Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

The Imported Food Control Amendment Bill 2017 has been sitting on the Notice Paper for some time, so it's good to have the opportunity to finally speak to the bill and to the amendment that's been moved by the member for Hunter. We can also talk more broadly about the importance of biosecurity here in Australia. We hear a lot about the clean, green image of Australia and how Asia and our other trading partners want our products. It's quite often linked to why we had to push through these free trade agreements. However, we have to work hard as a nation, and the government should be held accountable for ensuring that we have the strictest and strongest biosecurity regime in place to ensure that we have a product to sell—to ensure that we have a product we can sell at the top price.

Last week I had the opportunity to be in Tasmania meeting with cherry, berry and apple farmers. We talked about various issues. Of course, as this place knows, because of the activism and speeches from Tasmanian members of parliament, they are confronting a real crisis when it comes to fruit fly in their state. Because of a lax biosecurity, because there has been a breakdown between the state and federal governments and because the state government has not enforced strict biosecurity measures, they now have fruit fly in Tasmania, and it's spreading. It's having a direct impact on those growers.

At the cherry farm we were at they were sorting the cherries. Looking at the cherries they send to China—China does pay top price. I'd never seen cherries that big! We get the little ones here in our supermarkets. China definitely does pay top dollar to get the best berries. But, because of the fruit fly outbreak—the cherry farm is in that zone—China said, 'Your cherries are banned.' So then they had to find a second buyer, and that was Hong Kong. The difference in price between China and Hong Kong, though, was $9 a box. That farmer and that community have just taken a big hit. They did find a buyer, so they're relieved, but, again, $20 to $11 is a big price markdown.

I'm disappointed that we haven't heard any word or any action plan from this government. We've got a new minister who could have started fresh and jumped in. Why isn't there, in this country, an urgent response plan? I'm from central Victoria. We have apple orchards and we have a problem with fruit fly in our part of the world and wouldn't wish it upon anybody. I've heard our small growers raise it at farmers markets: 'The fruit fly this season is particularly bad.' It is just devastating, since we know how bad fruit fly is, to see that the federal government and the state government have not reacted urgently to try and stop it in Tasmania, because Tasmania does have an edge over its competitors when it competes internationally against New Zealand and other countries. The South Australian government have stepped up. They're doing a lot more. They are quite aggressively going after the problem with fruit fly, but we haven't seen the same reaction when it comes to Tasmania. I flew to Tasmania, but my mum took the ferry over. We were just two people entering the state, and we didn't receive any warnings. We weren't told, 'Dump your fruit; we're facing this crisis.' There's been a real lack of reaction from this government, from the new minister and from the state government. We need to work together, collaboratively, with industries, departments, state governments and politicians to protect our biosecurity regime. We need to ensure that it is funded and that we're working closely to stop disease coming into this country.

The amendment before us does strengthen the current risk management approach towards imported foods and it will create better health outcomes for consumers. Labor supports the bill because it recognises that, whilst Australia has a robust imported food safety system, we can always do more to improve it, especially given that Australia is a country that imports great amounts of food from other countries through the trade agreements that I mentioned. We also produce a lot in the way of agriculture, so we do want to stop any kind of cross-contamination and food-borne illnesses that could have serious consequences not just for the health of Australians but for the product that we're growing here in this country. Everybody in this place, in their speeches, has been referring to the hepatitis A outbreak in 2015 linked to the importation of frozen berries. It was a debacle. Over 13 people were hospitalised in relation to that case. Again, the response from the government at the time was slow. It linked it to proper country-of-origin labelling, but, when you picked up a packet of berries, it told you it was from China. It didn't tell you, by the way, 'This product from China might have hep A,' but the product was clearly labelled 'From China'. That didn't affect what happened. It was just a bit of a cop-out—'Look over here'—by the then minister, the member for New England. We need to do better than just say, 'Look at the packet.' We need to ensure that product that is contaminated does not enter our country.

We've had our scares in the pork industry. We've had our scares in the chicken meat industry. In my electorate of Bendigo, a regional electorate, we produce Australian pork and a lot of chicken meat. There are strict importation controls around chicken meat and pork. You cannot import pork on the bone, so the bacon that you eat, the Don-KR Castlemaine bacon that is proudly produced in my electorate, is made from imported pork fillet. That is allowed, and most of it comes from Canada or Europe. However, the hams that you might have had at Christmas from Don's were actually Australian pork—because we have strict rules around the food-borne illnesses that can occur from pork on the bone in this country. That is why we've got that clean, green protection in place.

However, a few years ago there was a situation in which bones and pork were being imported separately and then being put back together here in this country and sold as pork on the bone. You'd think, 'Who would actually go to that extent?' But people did. The collaboration of the Victorian government and the former Labor government quickly stopped that from happening. Stopping that didn't just protect the Australian pork industry; it also protected Australian consumers. Can you imagine what kind of product you could be eating if you brought in the bones in one parcel and the ham in another parcel, put them back together, packaged it all up and tried to sell it? You start to get horrified about what you could be eating.

The chicken industry is another one. We know that poultry has had issues overseas. Because of the biosecurity that we have in place in this country, we've been able to stop avian flu and a lot of those viruses overseas from getting into our chicken meat industry and egg industry. However, these industries consistently raise with me that they are worried that the import food controls around their industries could be weakened. It is an ongoing issue that they have in the back of their minds—that import controls could be relaxed and that their industry could face risk. Pork Australia recently raised with me their concern about partly cooked product. As an example, some of the precooked meals that you might buy at the supermarket or in a restaurant are being produced in the United States and are being packaged up, partly cooked, and put in sauces and sent to this country. They're worried about that food and are calling for it to be investigated.

These are examples of the risks we face in this country, and this is why we need to continue to invest in the research on import food controls. It is why we support the bill that is before us, but we really call upon the government to do more. They have focused on shifting public sector jobs around our country, shifting agencies, which further weakens them and distracts people from what we need to be focused on. We need to make sure we are always doing our utmost in this place to stop unwanted disease coming in, to protect the Australian markets that we have and to help promote our clean, green image.

I have mentioned the problem with raspberries and hep B, and how the minister of the time tried to dismiss it as a food-labelling issue. It was not. I have mentioned the biosecurity fruit fly threat we now have in Tasmania. Still, to this day, we have failed to see a decent action plan from the minister to try to stop the spread of that horrible disease in Tasmania. We have heard from previous speakers concerns about white spot disease and the problems it created in Queensland. The previous speaker was absolutely right: the seafood we have on the Sunshine Coast is world class; it is the best. Again, you won't see those prawns at Coles or Safeway. Unfortunately, in the rest of the country we don't get to benefit from this fabulous seafood that you can buy literally off the boat in Mooloolaba. It goes to those top markets overseas. But that was seriously at risk last year and the year before because of the outbreak of white spot disease.

We can always be faster—and we should be faster—in reacting to these biosecurity threats. We need to acknowledge that we live in a time when people move in and out of country and move across borders. We need to be doing more to educate our public. The fact that today you can get off a boat or a plane in Tasmania and nobody is there to say, 'Dump your fruit,' is a real problem. The fact that we have people coming into our country who don't understand our strict biosecurity rules and are innocently making mistakes is a problem. It is up to government to educate. It is up to government to legislate. It is up to government to make sure there is enough funding in this space so that the inspectors, the public servants and the agencies are able to crack down on these outbreaks when they occur. We can't stick our heads in the sand and pretend it's not going to happen. We need to be ready to react when it does happen.

Whilst Labor support the bill that is before us, it would have been nicer if this had been brought on sooner by the government. It's noncontroversial; it strengthens what we have in place. But, equally, we call upon the government to invest more to make sure we are able to crack down on these issues when they happen.

See this speech in context