Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Last week we had an Australian National Audit Office report on biosecurity in Australia. The findings of this report are incredibly concerning. The ANAO report concludes that the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment's arrangements to respond to noncompliance with biosecurity are 'largely inappropriate'. What does this say about the Morrison government's interest in biosecurity risks? The ANAO's findings in relation to the inadequacies of Australia's biosecurity system need to be taken seriously. A biosecurity system that is deemed to be inappropriately managed has massive implications for the agriculture sector, and it puts Australian farmers in a very vulnerable position. This is totally unacceptable. The ANAO report also validates numerous and serious concerns raised by farmers and producers and the agriculture sector.

As already mentioned, biosecurity threats and the inadequacies of the current system are issues that are consistently raised with me. No doubt MPs across all parties hear these concerns in their local constituencies. Incursions of pests and disease are of great concern to farmers and producers, who know the significant risks if and when Australia's biosecurity system fails us. The Morrison government really must do better when it comes to the agriculture sector and Australia's biosecurity system.

Of course, we know there are other issues impacting the agriculture sector that the Morrison government has also done nothing to fix, even though it knows they are impacting on Australian farmers. We've seen today an announcement about agriculture workers, and we know there has been a labour force issue on farms across this country for years—for years and years. This pandemic hasn't been going for just a few months, of course. Last year, the government promised 25,000 workers from Pacific nations. By the government's and the minister's own admission, less than 7,000 of those workers have made it into Australia and onto farms.

We keep hearing the government talking about how they help farmers all the time, but the reality is that what we actually get is something very different. The farmers know the government is not delivering when it comes to the assistance it continues to talk about all the time. We know that they're not actually delivering on all of their announcements when it comes to assistance for farmers and regional communities. They talk a lot, they say a lot and they announce a lot, but they don't do much. This seems to be a consistent theme from this government.

When we talk about the budget and we talk about the workforce and we talk about the ANAO's report on how inappropriate the biosecurity system is, the government says, 'Oh, but we put $370 million in the budget.' If that money hadn't gone into the budget, as I said earlier, then they would have actually gone backwards in biosecurity expenditure in this country—backwards! And that $370 million is mostly capital expenditure required to fix the ICT system, which we know is inappropriate. The government's talking more about relying on artificial intelligence. I have raised my concerns about that in this chamber before. We all know how the government goes when it comes to ICT systems. They haven't been very good at it, to date. So I hope that these investments in ICT, in our biosecurity system, that farmers and producers are relying on, actually work. They need to work, and the government needs to make sure that they do work before it introduces this system. It absolutely needs to make sure that this happens.

In the meantime, as I said, we've still got farmers and producers who can't get their fruit and their produce off their farms because the government hasn't done enough about labour. The ag visa that was announced overnight and then talked about today was promised three years ago. Now the minister is saying, 'We might get it done by Christmas.' What is the point of having all of these workers ready when we don't have a national quarantine system, we're not all vaccinated and we can't open our borders? How is that going to help farmers who need workers now?

When the government is asked this question, they don't have an answer. They just try and blame the states for not doing enough quarantining. Quarantine is their job. Quarantine is the federal government's responsibility; it's not the states' responsibility. They've been on alert about this for months and months. They know they need to build a national quarantine system, and yet we haven't seen it. We still haven't seen it.

What we've got from this government is more ad hoc pieces of legislation, more trying to look like they're doing something when they're actually not doing much at all when it comes to Australian farmers and biosecurity and the risks that it poses to our agricultural sector. When you've got farmers talking about tens of millions of dollars in loss for not being able to get products off farm and you've got the government renouncing something they announced three years ago and saying, 'We're really going to do it this time,' farmers are a bit sceptical, to be blunt. Look at what the NFF said. It was interesting to see the minister for trade read some quotes from the NFF here today. He didn't talk about what they said about their ag visa. He said farmers need to see this delivered, because they're a bit sceptical, basically. And who could possibly blame them after what we've seen from this government? Seriously, all the time, talking, talking, talking, announcing, announcing, announcing and not really delivering.

And then, of course, we've got the one thing they don't want to talk about, as we saw in question time today on the motion I moved earlier: the mouse plague. Here we have a very serious mouse plague—some are talking about it being the worst Australia has seen. We've got the New South Wales Farmers Association saying this is going to cost around $1 billion to production in New South Wales farms. You've got the four states—Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia—where this plague is now, and you've got the federal government saying: 'It's not our job. It's up to the states. Don't look here.' And then we had some bizarre response from the Acting Prime Minister today, which basically said, 'Why don't we catch them all and re-release them in the inner city so they can bite and scratch them?' It was the most bizarre thing I think I've heard here in a while.

Mr Sukkar interjecting—

The point is he should be serious, the minister at the table. The point is that Australian farmers have been dealing with this mouse plague for months. Your government has done nothing about it. There's no national response plan to deal with the mouse plague. The farmers are crying out for this federal government to do something about it, instead of them sitting on their hands saying, 'Not our problem.' That's what's happening on this side of the House.

The Australian farmers need to have confidence and certainty. They need to know that, when the government says something, they're going to actually deliver on it, and we don't have that today. When we have this legislation talking about the importance of our biosecurity system, I hope that the government is taking this with the utmost seriousness, as it should. We need to make sure that the biosecurity system delivers for our vital agricultural producers in Australia. We need to make sure that all of Australia can have confidence in our biosecurity system. We need to make sure that whether it's human biosecurity, plant biosecurity or animal biosecurity, this government is doing its job and we want to move a second reading amendment that reflects our ongoing concern about the government's inaction. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes the Coalition Government's ongoing delays to upgrade Australia's biosecurity arrangements".

We have an ANAO report that says they're not doing enough. They're not doing enough at all, and they need to do so much better.

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