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

As most people know in this part of our national debate, we have lost over half the irrigation water supporting food and fibre growing in northern Victoria and in southern New South Wales. That is in itself a crisis for our Australian domestic and export values.

But there are other issues concerning us besides the irrigation water loss. We are major food producers and manufacturers, but we have to make sure our biosecurity protection remains well resourced and that the states, as they have done traditionally and according to their constitutional responsibilities, have an active role in both detecting and eradicating biosecurity diseases in our plants and our animals.

I want to talk about some of these diseases which we do not have but which are a great risk to us if they come in with imported product. One of these is the disease which is called the tomato-potato psyllid. It is found all across North and Central America and, in 2006, it was found in New Zealand. There has been no detection, fortunately, of this psyllid in Australia. The problem is the bacteria which cause this condition in both tomatoes and potatoes can cause other bacterial infections in potatoes, and then you have the disease called zebra chip. In New Zealand, zebra chip disease has caused them losses of up to $120 million a year. It is a shocking situation where the product is unusable. When you slice open the tuber, which can be small and misshapen, you get the dead cells. If the potato is deep-fried you end up with black marks, black stripes, in the product—hence the name zebra chip. In New Zealand, they are spraying their potato crops up to 18 times with insecticides. Of course, for that amount of saturation the insects are now developing resistance, and so they are having to look at some other treatments. We have to be so careful of any importation of potatoes from the US or New Zealand so that we do not accidentally import this terrible disease into our country.

Then there is another very nasty disease that is now affecting up to 80 per cent of olive crops in Europe. It is called Xylella. It is also a bacteria, and it is wiping out these crops. We do not at this point in time have it in Australia. We have had emergency measures for the last 12 months in relation to not letting any cuttings of olives come in. In my electorate, where we have some of the largest olive groves in Australia still, despite the threat to them of water removal, we have to make sure the Victorian department of agriculture gets active again, working on farm, in region, to be vigilant and to inform and educate growers as to what they have to look out for. We have abandoned orchards and we have to make sure those abandoned orchards are removed and certainly that the Victorian department of agriculture is active in ensuring that trees that are no longer pruned and that have been abandoned are not harbours of disease.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If no member present objects, three-minute constituency statements may continue for a total of 60 minutes. Is everyone in agreement? Thank you—well, not for the member for Lingiari! I call the honourable member for Lingiari.