Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I've often said in this place and at dozens of community meetings and listening posts all over my electorate, I want to help make my electorate of Fisher the place to be for education, employment and retirement. I want to make sure that our young people can get the very best education, build a rewarding career and retire in comfort and dignity without ever having to move away from the Sunshine Coast. To make that a reality, we need to bring new jobs to our community. As the Sunshine Coast grows, we must diversify and welcome new industries. With the right encouragement, I believe that the defence industry, high-tech manufacturing, health and aged-care services and professional services are all sectors which should be at the heart of our region. We already have businesses in my electorate that are expanding and succeeding in all of those sectors, and I'm doing what I can to encourage them.

However, there is one sector which, with the right support, is sure to be an important part of that future Sunshine Coast economy and which is particularly relevant to the bill before us today. I'm sure that members on all sides of the chamber would agree—those that have been there—that the Sunshine Coast has the best beaches and the best seafood in Australia. I think we all know that. What is less well known is that the Sunshine Coast also has the largest long-line tuna and prawn fishing fleets on the east coast of Australia. You could say that Mooloolaba is our nation's fishing capital. Fishing on the Sunshine Coast generates $42.5 million in direct sales every year, with more than $30 million in exports. Throughout South-East Asia, people are serving Mooloolaba prawns and Coral Sea tuna caught in our local waters. This fishing sector, already substantially successful and not at the mercy of tourism cycles, is exactly the sort of industry we need to encourage on the Sunshine Coast.

In my electorate I've been working hard to do just that. In April last year I showed the Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources some of the hardworking fishing businesses that operate out of Mooloolaba and gave them the opportunity to speak to the minister about issues that concern them. Subsequent to that visit, I set up a Fisher Commercial Fishing Industry Council, which is a mouthful, in my electorate to go along with my Defence Industry Council. Members who have heard me speak before will know how committed I am to the promotion of defence industry in Fisher, and my foundation of an equivalent council for the commercial fishing sector is an indication of how important I believe that industry will be to our future.

The Fisher Commercial Fishing Industry Council first met in October last year and is due to meet again in just a few weeks. We've discussed a range of issues, from marine parks to the dredging of the Mooloolah River mouth and also the Mooloolaba Harbour. I want to take this opportunity to thank Heidi and Parvo Walker of Walker Seafoods, Paul and Mike Williams of P & M Williams Enterprises, Jim Utterleymoore of Paddock Wood, Adam Whan of 4 Seas, Johnny Rockliff of Rockliff Seafood, as well as Les Apps and Jason Simpson of Aussie Red Crab, for getting involved in this council. I'd also like to give a good shout-out to David Ellis from Tuna Australia for his advocacy on behalf of these local businesses. It's been fantastic to see how engaged our local fishing industry is and how they share a vision for the future of fishing on the Sunshine Coast.

To ensure that this vision comes to fruition and we build a thriving and expanding fishing industry on the Sunshine Coast, we need the right legislative framework from the federal government. The government has already taken action on one of the important issues raised to me by my council: repairing the disastrous marine parks plan created by Julia Gillard's Labor government and masterminded by the Member for Watson. This increased the size of our marine parks to almost 40 per cent of Commonwealth waters. In July last year, the government acted, releasing a new, smarter marine parks management plan. The size of the parks stays the same under the new plan, ensuring that the environmental outcomes will be world class, but only 20 per cent of the marine parks will be designated green zones, where no fishing can happen. In much of the rest, features on the sea floor will be protected and oil and gas exploration prohibited, but sustainable fishing in the water column will be able to take place. This will halve the economic impact of marine parks on commercial fishers across the country.

However, we now need to deal with another threat to our fishing and seafood industries which risks a larger, more devastating impact. That is the import of contaminated foods and, in particular, the import of contaminated raw foodstuffs. The domestic prawn industry in Australia, including businesses in my own electorate of Fisher, has been worth over $350 million a year to the national economy. Australian businesses catch approximately 25,000 tonnes of prawns every year. However, in November of 2016, an outbreak of white spot disease was found among prawns in seven Queensland farms on the Logan River. By January 2017, the Australian Prawn Farmers Association was suggesting that the outbreak was already affecting the livelihoods of 100 Australian families. The disease spread to wild prawns in Moreton Bay, just south of my electorate, during 2017. It became necessary for the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries to impose restrictions on fishing and movement of uncooked prawns from the Moreton Bay region.

The source of the disease was not immediately clear, but Dr Ben Diggles and the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources found, after detailed investigation, that the most likely source was infected imported prawns. White spot disease was also found in a high proportion of imported, uncooked prawns bought within 10 kilometres of infected farms. It was necessary for the Director of Biosecurity, with the Deputy Prime Minister's support, to suspend all raw prawn imports to Australia from white-spot-affected countries for six months.

Fortunately for the fishers of my electorate, the electorate of Fisher, the disease was contained before it reached our region. However, for businesses in the Moreton Bay region and on the Logan River, the impact was devastating. At the seven prawn farms on the Logan River, it was necessary to destroy all of their prawns. One of the largest prawn farms in Australia, Gold Coast Marine Aquaculture, lost 25 million black tiger prawns as part of its eradication efforts. Fishing businesses around Moreton Bay were unable to transport and sell their prawns, while businesses like that owned by one of my own constituents, Craig Winkel, were badly impacted by the import ban. Mr Winkel's company, AGFC Group, exported frozen Australian prawns to Vietnam for processing before re-importing them for local sale—a process that became impossible once the ban was in place.

If the disease had spread further, let alone become endemic in the wild, the impact on the fishing industry in my electorate and all over the East Coast could have been catastrophic. As it was, in all, the outbreak cost tens of millions of dollars, if not more. Ridge Partners estimated that the cost to the Logan River region alone was $49½ million. In addition, the Commonwealth invested $20 million in additional financial support for the farmers, while the Queensland government spent more than $50 million in controlling the outbreak and assisting the affected industry.

As of December 2017, there are still prawn farms in the region that are closed and unable to raise stock. The Deputy Prime Minister has taken action to improve Australia's biosecurity system at the border. The government has invested an additional $200 million over four years to strengthen the national biosecurity system through the Agricultural competitiveness white paper. The Commonwealth's total expenditure for biosecurity this financial year amounts to $752.7 million, representing an increase of $149.3 million since the coalition came to government.

In addition, the department is also undertaking a review of the biosecurity risks of, and import conditions for, prawns and prawn products for human consumption. The review will include comprehensive scientific and risk analysis and is expected to take up to two years. However, as Dr Helen Scott-Orr said in her Inspector-General of Biosecurity report into the white spot outbreak: 'Governments alone cannot deliver biosecurity.' We need more than just tighter border controls. We need importers themselves to contribute proactively to ensuring that these threats do not reach our shores. That is where this legislation comes in—not only in the case of seafood, which is so important to my electorate of Fisher, but in all parts of our food import sector. The bill will allow us to go beyond relying on border testing alone. As supply chains become more global, it's necessary for us to reach beyond our borders and satisfy ourselves that food safety is being maintained at every stage of the chain.

This legislation will achieve that by requiring importers to provide robust documentary evidence which shows that they have effective, internationally recognised food-safety controls in place throughout the supply chain. It will also require importers to account for the food's journey to market, both one step back and one step forward in the supply chain. It will give those requirements teeth by ensuring that the government's emergency powers extend to holding food in the process of import at the border when its safety is not certain. It will do this while ensuring that the requirements are not excessively onerous, by recognising the food safety regimes of other countries that are equivalent to our own in their entirety, simplifying import from those safer jurisdictions. This legislation is proportionate, considered and a necessary part of our action to help prevent Australia's biosecurity regime being so damagingly compromised, again, in the future.

I'm delighted to say that, as of December 2017, tens of thousands of samples of wild crabs and prawns have been tested without a case of white spot being identified. We have reason to be cautiously optimistic that once again this outbreak has been controlled. Australia is the only major prawn exporting nation that does not suffer from endemic white spot disease. It's a great example, but it is far from the only unique claim we can make for our world-class agricultural sector and our biosecurity regime. It is a precious legacy which we must pass unspoiled to our children if food production is to be a part of our increasingly prosperous future on the Sunshine Coast and throughout Australia. We need these further controls to secure that legacy and support that growth, and, for that reason, I commend the bill to the House.

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