Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the government response to the Senate Rural Affairs and Transport References Committee inquiry's report Science underpinning the inability to eradicate the Asian honey bee.

This is a very sad and ongoing saga and it is something that the Senate Rural Affairs and Transport References Committee spent a considerable amount of time on, working very hard to try to get to the bottom of the process behind the decision that the Asian honey bee could not be eradicated from where it has established itself in an area around Cairns. It is reasonable to suggest that members of the committee still have considerable concerns about the process, the way it was managed and the way the decision was made. Unfortunately, events since then do not change the view of many of us who have followed this issue closely.

We do acknowledge, though, that following the hearings that were held and the concerns that were expressed by the committee, the government provided $2 million to support a national pilot program to facilitate management of the Asian bee. But, again, the processes that the government undertook and the way that this issue has been managed have continued to raise concerns. As part of the process, and as part of the funding for this $2 million that was allocated by the government towards the study of the Asian bee, the government was supposed to provide a document to support a national pilot program—a plan—put into place by June.

We hear that just this morning—months, obviously, after the target date of June—members of the industry have been offered and provided with a copy of that plan. This continues the process that we saw during the decision-making discussion around whether or not the Asian bee might be eradicable. The farce continues. During the management of a key meeting in January on whether or not the bee might be eradicable, one of the pre-eminent scientists in this country had his name disappear off the email list, so he was not available to speak and advise the industry at the meeting. We hear now that, through the development of this plan which is five months late, scientists sitting around the panel are only allowed to speak if they are asked a direct question. They are not allowed to have general input. The process has been held confidential to three members of the industry.

It is a great way to manage dissent—that only three members of the industry who are on the panel developing the plan are able to have access to the information. There has been no effective consultation with the industry, no capacity for the development of the plan to be canvassed broadly within the beekeeping and honey industry in Australia. Three people have been allowed to be part of the process. The scientists sitting on the panel are allowed to comment only if they are asked a direct question. The complete farce that is this process continues. Further, we have a number of members of the beekeeping community, about 50 volunteers, working in and around Cairns on the potential eradication of the bee. One of the key assumptions made as part of the process was that the bees would move into the dense rainforest in and around Cairns and that it would be very hard to find them. That was one of the key elements in the decision-making process as put to us, as senators on the Senate inquiry, by departmental representatives. So dense forest was an issue for the potential eradication of the bee.

The observations coming out of that region now are that the bees are in fact not taking up residence in the dense rainforest. There is no food for them in the rainforest, so they might be going in but they are coming back out. One of the criticisms committee members had of this process during the inquiry was that at a critical point for the decision-making process the funding ran out, even though a decision had been made to collect more data. The fact that funding was not available meant that the data was not collected. Now the volunteer beekeepers operating around Cairns are finding a contradiction to what was the accepted wisdom at the time—that the bees would establish in the rainforest. They are telling us that the bees are not establishing in the rainforest, so the reality of the decision made earlier this year may be very different.

I know that Senator Milne has also been quite concerned about ensuring that this process continues. We acknowledge that the government put additional money on the table and we appreciate that. Let us not criticise the fact that there has been a positive move made in that area. But then the report on how to manage the process was five months late, continuing the complete debacle which has been the process right from the outset—when a key member of the committee did not attend a meeting because their email address had slipped off the invitation list. I do not know whether you call it being accident prone, careless or incompetent. I really do not know how to describe this.

Then we saw in the development of a management plan that only three people have been allowed to be part of the process. The key scientists, the people who really understand the Asian honey bee and its characteristics, who might have known what to do, were sitting around the table and could speak only when they were directly asked a question. This process has been so intensely controlled to manage against dissent or discussion that it is just absolutely absurd. For the government to control and restrict it to three people and not allow effective discussion throughout the rest of the industry is completely outrageous.

We appreciate that the government has accepted a number of our recommendations—they have stepped away from a couple of elements of what we asked them to do—but the practical processes they have undertaken right throughout the incursion of Asian bees into Australia really has been a comedy of errors. We questioned the decision that the bee was not eradicable and we questioned it based on advice from scientists who said there was not enough data to properly make that decision. We questioned the fact that the scientists were allowed to sit around the table but not be part of the discussion and that the key scientist was not at the meeting where the decision was made.

It now appears, through observations being made by beekeepers and the volunteers who have taken it upon themselves to continue the work in and around Cairns—and we know that is by the agreement of the government—that their observations are indicating that the bees still may be eradicable. Yet the government persists with the line that it does not believe this bee can be eradicated even though the basic premise we saw during the inquiry was that there was not enough information to make that decision. While I acknowledge the tabling of the government's response, I still question their management of this overall process because it appears to me, with the key report being five months late, there is still a lot to be desired as far as the process is concerned.