Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian biosecurity system is a national asset which we've got to be proud of. It's there to protect our agriculture and our exports. We are going gangbusters with our agriculture. This year we're on track for about $72 billion worth of product. This is up from about $48 million only a few years ago. Our farmers are renowned for the clean, fresh and green products that we produce. The Australian consumer loves our products and so does the export market.

Biosecurity is one of the key pillars. If you listen to our agriculture minister, there are seven key pillars when it comes to agriculture; biosecurity is one, and a very important one at that. So, as we head towards $100 billion by the year 2030, we, as a government, must ensure that we are here to protect our lifestyle and the products that we produce.

In this year's budget, as the member for Riverina said, over $400 million was put aside for a range of portable devices or machines that can be taken around by our Customs and Border Force people to detect what's coming in in containers and that type of delivery. It's very good; it's very effective. We need this money also to train our officers in the latest detection methods. Drones are now coming into favour; they're used for control of feral pigs, and camels and buffalo, more in the Territory. For instance, if foot and mouth was to get into the Northern Territory or into Queensland in the gulf country, we'd have no end of trouble. We'd find we'd have to destroy most of our herds of cattle, because it's very easily transferred.

David Littleproud, our minister for agriculture, has proposed a road map and is doing great things to protect our environment, the economy and early delivery of products. And that's a lot of paperwork. As the member for Barker said, there's a hell of a lot of product coming in and out of Australia. We are an island nation, but we export over $80 million of product and we're a country of only 25 million people.

It's for that reason that we've got to stop these diseases like canker. Canker is a disease that gets into our citrus food. It struck Emerald in my electorate, back in the early 2000s, and they had to have an exclusion zone for 30 kilometres—it took in the town of Emerald—and every citrus tree had to be destroyed and replanted and that area not used for three years. Swine flu is sweeping through China and other places around the world as we speak, and it's an outbreak that we don't want in Australia. BSE, or mad cow disease, is another disease that we don't want, and we'll fight tooth and nail to keep it out. White spot in prawns and crabs is another bad disease, and that has come into Queensland through importing raw prawns. Recently I was in Darwin at the barramundi farm up there, and what they fear up there is that we're still importing whole fish—that's the head, the gut and the skeleton, which of course we don't use in our kitchens in Australia—as that is where the disease is likely to be picked up, as with white spot in our prawns. They don't have visitors at the barramundi farm up there at Middle Point because they are so scared of introducing these foreign diseases. There's fruit fly—they call it the 'Queensland fruit fly', though I don't know why they call it the 'Queensland'— (Time expired)

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