Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on the report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Water Resources entitled Safe keeping: inquiry into the biosecurity of Australian honey bees. The importance of honey bees to our lives cannot be understated. The importance of a healthy bee population to this country is critical to how we live and to what we eat. The committee report notes—quite clinically, I think—the significance of the pollination services that honey bees provide. If honey bees were in a position to send us all an invoice for their important work of fertilising flowering plants by the transfer of pollen, the Australian Honey Bee Industry Council tells us we would be up for $4 billion every year. I think the bees are worth much more. I think these beautiful insects are invaluable. We must do all that we can to protect them from disease to allow them to do their good work, which they do for free.

I am a beekeeper. I am not sure if there are any other members of parliament in this place that also keep bees. My husband, Jamie, and I have kept bees for a number of years. We have become keen apiarists. It is the most delightful pastime, if sometimes accidentally painful. In fact Jamie will rob a hive of its summer honey tomorrow while I am here in this place. I am sad to miss out on this exercise because there is nothing quite like gently opening up the lid of a super and hearing the low rumble of a colony of bees getting about their important work. There is a mix of exhilaration and trepidation in invading their home, which is what we are doing, but we are doing it to check on the health of the hive and to rob the hive of its excess of honey. This honey is made up of the teaspoon of honey the worker bees will each produce in their very short, yet very productive, six-week lives. The tone of the buzz of the bees changes as we get about our beekeeping work. We do this work quietly, quickly and gently and, at all times, try to keep our heart rate down, which can be difficult as the modulation of bees changes as you disrupt their day. But, from my experience, it is best to remain calm and purposeful when working with bees—and of course dirty beekeeping clothes help a lot with one's confidence.

Helping harvest the Shoalwater honey later this week will be our cousins, David and Christina Galloway from Cumbria in the north of England, who visited the parliament earlier this week. In fact they also keep and care for bees, and we spoke in this building about their hives that are infected with the destructive varroa mite. We talked about how they have to actively manage this pest that has decimated beehives around the world. They told us how the mite first arrived in the south of the UK, in Devon, in 1992 and progressively made its way through the whole country. There was no stopping this pest, and now all British beekeepers can do is to manage the infestations.

Thankfully the destructive varroa mite is not in Australia, and that is in part due to our isolation. But being an island is not enough, as New Zealand has discovered, as has the remote island of Hawaii. The vigilance of this nation's biosecurity measures and the proactive manner in which authorities seek out potentially devastating pests are the principal reason we remain free from the destructive varroa mite. I commend the committee on its work and support its recommendation that the National Bee Pest Surveillance Program implement an enhanced program to intercept pest bees and infected bees at ports around this country. This they will do through more sentinel hives and catch boxes—very practical, very effective and very efficient means to protect our healthy honey bee population. These traits are hallmarks of the beekeeping community.

I also want to congratulate the committee on taking on board an idea put forward by my friend and colleague the member for Paterson, the thoroughly modern Meryl Swanson. She recommended that the government investigate developing an easy-to-use smartphone application that will enable the public to report pest bees that they spot in their gardens, on their farms and in their towns. The increased popularity of amateur beekeeping will make such an easy-to-use app a very useful weapon in the fight to maintain our biosecurity. Education of the public is critical. The importance of biosecurity in quarantine procedures to protecting the Australian environment and maintaining a healthy bee population, which is the healthiest in the world, will be critical.

The report noted that queen bees have been intercepted—mailed—through the post from overseas. I can assure members, you can receive bees in the post. It is quite an interesting process, but you can only get them from Australia. Seeking to import queen bees from overseas is one of the most reckless things any beekeeper can do. It endangers our whole agricultural industry, and I urge those people who are thinking of doing it to never do it.

There are many people working very hard around this country to prevent bee diseases making it to Australia but, should what beekeepers fear the most and the varroa mite make it to this country, there will be a need for further urgent discussions on how we can quarantine infected sites. Western Australia is separated from the rest of this country for the most part by arid lands and desert. Tasmania is separated by the sea. Should the varroa mite arrive, then the discussion will turn to how we use the landscape of this country to maintain healthy populations as far as possible.

There has been a long history in Western Australia of trying to keep out pests from the east. We have been pretty successful with the Collingwood Football Club but, sadly, not the rabbits—as many will know, there is a rabbit-proof fence that started construction in 1901. That was rabbit-proof fence No. 1. It stretched 1,834 kilometres. Some years later, when that did not seem to work, we built another rabbit-proof fence, rabbit-proof fence No. 2, which stretches 1,166 kilometres. People were trying to do their best but, ultimately, it was an effort in futility, and of course rabbits are everywhere.

We have tried to keep cane toads out of Western Australia. Again, we have failed, although people are trying very hard in the north-west of our state to keep them moving further down from Kununurra. They arrive on trucks out of the Northern Territory and, as I said, all we can do is do our best. But, nonetheless, these pests persist.

Western Australia has strict biosecurity laws. If you come to Western Australia, you will be asked to throw all your fruit and any bee or honey products in a bin. There will be dogs at the airport—cute little beagles—that are seeking to protect Western Australia's agriculture industry by making sure you do not have a stray apple, banana or jar of honey in your luggage. If you arrive at the Perth domestic airport and someone asks you to open your bag and relieve yourself of all your fruit, please do it quickly and quietly. There is never a fuss; we are just trying to keep Western Australia safe from these eastern pests.

Jamie and I brought our first queen bee and starter colony from Ms Tiffane Bates, a queen bee breeder and apiary keeper of the UWA Centre for Integrative Bee Research—known as CIBER. The work of this centre was the star in a remarkably popular documentary called More than Honey. I encourage people to look this up on the web; it is easily accessed. It talks about the devastating effects of colony collapse disorder, which we are seeing around the world.

Ms Baits was awarded a Churchill Fellowship and has undertaken extensive research on how bees can be bred resistant to varroa mites. Ms Baits in her reports for her Churchill Fellowship called Australia the last honeybee oasis. That we are, and this oasis we hope to remain. But it is important for research by Ms Baits, her colleague Professor Boris Baer and others at the UWA centre for bee research to continue. Their focus is on discovering genetic traits in bees or existing bee stock that are able to survive an infestation of the varroa mite and build and maintain healthy working colonies of good temperament while minimising the use of chemicals.

Temperament is an unusual word to hear in relation to bees but, I can tell you, having gone through a few different queens, we have experienced beehives and colonies with a good temperament that were nice and quite gentle to work with, and then there are bees that are a bit more aggressive and they are very difficult to work with. This is where the pain comes in in beekeeping.

I sincerely hope our biosecurity measures hold out against this beehive-destroying pest, the varroa mite, and I am pleased that research is continuing should the worst occur. There are more funds going towards bee research. There is a cooperative research centre for honey bee products, also located in WA and now with a new office out in Yanchep. It will assist efforts in offering pollination security to the agriculture industry of WA and increase the ability of the industry to attract and train professional beekeepers and increase the number of hives. This is of great importance, as I said, to the agricultural industry of Western Australia.

Again, I urge anyone in this House that might also be a beekeeper to get in touch. There are lots of parliamentary friends groups in this place, but I am yet to see one that is for beekeepers. It might be a small group, but nevertheless I think maybe we should start it.

I thank the committee for their very hard work, I support their recommendations and I hope we as a parliament can continue to work together on such committees to look after these beautiful insects, bees, that provide so much to our community and our lives.

Debate adjourned.

See this speech in context