Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak today about Australia's biosecurity capabilities and about the need to ensure that our quarantine capabilities and border biosecurity are kept separate from Border Force.

Biosecurity is a different focus. It has a different set of skills than general border security. We need to maintain that edge. Australia suffers many disadvantages being an island and being a long way from many of its markets. But its greatest advantage is the fact that we are free of many of the diseases that plague our competitor nations. There has been some discussion of weight of the need to combine Biosecurity with Border Force.

There have been inquiries in the past, as recently as 2008 with the Beale review and that was followed in the same year by Mr Rick Smith's review. These reviews showed no indication that there was any advantage in merging the two. To give you an example, while it is good to identify and contain a suitcase full of contraband at the border—whether that is illegal cigarettes, firearms or, quite frankly, drugs—a pair of muddy shoes that go through the same border has the potential to have a far greater devastating effect on the economy and the wealth of our nation. Whenever I travel and come back to our country, I am very careful to clearly identify where I have been and identify any products that may need further scrutiny, and I certainly make very clear if I have been in any farming areas and have my clothing and footwear thoroughly cleaned. If a disease such as foot and mouth were to come into this country—and that could be as easy as someone smuggling a bit of their grandfather's home-made salami into the country on a return visit from the motherland—and it got into our livestock, particularly considering the population of feral pigs that we have right across this nation, it would be crippling, not only for the livestock industry but for our economy.

Arguments could be based that biosecurity could be the fifth pillar of our economy. Quite frankly, many of our exports rely on markets that insist that the products come from Australia because of the clean, disease-free nature of our industries and produce. Many of the biosecurity risks managed at the border potentially have huge financial consequences for Australian agriculture. The risks are generally not visible and require specialised management systems. It goes back to what I was saying earlier. A pair of muddy, soiled boots from visiting a farm in a country that might have bluetongue, foot and mouth or a disease such as that could be a far greater threat to the security of this nation than some more sinister contraband. We know that if this happened it would destroy whole communities, not just the livelihoods of the producers. The impact would be felt right throughout the supply chain and would severely affect our economy. For instance, fire ants have cost the government $281 million over the last 12 years. (Time expired)