Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise, in following my colleagues, to outline our concerns about the relaxation of the importation of beef from countries that have had BSE or, as people would more commonly know it, mad cow disease. Firstly, I take exception to Senator Sterle’s comment about the comments coming from this side being scaremongering. It is anything but scaremongering. We are actually trying to get the facts of this out into the community, out into the public arena, so people can know what is going on. There is no parliamentary oversight of these changes—absolutely none—and there is no legislation and there are no regulations required, which means that the Parliament of Australia has no ability to have any input into the decision to make these changes. It is a decision of Minister Burke alone. It is about time that people around Australia had the opportunity to hear what is actually going on. This has been brushed under the carpet. As my good colleague Senator Back has just asked in his comments, why the secrecy? This has only started to come out because my colleagues Senator Heffernan, Senator Back and I, as a committee chair—and Senator Colbeck, Senator Williams and other very interested coalition senators—know that this should not be going ahead. If it were not for us the Australian people would not even know that these changes were going to come in on 1 March.

We are being told that there is negligible risk of an outbreak of mad cow disease if the importation rules are relaxed. The people that I am talking to about this are not at all comfortable with ‘negligible risk’ because ‘negligible’ means that there is a risk. I do not think anybody wants to walk into a restaurant with a sign out the front saying ‘Negligible risk of getting mad cow here’. That might sound a bit extreme but nobody can tell us otherwise. Nobody can look us in the face and say, ‘This will not occur. We will absolutely guarantee that we will not get mad cow disease in Australia.’ Under these changes they simply cannot do that. They absolutely cannot do that. This is being done purely on the health impacts. There is no import risk analysis whatsoever on the impact on the beef industry, absolutely none, and we are being told that that is fine and that is okay because there will be a negligible risk and there will not be a problem at all. That is just rubbish. It is not right and it should not be going ahead. This disease has a dormant period of 40 years. How can we possibly know that we can really say, ‘Yes, this is safe and this is fantastic’? It is just not right. This has been rushed; there has been undue haste.

We have the reputation of being a clean, green exporting nation. Why on earth would we risk that? We are being told by industry bodies that it is about the risk of trade retaliation if we do not move to the same level playing field, because the science now says that it is okay. That might be their view but there is still this risk attached to it. It is interesting that we have been told during the process that our trading partners have been pushing for years to try to get access to our market because they feel they are being unfairly precluded. Yet on the other hand at the same time we are being told that there is really not going to be any great increase at all in the importation of beef into this country. Doesn’t that then lead to this question: if our trading partners are so keen to get access to our market, why do they want to do that if they are not planning on supplying it? There must be a very good reason. I would imagine, as Senator Colbeck said before me, that it has something to do with the markets that we already hold. Interestingly, it was put forward this morning by MLA that indeed when this was announced there were concerns from Japan about our existing markets. We already export into Japan. What is this going to do in terms of creating a risk for our existing markets in places like Japan? If all of a sudden we now have relaxation of the rules that are going to allow imports from the US, for example, into Australia, what does that say about our standing in terms of our clean, green, top of the range—top of the level, if you like—status as an exporter? I would ask this: what is going to be the reaction of those countries if there is an outbreak after this all happens—and we hope it does not go ahead—in the US? What does that then do to our exporting relationship with Japan? Is it going to put us in the same basket as the US because we have been letting their beef come into this country? Of course it is.

This whole argument that the science is now okay simply does not wash. It absolutely does not wash. We know that the protocols have not even been drawn up yet. Those very guidelines that are the only things that are going to determine how, why and when countries that have had mad cow disease can send beef here are not even finalised—and this is starting on Monday morning. While we might not have beef coming in through the doors on Monday morning, their ability to apply to export absolutely starts on Monday morning and we do not even have the protocols. We do not have anything in place that says by what measure they are going to be allowed to do this. This is an absolute farce. The minister should simply be changing his mind, along with that of the departments, right now in the best interests of Australia.