Tuesday, 2 August 2022

 Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (19:40): (2021) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Agriculture and concerns the catastrophic consequences an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease would have for Victorian agriculture. I joined a protest in Colac last week where, with just 48 hours notice, hundreds of concerned people gathered to beg the federal and state governments to take the threat more seriously. Farmers are quite rightly concerned that the 260 weekly flights from Indonesia represent a real threat to their livelihoods.

I was intrigued to see a piece in yesterday’s West Australian newspaper—an account from an MP of his briefing from that state’s department of agriculture. He revealed that at least 10 per cent of travellers entering Australia from Indonesia are failing to declare prohibited foods in their luggage and that 30 undeclared items are found for every 300 that people declared. Worse still, he was told that officials are weighing the convenience of passengers above the need for absolute border security and are cutting corners to avoid long queues. At one point the arrival into Melbourne Airport of four planes from Indonesia, Minister, within a 90-minute period meant that not every bag was screened. It is a disgrace. How can this be good enough? Nobody wants long queues at the airport, but serious action needs to be taken to increase staffing resources, to reschedule flights and to reassess priorities. I sincerely hope the minister is doing everything in her power to persuade her federal colleagues that this is not just a niche issue but could see the decimation of one of our nation’s biggest industries and the devastation of tens of thousands of farmers, let alone the animals that will be slaughtered.

As the minister certainly knows, farmers’ livelihoods are utterly dependent on biosecurity. It is not a matter of choice; it is the difference between business and bankruptcy. Yet the Andrews government continues to roll out a scheme giving unlimited numbers of the public unchecked and unrecorded access to camp on licensed riverfrontage in Victoria. Even with perfect compliance, this access introduces serious biosecurity risks, and we all know that not everyone will behave properly. This represents an enormous hazard at any time, but given heightened present concern about the transmission of foot-and-mouth disease, failing to cut out this risk is surely utterly negligent. As farmers face ruin—the potential catastrophic reduction in incomes, the loss of their stock and of centuries of genetic breeding—surely now is the time to suspend this scheme. So the action I seek from the minister is a thorough review of the biosecurity risks of extending the present access and a decision which demonstrates— (Time expired)