Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have this opportunity to contribute to the debate on the Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Legislation Amendment (Export Control and Quarantine) Bill 2006. The opposition supports the passage of this bill. While this bill is not controversial in any way, it is a significant piece of legislation because it concerns matters of vital importance to our food processing and export industries and therefore deserves serious consideration and the support of both parties. Basically the bill provides for technical improvements to Australia’s regime of export control and quarantine. It does that by closing some gaps that have been identified in the present system of export inspection and introducing a number of new offences to strengthen the integrity of the export chain.

To appreciate the importance of maintaining the highest possible standards of export inspection and quarantine in this country, one only has to recall the potentially disastrous events of the early eighties which led to the enactment of the current Export Control Act 1982. In August 1981 discoveries were made in the United States of horse meat having been substituted for beef by an Australian meat export establishment. As a result of that, the reputation of the Australian meat industry was severely tarnished. In response to the meat substitution scandal the Customs (Unlawful Exportation of Food) Act 1982 and the Meat Export (Penalties) Act 1982 were enacted. These acts were replaced in 1983 by the present Export Control Act 1982. So, while the debate today is technical in nature, the changes proposed send a strong message that we take protection of our export industries very seriously indeed. We cannot afford to take any risks with Australia’s reputation for the highest quality food exports.

Specifically the bill seeks to amend the Export Control Act 1982 and the Quarantine Act 1908 to create new offences that will apply to persons who are in control of the preparation of food products for export and who fail to ensure that the goods are prepared in accordance with legislated requirements, especially food safety legislation. The bill also seeks to provide a legal basis for the recovery of fees for quarantine services provided under the Quarantine Act to other Commonwealth bodies. It will extend the services for which fees may be charged under the Export Control Act to services provided by the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry or by the secretary’s delegate. It will clarify the use of certain terms and definitions in both the Quarantine Act and the Export Control Act and insert a new definition of ‘fish’. The definition of ‘preparation’ will also be extended to include the catching of fish.

As I mentioned earlier, the Export Control Act dates back the early 1980s. It set up a regime for the export inspection of prescribed goods, including meat, fish, fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy produce and grains. Inspection is carried out by authorised officers of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service in order to ensure that the goods that are to be exported meet the strict requirements set out in the regulations made pursuant to the Export Control Act. These requirements are aimed at ensuring fitness for human consumption, quality and accurate trade description of the goods.

Members on both sides would agree that the officers of AQIS do a fine job and their ability to enforce high standards is central to maintaining the integrity of our food exports and allowing us to compete for premium markets. Australia enjoys a reputation for the high quality and safety of the food products it grows, processes and exports. That reputation has been hard-earned and must be protected against any poor practices, either negligent or wilful, that could harm our standing in the world market.

I will digress for a minute to let the House know about a visit I made some years ago to Kailis Bros, a food processor in WA. It is a very successful operation, exporting all over the world. It gave me a real appreciation of the enormous competition out there in the food-processing sector and in the markets Australia is trying to break into. It highlighted to me the enormously high standards that have to be maintained by food processors wanting to export into that world market and wanting to compete effectively.

Kailis Bros provide products to organisations such as airline caterers, education facilities and health care providers, among many others. They process all sorts of seafood products, dessert products, frozen fruits and vegetables, and pasta products. The day we visited this plant, we watched the processing of lasagne, which was being put into frozen packs and exported to Japan. The owners of this food processing plant were explaining to us the stringent requirements that their Japanese purchasers placed on the products that came out of their plant. They were making lasagne this day, and it actually came down to the diced onion having to meet the specified requirements and the fact that there could not be one shred of tomato skin going into these products.

That was an example to me, and allowed me to appreciate what our food processors have to do and the high quality systems they have to have in place if they are going to compete in the international market. So, when you see the investment that was made by just one organisation, one business over there in Western Australia, to maintain their presence in the Japanese market, you understand the essential role that our food inspection service plays in maintaining those markets. If they could not let wrongly sized diced onion go into their product, we certainly have to make sure in Australia that we have the highest and most stringent standards of food quality and export control across the food processing sector.

Ever since the scandals of the early eighties, successive governments have taken a serious view of malpractice in the export food industry. Consequently, there has always been in the Export Control Act measures to deal with any such malpractice that may endanger the reputation of Australia’s export industries and jeopardise overseas markets. Currently, there are penalties for false declarations and trade descriptions, but gaps have been identified that this bill seeks to address.

This bill creates four new offences to deal with people who fail to ensure that goods are prepared for export in accordance with legislation. Two of those new provisions apply strict liability to some of the physical elements of those offences. These changes to strengthen and extend the reach of the legislation have come about because offences under the Export Control Act currently only apply to the persons actually exporting prescribed goods or to persons in possession of prescribed goods intended for export. So the focus up to now has been on persons involved in the post-production stage of the export chain. That left a gap—as the parliamentary secretary rightly pointed out in her speech, a serious gap—when it came to the actions of those people actually in control of the facilities where food products are processed.

This legislation creates new offences for persons in control of the preparation of food products for export who fail to ensure those goods meet legislative requirements, especially in relation to food safety. Two of the four new offences apply strict liability to some of the physical elements of the offence. ‘Strict liability’ means that the prosecution does not have to prove a fault element in relation to all or some of the physical elements of the offences, only that the defendant engaged in the relevant physical elements of the offence. This is necessary because otherwise persons in control of establishments preparing food for export could avoid the consequences of noncompliance by claiming that they were not aware of what was occurring in their establishment. This aspect of the bill sends a clear message that poor practices in the food-processing sector will not be tolerated. The stakes are too high to allow for any corner cutting when it comes to maintaining the standards of Australia’s food exports, even if it is unintentional on the part of the operator of the facility.

The fact that the offences apply strict liability means that there is a heavy and appropriate responsibility on the operators in the food export sector to have the best possible systems in place to guarantee the safety and quality of the food they produce for export. I think back to that example in Western Australia, where Kailis Bros had invested enormous amounts of money in setting up their plant and in pursuing that market in Japan in this particular instance. We just cannot take risks when our processors rely on the confidence of consumers in those markets to keep buying Australian products; we cannot afford to let poor practices in one area of the industry or in one particular business undermine the efforts of all those other businesses who are making those investments and doing the right thing.

The bill provides for penalties for the new offences, and the penalties are broadly consistent with existing penalties in the Export Control Act. The maximum penalty for the strict liability offences is 60 penalty units, and the other two new offences have a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.

The legislation also clarifies the legal basis for the recovery of fees for quarantine services provided to other Commonwealth bodies and extends the range of services for which fees may be charged under the Export Control Act. Labor supports the inclusion of this measure in the bill. Labor has long supported full cost recovery for the provision of quarantine services and other services provided by government relating to the export of food products.

The other provisions of this bill make a number of definitional changes and clarify the use of certain terms within the Export Control Act. The main one of these changes is the extension of the definition of preparation to include fish, and it clarifies that the Commonwealth has appropriate legal authority to regulate the sourcing of fish for export. This is an important addition to the act because the authority to regulate the sourcing of fish for export is necessary to ensure ongoing access for exported fisheries products into overseas markets and to protect consumers by ensuring that fish, including shellfish, are harvested from areas that do not contain pathogenic organisms, biotoxins and chemical contaminants at levels that may represent a threat to consumer health.

The whole issue of food security and consumer confidence in Australia’s food exports is one of vital importance to my electorate. As members have heard me say countless times in this place, Rockhampton is proud to be the beef capital of Australia and is at the heart of the large and very successful beef industry in Queensland. How many times has the member for Batman heard me—

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