I indicate that the coalition will be supporting this important motion from Senator Pocock, and I want to acknowledge him for his genuine interest in these issues of invasive species. What we're talking about here is protecting Australia. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about protecting this country, protecting it from the threat of erasure, which we have seen, sadly, over the last couple of 100 years, where we have lost too many of our own species and unique flora and fauna as a result of different invasive species penetrating our biosecurity. What could be more important than protecting Australia? I'd say that, when I was growing up in northern Victoria, you could see the difference between where invasive species had penetrated parts of the day-to-day landscape and where they hadn't. You could see the material difference it made. I think about the impact of European carp in the Goulburn and Murray river channels in the system and the fact that, in other parts of western Victoria, there were no European carp and, therefore, the fish sector and the environmental sector were radically improved for everyone.

This is a very serious matter. We see the rural vista. We see the deer, the goats and the pigs. These are very serious threats to agriculture and very serious threats to our native species. This is a regional problem which threatens our economy. It threatens our sustainability. In the cities, though, we have a terrible problem with feral cats. So it's not just a rural and regional issue. And then we have weeds, which can destroy parts of the natural habitat. At the moment, there has been a big focus on the fire ants, but there are also the varroa mites, which have been detected at the Port of Newcastle. These mites can destroy European honeybees, which is a very significant threat to our honey industry. That's just one that has come up recently. But the pigs are a big problem. The goats are a big problem. The camels are a big problem, actually. So these are longstanding issues.

The government has been in place now for many years, and the industry is very, very worried. In the farming sector, anyone that has any exposure is focused on this: 'Can we get better program certainty from the government?' These are long-run campaigns that are needed. You need to have the funding certainty. Stakeholders, including the Invasive Species Council, are identifying that the yellow crazy ants, the gamba grass eradication, the Kangaroo Island feral cat eradication and the Tasmanian feral deer on Bruny Island are some things that are happening right now where there isn't funding certainty; there isn't program certainty. The government have, in their words, 'reallocated'—but have, we would say, cut—funding from these programs in the last budget.

What we want to see is a serious whole-of-government endeavour to eradicate these invasive species. That, in some cases, will take up to a decade. You can't just run the program for one year or two years and re-announce things and rebadge things in the budget. This is a serious problem that we're fighting on a number of fronts. As I say, there's a problem in the city. There's a problem in the bush. There are the weeds. There are so many different invasive species in different forms.

If we take it back to first principles, we are all committed to protecting Australia regardless of our political differences. This is one of the most basic things we can do to protect our environmental heritage but also to protect our economy, our livelihoods and our health. That is why the ask from the industry that is most exposed to the invasive species mismanagement is simply for funding certainty and program certainty. I think that's something that we should all try and work together on. Everyone wants to protect our native habitat, because that is what is sustaining us here on this continent.