Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the answers by Minister Cormann and Minister Canavan—in particular, the appalling response from Minister Canavan in response to three simple questions about the fruit fly emergency that we're facing in Tasmania at the moment.

I note that in January, adult fruit flies were detected on Flinders Island, on one of the eastern islands of Tasmania and also in the north-west of Tasmania. We're getting daily reports of additional fruit flies being detected, both larvae and the adult flies.

People are still arriving in Tasmania by sea and air without biosecurity checks. There's a fruit fly emergency. We haven't had fruit flies in Tasmania until just recently, when they were found in January. This threatens the future of our state's relative pest- and disease-free status, which then affects the markets that we send our fruit and vegetables off to—particularly in Japan, China and a number of Asian countries, but all over the world.

This is a biosecurity emergency that the Tasmanian Liberal government has completely failed to provide any adequate resources for. This emergency is the latest in a chain of biosecurity disasters for Tasmania under the Liberals. We've had Norwegian salmon on supermarket shelves, blueberry rust, Pacific oyster mortality syndrome—and now a fruit fly emergency.

What was particularly appalling about Minister Canavan's response was the lack of simple information from the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources. Minister Canavan responded to my first question by reading his brief word for word. My first question specifically asked about what information the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, who is responsible for biosecurity in this country, had sought about the fruit fly emergency, the consequences of the Tasmanian Liberal government cutting $1 million from that biosecurity budget and the consequences of people arriving from mainland Australia without biosecurity checks.

Minister Canavan did not dispute that the Tasmanian Liberals cut $1 million from the biosecurity budget. No, he didn't say anything about that. He didn't dispute that people are arriving in Tasmanian airports and seaports from mainland Australia without adequate security checks. He just read the lines. At one point I heard him say that there is well-established monitoring in Tasmania. I pay tribute to the hardworking men, women and dogs from Biosecurity Tasmania, but to say that there is well-established monitoring does not specifically answer the question about how the crisis is being handled in Tasmania.

As I explained to the chamber in my question, people are still arriving in Tasmania by sea and air without those biosecurity checks. Last week I attended a Senate inquiry in Melbourne. When I flew back into Devonport on Thursday afternoon there was no-one at Devonport airport undertaking any biosecurity checks—not one person, not a sniffer dog—in the middle of a fruit fly emergency and at the one airport that's actually within the control zone. How is that allowed to happen? How can that happen?

It's clear that the Tasmanian Liberal government are out of depth in protecting Tasmania's interests. Again, the Tasmanian Liberals are not communicating with their colleagues, otherwise Minister Canavan would have been able to answer the questions that I asked. Labor, on the other hand, has a very strong relationship between federal and state branches of our party. I know that our Tasmanian shadow minister for primary industries, Mr Shane Broad, and the member for Braddon, Justine Keay, are working hard on consulting with industry and holding the weak Tasmanian Liberal government to account.

My second question to Minister Canavan requested information on whether the Tasmanian Liberal government had made any representations to the Australian government for additional support for the fruit fly biosecurity emergency. Just as he had read the brief, word for word, for the first question, his complete nonanswer to the second question demonstrated that the Tasmanian Liberals have not picked up the phone and not put pen to paper to get the Australian government involved. If they had have done then it would have been contained in the brief that he referred to.

The Tasmanian Liberals have failed business, failed the community and failed our farmers. Their budget cuts to vital biosecurity services, coupled with the ridiculously slow place of their response to this emergency and not ensuring we have biosecurity checks at our airports at the most vulnerable time, is incomprehensible. (Time expired)