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

The member for New England and I will have that debate another day and I am sure I will win it on behalf of the good people of Rockhampton.

The importance of the beef industry to our national economy cannot be overstated, and I am sure the member for New England will agree with me on that. Australia remains the largest exporter of beef in the world ahead of Brazil. The meat and livestock industries in Queensland contributed over $3 billion to the Queensland economy, and that represents 30 per cent of Queensland’s gross value of production from agriculture. So, when you look at that context and the significance of it to my electorate, you can see why I support the measures in this bill that strengthen our export inspection and control regime, because maintaining the quality and safety of all food products exported from Australia has an impact on what producers and processors in my electorate are trying to do.

I want to talk briefly about where this bill fits into what is happening in the beef industry. As I said, this bill focuses on the processing sector—one of the end stages of the export chain. What is being talked about in this bill—that is, putting in more stringent requirements and enhancing the ability of AQIS and the export inspection regime to enforce standards in the processing sector—complements the work being done by the grazing industry and primary producers generally to meet those stringent standards of quality and safety being demanded by our export markets.

The most obvious example of that in the beef industry is the National Livestock Identification Scheme, which has been put into practice over the last couple of years. The NLIS is a major investment by the beef industry to make sure that we can guarantee that we can track cattle through the whole production process and that we can export beef with the best possible guarantee of safety and biosecurity as a result of being able to track each animal through the chain. As I said, it is a major investment by the industry. The NLIS is estimated to cost the Queensland cattle industry $32.5 million per annum. The majority of that is actually borne by the production sector. This is where the industry itself is making sure that it does everything it can to protect its markets and to protect its reputation in those world markets.

Of course, this has been forced on Australia and on the industry by things that are happening overseas. We need to be able to demonstrate that we have the highest standards of biosecurity and food safety to make sure that we can export products that meet the very highest standards that are being imposed on us by those overseas markets. We have seen what can happen overseas when disease outbreaks occur or when food security is compromised in some way. At the moment we are in a position where we have been able to capitalise on and take advantage of some of those outbreaks and things that have hit overseas markets, particularly in the US and Canada, and we have been able to take advantage of markets opening up as a result of disease outbreaks overseas. This is about an insurance policy for our local beef industry—that we are in a position to guarantee the quality of our products and to make sure that we have a system in place to minimise the impact of any disease outbreak that might occur.

The Productivity Commission has estimated that a disease outbreak such as foot-and-mouth disease or BSE could cost the industry, through loss of export and domestic market revenue, between $5.7 and $13 billion and the impact could last for up to 10 years. You only have to look at what happened in Canada, which has a similar herd size to Australia, where after detection of a single BSE animal the livestock industry has lost an estimated $3.3 billion plus a flow-on loss to rural communities estimated at $1.8 billion. The total broader economic impact of the BSE case in Canada is estimated at $6.3 billion. They are such very sobering figures for people like me and the member for New England who represent communities that rely so heavily on our beef industry and primary industry sector.

I highlight that to demonstrate to the House what is happening in the beef industry for two reasons—firstly, to show that the beef industry is certainly doing its bit to uphold Australia’s reputation in international markets. The reason I support this bill so strongly is because I see it as complementary to what is happening at that primary production phase, making sure that the processing part of the export chain is held to similarly high and stringent standards so that, overall, our reputation as an exporter of very high quality and safe food is maintained.

It is important that Australia’s trading partners can be confident of the quality and safety of food products exported from this country. The amendments to the Export Control Act and the Quarantine Act are sensible and are consistent with the approach taken by both the government and the opposition in these areas in the past. As such, Labor supports the passage of this bill.

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