Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Hansard source

Labor supports the Biosecurity Amendment (Traveller Declarations and Other Measures) Bill 2020. Technically, the bill will amend the Biosecurity Act to allow the Biosecurity Regulation 2016 to specify different penalty amounts for infringement notices issued for different kinds of alleged contraventions of provisions of the Biosecurity Act. It also clarified that the regulations may prescribe different periods of time to pay an infringement notice depending on the kind or class of goods to which an alleged contravention of the Biosecurity Act relates. The bill will further amend the Biosecurity Act to permit the Director of Biosecurity to make a legislative instrument to specify goods or classes of goods that can attract a higher infringement notice amount. It will provide that the legislative instrument made by the Director of Biosecurity is not subject to parliamentary disallowance due to the technical and scientific nature of underlying risk assessments and is made for a period not longer than 12 months. It will permit the regulations to incorporate references to the legislative instrument as in force from time to time.

Strengthening Australia's biosecurity system is a good thing. Our biosecurity system is described as a significant national asset. Australia has a unique environment. We are an island country, which has its benefits and challenges. We can control who comes into our country and assess incoming passengers to ensure that they are not bringing in products which pose a risk to our biosecurity status and could potentially expose our farmers and the natural environment to pests and diseases. However, this is a risk based assessment, and therefore there is a responsibility on incoming passengers to declare what they are bringing into our country, and our biosecurity officers will then determine whether the produce is a threat to Australia and Australians.

This legislation reminds us all that at times many Australians and, indeed, visitors to our country don't understand the importance of our biosecurity system. Everyone in this chamber will be familiar with the program Border Security: Australia's Front Line, where we see many visitors and Australians trying to circumvent Australia's biosecurity rules, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unknowingly. Whilst the program is called 'Border Security', it is predominantly biosecurity officers from the department of agriculture who work in partnership with their state and territory counterparts who do much of the work at our airports and ports. Biosecurity is a key responsibility of the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, and ensuring that biosecurity is well understood is an important responsibility of the minister and his department. Indeed, the explanatory memorandum states:

Prior to commencement of the amendments, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment will also conduct an education and awareness campaign targeting incoming passengers and crew …

COVID-19 has heightened awareness of Australia's biosecurity system because of the failings at our borders to stop cruise ship passengers infected with COVID-19 from disembarking and spreading the virus throughout Australia. This failing also highlighted that there is a lack of clear understanding as to who is responsible for assessing the passengers from a biosecurity health perspective. The department of agriculture claims in its corporate plan that their biosecurity staff work on behalf of the Department of Health to carry out health screening of international passengers, yet we know that as the Ruby Princess passengers left the ship no-one was assessed by biosecurity officers. There has been buck passing by the ministers as to exactly who was responsible for the health assessment of passengers on cruise ships. The Morrison government must do better at ensuring that our biosecurity system works so that Australians can have confidence that the system is robust and that the Department of Agriculture is working closely with its partners.

Last week the CSIRO released its report into Australia's biosecurity system entitled Australia's Biosecurity Future: Unlocking the next decade of resilience (2020-2030). The report paints a concerning picture of the state of our biosecurity system—that without proper resourcing our biosecurity will not be able to cope with the increase in biosecurity risks. The executive summary states:

Biosecurity is critical to supporting the health of Australians, their environment and the competitiveness of key industries through biosecure trade networks. While Australia has one of the strongest biosecurity systems globally, outbreaks across human, agriculture, environment and marine health are continuing to rise in volume and complexity. This is due to a range of factors including growing levels of trade and travel, urbanisation, climate change and biodiversity loss.

The report reminds us all of the economic impacts that failures in our biosecurity system will cost Australians, our natural environment and our agriculture industries. This would include $5 billion each year if a large multistate foot-and-mouth disease outbreak occurred, until it was eradicated. The report also states:

Weeds cost Australia around $5 billion annually in control measures and lost production. Approximately 20 new weed species establish in Australia every year.

It says the most significant mistake will be 'continuing along the "business as usual" trajectory of slow and incremental change', which 'could expose Australia to significant triple bottom line risks over the next 10 years'.

Over the past seven years of this Liberal-National coalition government, collaboration and genuine policy work to strengthen Australia's biosecurity have been haphazard and reactionary rather than forward-looking and one step ahead of potential challenges. Let's go back to one of the first acts of the Liberal-National government in 2013, which was to scrap the Standing Council on Primary Industries. Back then, the member for New England, who was the Minister for Agriculture, claimed scrapping SCoPI, as was its acronym, was a money-saving exercise. However, the cost of biosecurity failings which have occurred on their watch due to the chaos and confusion in the system far outweighs any so-called cost savings.

SCoPI was a COAG committee of agriculture ministers at the federal and state levels. It was through this committee that the Intergovernmental Agreement on Biosecurity was developed. The intergovernmental agreement makes it clear that biosecurity needs to be a whole-of-government approach covering areas including trade, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, tourism, the environment, social amenity and human health. We saw in 2016-17 the devastating impact that biosecurity failings can have on farmers, with prawn farmers having to shut their farms overnight due to a white spot disease outbreak in Queensland. It cost the industry close to $100 million in losses—and, boy oh boy, don't I know, because it was our committee that went up there and actually met with the farmers. These biosecurity failings could have been avoided if the Liberal-National government properly understood the important role our biosecurity systems play in keeping farms operating.

The IGAB prescribed a five-year review into biosecurity, which was undertaken by Dr Wendy Craik. The final report was delivered to the government in 2017. The report made 42 recommendations and identified that Australia's biosecurity system required—ready, Madam Acting Deputy President?—additional resources. In the 2018 budget, the Liberal-National government committed to providing $325 million to biosecurity over three years. However, like everything with the government, the devil is in the detail, and the detail is a damning indictment of their lack of seriousness about Australia's biosecurity. The government botched the implementation of the levy, and there is now a $325 million budgetary hole. Biosecurity continues to be underresourced. The Morrison government delivered very little budget funding dedicated to biosecurity, despite the fact that we are currently experiencing a terrible pandemic. This just highlights that the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management does not properly understand the responsibilities of his department with respect to the adequate resourcing of the biosecurity system.

The former independent Inspector-General of Biosecurity, a position the member for New England had tried to abolish back in 2014, found major failures in Australia's biosecurity system during her review into uncooked prawns, including that it was not providing an appropriate level of protection. The inspector-general, Dr Helen Scott-Orr, stated:

During this review, I found several deficiencies in the management of the biosecurity risk of uncooked prawn imports, with broader implications for Australia's biosecurity risk management more generally.

Dr Scott-Orr further said:

I found that specific policy elements and their implementation had sowed the seeds of failure many years before, while progressive and cumulative acts, omissions and systemic factors at many levels exacerbated the risks over time. Many of these failings have been swiftly addressed by the department and other stakeholders, but more needs to be done to manage the biosecurity risks of prawn imports in the future. I have made recommendations to improve this biosecurity risk management framework and its ability to deal with ongoing and emerging challenges. Long-term adequate resourcing will be a key success factor in this endeavour.

…   …   …

Above all, detecting and deterring deliberate or inadvertent failures to implement biosecurity risk management policies effectively must be a priority. Governments and aquatic industries must cooperate to resource and implement these efforts. Failure to do so will imperil the future development of a sustainable and profitable aquaculture sector in Australia.

The inspector-general stated that the department must 'remain vigilant, proactively review and update import requirements and policies, and maintain excellent communication with both government and industry stakeholders'.

These findings from, I believe, 2016-17 can also be applied to the more recent biosecurity failings with the Ruby Princess. If they had been taken seriously across the department, possibly, we would not have seen the tragedy and dysfunction associated with the Ruby Princess. Instead, the Inspector-General of Biosecurity is now examining the effectiveness of the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment's systems, policies and processes in place to support biosecurity officers in the discharge of their frontline prevention biosecurity responsibilities, including in cooperation with other agencies. The Morrison government should hang their heads in shame that Australia's biosecurity system failed the Australian community. The minister for agriculture, Mr Littleproud, should have ensured his department was well resourced and vigilant with regard to potential biosecurity threats relating to COVID-19. Labor looks forward to seeing the recommendations from the inspector-general once his review is complete. However, there is no guarantee the Morrison government, unfortunately, will take the recommendations seriously. Sadly, for many families across Australia, the failings have cost them dearly, and our condolences go out to these families.

The current bill before the Senate will give the department more flexibility to deal with biosecurity breaches, and to issue larger fines as a form of deterrent—such as with African swine fever, which is a real threat to Australia's pork producers and could cost the industry up to $2 billion in losses. Whilst the government has provided some additional funding for ASF, and whilst COVID-19 has seen traveller numbers decrease to almost zero, the current Inspector-General of Biosecurity, Mr Rob Delane, has found similar failings within department systems as were found by the former inspector-general, Dr Scott-Orr, with white spot disease.

The inspector-general's report is concerning. It identifies three strategic risks to the department's capability to effectively prevent ASF entering Australia, including:

The report takes an outcome based approach to the assessment of swine flu prevention readiness and summarises relevant observations and findings through an IGB assessment of key areas.

Our farmers in the broader Australian community rely on the Morrison government to get biosecurity right. So, whilst Labor supports the bill before the Senate, the government must do more and properly resource our biosecurity system and biosecurity frontline officers to ensure they can effectively and confidently do their jobs. Anything less is reckless and negligent.