Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Legislation Amendment (Export Control and Quarantine) Bill 2006. They are very important issues that my colleague the member for Batman just spoke about: the certification of products and the enforcement of those certified products coming into our country. The objects of the federal quarantine and export services are to protect Australia’s animal, plant and human health status and maintain market access through the delivery of quarantine and export services. These services also have a vital role in implementing and administering strict quarantine control at Australian borders to minimise the risk of exotic pest and disease incursions. With the support of industry and the community, Quarantine responds to potential quarantine threats.

Maintaining access for Australian agricultural and food products to hundreds of markets around the world is essential. Export inspection, auditing and certification services help generate over $26 billion in exports by the meat, horticulture, grain, fish, dairy, organic and live animal export industries. The Export Control Act sets up a regime for the export inspection of prescribed goods. These goods include meat, fish, fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy produce and grains. Inspection is conducted by authorised officers of the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, AQIS. The purpose of the inspection is to ensure that the goods which are to be exported meet the strict requirements set out in the orders made pursuant to the regulations made under the Export Control Act. These requirements are aimed at ensuring fitness for human consumption, quality and accurate trade description of the goods.

The current act arose out of events in the early 1980s which I remember well. In August 1981, discoveries were made in the United States that horse meat had been substituted for beef by an Australian meat export establishment. I had just left the Meat Workers Union and gone into the state parliament of Tasmania, so I know that this issue was a live issue in the meat industry at the time. The reputation of the Australian meat industry was severely tarnished. These amendments seek to ensure that our guidelines are strictly adhered to.

Other speakers this morning have talked about the need to make sure that we do not give away the opportunities that we have of protecting our export markets. We are an island continent. That gives us the advantage of being free of many diseases that exist in other parts of the world. We need to make sure that we do not destroy that. I come from an island state of this island continent which has even fewer pests than the mainland of Australia, and we get criticised for trying to protect our export industries from disease. One prime example is the fire blight disease which occurs in New Zealand. New Zealanders would love to export their apples and pears into my lovely island. Because of fire blight it costs 30 to 40 per cent more to produce apples and pears in New Zealand than it does in Tasmania. So you can see the advantage we have by not having that pest with us.

Successive governments have taken a serious view of malpractice in the export food industry. They have argued that any malpractice that may endanger the reputation of Australia’s export industries and jeopardise overseas markets for Australian goods must be strongly deterred. The Export Control Act includes penalties for false declarations and trade descriptions, and grants extensive regulation-making powers to the Governor-General, including penalties for offences against the regulations. This bill creates four new offences, including two strict liability offences, to deal with those people who fail to ensure that goods are prepared for export in accordance with the legislation. In her second reading speech, the parliamentary secretary said:

The creation of four new offence provisions is in response to a serious gap in the Export Control Act. Currently, the offence provisions in the act focus on persons involved with goods in the post-preparation phase with the result that persons who are the occupiers of establishments where the preparation of the goods occurs are immune from the serious penalties that apply to other offenders under the act. The new offences focus on the person responsible for the preparation of the goods for export.

Other amendments remove any doubt that the Commonwealth has a level of control over the sourcing of fish intended for export. To ensure ongoing access for exported product into overseas markets and consumer protection, fish, including shellfish, must be harvested from areas that do not contain pathogenic organisms, biotoxins and chemical contaminants at levels that may represent a threat to consumer health.

I believe this is very important and that we should show that this is a part of our export regime so that those who import can be pushed to follow the strict guidelines we have here. I saw the Indonesian minister in Australia this week endeavouring to ask Australia to take more food products from Indonesia but also asking that maybe we could help bring them up to a standard where they could import into Australia. Maybe we can assist them through the aid programs we have to come to grips with the standards that will need to be met before they can import everything they want into Australia.

This act also creates four new offences in the Export Control Act to enable the Commonwealth to prosecute those people who fail to prepare goods that are exported in accordance with the act. Labor believe the amendments are sensible, and we have long supported the full cost recovery of the provision of quarantine services and other services by government relating to the export of food products. It would be nice to think that similar provisions exist in other countries trading with Australia so that we could ensure products received were similarly scrutinised and that legislation existed to prosecute those who are not so careful.

The member for New England mentioned this when he spoke in the debate about chicken meat in Australia. When we got the bottom line of that, it was discovered that some of the Asian countries that wanted to import chicken meat to Australia did not have the standard of heat cooking they were supposed to have—the standard which was needed to import into Australia. When we start to bring together and weaken standards from one country to another, where we say, ‘That’s been done there, there’s no need for it to be done here,’ or accept another country’s standards, we should be very careful and make sure those countries have the standards that we expect them to have, otherwise it will be a weakening of our biosecurity regime.

In the world of multilateral trade, it is not only food items that travel between countries; it is all the pathogens that go with that particular food. Some we already have here, many we do not. The only means of control for some of these is at our borders, and that means we must be on the lookout at all times regarding the quality of our imports. Our quarantine laws are strict, and we must ensure that Australia remains free of some of the virulent diseases that are present on continents that cannot secure their borders from disease like we can. So legislation like this can give our growers and producers the edge over others as we ensure that our produce is as healthy as we can make it.

The previous speaker, the member for Batman, spoke about certification in the forest industry. There were also some issues about biosecurity there. There have been some pilot programs set up around Australia at airports and seaports to collect bugs that come in through the air off ships. There is a new program starting up there, which I am very pleased to see, to protect the enormous forestry industry of Australia. We need to be vigilant there as well. I certainly support certification in that industry.

In the fishing industry I have long advocated ensuring that we continue to do as much as we can in the world to certify fish that come from the international seas and that countries do not import fish that are not certified in a given way in a good world certification regime. This legislation goes some way to ensuring that we continue to have the safety margin we need during export and also gives us the opportunity to ensure strict guidelines are in place for foodstuffs entering this country. I support the legislation.

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