Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Well, when you have a strong economic plan, you can do a whole lot of things—like respond to risks to the economy which would be incurred if we got African swine fever onshore. We are protecting our 2,700 pig producers and the 36,000 Australians who work in the pork industry and making sure that this disease, which kills 80 per cent of the pigs it infects, is kept away from our shores. When you've got the financial resources at your disposal, you can send Suki to Darwin to check the nine direct flights from Dili when you need to. You can actually ramp up the inspections at the border and increase the X-raying of parcels from affected countries. Through those measures, we've been able to detect and stop over 27 tonnes of cooked pork product from affected ASF countries from reaching our shore. That is responsiveness we need.