Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry: why is funding certainty so important for essential government functions like biosecurity, and what happens when governments don't plan for the future by providing this certainty?

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Solomon for his question. He knows, particularly being from the Northern Territory, just how important our biosecurity system is for agriculture in the Territory. You'd think, frankly, it would go without saying that funding certainty for essential government functions like biosecurity is vital. Certainly we on this side of the House absolutely understand how vital that is. We understand the need to protect the Australian community from biosecurity threats that could wipe out our agricultural industry. This is a multibillion dollar industry that we rely on for our export trade. Five point seven trillion dollars of environmental asset are, of course, incredibly important to this country and 1.6 million jobs across Australia depend on effective biosecurity measures. Everyone in Australia shares the benefit of a strong biosecurity system and we all have an incredibly valuable role to play in supporting it. That is why it is so important that our biosecurity system has funding certainty.

Unfortunately, what we now know is that the former coalition government, squandering nine long years, left our biosecurity system without the funding certainty it needed to do its job. I'm sure that everyone, including every farmer in this country, would be very surprised to learn that embedded in the Liberal's last budget was a drop in funding for biosecurity of 20 per cent on 30 June this year and another 25 per cent drop on 30 June next year. That is the legacy of biosecurity that the previous government has left us. The funding has fallen off a cliff. Trying to make sure that in an election year their budget looked okay, they failed to properly fund biosecurity going forward. We know that, of course, the previous government refused to do the hard work to actually fund it—as if the people of northern Australia don't need protecting from foot-and-mouth disease or lumpy skin disease, as if our prawn farmers don't need protecting from white spot disease, as if our horticultural industry doesn't need protecting from varroa mite, as if Australians aren't going to need detector dogs at our airports to keep out exotic pests and disease.

On the National Party's watch the number of detector dogs at our airports dropped from 80 in 2012 to only 39 in 2019. That is what happened under their watch, so concerned were they about biosecurity. Of course, after an irresponsible and reckless coalition government we have now been left to clean up your mess.