Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution on Senator Xenophon's Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill 2011. The bill aims to establish greater parliamentary scrutiny over import conditions for biological products. If the bill is passed, it has the potential, unfortunately, to damage Australian industry and productivity—and I am sure that is something the Senate would never ever agree to. It could, unfortunately, cancel the opportunity to have the turkey at Christmas. It will prevent health authorities from obtaining timely vaccines to emerging global health epidemics. The bill will create uncertainty for Australia's farmers and the mining sector, who rely on quarantine clearance for machinery imports and other inputs. Australia's winemakers, unfortunately, would be denied access to something as simple as imported oak casks. The legislation poses a bureaucratic bottleneck for importers that could take years and years to clear. The question is not whether this legislation will cost jobs but how many jobs and who, if anybody, will benefit. The legislation not only denies imports but hampers production. Australia's ports would grind to a halt amid the uncertainty that this bill would create.

In the time allotted to me I want to explain how the bill would work. The bill would prohibit the importation of any product of quarantine concern. When we talk about quarantine, the first thing the majority of Australians would think about is produce, food and the like. But quarantine goes to a whole host of other items. Mining equipment, transport equipment and anything that comes on to our shores would be affected by this bill. All conditions of imports would then have to be remade as a legislative instrument by the minister.

I would like to dig down a bit further into that. The legislative instrument would be automatically referred to a parliamentary committee. If the committee did not move to disallow the instrument, the import permit and/or conditions of import would be considered valid. For example, if the committee or any other member of parliament—and that could be quite dangerous—moved to disallow the import permit and associated import conditions, it could result in a delay of a further 15 sitting days. I want to clarify that that is not normal Monday to Friday business days but sitting days. I have the parliamentary sitting program here in front of me. If this bill is passed, an importer could apply to import a product on 1 December 2011 and, going by the sitting calendar, the sad fact is that it could be well past Anzac Day next year before the importer would have certainty that no disallowance motion had been moved. If a disallowance motion was moved, the importer could be waiting until mid-August 2012 to have certainty about their permit. You do not have to be Einstein to work out that it is absolutely ludicrous that it could take that long when we have products sitting waiting to come into our country. If it is a bit of equipment that a mining company, or a transport company or a community may be hanging on, that is just crazy—let alone fresh produce, seafood or whatever it may be.

While the legislation only applies for the first time that import conditions are finalised, the AQIS import conditions database, known as ICON, specifies more than 14,000 import conditions. Import conditions for the same commodity can vary significantly depending on the risks associated with the country of export. If it only took 12 months to consider every set of import conditions, the Senate Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances would consider no less than 250 import conditions every parliamentary sitting day. It is quite frightening when we start talking like that. As we all know in this place, there are just not enough legislation drafters to draft all these legislative instruments. One can only imagine how long it would take to clear such a bottleneck. And because the legislative instruments automatically terminate 10 years after they are made, the parliament, after finally clearing the bottleneck caused by the bill, would be considering all of these import conditions all over again.

Roughly 36 million domestic and international passenger movements were recorded at Sydney airport in 2010—that is just Sydney alone. The swine flu epidemic demonstrated how quickly influenza, at first isolated to a few communities in Mexico, spread around the world including to Australia. Every year, Australian medical practitioners prescribe vaccines to combat flu and other diseases. Viruses and diseases evolve, and so too do the biological products the medical profession users to respond to them. But while passenger flights take off and land in real time, doctors and medical researchers could be waiting for months and months before their import permit was approved.

Just as importantly, the bill will hurt Australian farmers. The legislation will lead to challenges in the World Trade Organisation and trading partners will impose retaliatory actions. That leads to expensive legal disputes, and we have seen our fair share of them. That is not something anyone in this chamber would want to see. Changes to import conditions would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny—not that that is a bad thing, but it is not the quickest. Quarantine officials will be unable to impose measures that respond to emerging animal and plant health issues. This will in turn leave Australia exposed—let us hope not—to foot and mouth disease and plant diseases like citrus and kiwifruit canker.

Australian farmers rely on imported inputs to achieve better productivity. In the short time I have left to speak I want to give a couple of examples. Farmers import machinery second-hand. Because it has been used before and may contain traces of dirt, plant matter and insects, quarantine conditions apply—and so they should. Farming businesses import semen straws, embryos and plant products to improve productivity. Wine producers who import French oak to mature wine in will be unable to do so under this bill. Australia's turkey industry will be unable to import fertilised eggs, which are hatched and raised by Australian farmers. Any farmer who imports stockfeed or fertiliser will have to wait for the parliament to work through thousands of other import conditions. So the legislation encourages subversive and illegal activity. Illegal imports and non-regulated trade are the biggest risks to Australia's unique biosecurity status.

The Senate Rural Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, which I proudly chair, considered this bill and recommended that it not be passed. The committee noted that the significant majority of submissions argued that the bill had the potential to weaken Australia's quarantine and biosecurity framework. We cannot ever—ever—take the risk of doing that. The committee noted evidence which suggested that the bill would lead to the unwanted disclosure of commercially confidential information. The committee also expressed concerns that the bill has the potential to enable the parliament to override scientific evidence and determinations provided by Biosecurity Australia and the director of quarantine. With the greatest respect to my parliamentary colleagues, both in this House and the other place, the last thing we would want is for the odd politician to have the ability to put at risk our biosecurity measures in this great country. We cannot support the amendment bill.

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

I also rise to make a contribution on Senator Xenophon's private senator's bill, the Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill 2011. I can genuinely understand Senator Xenophon's concern in putting this piece of legislation before the parliament, particularly given the management of this issue by the government since early this year when the Prime Minister made her visit to New Zealand and effectively announced to the New Zealand parliament that we were going to take New Zealand apples. This issue has been before this parliament in a number of guises for a very long time. I am aware of at least two or three Senate inquiries into the importation of apples from New Zealand through various import risk assessment processes that have occurred since I have been here and I am aware of inquiries that occurred prior to that. But when the Prime Minister stood up in the New Zealand parliament and said effectively that we would take apples from New Zealand the industry were quite understandably very concerned about that statement, given that we were in the middle of a WTO process where the New Zealanders had referred our import risk assessment and the conditions attached to that to the WTO for arbitration. So the apparent pre-empting of that decision by the Prime Minister quite understandably got the industry very concerned.

One thing we need to be very aware of is the very fortunate situation we find ourselves in here in Australia with respect to our quarantine status. We make absolutely no apology for maintaining a very high level of protection for that quarantine status. It is more than appropriate that we do that. We are free of foot and mouth and a whole range of other diseases that impact on other countries around the world. In particular, in this case, fire blight is a disease that we are very fortunate we do not have to manage. It would have a huge impact on our apple and pear industries, completely devastating the pear sector, and there are a number of chemicals and management tools that are available particularly in New Zealand that are not available to our farmers here. Streptomycin is one that comes to mind. Senator Xenophon's motivation in putting this piece of legislation forward cannot be questioned. He is quite genuine in his concern to ensure that our biosecurity is at its strongest and that the disease status of our industries are protected to the absolute maximum possible. Unfortunately, the mechanism that he has designed in this piece of legislation cannot be supported. As Senator Sterle has just put on the record in his contribution, it does create a lot of uncertainty around the issuing of permits and, therefore, creates potential delays for our industries. I think this particular mechanism would do more than harm than good in protecting our biosecurity status.

The issue of the importation of apples, as I have said, has been a vexed one for a very, very long time. I have to mention the New Zealand minister who, when a delegation of coalition members were in New Zealand recently to inspect some of the processes and procedures occurring over there, acknowledged that the New Zealand industry had to lift their game in their sheds to ensure that they had a satisfactory outcome as far as their processes were concerned. The failure rate of close to 25 per cent that they have had since apples have been approved to come from New Zealand I do not think is acceptable and, if it had been an Australian product going overseas and we had that level of failure in our inspections, there would be an enormous hue and cry. I think the Australian apple and pear industry are more than reasonable in the concerns they have expressed about that level of failure rate. It is important to acknowledge that the New Zealand minister, who has been very, very good in the conversations that I have had with him in relation to this matter, has said to the industry that they need to lift their game and improve that rate. I think the New Zealand apple industry actually acknowledged that too, given the feedback that I have had from members of the delegation who went to New Zealand a couple of weeks ago. The fact that the New Zealanders were prepared to open their sheds to us to allow us to inspect their systems and to watch the way their processes worked is appreciated by the coalition, and I know that the industry appreciate the fact that we were able to go and have a look over there as well.

I come back to the government's management of this particular issue. They have created angst, particularly through the apple industry, where they did not need to. During the development of the import risk assessment the industry were very keen to get access to what is known as the New Zealanders' management systems of their orchards. They made a number of requests and were told by the government that the information was commercial-in-confidence. It was not until the coalition placed an order through this House that that information was provided to the industry. As it turned out, the information was actually available to the industry in the import risk assessment. All the government had to do was say to the industry, 'The information that you are looking for is accurately reflected in the import risk assessment document,' and that angst could have been removed. I believe that that is a completely and absolutely unnecessary concern that the industry had to go through and that the government could have resolved, if it had had the want to do so.

There is a lot of information in the New Zealanders' procedures manual that is commercial-in-confidence. It goes to marketing and it goes to a whole range of other matters. Had the government spoken to the New Zealanders and said, 'We want to give the Australian industry access to the information around the management of fire blight in particular in the orchards during the season and through the packing sheds,' that could have saved an enormous amount of angst. There were serious concerns that moved through the industry and I think they were quite justified because they believed information that was going to be used in the management of Australia's biosecurity—and I go back to the importance of our biosecurity status—was being withheld from them. Quite frankly, if the New Zealanders wanted to use their orchard management system as a mechanism for the management of their biosecurity, they should have been prepared to put that information on the table right from the outset. I think our industry deserved to have access to that information. It was more than reasonable.

There has been a lot of argument about the science of fire blight and the potential transmission of that disease into this country on mature apples. That has gone backwards and forwards over a long period of time. The decision has now been made that we will import apples from New Zealand into Australia. The most genuine concern that I came across was the capacity of the New Zealand industry to prevent the disease from being transmitted particularly on litter that might come with the apples in the packed boxes. The fact that in the first consignments there was an almost 25 per cent failure rate of either leaf litter or leaf curling midge in those consignments, I think, vindicates the concern that the industry had about the capacity of the New Zealand industry to meet those protocols.

The growers in Australia know about growing apples, they know about packing apples and they know about the potential threats and concerns that might arise in that process, particularly in the packaging and export of apples. Why they were not given access to the information that related to that process and why they were not consulted more genuinely in that process, I do not know. But the fact that they were not created an enormous amount of angst and created an enormous amount of concern in the industry about the efficacy of the system. I have to say that the failure rate to date has justified their concerns. Now that we have decided to import apples from New Zealand—again I acknowledge the comments of the New Zealand minister, who has been very good in relation to this—a real effort needs to be made to ensure that New Zealand has a satisfactory process in place. It needs to be acknowledged that it needs to lift its game, because one thing that we do not want, do not need and cannot afford is a serious breach in Australia's quarantine system in relation to the particular diseases that are of concern in apple imports.

We have seen in recent times an incursion of Asian bees and there has been significant concern from the beekeeping industry about our management of that incursion. A decision was made late last year or early this year that the Asian bee was no longer eradicable. There were sincere and real concerns throughout the beekeeping sector that the decision-making process around that decision did not take into account all of the information. In fact, even as late as a couple of weeks ago, Senator Milne and I were at an event in Sydney where concerns remained about the gathering of data and the decision-making process around the potential eradication or otherwise of the Asian bee.

We have also seen the incursion of myrtle rust into the country. Again, there have been concerns coming back from some elements of the scientific community about the management of that process. We do not want the same thing happening to other agricultural industries, particularly our apple and pear industry, from fire blight. We do not want to have to go through that process. So it was more than reasonable that our industry spent a considerable amount of time to ensure that the processes put in place had the required efficacy. People in the industry need to be assured that their businesses are protected from the threat of diseases that do not exist in this country.

Because of our quarantine status, my home state of Tasmania has access to a number of markets that other states do not have access to due to the fact that they are, for example, free of fruit fly. They get into some very valuable markets because of their quarantine status and we do not want to put at risk our access to those high-value markets by not having a strong biosecurity system. So I do not apologise for the processes that the coalition has ensured this import risk assessment went through. I do not apologise, for a minute, for the questions that we have asked of the government, but I do criticise the government's management of this.

As I said, when the Prime Minister went to New Zealand earlier this year and basically said, 'We are going to take your apples,' there was an enormous concern that went through the New Zealand industry—and justifiably. We were in the middle of a process. We were still negotiating the design of the revised import risk assessment. Then when we got to the end of the process, in August this year, for the industry to find out after the permits were issued and after premises in New Zealand had been certified I think shows no respect to our industry at all. I am not sure what the government was concerned about but, quite frankly, it should have been much more open. For the industry to find out on the day that the process was determined to be completed—and that date was determined as part of the negotiation of the WTO settlement—that in previous weeks certification of orchards had been approved and export permits had been approved, shows no respect to our industry.

It also demonstrates a general disposition that this government has towards the agriculture sector in this country. It does not show the sector due respect. The industry found out late in the process, but they could have been told what was happening, when it was happening and how it was happening, which would have removed that concern and angst that was generated throughout the industry. It is going to take a long time for the industry to regain some trust in the mechanisms of this government and in the way that the government interacts with them.

The bill review process occurred during the last parliament. The government has been very slow to enact the provisions of that. We know that economic conditions are tight but, as I said, the biosecurity status of this country is one of our greatest assets. Having a strong biosecurity system and having good systems that allow us to import and export our goods efficiently is very important. Any loss of that biosecurity status provides a significant risk and threat to our export capacities and export revenue.

If you go back to the time of the global financial crisis and look at the statistics you will see that it was agriculture that was one of the sectors that held our economy out of recession. The strength of our agricultural exports was one of the key factors in holding our economy out of recession. So when the government is so lax in the way that it deals with our farming sector—our rural exporters—I think it really needs to sit back and take a close look at the way it is managing this. It needs to be prepared to invest in the recommendations that came out of the bill process to ensure that this country has a strong and efficient biosecurity system. There is not question that that is the case.

Unfortunately, this legislation that has been put in front of the parliament by Senator Xenophon, although very well intentioned, does not meet the mark. I think Senator Sterle's contribution quite clearly laid out some of the issues that this legislation would create, but by the same token, given the way that the government has approached this matter and given the way that the government has managed this issue, particularly over the recent past, I understand his sincerity in wanting to ensure that the biosecurity system is strong. Unfortunately, the legislation does not provide, in my view, the efficiency of process that might be required to maintain an efficient biosecurity system. In that context, I support the committee's recommendation that the bill not be supported. It is important to note that the submissions to the inquiry predominantly followed that line as well. They were not supportive of this piece of legislation because of the inefficiencies that it might bring to the system. As I have said on a number of occasions during this contribution, Senator Xenophon's concerns are very genuinely held. I know that in South Australia there is an important apple industry and that the growers in his state, as they are in mine and in other states, are very concerned to ensure that they are not subjected to diseases, such as fire blight, that would have a major negative impact on the industry. In saying that, I again acknowledge Senator Xenophon's genuine concern for the industry but indicate that I cannot see myself supporting this piece of legislation.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill 2011 is an important piece of legislation because it brings to the Senate a matter of grave concern for Australia's primary producers and for biosecurity nationally. We should bear in mind that the seven billionth person has now joined us on this planet at a time when we have accelerating climate change. A recent report on food security, which is becoming absolutely front and centre in global negotiations, from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations through to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, recognised that with extreme weather events, a changing ice melt and so on areas that have been food bowls up until now will become less productive as we proceed into the future. One example I will give of this is South America, where there is a huge dependence on glacial melt to maintain irrigation over the dry season. We are now finding that those glaciers are melting at a great rate, and there is real concern that Peru, for example, will have a major problem feeding itself, let alone anyone else.

In California, the Colorado River feeds one of the world's largest fruit and vegetable growing bowls. It is a competitor in the global context. In California they are not getting the snow they used to get and therefore not getting the snow melt that is necessary to maintain their rivers and their irrigation levels. So we are going to see both threats and opportunities emerge globally, but the reality is that we need to produce as much food as we possibly can, not only for ourselves in Australia but to feed into a global marketplace. I have little confidence in the predictions of some of the professionals in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in analysing already evident trends in global warming, glacial melt and snow melt and in looking both at opportunities to maximise penetration in world markets and at where there will be shortages and therefore higher prices in certain commodities at certain times of the year.

Things are changing and, as I said, there are threats and opportunities. We are now in a position where we have to maximise agricultural production in Australia at a time when we are seeing extreme weather events and shifting rainfall patterns. We saw this last year in Queensland with the flood events, we have seen it with the extreme drought in the Murray-Darling and we have seen it with fire. We need to think about how we maintain agricultural land and ecosystems for maximum food production, and we have all the challenges from urbanisation, coal seam gas and the like. But if you make a priority of maintaining the health of ecosystems and agricultural land to maximise productivity then biosecurity is front and centre. We have to make sure that we stop any further incursions into Australia of diseases we do not have already and that when those incursions occur we get onto them immediately and do everything we can to eradicate them before they become a major problem.

Senator Xenophon's bill today is as a result of the controversy over the decision to allow apple imports from New Zealand into Australia, therefore threatening Australian apple and pear producers with fire blight. He has brought in a piece of legislation which would impact not just the issue of fire blight but in fact all agricultural imports. The issue that has brought us to this point is that Australia does not have fire blight. A commonsense test of the person in the street would ask: if we are a country without fire blight, why would we allow the import of apples from a country that does have fire blight? Biosecurity Australia gave evidence to a Senate inquiry a couple of years ago saying that, yes, fire blight would come to Australia as a result of allowing apples from New Zealand. Their main argument then was: however, it will not spread; it will come here but it will not spread. How can we possibly take the view that it will not spread? Conditions are changing, and I am concerned that not only will it come here but it will spread.

The question is: why would you have to do that?

Why would a country have to take apples from a country with a disease we do not have and risk biosecurity in this field? The answer is: the World Trade Organisation rules. That is where it all comes back to. That is the reality. That is why we are doing this; otherwise, common sense would say, 'We're just not going to do that. We're not going to allow in an import of a product that could threaten our biosecurity in any shape or form. We don't need to do it. We don't need New Zealand apples in the Australian market. We've got quite enough apples of our own.' But it is because of the World Trade Organisation rules. Of course it is well known to all of us that New Zealand took Australia to the WTO over this particular issue and Australia lost in that international forum, and that is why we are in the space we are in. Then it was up to Biosecurity Australia to look at the risk assessment and the rules that would cover the import to make sure they are stringent enough so that they minimise the risk to Australia of the entry of the disease. That is the point where Senator Colbeck is right.

The decision by the Prime Minister when she went to New Zealand to address the New Zealand parliament to use that opportunity to say that Australia would take New Zealand apples when the revised import risk assessment was still underway meant that every single producer in Australia saw the Prime Minister take a political opportunity in the country in question to get a big cheer from that parliament. But what it said to producers here was: the revised risk assessment really was not worth anything. The deal had already been done. Everything had already been stitched up. To add insult to injury, when the New Zealand Prime Minister came to Australia and spoke in our parliament, the Prime Minister then made a joke of it with him saying that if Australia won the world cup she would eat a New Zealand apple, and if New Zealand won—you know what I am saying. Conversely, they would each eat the other country's apple in the event that that was the outcome of the world cup.

Again, you can imagine what that did to apple growers around Australia who are very, very concerned about what the risk to their whole business, their community, their district was to see this being turned into a political joke. It is actually the reverse here: the argument against Senator Xenophon's bill—and I think it has been put quite succinctly by the Animal Health Alliance when they said in their contribution to the Senate committee that, historically, Australia has had a reputation internationally of being a difficult country to import into due to its strict quarantine requirements. They argued that 'including a political step in the quarantine assessment process would further erode our international credibility.' The political step they were referring to was Senator Xenophon's requirement that this could be a disallowable instrument; that any permit of this kind, whether it is apples or something else from another country, could be a disallowable instrument. That is the political step because it plays in a Senate committee or a parliamentary committee which must report within 15 days based on that.

The political step that was taken—in my view, a very poor judgment—was to make this announcement in the New Zealand parliament and then make a joke of it in the Australian parliament. That was a political intervention in the process and it has undermined confidence in apple growers that when the revised risk assessment went around it was anything other than just a cosmetic procedure.

What we do know is that Australia as a member of the World Trade Organisation is obliged under the SPS agreement to consider all import requests from other countries concerning agricultural products. That World Trade Organisation agreement states specifically that:

Members shall ensure that any sanitary or phytosanitary measure is applied only to the extent … [it] is based on scientific principles.

The issue here is to whether we are taking the scientific principles seriously enough, whether we are doing adequate research, whether we are actually out there arguing the science. I am concerned and I have lost a lot of confidence in Biosecurity Australia in terms of application of the science and indeed how the whole thing is managed.

When I was first elected to the Senate in 2004 we had the citrus canker outbreak in Queensland around Emerald. To this day we still do not know who tipped off the owners of the property that Biosecurity Australia were coming on a raid, and overnight, the night before the raid, the evidence was dug up and taken away. To this day no-one has ever been charged in relation to that and they got away with it.

The next issue I have been dealing with lately is the Asian honey bee. Biosecurity Australia has said, 'There is no evidence to say that it can be eradicated therefore we have downgraded it. It is no longer an eradication effort; it is now a management effort. We are going to manage the incursion of the Asian honey bee.' I can tell you, Madam Acting Deputy President, that the Asian honey bee will progress beyond the tropics into New South Wales and it will probably come even further south. When it does, the community is going to ask: how on earth did this happen? What is more, on the science base—apart from my concern about the beekeepers and the cross-pollination services and so on that are currently offered by the beekeepers of Australia and of course their honey production—I have got major concerns about wiping out native bee populations and our whole biodiversity.

I am disgusted with the department of the environment in that whole process about determining the risk of the Asian honey bee. The department of the environment sent an observer only and then the observer said nothing during all of this. There is an expert at the CSIRO who has spent 25 years studying the Asian honey bee and he was not given the run of the floor in terms of explaining the biodiversity impacts. Regardless of that, why weren't our Biodiversity people talking about what was going to happen?

We have seen it again with myrtle rust, another disaster for the natural environment. The Lamington National Park in Queensland has been devastated now by myrtle rust. In it came and it just got away from a flower farm in New South Wales before it was taken seriously. A small hive beetle had come into New South Wales. The beekeeper concerned alerted the authorities, saying: 'I'm worried about this. I haven't seen it before.' It was near the Richmond Air Force base. Might that not give you a few clues? The Air Force there had been flying backwards and forwards from South Africa at the time. You should think: 'That hive is near the Air Force base. They've been going backwards and forwards from South Africa. We might have a good look at that.' But, no, quarantine New South Wales just said, 'No, it's fine to move that hive into Queensland.' That was done and now this small honey beetle has had a huge impact right through New South Wales, leading to massive reductions in honey production as a result of a complete failure.

I heard just recently that we have now discovered a bacteria in the Riverina that has come from semen straws imported into Australia, and it is leading to a significant reduction in fertility in the beef herds in the Riverina. A PhD student is doing her work on that. That bacteria will become an increasing concern. Is it any wonder the apple growers in Australia are worried sick about fire blight? Is it any wonder that the beef growers of Australia are going to be panicking shortly with regard to the imported product that is bringing in a bacteria previously unknown here? These are the sorts of realities we are facing.

Every year there are more and more incursions into Australia's ecosystems that will reduce our agricultural productivity at a time we need to be maximising our productivity. That is the biggest challenge for agriculture, as I said at the start. We need to lift our agricultural productivity. We cannot do it in the same way we have done it in the past. We cannot clear more land. There is no more water for irrigation. We are faced with an oil crisis and we have to get off petrochemical fertilisers. How are we going to lift our productivity? We are going to need massive research and development. What we do not need are additional costs on growers and producers around the country because they have to manage incursions of disease that they ought not to have been confronted with in the first place.

So I have a good deal of sympathy for what Senator Xenophon has put on the table. I note with interest that Senator Colbeck did not mention that the shadow minister for agriculture, Mr Cobb, had a private member's bill in the lower house which was practically the same as Senator Xenophon's—the ability to disallow. He went to several districts around Australia, waving the private member's bill and saying that the coalition would do this and that to stop the import of apples from New Zealand. When it came to it in the House of Representatives, Mr Cobb was given the opportunity to speak to the bill and move it. He did not do so, saying instead that he would go to New Zealand to have a look, when in fact many coalition members of parliament and senators had already been to New Zealand.

The issue here and what is really weighing on people's minds is: how do you weigh up Australia's national interest and how do you weigh up our obligations under the World Trade Organisation rules? The accusation of course always is that Australia is using its concerns about quarantine—our sanitary and phytosanitary measures—as non-trade tariff barriers. That is the accusation and that is one of the criticisms here—that what Senator Xenophon is trying to do is to add a political step which will give other countries a greater reason to say that we are putting politics ahead of the science and therefore undermining our credibility in markets. Of course this goes both ways. Other countries can then say that they will not take Australian product if we start this. So you can see that there is potential for a trade war, with other countries joining in and so on, if this were to proceed. The Australian Greens cannot support this legislation either, for the reason that I am just outlining.

We think Australia rushes into way too many free trade agreements and we think it is time that we absolutely lifted the scientific and R&D effort that goes into biosecurity and quarantine in Australia. We cannot tolerate these continuing failures in our own bureaucracy. On the Asian honey bees, Biosecurity Australia have provided no scientific evidence whatsoever that the Asian honey bee cannot be eradicated in Australia. They have said it cannot be but they have not gone up to Cairns and collected the data, and they have not supported the on-ground effort around Cairns. They say that it cannot be done. The scientists say that they do not know whether it can be done or not but we should try because of the consequences. That is what the Greens have been saying—go up there and get the evidence. It is not just the Greens saying this; it was a tripartite agreement from this parliament. The government, the coalition and the Greens in the Senate committee all said, 'Go and get the evidence.' And they did not. I think Biosecurity Australia are absolutely remiss in utterly refusing to give effect to what the Senate committee unanimously asked them to do—that is, to go and get the evidence. So I have grave concerns.

Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise also to speak against this Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill 2011, a bill that has the potential to damage Australian industry and productivity. This bill aims to establish greater parliamentary scrutiny over import conditions for biological products, parliamentary scrutiny that will go over and above the current strict, scientific import conditions placed on Australia's businesses and that will impose a significant bureaucratic bottleneck that could take years to clear. It is important to recognise that Australia is first and foremost a trading nation, and that the Gillard government maintains its commitment to a science based, quarantine decision-making system. As an island nation with abundant farming land, we are reliant on our ability to export. Australian grain exports equal approximately $6 billion per year. We export approximately $5 billion worth of meat, and sugar and horticultural exports total approximately $1 billion. This bill puts over $440 million worth of Tasmanian agricultural exports and over $32 billion worth of Australian agricultural exports at risk and would result in Australia failing to meet its international obligations. This is revenue that sustains rural and regional communities all across this country—revenue that, if this bill is passed, may be lost to those communities.

It is fascinating to think how this bill originated. The importation of New Zealand apples has been a deeply divisive issue for the coalition. While we on this side have accepted the scientific assessment of Biosecurity Australia, there was the contribution from the opposition spokesperson on agriculture, the member for Calare, who was trying to propose any means possible to stop apple importation from New Zealand. Such legislation would have given the New Zealanders a prime case to take to the World Trade Organisation and claim for damages, a claim that would have allowed New Zealand to impose retaliatory action on Australian exporters up to the estimated value of the lost apple exports. Luckily, once again the Nationals were slapped down by their senior coalition partners. The member for Curtin did think of the Australian farmers and their communities ahead of the short-term political window-dressing of the Nationals.

Australian scientists have confirmed that any fire blight on commercial quality and mature fruit is in poor health and dies quickly. Further, science has found that it has never been shown that fire blight can be moved from apple fruit to a tree. Quite simply, the scientific facts do not support claims that countries that import apples eventually get fire blight. It is the import of nursery stock that is the potential pathway for fire blight. As members opposite should be aware, Australia has a stringent two-year quarantine requirement for imported apple nursery stock, and these requirements include specific testing for fire blight.

Unfortunately, Senator Xenophon has continued the Nationals' campaign to destroy Australia's agricultural exports, in the form of this bill—a bill that seeks to add a demonstrably heavy-handed layer of parliamentary scrutiny to what is already a transparent and science based process to manage the pest and disease risks associated with imported food products. It is a quick, populist reaction to the New Zealand apple issue, not a considered, scientific approach to dealing with the real threats of disease importation into Australia. Senator Xenophon admitted to this in his dissenting report to the Rural Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee's inquiry into this bill, where he only referenced New Zealand apples—one thing that is imported, yes, but there are many, many others. In his dissenting report, Senator Xenophon stated:

The controversial introduction of New Zealand apples into Australia is a prime example of where this Bill would have provided an additional layer of scrutiny …

However, the proper place for scientific scrutiny and comment on the import conditions for apples from New Zealand was during the 60-day comment period after the draft report was released. All stakeholders were provided with sufficient opportunity to highlight their concerns and provide any scientific evidence supporting different quarantine measures.

As a member of the Rural Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, I participated in the inquiry into this bill. As Senator Sterle outlined earlier, the committee's report recommended quite clearly that this bill not be passed. Submissions were received from 16 organisations, and the clear majority argued that this bill is not necessary and would in fact weaken Australia's quarantine and biosecurity framework. The committee found that, in practical terms, the bill was unworkable, specifically because it would cause significant and unnecessary delay, both to the issuing of permits and to trade.

The bill seeks to amend the Quarantine Act 1908 to provide that the biosecurity policy determinations made by the Director of Quarantine are disallowable legislative instruments. The bill seeks also to provide that a permit to import, introduce or bring in an animal, plant, substance or thing is a disallowable legislative instrument and that, when these instruments are presented to parliament, the minister is required to table a risk analysis in both houses and refer the instruments to parliamentary committees responsible for agricultural matters.

Practically this means that the bill would prohibit the importation of any product of quarantine concern, and all conditions of import would then have to be remade as a legislative instrument, by the minister. The legislative instrument would be automatically referred to a parliamentary committee, and, if it or any member of parliament did not move to disallow the instrument, the import permit and conditions of import would be considered valid.

For example, if the committee or any member of parliament moved to disallow the import permit and associated import conditions, that could result in a delay of a further 15 sitting days. As an example, if the bill passed this year, an importer could apply to import a product on 1 December 2011 and it would take until well after Anzac Day 2012, some five months at least, before an importer had certainty that no disallowance motion had been moved. If only one member of parliament moved a disallowance motion, the importer could be waiting until mid-August 2012 for certainty. Australian retailers are already doing it tough enough with the high Australian dollar. They do not need this heavy layer of uncertainty placed onto their business.

The Pet Food Industry Association of Australia and Animal Health Alliance noted in their submissions that the approval system for the import permit applications is already both arduous and time consuming. The Animal Health Alliance stated that the new arrangements proposed by the bill would 'only serve to lengthen the already unacceptable time line for the issuance of import permits'.

Under this bill, any decision to allow the importation, introduction, bringing in or removal of a thing—defined under the Quarantine Act 1908 as an animal, plant, substance or thing—will be thoroughly scrutinised by parliament. Currently this decision-making power is left solely in the hands of Biosecurity Australia, where science based risk assessments are undertaken to protect Australia's animal and plant status and natural environment.

In its submission to the inquiry, Shipping Australia stated that, if passed:

… this Bill clearly indicates that Parliament does not have any confidence that the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service can carry out its role in terms of granting import permits and would deliver a clear signal to industry that they should also question their confidence in the ability of AQIS to carry out the tasks set under legislation approved by this Parliament.

Further, the Food and Beverage Importers Association commented in its submission that:

Any review by Parliament would not be seen as 'scientifically based' but as 'politically based' because the Parliament and its Committee system would not hold any specific scientific expertise over and above that contained in the Framework.

The committee was particularly mindful of Australia's WTO obligations and is committed to Australia's responsibilities which require that all import requests from other countries, particularly in relation to agricultural products, are considered using scientific based principles. It is vital that Australia not only meets its obligations under the WTO, but continues to make trade decisions based on scientific evidence provided by the appropriate government agencies, not on political grounds. Senator Xenophon goes on to state in his dissenting report, and I quote:

In the case of New Zealand apples, while analysis may have determined the risk of fire blight to be low, it can be argued that the damage caused by fire blight makes any risk too great.

While I understand the senator's concern, it is simply not legitimate. If this approach were taken by countries that take Australia's agricultural exports, our industries would be decimated. The simple fact is that one can never be certain of zero risk and, if other countries were to demand a zero risk of disease importation, our industries would be decimated. In its submission, Quarantine and Inspection Resources Pty Ltd, expressed concern that:

This Bill will undermine the credibility of Australia's market access efforts.

They also state:

The ability of Australia to gain access, and perhaps even more importantly maintain access, in the face of a problem depends to a high degree on the credibility of the ... scientific staff involved in market access arrangements.

It is quite obvious from the overwhelming evidence provided to the committee's inquiry that this bill should not pass. It is quite obvious that this bill would do serious harm to Australian agricultural industries and to the reputation of the scientists at AQIS and Biosecurity Australia and would create an extra unnecessary workload for the parliament.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also have some concerns with this bill. I have been listening to the debate very carefully and I thank particularly Senator Colbeck for his leadership on this issue. I hasten to say twice in two days that there is one aspect of the debate on which I agree with the Greens—that is, what a fool our Prime Minister made of herself when she went to New Zealand and there made a major announcement on apples which involved the biosecurity of our country. To do that in New Zealand just shows how poorly served we are by our current Prime Minister. I continue to be amazed as to why the Greens, with all their criticisms of Ms Gillard as occurred in today's debate, continue to support her in the Lodge. I suppose the answer is the evidence this week when, by a guillotine arrangement supported by the Greens, this parliament adopted the carbon tax legislation, even though just 12 months ago, as Australians listening to the debate will recall, Ms Gillard promised the Australian public, very solemnly, very sincerely, that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led—yet this week that carbon tax was introduced into Australia.

How can anyone ever have any confidence in anything Ms Gillard says in the future? That dishonest approach to political campaigning—promising there would be no carbon tax because she knew at the time, had she been honest, that Australians would not have voted for her—will never be forgotten by Australians. Similarly, apple growers in Australia will never forget the Australian Prime Minister going to the New Zealand parliament and making an announcement about importation of New Zealand apples to Australia with what many people believe are not the right biosecurity arrangements.    I am going to have to curtail my speech because again the Greens and Labor Party have put a time management arrangement on all the bills before us.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How many times did the Howard government do that?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Polley, as I recall, was always first to her feet saying how awful that was. These things happen, but it is the hypocrisy which really disturbs me. What happened to the time when you could come into this chamber and debate fully bills of importance? The speakers list shows how very importantly senators treat this bill. We are all being time constrained. A number of senators who want to speak simply cannot get onto the speakers list. I have agreed to restrict myself to just 10 minutes so that other senators have an opportunity to put their views forward.

I am concerned about making biosecurity more a political issue than a scientific issue. That is why I have genuine concerns with this bill. As I said, Ms Gillard's actions in the New Zealand parliament showed that the last thing Australia needs is politicians grandstanding and playing politics in matters as important as biosecurity.

The majority of submissions made to the committee which investigated this bill argued that it would weaken Australia's quarantine and biosecurity framework. The committee was also told that, in the view of many of the submitters, the bill was unworkable specifically because it would cause significant and unnecessary delays both in the issuing of permits and in trade. As well, many of the submitters indicated that it could result in the disclosure of commercially confidential information. What concerned me was the argument made by a number of people who made submissions that the legislation was potentially contrary to Australia's World Trade Organisation—WTO—obligations. A lot of Australians do not fully understand the import of WTO rules and regulations. A lot of them say we should be building tariff barriers and we should not be letting in other goods and commodities that compete with ours. But, of course, Australians benefit more from WTO regulations than do many other advanced countries around the world.

For example, we grow more sugar than we could ever consume ourselves and it is terribly important to Australia that the trade be as free as possible without tariff and non-tariff barriers. The Australian sugar industry is only as good as it is because it exports a considerable proportion of the cane that is grown in this part of the world. I come from a cane-growing area so I know just how important the cane-growing industry is to Australia and how many jobs it supports and how many people's lives depend on that industry. So it is absolutely essential that WTO rules are followed and observed, because it is in Australia's interests.

Similarly, I have, on behalf of the opposition, shadow ministerial responsibility for Northern and remote Australia and I note the beef cattle industry is so terribly important to Australia but, again, we consume only a small proportion of the beef that Australia produces. Our industry is really so good because we can export practically free of constraints to many parts of the world. There are many parts of the world, like the United States and Japan, to which we do export quite a bit, but there are some constraints. This is why our trade in live cattle exports to Indonesia is so very important to Australia and why the quite stupid decision of the minister to totally ban exports for a period of time was such a bad policy decision and made things so difficult for so many smaller operators, particularly those in the beef cattle areas.

I also want to briefly touch on the issue of importation of bananas. We have to allow free trade, but our biosecurity rules should be such that they allow us to reject imports that do not meet the very stringent arrangements we have for disease-free fruit. Banana growing is a very important industry and is to be found in the area that I come from, around Tully and Innisfail and now up on the Atherton Tableland. It is essential that our quarantine and biosecurity arrangements are first class. To have politicians interfering in scientific arrangements for the importation of anything is the wrong way to go, and that is why I have some serious concerns about this. I congratulate the Australian banana industry, as it is a fabulous industry that employs so many people in the north. We do believe, if I may say so with perhaps a little bias, that Australian bananas are the best that you would find anywhere in the world. But we must continue to protect this industry with proper biosecurity arrangements.

The Asian honey bee, which I first raised many months ago after some people from Cairns raised it with me, is an issue that is not very well handled by the current government. We have the government supporting scientists who did not really seem to have any interest in eradicating the honey bee, whereas other scientists do—and certainly the industry, and I think most parliamentarians, are very keen that the government should be doing everything to eradicate the honey bee. I think the idea that you cannot eradicate it so you control it is the wrong one. Had action been taken right at the beginning, when this was first raised, I think eradication would have been easy.

It is similar to the situation with the tilapia fish that are now infesting waters in North Queensland and will soon do it elsewhere. The state government, who control our waters there, particularly the rivers, did nothing for years and allowed the tilapia to get a real foothold which will now be very difficult to eradicate. I will finish my remarks there, although there are a lot of other things I would like to say, as I am conscious of the time. I will leave my remarks there and reserve my position on this particular bill.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Link to 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—

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister.

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

Former Prime Minister, yes—correct. He lost his seat in the 2007 election, as I recall.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Correct; just in terms of reference, Senator.

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

Yes, I understand, Madam Acting Deputy President, and I shall call him Prime Minister. Prime Minister John Howard said that Australia exports four times more primary produce than it imports and would 'suffer four times as much' in retaliation. That is why it has been so disappointing to observe the coalition as it has responded to the issues of apples from New Zealand. We have seen the member for Calare with his reckless New Zealand apples bill. Like all of the National Party policies, it has been a colossal flip-flop. It was introduced and then withdrawn after he was rolled by Julie Bishop. Then we saw the members for Calare and Murray in New Zealand on their political tourism trip embarrassing Australia and embarrassing their colleagues while they were guests of the New Zealand government.

But National Party members have not asked the minister a single question on this issue during question time. In fact, they have barely turned up to the Senate estimates hearing on this matter. They have left the heavy lifting to their Liberal colleagues because they do not have the gumption to do it themselves. That, of course, is why they keep getting rolled within their own coalition. I say this to the carping, negative Nationals: if they want to revisit the conditions for the importation of apples from New Zealand, all they need to do is stump up with the science that contradicts the findings of the department's review on import conditions. Any credible evidence that says Australia's conditions of import put Australia's biosecurity status at risk will of course be taken very seriously by this government.

In conclusion, the Gillard government is getting on with the business of building a better biosecurity system. We are investing in the information technology that the system requires; correcting Warren Truss's short-term budget decision to flog off the Australia Post quarantine stations, by investing in the PEQ facility to meet our future needs; and, finally, analysing the data and intelligence on biosecurity matters and making science based decisions that protect Australia's pest and disease status and the $30 billion in farming exports annually. As a result, the government does not support this legislation.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to address the Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill 2011. In doing so, I would like to recognise Senator Xenophon's deep concern and interest for industries in South Australia, and I think that is shared by all members of parliament in South Australia. Having attended rallies up in the Adelaide Hills with apple and pear growers and seeing people from the Liberal side of politics there and also Family First, Senator Xenophon and others, there is obviously a deal of concern to make sure that we sustain what is a very good industry for South Australia.

There are a couple of issues, though, with this bill. It seeks to address the option for parliament to intervene in imports. This is largely in response to the issue of New Zealand apples and the expected impact that may have due to the presence of fire blight in their orchards, which not only has made apple growing problematic for them—although they have a large industry and they manage it—but also has pretty much obliterated their pear industry. So there is a great concern here that, if fire blight took hold, it would likewise obliterate the pear industry here. So there is a very legitimate concern that has led to this bill. The problem with the bill, though, is that it will apply far more broadly in Australia and will have impacts in many other sectors. What I would like to do is acknowledge the South Australian situation and what has led to the bill. And then I will talk a little more broadly about how the government has responded to the New Zealand issue and to biosecurity more broadly—the need to put in place a suitable framework for biosecurity and, most vitally, what it has done to date in terms of funding for biosecurity. Biosecurity is not just our horticultural sector. It is also about our livestock sector and even things like native forest growth and the opportunity there for carbon sinks. If we are to truly protect industries such as the apple and pear industry in my home state of South Australia, as well as many other industries, there is a whole range of areas where biosecurity is quite important.

In South Australia apples are important. Something like 29,000 tonnes of apples are grown there. The farm-gate value of production there is nearly $60 million and that represents about nine per cent of Australia's apple production. It has exports of around 1,000 tonnes a year which are valued at some $2.8 million. It has about 220 apple growers and about 100 primary produce growers, and the vast majority of those are family owned businesses in the Adelaide Hills. There is a rich history going right back to the 1860s in South Australia. They have obviously been very concerned about the decision to allow New Zealand apples in because of fire blight. In response, the South Australian government has also looked at this and has had a couple of knee-jerk responses—for example, putting in its own quarantine zones. It has been interesting to see that even Apple and Pear Australia Ltd and the growers have said that is not a great idea and have encouraged them to wind back those options. It has been heartening to see some of the supermarkets in South Australia say they will only stock South Australian grown produce. Along with appropriate labelling to give the public the option to choose where they buy things from, I think that is a good way to move ahead.

This bill, in seeking to address the problem Senator Xenophon has identified and brought to our attention, would have a far more broad reaching impact. As we have just heard from the previous speaker, Australia exports significantly more than it imports. It is important for Australia to maintain its integrity within the World Trade Organisation construct and rules so that we can have the fairest and easiest access for our produce into overseas markets—and that is across a whole range of areas.

The New Zealand Apple occurrence is a really good example of why this bill is not a good idea. The bill essentially provides a mechanism whereby the parliament can inject itself into a process that should be something importers and exporters see as a consistent, reliable and transparent process that will allow them to make investment decisions with some certainty around what crops they will grow and what money they will spend in terms of marketing their produce. Our Prime Minister addressed the New Zealand parliament and decided to announce that new Zealand would be able to send their apples to Australia. Biosecurity Australia then had to play catch-up to produce the appropriate IRA to allow that to occur. So the very thing that has led Senator Xenophon to this bill is a classic example of why this bill is not actually a good idea. It is not in the long-term interests of Australia's growers in the apple and pear industry or any other industry that seeks to export its produce from Australia.

The Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport held an inquiry into this bill. A number of stakeholders came together and provided input to the inquiry, and the vast majority of them did not support the bill. The committee argued that the bill was not only unnecessary but also had the potential to weaken Australia's quarantine and biosecurity framework—and that framework is the thing that provides security and certainty for importers and exporters. The committee also indicated that the bill would cause significant and unnecessary delays both in the issuing of permits and to trade itself. The committee acknowledged that the evidence provided by a number of organisations argued strongly against the bill on the basis that it would be contrary to Australia's WTO obligations—and, as I have highlighted, those obligations are important for the viability of our industry to actually maintain exports into a number of countries.

The governance issue and the framework are really where I would like to spend the remainder of the time I have available. The Labor government, to their credit, commissioned Mr Beale to have a quarantine and biosecurity review into the framework of biosecurity in Australia. Mr Beale found that 'it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the agencies are significantly underresourced, putting Australia's economy, people and environment at significant risk'. Despite that, in 2009 the Labor government slashed $58 million from the Customs budget, leading to some four million fewer air cargo consignments being inspected each year and 2,150 fewer vessels being boarded on arrival. There have been further cuts to things like CRCs, which are an investment in our ability to develop the science to actually conduct appropriate biosecurity measures. Given that agricultural production in this country drives around $150 billion a year in economic production—it is about 12 per cent of GDP, about 1.6 million Australian jobs and around $32 billion in exports—cuts to the resources going to biosecurity are obviously not viable.

The reason we need to make sure that biosecurity work, both in framework and in resources allocated to it, has again been borne out by the whole New Zealand apple import issue. Whatever the political background, whatever the flaws in the way it has been arrived at, the people involved have intercepted nearly a quarter of the New Zealand shipments and found that they have not met the requirements—so they have been rejected. Whilst that is pleasing from the point of view that they have been intercepted, what it highlights is that an adequate level of resourcing in a suitable framework is required if we are to maintain the integrity of biosecurity in Australia because the cost of the resources to intercept and stop infected shipments arriving pales into insignificance compared to the cost of constraining an outbreak. We have seen in Australia that just in the horse industry, for example, over $1 billion has been spent trying to constrain outbreaks. If we look at foot and mouth disease, which could have a devastating impact in Australia, or diseases in the apple and pear industry or any number of areas, once an outbreak has occurred the cost to constrain it and recover would be enormous. So it is worrying when we see throughout the Beale review a number of comments that the Commonwealth government needs to increase resources. Recommendation 3, for example, says:

The Commonwealth should increase its resources to support the monitoring, surveillance, investigation and, where appropriate, prosecutions associated with post-border biosecurity detections.

There are a whole range of areas where the review talks about the need for increasing resources as well as increasing cooperation.

When we look at the government's response and the 2011 budget papers what we see is that they have successfully negotiated a draft intergovernmental agreement on biosecurity, but the actual actions that have been taken have been largely around interim inspector-generals—so more bureaucracy—and an expansion of an eminent scientists group to include an economist, and an advisory council. They have put in place a whole range of these measures but not more funding to people on the front line to do the roles that have been identified as necessary.

The South Australian government in their submission last year to the Senate inquiry into biosecurity and quarantine arrangements noted that the formation of Biosecurity SA had integrated a bunch of things because of the value of the agricultural sector and primary production in South Australia. But it goes on to say that, due to budget pressures facing governments, it is going to be difficult to maintain the current capacity to manage biosecurity threats. It talks about a number of things being developed, but goes on to highlight that budget pressures are the significant issue.

This bill goes far broader than the apple issue that caused Senator Xenophon to bring it forward. It would, however, undermine our obligations to the WTO, which is the framework under which most of our primary producers are able to export and which is of great value to Australia. But the critical point is that the growers' concerns have been validated by the import consignments that have already been rejected. It highlights that not only do we need a good framework for biosecurity but it needs to be adequately resourced. The record of this government to date has not shown that it is serious about adequately resourcing the biosecurity framework. So, whilst not supporting Senator Xenophon's bill, I do support his concern and I certainly call on the Labor government to provide adequate resources to make sure we have a biosecurity system that will prevent, as opposed to just respond to, biosecurity issues in Australia.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to rise here in support of the sentiment of Senator Xenophon's bill—who by reason of health is not able to be here today—though acknowledging that we will not be supporting it. But it is clear to state that we have heard a tirade—well, not a tirade, sort of a wet sponge from the Labor Party, about how the National Party has not been doing anything, but they spend their whole time complaining about the National Party and what it has done, which is fair enough.

What I can look at is the Labor Party's record. You do not have to go too far from this town to see the effects of the Labor Party's record on anything to do with biosecurity or anything to do with real and effective dealing with environmental issues—such things as African lovegrass, which is not that far from here, and serrated tussock. You have just given up on all these things. You do not care about them anymore. You apparently can cool the planet, but you cannot deal with African lovegrass. You can rejig the whole of the Australian economy on a colourless odourless gas, but you cannot deal with Asian honeybees. Apparently you are going to lead the world on changing an economy based on carbon dioxide, but you cannot deal with myrtle rust in your own country. It just goes to show how absurd the Labor Party have become.

I remember as a kid going in to see my dad when he was involved in the BTEC scheme—he was a vet—and spending days going out with him bleeding cattle. At a later stage he was in charge of that brucellosis and tuberculosis eradication scheme in northern New South Wales, out of Tamworth office. That was a great success. Australia got rid of brucellosis and tuberculosis. New Zealand still has it. It goes to show what a country can do when it is motivated.

But we are going to get nowhere with the Labor Party and the Greens. They are not really worried about the environment in the proper sense. What they are really worried about is the philosophy and the theatrics. They are really worried about social re-engineering; that is what they really want to do. I was listening Senator Milne's discussion here today about quarantine and we started hearing about floods and fires and famines and all the incredible things that are apparently going to happen. But even their grand architect, Professor Flannery, says there can be seen to be 'no discernible correlation' between changes in the extent of fires, floods and famines and global warming. It is one of these total absurdities that is trotted out here. What I did not hear Senator Milne or the Labor Party talk about is how they are dealing with biosecurity as it is at the moment. And of course we have no confidence in them.

You can bet your life that under this government, the Green-Labor-Independent government, fire blight will come in. It is just a matter of when. It is going to come. We have already heard today about the evidence that a quarter of the shipments have had issues pertaining to them. They are failing before they have even started. If someone said that in a quarter of your cars the brakes are going to fail then you would probably recall the cars. But they are going forward with the process under the current arrangements because they do not really care about the environment. They do not really care whether we wipe out the pear industry in Australia. They do not really care whether fire blight comes into this nation. It is absurd. With all the trash of leaves and litter that is going to be coming in from farms, which will have fire blight, sure enough we are going to get fire blight.

What will the Labor Party do then? They will deal with it the same way they are dealing with African lovegrass, with Chilean needle grass, with St John's wort, with the Asian honey bee and with myrtle rust. They will not deal with it because they do not really care. What they do care about are the theatrics. They care about people dressing up as koalas and parading out the front of this building. That is the Greens and the environmental movement—dress up as a koala and wave a placard. But when it comes down to dealing with the issue, when you really need the competency to grasp the issue and deal with it, they do not have it and they do not care about it. True environmentalism is actually looking after the environment in a hands-on and real way. Whatever happened to the production of an effective rust to deal with blackberries? That has gone nowhere.

I had the privilege the other day to visit the farm where Farrer developed a variety of wheat that took Australia into the 20th century. He developed it from a small plot down on the river. I saw at that point in time the sorts of competencies our nation had, the sorts of desires and the thrill that the government had to get behind people who were giants in this nation. But this government is not investing in them. This government is taking the resources out. This government is incompetent even when it comes to the health of our own people. What about the Indigenous people of Northern Australia? What happened to the tuberculosis clinics in the Torres Strait Islands? You care about the environment but you do not care about that part of the environment. That is another little thing you have moved out of the way. Let us not worry about tuberculosis coming. Let us not worry about the infection of the Australian people. If we get drug resistance in tuberculosis, we have no hope of treating it.

All you care about is the hugging and kissathons at the end of the vote. You do care about completely redesigning our nation's economy, even though we see on television Europe falling over. The global financial markets are falling over and there is complete and utter culpability of what we did the other day. You just do not care and you step back from it. As I said the other day, it is part of the Vandals who have overtaken Rome. The philosophy is over; the Labor Party has finally been subdued. What we have in the Prime Minister is basically a manifestation of Romulus Augustus. It is all over and it is merely a figurehead. The philosophy is now occupied by somebody else. It is a sad day. The party that was once the party of Curtin and Chifley is now, what? What have you become? You are a vacuous type of shell.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order on relevance. Until Senator Joyce arrived we were having a sensible debate in the chamber about the merits of a bill on biosecurity. I would ask that Senator Joyce direct his remarks to the bill on biosecurity.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Thank you, Senator Milne, there is no point of order. Senator Joyce.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Acting Deputy President Boyce. I was in my room happily listening to Senator Milne talking about fire, flood, famine, fear and loathing. This is what it always comes to, to make you feel guilty. It is what they always do. After they have made you feel guilty they say you should become righteous. The prospect of righteousness is always an amazing path to get there. The path to righteousness via the Greens and the Labor Party is a new tax. If you pay the new tax you are righteous and you are a wonderful person. Coal becomes righteous once it crosses the sea, apparently. If you burn it in China it is righteous. For uranium it is the same deal. It is righteous once it passes over water. It is an incredible position. I was wondering about this, so I found what Tim Flannery said:

Australia naturally has a high degree of variability in rainfall,—

I agree with him—

with long periods of intense droughts—

I agree with him—

punctuated by heavy rainfall and flooding,—

I agree with him on that too—

so it is difficult from observations alone to unequivocally identify anything that is distinctly unusual about the post-1950 pattern …

But that is apparently not what Senator Milne believes in. She believes in devastation. You have to make people feel scared before they bung a new tax on you. You have to make people scared before, via every power point in the house, you turn into a collection mechanism for the Australian taxation department.

Now we have Senator Larissa Waters saying that we are going to remove fossil fuels in the next decade. It is like a couple of days ago was year zero. We will all be heading out to the countryside to a new cultural revolution. We are going to sit down there and live on beetles and nuts and we will be righteous. We will be hungry, cold and miserable but we will be righteous. But that is what you do, and it makes abundant sense. Of course we can get rid of all fossil fuels in the next 10 years. We do not need a car park anymore; we need a stable to put the horses in when we ride up here! This is the absolutely absurd position. The absurd position is evident in this. They do not care about the real environmental debate—the one that takes acumen, planning and, as it says in the report, resources to deal with the issues. They do not care about that. They do not care about having a proper analysis of the statistical probability that fire blight will come in. They do not care about that.

The Greens do not care about putting their hands on the hotplate and saying, 'I'll bring down the government if you do not properly deal with fire blight.' They do not care that they are not able to show anything that this Labor-Green-Independent alliance has done for the environment, bar one thing. I will give them one: they will probably get rid of rabbits on Macquarie Island. That is about it. That will be the piece de resistance. The removal of rabbits from Macquarie Island is about as good as it is going to get.

Unfortunately, I do not think that is going to stop us from getting fire blight. It is certainly not going to deal with African lovegrass. It is certainly not going to deal with Chilean needle grass. It is not going to deal with blackberry, St John's wort, myrtle rust and the Asian honey bee. And it is not going to stop fire blight coming into our nation. When it comes to the real, on-the-ground, definitive environmental statement, they do not have one. They cannot formulate that outside this building. How can you possibly think about the proper environment when what you are really concerned about is the next manifestation of the conversation at the manic monkey cafe of inner suburban Nirvanaville? That is really what they are concerned about.

Ms Plibersek—this is the misleading way they carry on—said on 1 August 2011, 'The thing that we need to remember about the reasons for doing this is that there is a serious threat to our economy.' She was talking about global warming. She said that there was a serious threat to our environment of not acting. She said, 'In environmental terms we are looking at losing the Great Barrier Reef.' I do not know where it is going. I do not know where the Great Barrier Reef is off to. I reckon I could find it; it is just off the coast of Bundaberg. But Ms Plibersek says we are losing the Great Barrier Reef. And she says that we are losing Kakadu. Where is it off to? She says we are losing the ability to feed ourselves. What a load of rubbish!

I will tell you when we are going to lose the ability to feed ourselves. That will happen when those opposite shut down the Murray-Darling Basin. That is when we will lose the ability to feed ourselves. Listen to what they want. They want to take 7,600 gigalitres of water out of the Murray-Darling Basin. We will not have an irrigation industry. They want to shut down the thing that feeds 40 per cent of Australia.

How are they going to feed the horses that we have to ride to work because they also want to get rid of fossil fuels? This is a mad world; it is the year zero of the Greens. It is a new world and they are proclaiming it each day. Each day you read about it. We will not eat; we will not drive cars! We are going to go to 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions to take us back to 1910 levels.

So when we go through the doors in the morning—I suppose that now that we do not have a steel industry they will have to be made out of wood—how will it all work? Where is the economy that works like this? Where is this magical place? Where is this Xanadu that we are basing this on? I think it might be somewhere in the highlands of Tasmania—in a little, little house with a little, little fire that you see every now and then on the television!

Why are we doing this to the Australian people? Let us think of the other things. The Greens want to shut down rodeos. We cannot possibly have them! They are totally evil! We cannot have people out west enjoying themselves; it is immoral! As we return to being content hunters and gathers on the forest floor, we will not be allowed to have fossil fuel. We will have horses but if you leave the Greens long enough we will not be allowed to ride them—you can bet your life!

An honourable senator interjecting—

The blacksmiths won't. This is all part of the progression.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. We are discussing a bill on a quarantine provision relating to fire blight and world trade. I ask that you ask the senator to be relevant to what is before the chamber.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce, I have been assuming that your comments were going to bring you back to the topic in hand. Could you please ensure that they do.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, I will. Fire blight will come into the country under this government, this regime. What do we call the regime? Big Brother No. 1! Under this regime fire blight will come in. Without being jocular, if fire blight comes in we will lose the apple industry. We will totally lose the pear industry; it will definitely be wiped out.

We got to this position because the Prime Minister of Australia went over to New Zealand and it just seemed like a cool thing to say. She was moved by the moment. She was moved by the podium. She thought, 'I've got to say something.' She said, 'Your apples can come in,' and then she walked away, to the smell of burning flesh. This is part of the crazy government we have.

I don't know; maybe if they have a change of leader they will change their position. I was watching the next contender for leadership—the former leader—sing the other day over in Perth. He was doing a marvellous job! He was being moved by the mosh pit! Apparently, he said that he sings like a cow. He was very tired. He asked the people whether they wanted him to sing. And I thought, 'There's my next Prime Minister. I'm feeling so comfortable about where we are! Things are looking A-okay!'

If we do not have a competent government occupying the treasury benches soon, on so many fronts—fire blight will just be one classic example—this nation is just going to start falling down around our ears. They have shown no competency. Whenever it comes to a test on biosecurity—we are not in the government; they are—they have shown no competency whatsoever in any way, shape or form on any of the major environmental issues and in the real environmental battles. There is not one thing that they can direct our attention to where they have shown a real interest in protecting the environment of Australia. They are very interested in the social re-engineering of Australia. They have been usurped by the Greens and have now gone down the path of almost profane economics that will put the whole of Australia at threat. But they are doing nothing at all to deal with the real environmental problems.

We have had so many issues and so many battles. I can remember postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome. Now it is the fire blight issue. We have had, in the past, governments that were actually competent. The brucellosis and tuberculosis eradication campaign was the classic example of what happens when you have real, fair dinkum people who get out and do a job and bring about a result. We do not have that with this government. What we will end up with is the destruction of a large section of the agriculture of the southern basin, because this government, backed by the Greens and the Independents, will be responsible for fire blight coming into this nation.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Could I begin by thanking the people who have found the time for me to speak today on the Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill 2011. It is said this place is about politics, but I would like to have a little go without too much politics. In an era of modern communication and transport, quarantine becomes seriously complex because of the dangers of the movement of passengers and freight. As Senator Milne pointed out, diseases can come in, such as the virus that is now threatening fertility in cattle in the Riverina, just by simple oversight. All science has vagaries, all human endeavour has some failure, and we must never lose sight of that, but for many years I have been on a committee that have worried about biosecurity and keeping Australia's trade advantage against its freight disadvantage and currency disadvantage. Australia's great advantage is its clean, green and free status and, with that in the back of our minds, for many years we have endeavoured to use science to keep us in that space—clean, green and free.

This bill presents the chamber and the parliament with a dilemma, because there are instances in trade where politics has got in the road of good judgment and maybe we need to think about a last-resort tool to prevent something stupid happening because of political intervention. The danger with this bill is that if we present ourselves to the rest of the world as being prepared to use politics instead of science then we open up the era of game playing—and I think we would easily lose that game. The future looks pretty grim for many democracies now—the United States is technically insolvent, southern Europe is technically insolvent, Japan is insolvent—and China has a non-market currency. This says to me that in Australia we are going to have a currency disadvantage. Even though we have got free trade agreements all round the place and more to come, in those free-trade agreements we got rid of tariffs but we have now imposed upon ourselves currency tariffs.

I do not think anyone knows what to think about this bill other than that it does have dangers, if we endorse it, for our scientific future. It is a fact that for many years—and I have chaired the committee for many years—we kept out New Zealand apples with science. We were always determined to find a way to do that because it is a fact that New Zealand do not have a substantial pear industry because they have fire blight. We have a huge pear industry, and that is the reason they do not have one. You cannot buy a New Zealand pear, because fire blight is now endemic.

There is no protection scheme in Australia. When we started off with the science on this we had a final import risk analysis of the importation of New Zealand apples which said: 'We accept that under this import risk analysis fire blight will enter Australia if we let the apples in.' That is what the analysis said, using the best of science. It went on to say, 'But we don't think it will get out into the orchards.' There was a precautionary principle behind that—and there is no politics in this; it has been difficult for everyone, and I gave my own mob when we were in government as hard a time as anyone—but now we have switched to risk management. With New Zealand apples we have done away with the biosecurity provisions in our trade arrangements and moved to farm management practices.

When the committee that I chair were going to New Zealand—and when I eventually told them what to do—they were told we could not go and have a look at New Zealand farm management practices because there is too much human failure in farm management practices. Every farm has a different practice and there are rorts built into the system now. I am pleased to see that we have knocked off a good few of the apples coming in now under the inspection regime we have implemented—which they are complaining about—but can you imagine the pressure the people who are doing the examining in New Zealand will come under over time if they find one leaf or half a leaf, as they have found, with midge on it or potential contamination in the containers? It will be: 'Mate, that's only half a leaf; let that go through.' That will be the pressure they will come under over time.

We have heard all the talk about the political intervention in New Zealand's parliament and here, which is the political intervention we resisted in our time—and very robustly, behind private doors, I have to say. We then come to needing a trigger to stop something stupid happening in quarantine and to maintain our clean, green and free status. I give the instance in recent times of the political intervention of the United States and Canada in pressuring the present government and Simon Crean to bring in beef from herds that have BSE. We resisted it. I had been to the Canadian parliament and told them that when they were prepared to do an NLIS and a whole range of other things we would think about it. But because of pressures—and I do not think Simon Crean understood this—he was agreeing to it. And the dopey Cattle Council signed up to it, as well as some unmentionable colleagues in this parliament who thought it was a good idea because the Cattle Council thought it was a good idea. Well, it was not a good idea. It was political intervention in a science base, and the danger of this bill is to set that precedent. We resisted that eventually. To Tony Burke's credit, the light went on and he was able to convince the government that we should not do this. I remind the parliament and people listening to this that you cannot sterilise against the prion for the human variant of CJD. If you go to the dentist and you are a risk of CJD because of blood, the dentist has to destroy the instruments; they cannot sterilise them. That is how serious it was.

But what it was really all about—and I had a very frank, short-syllable discussion in the Canadian parliament about this—was that we get the advantage because we are clean, green and free of these diseases, thankfully, so far, against the risk of modern communications, transport and freight movements. So far we are clean, green and free. Every time they got a reactor in the United States and Canada, we got their market share in Korea and Japan. That was an advantage that was more valuable to us than the disadvantage we have in currency. These are the things that we have to consider in this parliament for the future.

Going back to a little bit before that, you cannot take it for granted that an organisation such as the OIE has any credibility on a lot of this stuff. I remind people today that we were nearly ambushed by beef from Brazil because Brazil was scheduled by the OIE to have foot-and-mouth-disease-free zones. If SBS ever did Australia a favour, it was when we talked them into taking a camera over there to show the absurdity of the desktop study done by the OIE under trade pressures and a glass of wine or two in Europe somewhere to allow them to bring beef into Australia—which actually happened. It came into Wagga. It ended up on the Wagga tip. We were able to demonstrate that in Brazil there is no such thing as a foot-and-mouth-disease-free zone because of what the cameras caught on the border, which was a road. You have to have a border on a foot-and-mouth-disease-free zone. There was the road. On one side of the road, on the right, it was foot-and-mouth disease free, and it was foot-and-mouth disease positive on the other side—and there was a mob of cattle walking up the road on both sides of the road. That was the end of it. I am pleased to say that someone in the decision-making processes of that got the bullet—not physically but figuratively. It was a dreadful thing.

With the cattle and the BSE episode, which is pretty recent, our guys—and I will not name them to embarrass them, but it falls onto both sides of politics—did not realise that, over there, the US Cattlemen's Association did not want to have traceability because they wanted to be able to do all the things that likeable rogues do with cattle herds. It was the same as we have had now: it took a serious crisis in Australia to convince the Northern Territory cattlemen that they ought to participate in the NLI System in Australia, which will probably cut down on some of the poddy dodging up there. What our guys did not know and certainly Simon Crean did not know—and you cannot expect people to know everything—is that there is an open border between Canada and America and an open border between the United States and Mexico. Eventually, sense won the argument, and we said as a government, 'Well, we'll do an import risk analysis with Canada and the United States,' and Japan was the other appellant. Canada wrote back and said, 'We don't have the resources'—which is absurd—'to carry out this import risk analysis; therefore we'll withdraw.' The United States said, 'We're not interested.' And that was due to political pressure from the US Cattlemen's Association.

We really do have to make sure that we have good science and that we are well equipped and financed to carry out that science. I remind you of the citrus canker outbreak in Emerald. That was a failure of border protection. Several other things have been nominated here this morning, such as myrtle rust and Asian honey bees. These are all things that we endeavour to keep out, but there is human failure.

On the Quarantine Amendment (Disallowing Permits) Bill 2011, while everyone is saying, 'We understand what's behind it,' the risk is triggering an event which will set a global precedent for political intervention in these processes. I have heard a lot of discussion that seemed to be well off the quarantine bill this morning. The real referee of what is happening to the globe is not a parliament anywhere; it is Mother Earth. She is the referee, so politicians can play around as much as they like.

I am disappointed that we have ignored the import risk analysis advice on apples and gone to farm management practices so that we can avoid, politically, the import risk analysis advice. The advice was that, if we bring in New Zealand apples, because of the calyx of the apple we will actually import fire blight, but allegedly it will not get out into the orchards. But—and there was no explanation of what that botanic gardens episode was in Melbourne—if that does happen, you can bet that no-one in the decision-making line in the bureaucracy or in the government will get the sack, but the apple and pear growers will wear the consequences. So this is serious stuff, and we should not be playing politics with it.

In an era of modern transport and communication, we do have some advantages. The best advantage Australia has is that, by 2050, two-thirds of the world's population is going to live in Asia, our nearest neighbours. It is estimated by the science that they are going to lose 30 per cent of their productive land in that time and the food task is going to double. Sadly, according to the science, unless there is some sort of human catastrophe, there will be nine billion people on the planet and 1.6 billion of those people could be displaced, looking for somewhere else to live. But this is the scary part. This is why we have to use science and—just getting off the page a fraction—protect our means of production and sell our surplus production rather than our means of production, especially to other sovereign entities. By 2070 China is going to have 1.8 billion people and the planet, barring a catastrophe, is going to have 12 billion people. Just to take China as an example, it is going to have to feed 900 million of those people from someone else's agricultural resource. What we really need to do in Australia is focus on the task ahead: the global food task. Part of us getting an advantage because of our fortunate geography—we are an island continent—is to protect our borders. Obviously quarantine provisions have a big part to play in that. I can remember some years ago when we allowed in Romney sheep from New Zealand. They went to Bathurst. The department of agriculture blokes who let those sheep in knew that Johne's disease was endemic in New Zealand. For whatever reason, those sheep were let in. Guess what? We now have endemic Johne's disease. I declare an interest here: we inoculate our sheep for Johne's disease. Senator Milne referred to the fertility issue with beef which is the result of semen straws that were brought into Australia. These are serious situations. Most people do not even think about them. We have heard all this political garbage, but most people take their food for granted. More people live in the western suburbs of Sydney than all of rural Australia. They just down to Coles or Woolies to get their tucker. It is not as simple as that.

We really need to carefully consider, without staking out a political position to advantage one side against the other, what we do to protect our greatest feature in global trading in food which is: 'You can eat our tucker knowing it is safe.' It is clean and green. In maintaining our trade advantage, we have to put up with the likes of the US who provide a $200 per head subsidy on cattle going through their feedlot system. We have to put up with Europe giving huge subsidies to their farmers.

The greatest risk to Australian farmers at the moment, as long as we can maintain our biosecurity status, is the distortion in the land market by foreign entities, especially sovereign entities. I can give you the names of people, but I will not—and some are in Western Australia, Senator Adams—who have sold their properties at a huge price and agreed to lease them back from the super fund et cetera who bought them. But they cannot pay the rent because the capital appreciation to get a return on the money for the super fund investor has set the rent too high against the risks from the vagaries of weather and from one or two crop failures et cetera.

We really need to take the political gusto out of this debate and give serious consideration to where Australia is going to be in 50 years time against the complications of modern transport and communications. Why? This one is unbelievable: how could Australia's quarantine and biosecurity people allow 34 containers through Botany wharf, allegedly holding fertiliser from China, that turned out to contain dirt? It turned out to be Chinese dirt not Chinese fertiliser. How could we have allowed that to happen? Those are the sort of risks we have. This poor guy in Condobolin thought he had saved $150 a tonne on his MOP fertiliser, but when it got there and he opened the container and one of the bags, he said, 'Gee that doesn't look like fertiliser.' It certainly did not. It was dirt, full of seeds and all sorts of quarantine risk materials, which is still in storage in Botany. I thank AQIS for the way they have gone about negotiating with the Chinese government—because it was bought through an accredited Chinese website—to try to get them to take the dirt back to China. We do not want it here. I think it has accumulated something like $300,000 in storage fees so far.

These are the sorts of risks that we take that ordinary Australians are not aware of. They are not aware of the good work that we do and the good work that the quarantine people do against the potential interference from politicians looking for a political advantage. We must not take things for granted and think, 'She'll be right,' because she will not be right. We have had umpteen instances. We have had Brazilian beef dumped at the Wagga tip on Christmas Eve. Brazil has endemic foot-and-mouth disease. Yet the OIE, the global organisation that is supposed to be the referee, said that it was okay to do it. This area is full of risk and it should be full of serious consideration. We must find a way scientifically to protect ourselves. That is what we have been able to do and I plead with the present government. They have made a serious error here. Political weight is put on here and the world trade people do put pressure on. When this came up when we were in government, I said, 'Let them go to the WTO.' But after enough glasses of wine in Geneva and after familiarisation with the officials, you come to an arrangement which says, 'We're going to set aside the import risk and the biosecurity provisions, and rely on farm management provisions.' I have to say that is fraught with danger.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Heffernan, you have had nearly 20 minutes of your speech; could you seek leave to continue your remarks.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.