Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion and to thank the member for Makin for putting it forward. It is a line of inquiry that I am also pursuing through some of my parliamentary committees to try to encourage them to do work in this area. In particular I am interested in imported foodstuffs and the people’s ability to make informed choices about their shopping practices. Australia has a reputation for producing some of the cleanest, freshest and safest food in the world; however, with many major food products we no longer have the cheapest. That is not to say that, if all foods in the Australian market had to be produced in the same safe, quality assured manner using our minimum standards, our industries would not be competitive.

I recently obtained an AQIS list of foodstuffs imported from China in the last six months. It is sobering reading—over 5,000 different items: thousands of tonnes of prawns, nuts, meats, shellfish, prepared foods, sauces and vegetables. The list goes on and on. I doubt we have any real idea how most of the food was produced, under what levels of hygiene it was produced and packed and what the quality of the water it was grown in and the chemicals which were used to grow it were. Are those chemicals banned in Australia? Of course, it is not just China; there are fish from Vietnam and Thailand and even food from India. Products are pouring in from all over the world.

Just last week we heard that we will now allow the importation of beef from countries with mad cow disease. If you gave the public adequate information on this product—for example, ‘This beef has been imported from a country with mad cow disease’—I would suggest that sales might be a little sluggish! But you can be sure that that sign will not be appearing on the product. Our beef industry is a multimillion-dollar export earner for Australia, and can we be sure there are no biosecurity risks and, even more importantly, no public health risks? I have been to Vietnam, and a wonderful, beautiful and industrious country it is, even as it deals with some difficulties in governance. But, although only a casual observer at the time, I could not help observing the conditions of the prawn farms. I allege they would be highly unlikely to pass Australian health tests. In fact, large tonnage of catfish is imported into Australia under another name. My understanding of catfish is that they dwell in the dirtiest of water and consume the filthiest of foods, but the Australian population lives largely in blissful ignorance of all this.

I am in favour of free and fair trade; however, production not meeting the conditions our locals producers must, is not fair on either the growers or the consumers. We turn our memory to the recent melamine scandal coming out of China. Are we convinced that our imported processed food from that nation is free of that contaminant? I understand part of China’s crackdown on this practice has involved lifting the maximum allowable standard of melamine in the product. So where are the safeguards? Unfortunately, they are difficult to find. Supposedly we are protected by AQIS, the very same organisation the government is planning to withdraw $40 million from. That is 40 per cent of their budget. And then we expect them to protect us! It is impossible not to think that in that event there may be shortcuts.

We should have a full understanding of where our food comes from. Even though there have been reforms in labelling over the years, I am far from convinced the public understands the messages in the labelling. We can have education programs encouraging people to read and understand the labels, but at the heart of the problem is that the public trusts the government and its institutions to guard them from poor standards. I am far from convinced that, as this explosion of imported food threatens to bury the cleanest, freshest food industry in the world, we are being properly protected. I support this private members’ motion and thank the member for presenting it. I support it because it does address some of the issues I have raised, supplying better information to the public. I suspect, though, we will have to do much more than just this to address many of those issues.

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