Thursday, 4 August 2022

Foot-and-mouth disease

Ms BATH (Eastern Victoria) (12:13): My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. Minister, the foot-and-mouth disease livestock standstill plan includes an immediate 72-hour halt of the movement of livestock in Victoria. All livestock in transit must go directly to saleyards and be put through a footbath and quarantined. Minister, how many saleyards across Victoria are equipped with quarantine facilities, including footbaths and separate watering and feeding systems?

Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education, Minister for Agriculture) (12:13): The first thing I would say is that foot-and-mouth disease is not in Australia. The second thing I would say is that the focus of the government is on preparation activities and planning, and that is well and truly underway. The other tranche of work that we are doing is what we do at the point of incursion and at the point of standstill, and that is the work that is being looked at very closely. At the moment we are finalising work in relation to workforce issues that are required in terms of preparedness but also in terms of incursion, and we are also of course doing a whole range of other works that are required in terms of preparedness.

What we are also doing is encouraging those opposite to work with the government as one as we work through this issue, and indeed I had a meeting this morning at 7.30 with Peter Walsh. We went through a number of issues, and I do appreciate the collaboration that he has demonstrated by bringing issues to me, many of which we are working on already. There were some other things that have also captured our thoughts, and we will work through those issues.

The fact of the matter is that what we have found in the last week or two is that because of the heightened awareness of biosecurity threats people are asking a lot of questions about what resources are on the ground. Even in terms of local government, they are not aware of what we have already got on ground, and that happened in my case even as recently as four days ago, where they did not believe that there were biosecurity practices and biosecurity officers at their local saleyard. They were asking me for them and they were already in their location.

These are the things that we are working through. The task force has met several times now, and of course we are looking forward to ongoing collaboration. And if Ms Bath wanted to talk to me about any of these issues at any time, as opposed to only talking to me in question time, I would be more than happy to do that, because that will progress the collaboration and the work in progress. Can I also call out the fact that responsible people like Simon Ramsay have said on ABC regional radio as recently as last week that those opposite have got a lesson to learn and that they should be working with government as one, and I agree completely with that position.

Ms BATH (Eastern Victoria) (12:17): I acknowledge the minister’s response. Indeed, Minister, you would be aware that there were many people who turned up to your offer of being on Zoom, where you were there and others, so we have been working collaboratively. My question, and very respectful question, was in relation to the Odysseus report that was out in 2015 that talked about the plan in relation to the livestock standstill plan. So my supplementary question is: what is the government doing to provide for saleyard operators to ensure that their yards have quarantine facilities, including footbaths, watering systems and feeding systems?

Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria—Minister for Training and Skills, Minister for Higher Education, Minister for Agriculture) (12:18): This is an important issue. It is highly operational, and this is one of the many things that the task force is dealing with to make sure that we have got the right people with the right skills in the right places and the facilities that we need to fight off any incursion of foot-and-mouth disease. It is clear from the behaviour of those opposite—not necessarily you, Ms Bath, but others—that they have still got a lot to learn about getting on board and working on something that is more important than any one of us or any of the political parties that we represent.