Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In my time in this great House of Representatives of the Australian people, I have come across some very interesting and diligent work undertaken by various committees, particularly committees related to agriculture. The report More than honey: the future of the Australian honey bee and pollination industries, of the Standing Committee on Primary Industries and Resources, is probably one of the most important reports ever to hit this place. It contains 26 recommendations that the government of the day should look at very seriously and implement as quickly as possible. Until the inquiry on the honey bee industry commenced, many people were totally ignorant of the importance of the honey bee to the whole way in which we as a community operate. For example, humankind relies on the pollination process to increase production in agriculture and horticulture.

Many of the issues that were raised in evidence to this inquiry centred around those things that impact on the honey bee population—that is, bushfires, access to national parks and state forests, the stupidity of governments of all political persuasions at the state and federal level, biosecurity and the lack of biosecurity. We recently saw how important biosecurity was to the way equine influenza impacted and savaged in a very short period of time the equine industry in this country. We also have to be aware that biosecurity is very important because we are under threat from incursions of exotic pests and mites, particularly the Varroa destructor mite—or the varroa mite, as it is commonly known. We are the only country in the world that is free of the varroa mite. The varroa mite attaches itself to honey bees and over a period of time infects their hives, and then we see the honey bee population dying.

We have seen more recently the honey bee established in New Zealand. Four years ago, the destructor mite got into New Zealand and we understand from the reports that we have received from New Zealand that it has already impacted on the honey bee population to the extent of decimating it by about 35 or 40 per cent.

Why are we concerned about it? The honey bee industry makes this contribution to this country: it produces about $65 million worth of honey and honey bee products, some of them medicinal products. Of that, $50 million is directly related to honey itself, and the remaining $15 million comes from the medicinal and other products that many people use, which I understand are very good.

More importantly, the honey bee pollinates our agriculture and horticultural crops. That is not only the hived, controlled bees that beekeepers keep but more importantly the feral honey bees, which were released in the 1800s and have multiplied at a dramatic rate. They pollinate not just the fruit and vegetables and other foodstuffs on our supermarket shelves that you and I take for granted but also pastures such as lucerne and other crops on which we are dependent to graze our animals and for our food and other by-products. Depending on who you talk to, the honey bee contributes between $3 billion and $6 billion to the economy of this country. When you look at that and at the actual honey bee industry and at what it contributes directly in honey and honey bee products, you have to say to yourself, ‘Gee, these little animals are punching above their weight,’ and they are. This comment was made during the evidence: no honey, no money. I cannot think of another phrase that would be more poignant—no honey, no money.

As a member of parliament one of the things about which I get very disconcerted and disappointed—and I know you, Madam Deputy Speaker Bird, and other members in this place today have been members of committees that have submitted reports to governments of all political persuasions; I am not being partisan about this particular government—is seeing hundreds and hundreds of hours put in by members of parliament and seeing professional, committed work undertaken by the support crews of the secretariats of this place in putting reports together with very, very significant recommendations for governments to undertake for the protection of the environment, agriculture or whatever; and what do we do? The ministers of the day pay lip-service to them and do not look at them as seriously as they should. More importantly, they do not take up the recommendations and act on them.

I am appealing to the new Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, the Hon. Tony Burke, who I believe is a very good, honest, committed individual, to look at this report and do something constructive for agriculture and horticulture in this country by taking up its recommendations—and not only from the point of view of protecting the honey bee and putting some money into the system so that we can set up a research centre to train people, which is very, very important. As in many industries, the people in the honey bee industry are ageing and, because of the little income they are able to generate through their professional commitment to the industry, we are not attracting young people to it. As a result, many of the skills in the honey bee industry have disappeared or are disappearing. We have got to the horrifying situation where we import people from Asian countries such as China to supplement the people in the industry to undertake the apiarist work, which is fine in detail and very, very important. It is terribly frustrating to try to maintain an industry and keep the momentum going to make sure that the industry continues to contribute to the economic viability of agriculture and horticulture.

It must also be terribly frustrating for people in the CSIRO. There are some scientists in the CSIRO who are world renowned for their knowledge of the honey bee and the industry itself. They are in demand in various countries around the world that are having problems with exotic pests and mites such as the varroa mite, but they do not have backup facilities available to them to pass on their significant knowledge and train young people in the very, very important role that the honey bee industry plays through that little insect, the honey bee.

A lot of people do not understand that we have a very lucrative business. As well as exporting honey because of the unique flavours of our honey because of our native flora, we also export packaged honey bees, an industry that is slowly increasing in size because of the demands upon it. Many people do not understand that California in the United States, for example, has the biggest almond-growing industry in the world. The varroa mite has affected that almond-growing industry to the extent that they have lost somewhere between 30 and 40 per cent of their honey bee population. We supplement their honey bee population by exporting our honey bees to California so that they can pollinate the blossoms and get the yields from the almond industry in the United States. That is a classic example. People do not understand that we actually take semen from bees, just as we do from animals, to get new strains and improve the strains of existing bees. It is a very intricate and finely tuned industry that is very, very important to people right across the world. It is as important to the Australian people as the survival of our agricultural and horticultural industries.

One of the things that people do not understand about the honey bee pollination process is that, when a honey bee pollinates a flower, when that flower turns into a fruit or a vegetable, because of the pollination process, it becomes a fruit that is more uniform, is larger and contains flavour. So the pollination process of the honey bees actually contributes to the quality and the quantity of the fruit and the vegetables that they pollinate in their little busy excursions from place to place. They probably have a work ethic that is greater than that of members of parliament! We often get criticised about our work effort, but our work effort pales into insignificance when you look at this little animal flying around from flower to flower in the pollination process. They are very busy little bees.

When we talk about biosecurity, we do not just talk about the sentinel boxes around this great country of ours; we talk about the need to have biosecurity measures at our internal borders. In other words, the states have to do something about ensuring that insects and exotic pests that come into this country which are capable of doing some very destructive work to a honey bee are isolated in a state, when they get into a particular state, so that they can be addressed with some very professional biosecurity measures at the state level in conjunction with the federal authorities.

When you look at the other things that affect the honey bee, at all the dangers and the threats around them, you see that they are pretty stoic individuals. They have little, weeny legs and little hands that use boxing gloves trying to fight off all of these threats to them. But they are a very significant and important part of the whole of what we understand to be nature. Unless we grab the nettle of the importance of this particular report and pick up the recommendations in it, and more importantly act upon the recommendations in it, we will see things happening in this country that we have never seen and never dreamed of before if the varroa mite gets in here. I know that the farmers out there are now starting to understand how important the honey bee is to their crops. But, more importantly, the honey bee industry is going to go through a different phase now. It has been concentrating on producing honey and forgetting about the pollination process. When bees go and pollinate they actually give farmers and people some of their honey product as payment for allowing them to put their hives there. But people have suddenly realised that, because of the danger of the varroa mite, and the possibility that the honey bee population is going to drop significantly, they are going to have to pay for the pollination processes. From the evidence we have heard, in the future that is going to make up about 60 per cent of the income of honey bee hive operators. So it is very important that we understand.

Not only is the pollination process important to keep the honey bee industry alive but it is critically important that we understand that without honey bees we will have a massive problem in our food bowl in this country. Australia’s food bowl is well respected internationally for supplying food to people outside of our borders. If we have that threat come into the country—it is not a question of if; it is a question of when—and we are not prepared for it then we will have ourselves to blame. The recommendations in this report quite succinctly point out to the government of the day that the minister of the day responsible for agriculture and horticulture has to put the money into the industry to make sure we give the scientists and the experts in the honey bee industry the opportunity to prepare for the threat and perhaps come up with some answers that may in fact stop the threat, kill off the Varroa destructor and perhaps help the rest of the world get back to increasing the population of honey bees and producing food for the very needy people right throughout the world.

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