Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is not a much more important topic for Australia's agricultural industry, and indeed for all Australians, than the biosecurity settings of our country. We are very lucky to have the cleanest, greenest, safest food supply system in the world. Not only is that important for Australians, who get to eat that beautiful food; it underpins the economic strength of our agricultural industry, because we do export something like 60 per cent of our farmed produce overseas. So it's absolutely integral that we maintain that safe system, those strong biosecurity settings, to keep the markets open in overseas countries.

So it has been a bit of a shock over the past week to hear the government announce that it would be changing those biosecurity settings. Some were concerned they are potentially weakening those biosecurity settings when it announced that it would allow US beef to have greater access into the market. The fundamental problem here is that the government hasn't been able to answer basic questions about on what basis this decision has been made and on exactly what terms US beef will be allowed in. I do and will recognise that, since 2019, we have allowed American beef into Australia. It has been permitted. I don't believe there has been much or any beef imported from America, but it has been done. It was approved under the former government under the strictest conditions. In particular, there had to be traceability on US beef to ensure that, in the box, though it may have had an American flag on it, there was no beef coming from Mexico or other parts of the Americas, where there are and may be diseases, like mad cow disease, which would be devastating if it ever came to these shores. The Americans generally struggle to provide that level of traceability. They don't have the same systems—the same supply chain assurance systems—that we have in this country. In this country, every calf is marked. It gets a little tag in its ear—it's called an NLIS tag—and it will make sure that, every time that cow or bull is moved through its life, it's recorded where it has come from and where it goes. Therefore, we can tell the final customer, wherever they may be, exactly where the beef in that box has been raised and has come from and assure them that there's no disease in those areas. That system does not apply to anything to that extent in the United States. It is not unusual it doesn't, because the US beef industry largely serves its own domestic market. It doesn't seek to have these supply chain assurance systems in place like we do to open up overseas markets.

The key thing here is it would seem like the government is not insisting that the same traceability requirements we have and impose on our beef sector should apply to the US beef sector. As I said, the details still remain somewhat murky about this. But I do have concerns if we are going to impose more stringent and strict requirements on our own beef sector than would be applied to a competitor in another country. I mean, surely, we should be able to tell the Australian people that we will seek to apply the same standards to our businesses as those that imported products have to comply with, in terms of safety requirements on others. Otherwise the American producers would have a natural economic advantage because of our policy settings, and that would be very inequitable to Australian beef producers.

This issue has not been helped, though, by the government's confused messaging here. There's obviously a very political element to this because it is wrapped up with demands from President Trump to open up our access to their beef and to do other things in our policy settings. So this change was always going to be viewed with a degree of cynicism, and the government has been left completely flat-footed and unprepared for basic questions. In fact, we saw the spectacle on the weekend of the trade minister saying one thing about a phone call in one hour and then the next hour saying something else completely different. So it's absolutely legitimate for the Australian agricultural sector to want answers to questions on this issue. That's why we have moved this motion today. That's why we're pursuing this through other means in the Senate.

The Australian farm industry deserves to know exactly on what basis this decision has been made. It deserves to know the protections that are in place for the industry. Even more importantly, Australia as a whole deserves to know that those protections are in place, because some of these diseases can affect human health as well. It is a very serious matter, and the government should take it much more seriously than they have.