Thursday, 12 September 2024

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:33): (1152) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Agriculture, and the action that I seek is for the minister to renew funding for the Queensland fruit fly management programs in Victoria and establish a working group to develop a new Victorian fruit fly strategy. In the middle of 2021 the state government released their four-year Victoria’s Fruit Fly Strategy 2021–2025 and announced four years of funding to implement that strategy to manage fruit fly in Victoria. The Goulburn Murray Valley fruit fly area-wide management program has been a great success, with state, national and international awards to prove it. In Cobram pest pressure was reduced by 83 per cent and there was a 60 per cent reduction across the wider region. But as the program’s budget has gradually shrunk, pest pressure has increased. There is now a serious risk that the important gains made in previous years could soon be completely lost.

Both the four-year strategy and its associated funding expire in the middle of next year, and there is no certainty about whether they will be renewed. Labor cannot manage money, and they are trying to pay off their massive debt through short-sighted cost cutting. It would be a terrible act of sabotage if Labor were to end funding for this important Victorian agricultural program. But when I look at how Labor handled the Commonwealth Games debacle, no amount of mismanagement would surprise me.

Agriculture is vital to the Victorian economy, and in my region of Northern Victoria horticulture is particularly important. There are 5000 horticultural producers in the state, employing around 11,000 people. The fruit-growing industry has a value of around $3 billion a year, with exports being around $1.6 billion, and $1 billion worth of those exports are crops affected by fruit fly. Victoria must start planning now for a new fruit fly strategy to take over from the old one, and the government must commit to funding the coordination and education activities that will be an important part of an effective strategy.

Since 2013 Victoria has been transitioning from a government-led regulation regime to one of a shared responsibility and cooperation between government and fruitgrowers. It would be a gross failure of responsibility for the government to abandon the horticulture industry, but it seems Labor could now try to shift the entire burden of fruit fly management onto commercial growers. Fruit flies do not only breed in commercial plantations but breed in backyard fruit trees and in the 8 million hectares of public land owned and managed by the Victorian government. The government still has an essential role to play in funding, overseeing and carrying out fruit fly management programs, even if most of the work is done by commercial growers. I urge the government to establish a working group of relevant stakeholders as soon as possible to begin discussing the next iteration of the fruit fly strategy.