Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

On 16 February this year the Prime Minister addressed the New Zealand parliament and, in an act of treachery to Australian apple-growing families, agreed to give carte blanche to allow New Zealand apples into our country. This was, in every sense, a betrayal of the worst kind—an Australian Prime Minister being disloyal to Australian people. Never mind the utterings that this rollover—and that is what it is—complies with the World Trade Organisation or anything else offered as some sort of feeble excuse. It is incomprehensible that our Prime Minister, as unpopular as she is in this country, would go across the Tasman to try to win a few friends over there in this way.

It was an executive decision to do this because in December last year the Australian and New Zealand governments agreed that a review of the situation would be completed on 17 August 2011, still many weeks from now. Despite this, our Prime Minister jumped the gun by several months and, in doing so—in wrongly doing so—opened the floodgates to New Zealand apples, placing our own apple industry in harm's way, risking fire blight and a flooded market. She did the same with live cattle exports, making an executive decision to ban the whole live trade to Indonesia, despite there being abattoirs which comply with Australian killing standards. It makes you wonder what the Prime Minister has against regional Australia.

On 1 June Apple and Pear Australia Ltd, APAL, which has been fighting the good fight against this Labor government's ineptitude and this Prime Minister's arro­gance, released a summary of a Centre for International Economics report commis­sioned by Horticulture Australia Ltd. The very first paragraph of the summary spells out the trouble we now face:

The Australian apple industry is likely to endure significant structural changes resulting from the introduction of apple imports, starting January 2011, with wholesale prices expected to be about 20 per cent lower and farm income about 30 per cent lower. Imported apples will be sold in Australia as a result of changes made by Biosecurity Australia to quarantine restrictions.

The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Joe Ludwig, attended the announcement of the report, which was made by APAL chairman Darral Ashton, of Batlow, a town in my Riverina electorate which faces a bleak outlook thanks to our Prime Minister's sell-out. I met Mr Ashton and an APAL delegation about 20 minutes ago in my office. They are very worried about Labor's attitude towards agriculture, and they have every reason to be concerned.

I hope the minister listened on 1 June. Moreover, I hope he takes some action to do something to help save what has been and could and should continue to be a great Australian industry, a great Australian trad­ition. I hope that, unlike with the cattle trade, Senator Ludwig does not cave in to orders from above, from a Prime Minister who puts everything into the delay basket, hoping that it gets lost in the 24-hour media cycle on which her government runs, hoping the next latte-sipping, union-grovelling, leftie focus group moves on to some other issue to appease the city dwellers or the rabid Greens to whom this Labor government is so beholden.

Meanwhile, regional Australia suffers. Meanwhile, our apple growers wonder if there will be a future. Meanwhile, New Zealand apple growers prepare for an assault on Australian markets which the APAL report said will have dire consequences for our industry. The Economic impact of apple imports from China, New Zealand and the USA on the Australian apple industry report suggests:

The immediate impact of the increased import competition that will result from relaxing quarantine restrictions will be to lower the domestic price. CIE used a model developed for a HAL Future Focus project, the Hi_Link model, to estimate the various adjustments that are likely to occur in response to estimated price changes. CIE estimated that relaxing quarantine restrictions on apple imports from China, New Zealand and the United States will have the following impacts on the Australian apple industry by around 2014:

Can we afford to allow this to happen to Australian apple growers, Aussie farmers? This is the first time in 90 years that apples are being imported into Australia. It is the biggest challenge the apple industry has had to face since England joined the Common Market in 1972. Apple imports could poten­tially cripple and undermine the economic prosperity of the Batlow and Tumut districts in the Riverina.

New Zealand initially applied to export apples to Australia in December 1995. Since that time, APAL and citrus fruit growers have done their utmost to ensure that, if New Zealand apples are brought into Australia, exotic pests and diseases present in New Zealand do not also arrive on our shores and end up in our orchards and, as the member for Forrest quite rightly pointed out, in our ornamental gardens as well.

On 1 January 2007, the agreement's rules of origin provision underwent considerable change to permit both the 'change in tariff classification' method and the 'regional value content' method to be used to establish whether goods are New Zealand-originating goods.

As part of the 2007 amendments to the agreement, both parties have agreed to perform a review of the new rules of origin within three years of these new rules taking effect. However, in the same year New Zealand lodged a dispute with the World Trade Organisation on the basis that Australian measures were inconsistent with Australia's international obligations under the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. This critical step entailed the decision-making process being taken out of the hands of both countries and all power given to the WTO—an international body committed to free trade, not fair trade. In August 2010, the WTO ruled that Australia's phytosanitary measures for New Zealand apples were not justified. An appeal was lodged but lost, in November 2010, and there were no further avenues for appeal by Australia.

Yet—and this is crucial to the whole argument—the two governments agreed to complete a review of the matter, which will not be finalised until next month, six months and one day after our Prime Minister made her great backdown speech in the New Zealand parliament. At present, Biosecurity Australia relies on New Zealand's standard orchard practices as the quarantine standard sufficient to protect Australia from a number of extremely damaging pests and diseases not present in Australia.

Mr Shorten interjecting—

This is a very serious subject, but I will take that interjection from the shadow minister—sorry, not shadow. He will be a shadow in the next parliament—trust me! These practices include application of the integ­rated fruit production system, or an equivalent, to manage pests and diseases in the orchards; testing to ensure that only mature fruit is exported to Australia; maintenance of sanitary conditions in dump tank water; high-pressure water washing and brushing of fruit in the packing house; and a minimum 600-fruit sample from each lot of fruit packed be inspected and found free of quarantine pests for Australia.

However, all horticultural industries in virtually all countries have standard practices designed to minimise the risk and spread of diseases. But the efficacy of those practices depends on many factors which are not always in the control of the orchardist or industry personnel. The standard practices, like any other code of practice, are open to potential flaws such as human interpretation and application of the standard practices, which invariably differ from grower to grower and from region to region. Without a significant level of auditing, there is no way of judging compliance with the standard orchard practices and, in New Zealand, there appears to be no single organisation which manages and audits the process across all export orchards to ensure accuracy and consistency and to deal with noncompliance.

Pest pressure, both on-farm and from neighbouring properties, choice and efficacy of application of control agents, and orchard canopy and design are also standard practices which can be open to issue and noncompliance. While in New Zealand it is mandatory to comply with standard orchard practices if fruit is to be exported, it is not mandatory to have all aspects of the program conducted in the expected manner. Whilst the modifications to the agreement will lessen the administrative burden on business and will assist the eligibility for duty-free entry of goods into both markets, the amendments will also provide greater consistency between the rules of origin in the agreement and those in other free trade agreements entered into by Australia.

Certain industries will indeed suffer from a decrease in prices and the importation of pest and diseases. This is just another blow to Australian farmers, who must feel that under this government they cannot take a trick. Foreign apples should never have been allowed into our country in the first place. Our apple industry is free of fire blight and is self-sustaining. All this has done is undermine and potentially cripple what was a vibrant Australian industry, which meant so much to the economic prosperity of Batlow and Tumut and many other regional areas as well. We have already seen what pests and diseases such as the asian bee and greening disease can do to countries with horticulture such as citrus.

Today, the shadow minister for agric­ulture and food security has circulated a private member's bill to safeguard against fire blight in the face of the Gillard government issuing permits to import apples from New Zealand. Australia's robust, science based quarantine protections must not be compromised. Our pest and disease-free status has been hard won and the government's bid to rubber-stamp New Zealand apples into Australia, without the same checks and balances that are applied to other countries, sets a very dangerous precedent.

While we have Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service inspectors on the ground in China, undertaking rigorous checks, we are expected to simply accept that practices across the Tasman in New Zealand adequately manage endemic fire blight risk in that country, despite not having a single inspector to check that the right thing is being done. Apples are apples, and the same scientific standards should be applied to apples, regardless of where they are imported from.

The coalition is so worried about the lax attitude to quarantine and biosecurity in Australia that we have put forward the Quarantine Legislation Amendment (Apples) Bill 2011, a bill which makes a permit to import apples a disallowable instrument. This bill puts the government and Biosecurity Australia on notice that, if they ignore the science and put trade before quarantine, this parliament can disallow permits and direct them to ensure that adequate protections against foreign pests and diseases are in place. Biosecurity Australia needs to clearly justify the risk factors and why Australia is allowing lower standards for New Zealand than those required to import apples from China. There is a very real risk of fire blight entering Australia and, of the 49 countries which have contracted fire blight, not one has eradicated it.

Fire blight is not a notifiable disease. There has, apparently, been no serious fire blight outbreak reported in New Zealand since 1998. But how would anyone know whether one has occurred? Indeed, when Biosecurity Australia inspectors visited New Zealand in March and inspected six orchards and five packing houses they found fire blight. The reckless pursuit by the government to import New Zealand apples without adequately managing the risk of fire blight will be a death sentence for our country's apple producers. This decision to make the permit to import apples a disallowable instrument is not a decision the coalition has taken lightly, but such is the lax attitude towards biosecurity by this govern­ment that we were left with no other choice. We have a duty to proactively protect Australia's shores from pests and diseases. After all, mangoes from Queensland are placed under very strict quarantine measures by New Zealand for fear of fruit fly, yet we are not supposed to have similar tight rules to guard against fire blight from New Zealand apples. The federal government has wiped its hands of agriculture. It constantly proves this with its laxity in biosecurity laws, suspension of live exports and failure to gain an understanding of the way of rural life through listening to the people who know best. One of those people is Hannah Cathels, part of the third generation of her family to grow and sell Australian apples. She wrote to me recently, and her correspondence is worth listening to. Her uncle Ian Cathels operates three orchards in Batlow, New South Wales, and her father, Rob, operates five divisions in the Sydney markets, where she works. The futures of her siblings and cousins, also part of that third generation, will be dramatically impacted should pests and diseases from New Zealand enter their orchards. Hannah says that this business producing and selling Australian apples has allowed her grand­father, father and uncle to provide for their family for the past 60 years, and she fears that without proper protocols in place for New Zealand apple imports she, her siblings and her cousins will not be able to do the same for their families in the future.

In Batlow, her grandfather bought his first apple orchard and now has three orchards and a large packing shed, packing for over 20 local growers. Hannah wonders what will happen to those people if the New Zealand apples come in and flood our markets. They employ 250-plus staff in New South Wales. Consider the 250-plus staff and their families also without an income if the New Zealand apples bring pests and diseases, which will, as she says, 'decimate' her industry—what she really means is 'devastate'. It is not going to divide it by 10; it is going to completely cripple the industry. 'It is extremely hard for me to understand,' she writes, 'how Biosecur­ity Australia and the Australian government can expect us to believe or even accept that New Zealand apple growers will honestly attempt to control the entry of their pests and diseases into our country if there is no auditing process and when they stand to receive significant financial benefits through the import of their apples into our country.' The Prime Minister should heed the words of Hannah, wise beyond her 22 years, and do everything she can to protect and preserve Australia's apple industry—not simply sell it up the river in yet another cheap political stunt.

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