Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Van. Certainly I'm aware that the department of agriculture has undertaken a large amount of work in the biosecurity protection space since that report was delivered by Ms Craik to the former government several years ago. I would be confident that the work that addresses that recommendation has been done, but I'm obviously happy to go back and have a look at that.

What we established in the work leading up to the budget was that we did need to lock in ongoing, year by year funding for biosecurity in a way that the former government was never prepared to do, so we could have that certainty around biosecurity funding, and that the cost of providing those services should be shared by the taxpayer generally, by importers and by asking producers to make a small contribution to the cost of those services. As I say, the overall cost that we will recoup from producers is about $50 million in a budget of several hundred million dollars.