Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Link to 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.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I go to the Minister, I am advised that the Greens amendment won't proceed.

Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me briefly sum up on the bill, and I thank senators for their contributions. The Biosecurity Amendment (Traveller Declarations and Other Measures) Bill 2020 will amend the Biosecurity Act 2015 to provide for a flexible and proportionate compliance response through the targeted setting of amounts payable under an infringement notice. The bill will allow the biosecurity regulation to specify different penalty amounts and different periods of time to pay for infringement notices issued for different kinds of alleged contraventions of the Biosecurity Act, including by reference to the kind of goods or class of goods to which an alleged contravention relates.

We'll permit the Director of Biosecurity to make a non-disallowable legislative instrument to specify goods or classes of goods that can attract a higher infringement notice amount. These changes will enable incoming passengers or crew who fail to declare high-risk biosecurity goods listed in the legislative instrument to be issued with an infringement notice in the amount of 12 penalty points or $2,664. This is an increase from the current infringement notice amount of two penalty units or $444. It applies regardless of the relative risk of the goods to which the contravention relates.

This bill will enhance existing compliance and deterrence measures designed to protect Australia's biosecurity status by encouraging people entering Australia 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 are seeking to bring into Australia. This is a sensible and timely improvement to Australia's biosecurity system that is consistent with mature regulatory practice.

I note the Acting Deputy President's advice to the chamber that the Greens amendment will not be proceeding and acknowledge the withdrawal of that from the Greens.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.