Damian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is why you get the big dollars, Mr Speaker. I appreciate that indulgence. In relation to the amendments that have been put forward, it is also my understanding that these are mere technical and typographical errors. I have been given assurances that they have no substantive impact on the definition of the bill or the intent of the legislation.

As was also put forward, it is absolutely critical that everybody in Australia understands that biosecurity is at the epicentre of the agricultural industries. Everything we do with our agricultural produce is based around the fact that we have some of the highest quality agricultural produce in the world. Because of the high cost of productivity and the high cost of inputs in this country, we understand that we need this amazingly clean, green reputation to be preserved. It is something that is absolutely critical to everything we do in the agricultural sector. It was a little bit interesting to see the shadow minister for agriculture spend one minute on that and then spend five or 10 minutes talking about sugar. However, the shadow minister did in fact come back to the bill.

This bill is incredibly important when you think about the 200 million tonnes of ballast water that is discharged into our ports around Australia. The sheer quantity of this water makes everybody quite alarmed. We have 13,000 ships coming to our ports every year, many of them empty and ready to pick up cargo. Obviously the additional weight that they need to remain stable comes from increased quantities of ballast water. What is also interesting with the statistics is the high number of different ports from different areas around the world where these ships arrive from. The Zika virus is something that has caused enormous concern because of its effect on humans, and the vectors that incursions are able to derive from certainly create a real concern for us.

This bill will also position Australia and its need to comply with the ballast water management convention—the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships' Ballast Water and Sediments—to provide an internationally consistent approach to managing ballast water on vessels. Ballast water is now recognised as a major source in the spread of exotic marine pests around the world, and Australia has played a key role in developing the ballast water management convention. We signed that convention in 2005, but it is subject to ratification. Australia is now a global leader in biosecurity and has a positive international reputation in relation to biosecurity and environmental control measures. Failure to legislate to comply with the ballast water convention before it is enforced in September would risk further damage to Australia's reputation. Obviously in Australia we have an expanding international marine trade. It is considered in Australia's interest to implement more uniform and stringent requirements to make sure that we do in fact conform to the convention.

I would also like to spend a little bit of time talking about just how important agriculture and trade is to my local area around the Goulburn Valley. It is often referred to as the 'food bowl of Australia', and around 25 per cent of Victoria's agricultural produce, in a different range of areas, is produced in the Goulburn Valley. On horticulture alone, the Goulburn Valley produces over 82,000 tonnes of apples. Twenty-eight per cent of Australia's total apple production is in the Goulburn Valley. Eighty-six per cent of Australia's pear production takes place in the Goulburn Valley. It is over 105,000 tonnes. Over 70 per cent of Australia's peaches are produced in the Goulburn Valley. We all understand that about a quarter of Australia's total dairy produce is produced in the Goulburn Valley, with over 2,300 million litres of milk and milk products being produced. Tomatoes, again, are a huge commodity within the Goulburn Valley in relation to preserved tomatoes and tomato products. It is predominantly driven out of KAGOME in Echuca and SPC in Shepparton. Nearly all but 10,000 tonnes of tomatoes that are processed in Australia are processed in the Goulburn Valley.

As I have said many times in this House, it is not just the primary produce that we have to protect when we are doing free trade agreements. We have seen the impact of those free trade agreements. When we create these free trade agreements with countries like China, Japan and South Korea, once those tariffs and once those exporting costs are diminished, we see a direct increase in the amount of produce that leaves our shore for those destinations.

It is not just the primary produce that benefits from these free trade agreements, from this amazing biosecurity reputation that we have and from the quality that we have. Sitting on the back of some of these commodities which I have already mentioned is a whole range of other primary produce that is yet to receive the go-ahead to move into these other areas. Whilst apricots have just recently been given the protocol approval, we are also looking at kiwifruit. There has been some serious investment in kiwifruit from the Goulburn Valley, and it is trying to reach its way into some of those Asian countries.

On the back of this primary production industry is, in fact, a whole range of other industries. We have the processing plants and then, on the back of the processing plants, we have a whole range of packaging industries—whether that be Visy or a whole range of others. They employ literally hundreds and hundreds of people throughout the Goulburn Valley just in packaging. And then, outside of Melbourne and Sydney, the city that has the most amount of transports registered to it is the city of Shepparton. Again, that is because the transport industry is so critically important to moving so much of this primary produce that the area creates. Should anything ever happen to our primary industries, we have the packaging industry and the transport industry sitting on the edge, which are directly affected, either positively or negatively. When primary industry is going well we also have an increased boost in these associated areas, not to mention, obviously, retail in our major cities around regional Victoria. When the agricultural sector is going well retail is also going well. We know that when the farmers are doing well they spend their money. They reinvest back in their farms and businesses and they provide a real boost for our regional economies. That spills over into the professional sector. When the farming businesses are really humming along, they have an extensive need to create the highly tuned businesses that will provide all the professional services that they need.

So, whether it be in transport or packaging or retail or professional or all the other associated industries that hang off the back of primary production, we all need to realise how critical our biosecurity measures are to maintain this reputation that we have spent over a hundred years in building, aided by the fact that we are an island nation and have had many years in which we have been able to invest in biosecurity.

It is worth noting that when we came to government there had been reports about the fact that we had let our biosecurity protocols slip and that there had been a disinvestment in the biosecurity area. We have had to correct that and bring those investments back. We have invested over $200 million to improve biosecurity since we have been in government, with $50 million to boost Australia's emergency pest and disease eradication capability and $50 million to give farmers betters tools and control methods against pest animals and weeds. It is a very strong record that the coalition has put together to ensure the continued care and protection of Australian farmers and the community from pests and diseases. We need to ensure that this continues to rebuild and reinvest in the biosecurity system.

This bill will effectively come into force on 8 September this year. It is a very important bill. It goes to the very centre of our reputation, which is so highly regarded around the world. We understand how important this is to our fishing industry, in relation to our vulnerability to marine pests. The member for Hunter has already touched on the outbreak we have had with the prawns, which needs to be addressed. It is a very difficult area to address. We have had previous outbreaks which have effectively been able to be treated, but we have ongoing challenges now which are going to need more and more work on them all the time. In this bill we are also going to make these essential changes in the hope that we will be able to reduce the risk of invasive marine pests entering Australian waters. Certainly we would like to think that if we remain ever vigilant—this is where we need to acknowledge the work that Minister Barnaby Joyce is doing in this area. He is prepared to throw whatever it takes at biosecurity measures to insist that Australia adheres to the convention that we have worked so hard to design and helped design. We need to acknowledge that Barnaby Joyce will do whatever it takes to make sure that we protect our reputation and do whatever we can to ensure that biosecurity is at the forefront of everything we do in relation to agriculture.

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