Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia’s kiwi fruit industry has thrived in a virtually disease-free environment protected by highly vigilant expert growers and our perfect climate and soil types. They in fact produce very superior fruit. Over 70 per cent of Australia’s kiwi fruit is grown in the Goulburn Valley in my electorate. It is a very important industry for its income earnings and its job generation.

Tragically, parts of Italy’s kiwi fruit industry have now been devastated by an outbreak of an incurable bacterial canker, Pseudomonas syringae pv actinidiae, or PSA. Closer to home, the same disease has now been confirmed in at least two orchards in New Zealand. The bacteria attacks young kiwi fruit in particular, and the golden varieties. Growers with the disease in their orchards can only cut out the diseased branches or remove the vines altogether. There is no cure.

Australia’s supermarkets import quantities of kiwi fruit from Italy and from New Zealand. There are at least six containers of kiwi fruit on the water from Italy as we speak. Two have recently arrived. So far, Biosecurity Australia has only put a ban on the importation of kiwi fruit plant material—this is from the regions with bacterial canker. I have begged the minister to go further and direct Biosecurity Australia to look harder at this issue and take no risks. To protect our industry, Biosecurity needs to be more vigilant. We must also now stop the importation of fresh kiwi fruit from the diseased locations. (Time expired)