Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak about the Gillard government's commitment to Australia's biosecurity system because this government inherited a run-down biosecurity system and we have been doing the right thing by Australian farmers and by the community. We are building a biosecurity system for today and for the future. I will say a bit more about that later.

Firstly, I want to remind senators about the role of the biosecurity system and then talk about the role of parliamentarians. Our biosecurity system exists to protect Australia's unique biosecurity status. I repeat: to protect Australia's unique biosecurity status. That is what it is there for. To do that, biosecurity decisions must be based on science. If they are not based on the science, then, quite frankly, they put the Australian community at risk. That is a lesson that the Leader of the Nationals, Mr Truss, became only too familiar with when he ignored all of the evidence, including warnings from industry, and assured the community that 'there would never be an outbreak of equine influenza in Australia'. We all know what happened in August 2007.

Over 11½ years of government, those opposite left us with a dishevelled quarantine system. They gave us: white spot disease in prawns in Darwin in 2000; black sigaota in bananas in 2001—