John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Hansard source

I probably should be. Coming into the budget, biosecurity was the one area that the government really needed to focus its energies and concentrate its policy on. However, despite forcing AQIS and Biosecurity to retreat from cutting research and development, Minister Ludwig has again ignored the Beale review—his own government's review, which was put into place back in 2008—and failed to increase their budget. It is a fact that inspections per unit of imports into this country continue to decrease.

Labor has also managed to cut $33½ million to the cooperative research centres, meaning that the CRC for National Plant Biosecurity and the Invasive Animals CRC are unlikely to be refunded. I have seen them lately, and they are extraordinarily worried about the funding situation they are in. Our worst fears look increasingly likely as a result of this budget. The government continues to ignore glaring failures in proactively protecting Australia's shores from pests and diseases.

The government claimed during the 2010 election campaign that they had a renewed focus on the regions, but the budget does not deliver for the people or industries of our regions. Biosecurity is such a huge issue for us. The federal government ignored myrtle rust, which is really guava rust, and ignored the fact that New South Wales wanted to deal with it. It ignored the fact that Queensland wanted to deal with the Asian honey bee. The minister and the department pretty much walked away from it. We now have myrtle rust not just hooking into nurseries; it is hooking into eucalyptus. Some four to five eucalypt species are now suffering, and it is up into Queensland. It could have been dealt with, but the bureaucrats and the ministry did not want to do so. This is a really serious issue. Biosecurity is a time bomb waiting to blow up. I implore the minister and the government to take it far more seriously.

Last year I said that the budget was an opportunity for Labor to invest in our regions. Once again, that has been ignored. My electorate and the farmers of Australia have been left to pick up the pieces. And now we are going to have to pay back a net budget deficit of well over $100 billion once again.

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