Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to join this matters of public importance debate on the decision by the government to reverse its decision to overturn the ban on the importation of beef products from countries affected by BSE. I do welcome the fact that the government has done a backflip on this particular issue. I congratulate the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry for intervening. It demonstrates that when the community is concerned and raises its objections in a logical manner, through a Senate inquiry process, at least the minister is listening. So I am pleased, and I congratulate Minister Burke for taking this decision. There should actually be more of that. There should be more of government ministers recognising that when they have made a mistake they should change their minds, not dig in and pretend that nothing has happened and that the community ought not to be listened to.

This matter came to the Senate on 27 October last year, when I moved a motion to refer it to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee because it was very clear to me that the community did not even know what was about to be proposed—that the ban on these beef imports was about to be reversed. It was of greater concern when I discovered that many of the people in the beef industry with whom the government had been negotiating had been sworn to silence. The reason they had been sworn to silence was that the government knew full well that once the beef producers and consumers did become aware they would not support it. So the government assumed that the best way of getting this through was to swear the industry to silence and to try to reverse the ban. Getting that Senate inquiry, enabling people to get the message out to the rural community and the broader community through consumer groups, has led to this process, where the minister has reversed his decision. Now there will be two years during which an import risk analysis will be undertaken and everybody will have the chance to feed into the process in the manner that they ought to have been able to in the first place. We should not have had to do this, but, nevertheless, it has worked. I am very pleased that the decision was made to refer this to a Senate inquiry and that the Senate inquiry has aired the issue to the point where the government has made this decision.

Having said that, it is very clear that this was always a trade agenda. Otherwise, why would a country with a strategy of having no risk whatsoever of the Australian community being exposed to BSE go to a negligible risk strategy? It would make no sense whatsoever to do that. Why expose your population when you do not have to, when you are clean, when your product is clean and when your markets depend on it being clean? Why would you take risks? The reason is purely and simply a trade agenda. We now know that former US trade representative Susan Schwab asked the Minister for Trade, Simon Crean, to cancel the ban on US beef when they met in Washington in January 2008 and again in Canberra that March, during trade talks, and in June that year. Canadian trade negotiators repeatedly complained about the ban during meetings with Australian trade officials in Geneva in October 2008 and in a meeting between Mr Crean and Canada’s Minister of International Trade a month later. Mr Crean was lobbied by US and Canadian officials again in Bali last June. In October, after more than 30 representations from the North Americans, Australia agreed to lift its ban on beef from countries with a history of mad cow disease.

The issue that I have is that this was always driven by a trade agenda. Australia was worried that if Canada was successful in its WTO case against Korea then eventually other countries would join the case and Australia might well lose in a WTO hearing. The worry was that Australian beef producers might then be exposed to retaliatory action. That would mean, for example, that other countries would be able to impose higher tariffs on Australian beef exports. At least 65, if not up to 75, per cent of Australian beef goes into export markets, which is what led to this decision. So it was purely fear of retaliatory action through the WTO processes that led to this. It is the same kind of pressure that was brought on by the Canadians when they tried to send salmon into Australia. Tasmania mounted a very strong retaliatory action internally in that case. It is the same pressure that the New Zealanders are now bringing on in relation to fire blight and apples. It is no doubt the same as the case the Filipinos will make in relation to bringing bananas into Australia.

It is because Australia accesses export markets on the basis of negligible risk that other countries are saying, time and time again, that they should be able to access our market on the basis of negligible risk. That begs the question: why is Australia so slavish in its commitment to the WTO processes and free trade rules when nobody else is? It seems like Australia wants to always take the white knight role. Frankly, look around the world and you will see that nobody else has the slightest intention of adhering to those rules. I was in Europe in December, in Copenhagen, and I can tell you now that Europe is moving very strongly to become a global island in terms of food security and self-sufficiency and fuel security and self-sufficiency. It will continue to subsidise its farmers to the last because Europe never, ever again wants to be in a situation where it could starve because of not being able to access food. Nor does it want to be in the position ever again where Russia can turn off the gas and Europe freezes. It does not want to be in that situation. If you want to talk to Europeans about where things are going, do not go off to the trade talks; go and wander around Europe and you will see that there is no community support for that.

In fact, the whole world is now moving to fresh, local, seasonal food. People are over the focus on free trade. They are now looking at sustainability, at peak oil, at the carbon constrained world of the future and how that will impact on food production. Food security and sustainability, not free trade, are becoming the issues that people are talking about. Frankly, Australia is flogging a dead horse. Pushing these agendas, against the interests of Australian public health and Australian producers, is crazy policy. I am really pleased that we are now going to go into this process in terms of reviewing the risk associated with importing beef and beef products from countries affected by mad cow disease. But it begs a bigger question. This country needs to start having a discussion about food security: where we are going to grow our own food into the future and how we are going to manage our ecosystems so that they are sustainable? As a country which can produce more food than it consumes, we also have a moral responsibility to supply food into markets in the future in order that the world can feed itself with a growing population.

There is a whole rethink needed here. That is why I think it is stupid to continue having these endless fights about the science of negligible risk. We will argue the case for years on end, but what happens is the science gets caught in the middle of what is effectively a trade agenda. I think we need to rethink this whole scenario. Having said that, I am very pleased to have played a part in stopping the overturning of this ban. I look forward to the process for the next two years. I congratulate the minister for listening to the community, but I put the Rudd government on notice that it ought to stop secret processes, because when the community find out about them they are doubly suspicious of their intent.