Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I support the Biosecurity Amendment (Traveller Declarations and Other Measures) Bill 2020 as a clear example of good lawmaking to protect Australians, Australian rural industries, the safety of our country and the safety of our people. Disaster will occur if our border protections fail to prevent the entry of pests or diseases that have the potential to decimate our crops, kill our farm animals or infect our rural products such that whole industries could be wiped out. Our biosecurity officers and Australian Border Force officers are under constant strain to maintain the high level of protection needed to keep out these threats to our Australian way of life. They do a great job, and we thank them.

The nationwide loss of pollination services from European honey bees due to a multistate varroa mite incursion must be avoided. Introduced bacterial diseases such as European foulbrood could wipe out our bee population. Officers are constantly on alert nationwide to prevent the incursion of any new exotic fruit fly. A nationwide outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease would be catastrophic, as would, say, a bluetongue outbreak across Australia's major sheep-producing regions. These are just a few of the threats faced when products from overseas are introduced into our country. The devastation caused to our food chain would be almost incalculable if we lost our bee population. If bees fail to pollinate, we will lose those industries and crops that rely on bee pollination.

I would like to divert for a minute from protecting agriculture to protecting people. Border security is a fundamental federal responsibility. It's one of its four core responsibilities. This virus that is now among us, I'll say, has highlighted failures in border security. The Ruby Princess, which the previous speaker, Senator Sterle, spoke about, is one example. The ship's doctor's log was completely wrong, from what we're told, and there was nothing done about it. These point to matters of governance. All the major problems in this country that I can see on energy, water and property rights point to this city and to governance in Canberra. Problems keep coming because policies are not based on data. Policy in this country both under the Labor Party and the Greens and under the Liberal Party and the Nationals is not based on data. That's what's causing people to have grave doubts about the governance in this country. Governance is now based on emotion, vested interests, ideology, stories, fashions and fads. We now have governance in this country that is aiming to look good, not do good. I'm not just talking about the Liberal and National government that's in place; I'm talking about governance in the last 20 and 30 years. It has failed this country. There's been an inability to plan because there is a lack of data underpinning policy and plans.

I'd like to contrast that with Taiwan. I'm making a plea to get back to data based policy rather than policy based science. That's not science. We have people invoking science, but they're doing it falsely, whether it be on reef regulations in Queensland or climate, energy or property rights being stolen. People are losing their incomes, losing their livelihoods, losing their futures and losing their industries. We are shipping industries overseas because we are not basing decisions on data. Let me give you an example—Taiwan. Taiwan have 24 million people. That's almost the same as our 25 million people in Australia. They have a much smaller area in which those 24 million people live, so it's much easier for them to transmit the virus. They're closer to China. They have many more interactions with communist China. They slammed the borders shut tight. Then they didn't shut down the whole country like we've done. They invoked testing, tracing and quarantining. They isolated the sick, they isolated the vulnerable and, as a result, even though they got the virus earlier than we did, in the time we've lost over 900 lives they've lost seven. And here's the punch line: they did not destroy their economy. Their economy has continued along steadily. Why? Because they trust their government. We don't have trust in government in this country, because government is not worthy of trust. That's the bottom line. We have to re-establish trust. That comes from making decisions and policies based on data.

So, while I'm talking about agriculture, it's extremely important to understand that we need to prevent these pests and diseases being introduced that affect humans as well as animals and crops. How do we prevent these pests and diseases being introduced? Strong deterrents are part of the answer. And that is the strength of this bill. I've just criticised the government of and governance in this country, but I'm going to compliment the government, because here's an example of a strong bill which is purposed to help militate against biosecurity risk. There is a light here shining, and it makes it through the pall hanging over Canberra from poor governance. This bill enables the Director of Biosecurity to determine that goods or classes of goods brought into the country without appropriate disclosure may attract a higher infringement notice penalty and provides that the determination is not going to be disallowed. We're in favour of that, because this country is worth protecting. It's worth keeping our borders secure.

People entering Australia must take seriously the need to 'comply carefully and accurately with requirements to provide written information for the purpose of assessing the level of biosecurity risk associated with the person and the goods they intend to bring into the country through their first point of entry, including airports and seaports. Quite frankly, any legislation that genuinely protects Australian rural industries is worthy of One Nation support'. This bill has our support.