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

My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Watt. Thank you for your briefing this afternoon on foot-and-mouth disease. Minister, if foot-and-mouth disease does enter Australia, the short-term response would be to start vaccination. Food and Safety Australia and New Zealand says vaccines are safe for human consumption. Having said that, Australia owns foot-and-mouth disease vaccines located in the United Kingdom. How many vaccines does Australia own in the United Kingdom?

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

Thank you, Senator Roberts. I'm pleased that you were able to come along to that briefing. The feedback that I had was that it was very informative for the members who attended. We are approaching this in a bipartisan manner, and we would welcome the opposition joining us in that, as I know you are, Senator Roberts.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

Just to pick you up on one point: if, God forbid, foot-and-mouth disease were to enter Australia despite the measures that we are putting in place, we have a well-developed plan known as AUSVETPLAN, which is prepared between the federal government and states and territories, about how we respond to biosecurity outbreaks. Biosecurity outbreaks are managed and led by state governments with the support of the federal government, and we have seen that occur in relation to the Varroa mite outbreak recently, where we have been supporting the New South Wales government. The point about vaccines is that biosecurity advice that I have received is that we would not immediately vaccinate all livestock or even a large segment of livestock immediately in Australia, and that is because if you vaccinate your livestock—

Opposition senators interjecting—

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

It's unfortunate that the opposition don't want to understand and listen to the measures of preparing for the outbreak. The reason you don't vaccinate, Senator Roberts, is that you are then deemed by the rest of the world as having foot-and-mouth disease, and that is what prevents the export of our product overseas. It's effectively the same as having the outbreak here when you vaccinate. The idea would be that in the first instance you would impose a 72-hour livestock standstill to limit the movement of animals, and only if the outbreak got further would you consider vaccines. My advice, and I will get this checked, is that we have approximately one million vaccines available to us in a stockpile and they are available within one week's notice.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts, first supplementary?

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

We have 25 million cattle and 2.5 million pigs. How is one million enough?

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

As I said, the first move, should we have an outbreak here, is not to just run out and vaccinate every herd of cattle, sheep, pigs or goats across the country—or buffaloes, for that matter. What we would actually do is try to control the outbreak in the localised area that it is in so that it didn't spread further afield. If it did spread further afield, that is when we would look to vaccinations as an alternative. It is not the only alternative that we would have, but it is certainly one, and we would be able to access other vaccines at very short notice. What we are actually prioritising in relation to the supply of vaccines at the moment is providing them to Indonesia, and the reason we are doing that is that, if we can bring that outbreak under control in Indonesia, not only is that in their national interest; it is in our national interest. We have continued to have very productive discussions with the Indonesian government about what other vaccines and other assistance we can provide. But my priority right now is keeping the disease out, and that is why we want to support the vaccine rollout in Indonesia.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Roberts, second supplementary?

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

Why are these vaccines not already in Australia? We are one of the largest cattle and related product producers in the world. Speed of response is critical to protecting our biosecurity. Why are these not being brought to Australia now as a precaution?

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

As I said, vaccination is not the first measure that you would undertake if there were an outbreak, but there are a couple of other reasons why we have got those vaccines here now, the first of which is that there are sometimes issues about the bringing of live virus into a country, and the responsible members of the opposition understand this. In addition, though, we don't necessarily know what strain of the disease we would have in Australia, and we want to make sure that the vaccines that we obtain would actually be effective for the strain of the virus that we would get if we were to get it. In fact some of the technical support we have started providing to Indonesia was actually to help them diagnose the strain of virus that they had so that we could then go out and procure the vaccines that would deal with that particular strain. There's no point sending vaccines to people if they don't work for a particular strain of the virus, and we would need a little bit of time to diagnose the strain that we have here in Australia so that we could then very quickly obtain the correct vaccines to deal with the version of the virus that we got.