Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Avian influenza is a significant national security threat to Australia and our region. Chicken populations in South-East Asia are large by global standards. There have already been a number of deaths in South-East Asia arising from avian flu, including most recently in Indonesia. That is why the opposition since March 2005 has campaigned consistently for the Howard government to implement a regional plan to combat avian influenza. The reason we have done this is that, up until that time, preparedness on the Howard government’s part for an avian influenza pandemic had primarily related to onshore measures—that is, within Australia. And the problem with the avian influenza virus is that it is no respecter of national boundaries, as we have seen with the spread of the virus from Asia to Europe over the course of the last 12 months. Last September the opposition released a five-point regional plan to combat avian influenza, and following its release and earlier statements from the opposition on this important matter the government has slowly started to lift its game in its funding allocations for regional preparedness—although it has to be said there is still much more to be done.

Today the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry decided to weigh in to this debate and claim that 400 words of what he described as a 600-word policy had been taken from international and other sources without citation. The opposition’s policy document is in fact an 11,200-word document, running to 29 pages. The policy recommendations section of this document alone goes to 1,200 words. The minister has chosen to base his statement to parliament on selected extracts of this policy document which were separately prepared by the Labor eHerald. Even these selected extracts ran to 1,000 words. Furthermore, the Labor eHerald extract states specifically that the full 11,200-word document could be accessed as a PDF file. The full policy document, of course, has been in the public domain since its release.

The policy document cites a range of domestic and international agencies including the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre at Curtin University of Technology, the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the Regional Director of the World Health Organisation. In the preparation of the document, my office inadvertently neglected to insert citations in seven paragraphs of the 11,200-word document—paragraphs of an entirely descriptive nature referring to the scientific definition of the H5N1 virus, its historical impact on humans as well as the history of earlier flu pandemics. My staff have assured me that this was an inadvertent error, given that the document elsewhere extensively cites the work of a range of international and domestic agencies. This contrasts with the agriculture minister’s statement that this 11,200-word document contains no attributions.

Significantly, the agriculture minister is totally silent about the document’s actual policy recommendations—the whole point of a policy document in the first place—because these are the recommendations which the government has sought to respond to in the debate which Labor has generated on this important matter of Australia’s foreign policy and national security policy over the last 12 months or more. I am advised that in the period since September 2005 we have had a total of $122.3 million in Australian aid allocated to this important task and, as I said before, it is an area where more work still needs to be done.

Finally, the agriculture minister failed to make any reference to the following rider, which is clearly inserted on page 3 of the policy document, which reads as follows:

Although at the time of publication, Labor made all reasonable efforts to verify the information cited in this document, given the resource constraints facing the Opposition, Labor is unable to provide an absolute guarantee that it is free from errors, inaccuracies or omissions. Labor expressly disclaims liability for any errors, inaccuracies or omissions or any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Labor is proud of the fact that we have been a significant contributor to the preparedness debate in relation to the H5N1 virus. There are still major gaps in regional preparedness: in surveillance strategies, diagnostic facilities, public health preparedness, veterinary health preparedness, public education, farming practices, vaccine and antiviral availability, contingency planning and administrative coordination. This should be a high priority for the Howard government in making Australia and the region maximally prepared for the terrible day that the H5N1 virus changes from animal-to-human transfer to human-to-human transfer—the day that we face a pandemic with grave consequences for our nation. (Time expired)