Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Labor will be supporting the Imported Food Control Amendment Bill 2017 because it will strengthen Australia's risk based management approach of imported food. We will also support this bill because it gives greater clarity to consumers as to where their food comes from.

Australian consumers increasingly want to know the country of origin of their food. I am sure consumers across Australia will welcome the mandatory nature of these changes from July this year. For many years, consumer groups like Choice have been campaigning for improved country-of-origin labelling for food. Previous Choice surveys have shown that up to 84 per cent of respondents said that it was crucial or very important for consumers to be able to confidently identify if food was grown in Australia. I also welcome the labelling methodology of a kangaroo and bar chart graphic. It is simple and easily understood, clearly setting out whether the food was grown or made in Australia and what percentage of ingredients in the food or product was Australian grown. There is, however, additional concern that, for products that are not wholly Australian, this methodology does not clearly state from where any additional ingredients come from. I know this is a complex area but believe we should continue to investigate options to give consumers increased confidence in knowing where the food they are eating comes from.

As I have mentioned, a key reason for this legislation is to strengthen our risk based management approach for imported food. When we are talking about imported food, it goes hand in glove that as a country we need a robust biosecurity system. A robust biosecurity system is very topical in my state of Tasmania, where we are currently seeing an outbreak of fruit fly. The Tasmanian fruit industry is worth almost $200 million and employs hundreds of people across the state. The Tasmanian Premier must take responsibility for this emergency. In his first budget, he cut $1 million from Tasmania's biosecurity budget. Documents obtained under right to information show this cut contributed to $1.9 million budget deficit in Biosecurity Tasmania as of August 2015.

The same documents from the Biosecurity Tasmania managers meeting show that the secretary and deputy secretary of that department were adamant they expected Biosecurity Tasmania to have a balanced budget by the end of the 2015-16 year. It is alarming that in the discussion points from this meeting it states, 'Biosecurity Tasmania has already been severely cut in the past and there is little room for further cuts without severely impacting on program areas.' The same points also state, 'Demands from programs exceed Biosecurity's capacity, so prioritisation and reduction of program activity will need to be undertaken.' Clearly, because of the Premier's cuts Biosecurity Tasmania has been forced to make some difficult decisions, and it now seems the chickens have come home to roost. Over the past four years we have seen unacceptable biosecurity breaches in Tasmania, including Norwegian salmon on supermarket shelves, blueberry rust and Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome.

Tasmania has seen a significant growth in visitors, which is fantastic, but the Liberal Premier and his government have not only cut Biosecurity Tasmania's funding but they are also guilty of being asleep at the wheel, leaving our state exposed. What is even worse is that now, in the middle of this emergency, people are still arriving in Tasmania by sea and air without any biosecurity checks. This is despite a promise by the state Liberals in 2015 that every flight in and out of Hobart and Launceston would be met by a sniffer dog. I note there are other ports in Tasmania, in my electorate, that do not have any biosecurity checks. On this count alone, the Liberals have failed.

Our hardworking local farmers are now paying the price for state and federal Liberal incompetence. The highly valuable Chinese market is now refusing to take fruit from the control zone. Taiwan has also locked out Tasmanian fruit. Sassafras Orchards, which I visited last week with the member for Bendigo, is now forced to sell their cherries into Hong Kong at half the price they would have received by sending them to China. Such is the incompetence of the Liberal government that 40 kilograms of fresh fruit from within the control zone has been found in an external local market. Strawberries were also seized off the main street of Burnie just this week. On top of this, local cherry tomato producers Marcus and Ellie Brandsema from Turners Beach have been forced to dump 300 kilos of cherry tomatoes. Local producers are facing the real prospect of going out of business.

These are the costs of the Liberals' biosecurity failure for our farmers. We need an aggressive biosecurity system in Tasmania. Our economy depends on it. We do not have it. The national and international damage to Tasmania's reputation as an island state relatively pest and disease free is immeasurable, yet even now the Premier won't take responsibility for this mess. The state Liberals' incompetence is also matched by a failure to act from this Prime Minister and his former agriculture minister. At a national level this government has so far refused to implement recommendations to strengthen our biosecurity, as contained in last year's review report into the Australian biosecurity framework. I have some hope that the new minister, the member for Maranoa, will get this right and take Tasmania's and Australia's biosecurity seriously. I will always have an open invitation for the minister to come to Tasmania. Tasmanian and Australian farmers deserve better.

While we are talking about country-of-origin labelling for food and imported food products, I would like to take some time to talk about a key priority for Tasmania's seafood industry. Tasmania is the largest producer of seafood by value in the nation and is a supplier of high-quality fresh and frozen seafood produce to both domestic and valuable export markets, principally in South-East Asia. The Tasmanian seafood industry comprises three primary sectors: wild catch, aquaculture and seafood processing. The key wild catch fisheries within Tasmania are abalone, commercial dive such as urchins, periwinkle, clams and seaweed, giant crab, rock lobster, scalefish and scallops. The key aquaculture sectors are farmed abalone, Atlantic salmon, ocean trout and shellfish—Pacific oysters and lovely mussels. Tasmania's seafood is nationally and internationally renowned as being of the highest quality. The latest data from the Tasmania Agri-food ScoreCard shows that the Tasmanian seafood industry is worth almost a billion dollars to the state economy. This report showed an increase in the value of the sector across both wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture. The industry value grew by 10.4 per cent, to a value of $0.9 billion dollars. Across all sectors, wild-caught and aquaculture, there has been an increase in the industry's value. A Tasmanian seafood industry workforce profile completed only last year by the Tasmanian Seafood Industry Council states that the industry directly supports over 3,400 full-time equivalent positions. It is estimated that indirect seafood-related employment in Tasmania is in the vicinity of 17,000 people.

As you can see, the Tasmanian seafood industry is a rapidly growing high-value sector for the state and Australia, but the industry is quite-rightly concerned that a quality Tasmanian seafood product has to compete in restaurants, hotels and supermarkets alongside a cheaper imported product. I would also argue that this is a lower-quality product. We don't know, really, where it comes from, what food safety standards have been in place and whether it has been sustainably harvested. I acknowledge that Australia is a net importer of seafood and that there will always be a demand for an imported product, but surely the Tasmanian and Australian seafood industry should be able to give consumers the choice—so they know the country of origin of their seafood. Consumers do know that for fresh seafood with mandatory labelling laws in place, but they don't have that information for cooked or pre-prepared seafood. There is clearly strong consumer demand for this information. The Marine Stewardship Council 2016 annual report found that 69 per cent of Australian seafood consumers state they want to know that the fish they buy can be traced back to known and trusted sources. It's clear to the supply chain and the retailers that consumers want to know more about what they are buying.

To this end, I welcome the bipartisan work commenced last year by the former Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science to convene a working group to consider options for improving consumer access to seafood country-of-origin labelling. The Tasmanian Seafood Industry Council is a very strong supporter of country-of-origin labelling for seafood in this process. It is a process I also supported, and I was pleased to be able to facilitate the Tasmanian industry being part of it. It is also worth noting that mandatory country-of-origin seafood labelling has been in effect in the Northern Territory since 2008. Information gathered in the 2017 Seafood origin working group paper states:

… under the NT licence system, consumers prefer local NT seafood over Australian seafood, which is in turn preferred over imports.

But that is not to say that, in our shops, restaurants and hotels, consumers should not be given the ability to make a choice; they should: a choice between a quality Tasmanian or Australian product or, if they choose, a lower-value imported product. To this end, I would like to call upon the new Assistant Minister for Science, Jobs and Innovation, Senator the Hon. Zed Seselja, to support a trial in Tasmania of the mandatory labelling of seafood in the food services sector. Tasmania is the most ideal place for this trial.

Information gathered from a Tasmanian trial, along with that from the Northern Territory, would help to inform the debate on a national level. I recognise that there will be concerns from the food services sector but, at the end of the day, if Tasmania can demonstrate that mandatory labelling can be cost effective and at the same time achieve higher returns for our local industry and a social and economic benefit for my state, then, in my view, it is well worth doing. Equally, I have no doubt that Tasmanian consumers would be very strong supporters of this trial. As the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources has walked into the room—congratulations on your appointment—I, as I said before, formally invite the minister to Tasmania at any time to see the wonderful things we are doing not only in our seafood and aquaculture sector but also across our agricultural sector broadly.

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