James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Biosecurity Amendment (Strengthening Biosecurity) Bill 2022. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge that I've had a significant outbreak of fruit fly in my electorate, recently, in South Australia. I really thank the people from the Department of Primary Industries and Regions SA for the work that they're doing to support the control of that and keep the growers in my home state well protected. I make that point because we want to acknowledge all the people that are working on the front lines in biosecurity to keep our agricultural production safe and secure.

In South Australia we're very proudly fruit fly free, at times—we tend to be all the time, particularly in the Riverland—so it's been vitally important that PIRSA have done that work throughout the state of South Australia. The residents of my electorate have been extremely supportive of the need to have their fruit removed from fruit trees and to be in a position where they're losing the productiveness for their kitchens and cooking needs et cetera. We need to remove that fruit and do all we can to combat fruit fly. Similarly, our Border Force officials and all the other elements of the federal government agencies that work to keep our border secure from the risk of biosecurity incursions coming into our country do an excellent job, so I want to acknowledge them as well.

We're very lucky to be a nation that has a continent to ourselves. We are very lucky because we don't have a land border, and it's a lot easier to protect a maritime border in this nation. For over 120 years, the government of the Commonwealth has done an excellent job in having a really strong and significant regime in place to ensure that we have kept out a lot of potential biosecurity incursions into our nation.

We've seen what sort of impact those can have in industries in other parts of the world. We've been concerned recently about the risk of primary production industries being affected through contamination that might have been brought into this country from Indonesia, and we've always had a vigilance around other potential livestock contamination. Like many people in this House, at various times we travel overseas. Although it's quite a significant procedure that you go through when you enter this country compared to the experiences you have in travelling to other countries, from a biosecurity point of view, we're very proud of the important measures that are in place to make sure that we are protecting our agricultural industries but also our natural environment, the people of this country, our livestock, our natural habitats et cetera from the risk of being contaminated from some kind of biosecurity incursion that could come into this country through the border.

We've got to be ever vigilant about this. We've always got to update our legislation and do so in a way that ensures that we're aware of what risks there are and make sure that we look for changes, from a legislative point of view, that are needed to ensure that future risks and technology are taken into account in a way that—

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