Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to speak to the Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill 2011. At the outset I would like to make a comment in response to some remarks made by Senator Colbeck earlier in this debate. Unfortunately, the opposition do not seem to be able to attack the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard, on the facts, so they make things up, and what Senator Colbeck said about the Prime Minister is a perfect example of that. He decided to use privilege to claim that the Prime Minister, when she was addressing the New Zealand parliament, had claimed, while the dispute over this issue was still before the World Trade Organisation, that Australia would accept apples from New Zealand. The facts are, as I am sure you would know, Madam Acting Deputy President Moore, that, in her speech to the New Zealand parliament, she said Australia had accepted the decision of the World Trade Organisation after the World Trade Organisation had made its finding rather than when the dispute was current, as Senator Colbeck claimed quite outrageously and quite falsely in his speech. In fact the World Trade Organisation had made its finding and what the Prime Minister said to the New Zealand parliament, quite correctly, was that the dispute had now been determined and Australia would accept the result, as it was obliged to do. So Senator Colbeck was quite inaccurate, quite misleading and quite wrong. I think the concerns of apple growers in Australia are exacerbated by these sorts of outrageous and false claims made by Senator Colbeck.

Returning to the bill itself, I think it is worth while acknowledging the report of the Senate Rural Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee. Senator Urquhart spoke very eloquently as a member of the committee, which was led by Senator Sterle, a very hardworking senator from Western Australia. The government notes that the committee recommended that the Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill not be passed, and of course that is the position of the government.

Each and every year the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry issues tens of thousands of import permits with some 14,000 different sets of import conditions. Permits cover an immense range of products. Madam Acting Deputy President, I am sure you are very familiar with these. There are fruit and vegetables; domestic pets such as cats and dogs; working dogs for the Australian Federal Police and the Defence Force; agricultural plant and animal breeding stock; genetic materials for horse, cattle and sheep breeding programs; medicinal and veterinary vaccines; used mining and agricultural machinery and military equipment; research supplies for universities and medical companies; and oak casks to support Australian premium wine production.

Permits are issued to the entire Australian community. Mums and dads can get them, wholesalers can get them and retailers, universities, mining companies, winemakers and farmers can get them. Unfortunately and without question, this bill will hurt Australian farmers, who rely on imports to improve their growing productivity. I will give some examples. Turkey farmers who rely on imported fertilised eggs to supply Australian turkeys will not be able to meet the demand next Christmas. Beef farmers will be denied access to the best genetic resources in the world. High-quality grape growers, particularly in my home state of South Australia, will not be able to have their grapes processed into high-quality wine for export because the importation of oak for this purpose will be suspended.

This bill if passed would mean that the Senate Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances would have to consider up to 250 import conditions every single sitting day in order to confirm all 14,000 sets of import conditions over a 12 month period—and that is only if there is sufficient expertise and human resources to provide that many draft instruments for the minister to sign, if the minister is on hand to sign all of these instruments each and every day and if the Attorney-General's Department can register all of these instruments on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments.

The government does not doubt Senator Xenophon's good intentions in respect of this bill. He has raised concerns in this place and in the rural affairs and transport committee about the revised policy determination on the importation of apples from New Zealand made by the director of quarantine. I will say a little bit more about this later on. This bill does not recognise the complex task performed by the department's biosecurity staff each and every day. It has been government policy over successive governments to implement a science based quarantine and biosecurity framework. Senator Macdonald talked about that in his contribution earlier. That means quarantine decisions are based on a scientific assessment of the risks posed by the importation of a commodity, and these risks are then managed by the imposition of specific and targeted measures. Biosecurity staff within the department and its predecessors have been performing this task for decades. That is why there are 14,000 conditions of import on the AQIS import conditions database. I commend the database to senators as a valuable resource, should they be responding to inquiries from constituents about import conditions.

This bill takes a sledgehammer to decades of accumulated knowledge developed by the department and its predecessors and says that they are all wrong. Senator Xenophon often says that, of course, about issues he disagrees with. This bill seems to think that once import conditions are established they remain static. In fact they are reviewed regularly and the department makes amendments to them in response to any changes to the pest and disease status of the exporting country. Earlier this year the department put in place emergency measures in response to a devastating outbreak of kiwifruit canker in New Zealand. The importation of nursery stock from New Zealand was prohibited immediately, and a very short time later the importation of kiwifruit pollen from New Zealand was also suspended.

DAFF officials are constantly monitoring the pest and disease status of countries that Australia imports from and amends quarantine conditions as necessary. Under this bill, however, when the department decides to change conditions of import, even if those changes are to strengthen conditions, the changes will be subject to parliamentary disallowance. This bureaucratic madness would have the perverse impact of encouraging the unregulated trade of products of biosecurity concern. It is unregulated or illegal activity that poses the biggest risk to Australia's environment and biosecurity, not formal, regulated trade. This bill is bad for Australia's unique biosecurity status. Let us look at apples from New Zealand. What Senator Xenophon is trying to do is to find a way of revisiting the Australian government director of quarantine's policy determination on the importation of apples from New Zealand. Senator Xenophon and those opposite know that the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry prepared a draft review of the conditions for the importation of apples from New Zealand. The draft review was published on 4 May 2011. The apple industry, members and senators, the scientific community and the community at large all had two months to provide comment on the draft review, and the comment closed on 4 July. Biosecurity officials within the department considered all of the submissions before finalising the review and providing it to the director of quarantine for a final policy determination. A final policy determination was made by the director of quarantine on 17 August.

We all know that the policy review was commenced because New Zealand successfully challenged Australia's 2007 policy in the World Trade Organisation. But the policy review was conducted by Australian officials of the department with no interference from the World Trade Organisation, the New Zealand government or the ministerial wing of this building. No matter how many Senate orders to produce documents Senator Colbeck sponsors, those documents will only ever confirm this fact. The review followed the same import risk assessment process that was in place when the National Party was on this side of the chamber. The revised policy decision is a biosecurity policy underpinned by the science—and those opposite know that they would not change it even if they were in government.

Those opposite also know that the Gillard government's response to the WTO decision followed the same process that the Howard government followed when it lost a similar action under similar terms relating to the quarantine conditions for raw salmon from Canada. In fact, after the decision, John Howard said that Australia would get 'murdered' in an ensuing trade war by challenging its loss in the WTO. On that occasion John Howard said:

... it’s very difficult to ignore the findings of a body such as this—

the WTO—

because if we can put aside the finding of a so-called independent body ... other countries can do the same thing.

It is not often that I quote John Howard in support—