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

Tasmania has a fruit fly emergency on its hands. Fruit fly has been found in Flinders Island and also in my electorate. The Tasmanian fruit industry is worth almost $200 million, employing hundreds of people across the state. Liberal Premier Will Hodgman must take responsibility for this emergency. In his first budget, he cut $1 million from Tasmania's biosecurity budget. Even now, in the middle of this emergency, people are still arriving in Tasmania by sea and air without any biosecurity checks. At a federal level, this coalition 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.

Our hardworking local farmers are now paying the price for state and federal Liberal government incompetence. The highly valuable Chinese market is now refusing to take fruit from the control zone, which is in my electorate. Sassafras Orchards, whom I visited last week with the member for Bendigo, have no choice but to sell their cherries into Hong Kong at half the price they would have received in China. Such is the incompetence of the Hodgman government that 40 kilograms of fresh fruit from within the control zone has been found in an external local market. The policy failures of Will Hodgman and this government have seen Tasmania's hard-won national and international reputation of being fruit fly free tarnished. Tasmanian farmers deserve better.