Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

That could have gotten interesting, but I will stick to the matter at hand. I rise to speak on the Biosecurity Bill 2014 and related legislation that we have before us tonight. We all know that Australian agriculture, in particular, is dependent upon high-quality biosecurity arrangements. After climate change, which is of course the greatest threat to that sector and many other facets of our very existence on this planet, the introduction of pests and diseases is the biggest threat that this sector faces.

Modernising and consolidating the arrangements that have been in place and developed over the past 100 years is a positive step, but the Australian Greens are deeply concerned that this bill does not sufficiently safeguard, in particular, our natural environment as well as not safeguarding appropriately industry and community from biosecurity risks. Nor do we think that it provides the right framework for ensuring that scientific risk based assessments are not simply undermined by other considerations such as international trade agreements.

As a replacement for the century-old Quarantine Act of 1908, this Biosecurity Bill of 2014 is an opportunity to bolster Australia's capacity to protect the environment from invasive species. We know that more than 70 per cent of the 1,700 species that are listed as nationally threatened and more than 80 per cent of our listed ecological communities are imperilled by introduced animals, plants or diseases. Sadly, Australia's most recent State of the environment report gave the worst possible rating for invasive species impacts on biodiversity. It found it is very high or deteriorating, and it found that management outcomes and outputs are 'ineffective'.

This deteriorating trend is due both to new invaders such as myrtle rust—which I want to focus on particularly tonight—and Asian honey bees, and there is also the spread of already established species. The Greens support the one biosecurity approach that was recommended by the 2008 Beale review that envisioned a seamless cross-sectoral cross-jurisdictional approach to biosecurity. But protecting the natural environment differs in many ways from protecting industry assets. It requires an ecological approach to biosecurity. Environmental biosecurity cannot simply be a bolt-on to existing industry practices. Biodiversity values at stake far outnumber industry assets. The scale and the complexity of the threats are far greater, knowledge is unfortunately much more sparse, the predictability of the impacts is lower and the management options are more constrained.

The Biosecurity Bill 2014 has some powers and tools to provide for more robust environmental biosecurity, but it is limited by inadequate institutional arrangements as well as deficient decision-making and review processes. I will go through those in greater detail. Some of the positives are the inclusion of the biodiversity convention in the objects of the act, and that provides, of course, the direct legal basis for measures to:

Prevent the introduction of, control or eradicate those alien species which threaten ecosystems, habitats or species …

That is article 8(h) of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Clearly, also, a national system for regulating the discharge of ballast water and sediment is a big advance, and we welcome that. There are other positives such as powers and tools like control orders and biosecurity zones, which could be applied positively and for environmental benefit.

However, and contrary to recommendations made by the Beale review in 2008, the proposed Biosecurity Act maintains functions within the Department of Agriculture rather than establishing an independent statutory authority. Instead of the recommended expert biosecurity commission and independent director, most decisions are to be made by the Director of Biosecurity, who is actually also the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture—although we are not too sure who that actual person might be, given the events of this week. The person who will fill that role has potentially conflicting roles in trade and industry promotion as well.

There are also some serious concerns about the lack of transparency about decisions that will be made under this act, including for the import of new species or new taxa. We are concerned that the decisions will be opaque, given that there is no requirement for community consultation; there is no publication of assessments; and there are, alarmingly, no third-party appeal rights or merits review. Only import applicants would have the legal right for review. Transparency—I would have thought it was pretty clear—is important to maximise community value-adding such as expert information and policy suggestions, for example, as well as to limit the potential for inappropriate political or commercial influences, which, again, I would have thought should have been a consideration that this place would turn its mind to.

Moreover, whether biosecurity import risk analyses, control orders or biosecurity zones will be applied for environmental priorities is the decision, again, of the Department of Agriculture secretary. There are no systems in the bill to ensure that they are applied in any sort of systematic way, and of course those sorts of measures have budgetary implications for the department, so one can infer that they would be more likely to be used for issues of highest priority for the Department of Agriculture—particularly when they are in times of budgetary constraint, as they continue to be under the current government—rather than issues of high priority for environmental biosecurity.

Another key concern—and I am going to elaborate on this shortly—is that there is no legislated involvement of the Minister for the Environment or the Department of the Environment in environmental decision making.

In terms of involving the community in decisions, the bill fails to give effect to the notion of a biosecurity partnership with the community and therefore to ensure productive involvement in policy setting and decision making. The Greens are concerned that this is likely to perpetuate the existing disparities in investment and response capabilities for environmental biosecurity as opposed to agricultural biosecurity. It is perfectly clear to us, as it is to many of the folk working in this area, that there is a real need for a body equivalent to the industry bodies—currently Plant Health Australia and Animal Health Australia. We need an equivalent body to focus on priorities for environmental biosecurity. Again, I will have some more to say about that in the course of my contribution tonight.

In short, unfortunately the architecture of this bill falls short of the highly regarded Beale review, and it fails to fully capitalise on the broad support that that review had generated in this area. From the perspective of the Greens, the key recommendation that has not been implemented from that review in this legislation is the creation of a separate biosecurity agency. My colleague Senator Rachel Siewert outlined our position in detail and, I believe, moved a relevant amendment in her contribution, so I will not go over that other than to reiterate our key concern in that regard.

I want to focus on the fact that we still see in this legislation the continuation of the environment being subservient to agriculture when it comes to biodiversity. Under the current arrangements in the Quarantine Act 1908—yes, it is very old—there is a requirement for the director of quarantine to consult with the environment minister over decisions that may involve a significant risk of environmental harm. This requirement, which is in that old legislation, is, alarmingly, not being carried over into this new legislative regime, the 2014 bill. One consequence of that is, of course, that the Director of Biosecurity is not therefore obliged to include officers from the Department of the Environment. The other consequence has been emphasised by Mr Andrew Cox, who is from the Invasive Species Council and is certainly an expert in these matters. He said:

… from a practical point of view, without a statutory basis, when those subjects are competing for priorities, they—

the environment department—

cannot justify spending any time or any resources on that issue.

To overcome these problems, the Greens have recommended that the Secretary of the Department of the Environment or, alternatively, the Minister for the Environment, as appropriate, have designated roles in decision making and in policy direction on important environmental biosecurity issues. We will be moving amendments in that regard when it comes to the committee stage of this legislation.

But of course it would not be enough just to include environmental biosecurity in the legislation; there would have to be a corresponding commitment from the government to resource that and to provide the resources to deliver on the environmental components if they were to be included in the legislation. Mr Andrew Cox says:

One important institutional change that needs to accompany this is setting up a body like Plant Health Australia and Animal Health Australia, which we have called 'Environmental Health Australia'. Those two other industry-based bodies do great work, and without the foresight, preparation and risk work that needs to be done on behalf of the environment, you have not got a good biosecurity system for the environment. We are missing out. The government is not investing in that, but they are investing in that for the industry.

Of course, the consequence of not having such a body—an institution that focuses on environmental biosecurity specifically—is that, because environmental threats are largely in the public interest, there is generally no-one willing to stump up the money and deal with them, except of course for government. But, when government takes it on, the current system does not properly involve the community, which also shares that public interest. A perfect example of this was with myrtle rust. Again, I am looking forward to elaborating on how, unfortunately, the management of that incursion was poor, particularly on this point: there was no consultation with the conservation community or with any part of the community beyond the government when we responded to myrtle rust. Of course, when an ordinary industry based risk happens, industry is actively involved in the response through those bodies, Plant Health Australia and Animal Health Australia. It would have been far preferable if this bill acknowledged the important role of the community and actually codified it and, again, made sure that the environment was not simply forgotten.

I foreshadow that we will be moving a second reading amendment. I believe Senator Siewert has moved one, so I foreshadow the second reading amendment, which has been amended and circulated in the chamber. It is on sheet 7679, and it reads 'but the Senate calls on the government to establish and resource Environmental Health Australia in the same manner as Plant Health Australia and Animal Health Australia in order to establish a partnership between community, governments and environmental organisations to focus on high-priority policy and planning issues in environmental biosecurity'.

I want to touch briefly on some issues, and Senator McKenzie took up some of these issues. Firstly, there are a number of definitions in the bill that we believe could be strengthened and clarified. Again, we will be moving amendments in the committee stage to achieve that. The definition of 'environment' in the bill is lifted from the EPBC Act, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, but it is quite broad and such that the definition itself could be taken to include invasive species—which, of course, is going to present difficulties. Likewise, it does not distinguish between biota that are indigenous and those that are non-indigenous, and it also neglects ecological processes. So we will be moving amendments in the committee stage so that 'environment' is defined so as to include Australian biodiversity, which is of course the variety of life indigenous to Australia and her external territories, encompassing ecosystem, species and genetic diversity. Secondly, I refer to ecological processes, the interactions and connections between living and non-living systems, including movements of energy, nutrients and species. Lastly, I refer to natural and physical resources.

We also believe that the definition of 'biosecurity risk' is not sufficiently broad and needs to include reference to regional variations. So likewise, in the committee stage to this bill, we will be moving that the definition of 'biosecurity risk' at least include consideration of changes through time to require that risks be assessed over an ecologically relevant time frame and also, importantly, take account of climate change; to include the likelihood of new genotypes of a disease or pest combining with others to exacerbate the potential for the disease or pest to cause harm, or to cause greater harm than the existing genotypes; and to recognise regional differences and different levels of biodiversity, ranging from the ecosystem to the genetic level.

In the short time that is left available to me tonight, I want to touch on the fact that this bill, amazingly, does not include reference to the precautionary principle. That is a fairly common occurrence in our law books, and certainly it permeates our environmental legislation. There needs to be a legislative requirement to apply the precautionary principle in decision making taken under this proposed biosecurity act. Clearly, when there is insufficient evidence to determine the biosecurity risk or if the available evidence is inconclusive, the precautionary principle should apply. The stakes are simply too high. Interestingly, Queensland has done quite well in this regard. Our Biosecurity Act 2014 uses the precautionary principle as a trigger for action. It says:

… including in risk-based decision-making under this Act the principle that lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason to postpone taking action to prevent a biosecurity event or to postpone a response to a biosecurity risk …

Debate interrupted.