Mr CAMERON THOMPSON (6:37 PM) —I took a few notes on what the member for Corio had to say in this debate on the Quarantine Amendment Bill 1998 . I think some of the things he spoke about were quite interesting. It was particularly worthy to note that the opposition was supportive of the government's position in relation to the structure that AQIS should continue to operate in terms of its not being a statutory authority, as recommended by the Nairn report. However, I did think it was a bit rich for the member for Corio or for opposition members to talk about reforms in this area as being something to which they in any way contributed a great deal.

Over 13 years I think we really did fall into a fairly dozy situation in terms of Australia's quarantine effort. When you talk about the fortress mentality and using border methods to enforce quarantine requirements, that is entirely a product of those 13 years in which there was not the kind of development that I think we need in this country. We need to be very much on top of it because Australia is an area of very diverse environments and with very diverse wildlife and products, and we need to be able to protect those very effectively through an effective and flexible quarantine service.

The member for Corio said it was important that we should have gradual reforms. In this area we need to have the capacity to be flexible about the way we reform, otherwise reforms may well be forced on us and on those occasions I think our capacity for it to be gradual would be very limited. We need a service that is capable of responding in a flexible way and responding instantly if that is what is required of it. Through this process we have to, at the end of the day, come up with an AQIS and a quarantine service in general that is capable of instant action but that has its eye on a longer strategic goal.

I have with me a copy of the Nairn report, Australian quarantine: a shared responsibility. Professor Nairn is a well-known authority in Australia in the veterinary fields. He was the first vice-chancellor of the Northern Territory University and certainly has earned a great deal of respect for his contribution over the years. I am indebted to the member for Corio for running through many of the aspects of the bill. I will not go over those again apart from to say that it does swing directly off the Nairn committee report. It addresses things under four broad subjects: the scope of quarantine in general; the principle of manageable risk, that is, managing what is going on so you have a focus on what are the prime risks affecting the country; the continuum of quarantine, as we said—not just talking about issues on the border but stretching that from the area of production to beyond the border and its final place within Australia or vice versa. That particular area has been broken down in the Nairn report under four areas. Those areas are: border measures, more efficient performance of quarantine, industry participation and a series of other miscellaneous steps. There are also some comments about compliance and enforcement and some steps taken there.

There have been some tough new quarantine measures introduced last year by the federal government. They are having quite a decisive impact on international passenger behaviour. We have on-the-spot fines and X-ray technology. The detector dogs program has been expanded, and that has been fairly well received by the community. That was all part of a $76 million allocation by the federal government, which was announced in response directly to the Nairn report. I think that is another thing that the member for Corio said. He was complaining that the bill had been slow in coming into the House and I think he mentioned funding as well, but the funding has happened. We have had $76 million put in there. The proof of the pudding is in the eating in relation to that.

Between 1996 and February 1998 the number of passengers failing to declare items of quarantine concern—in other words, coming through the green lane, that is the nothing to declare channel—dropped from 35 per cent to just over 21 per cent. The number of people coming in and failing to declare high risk prohibitive items also dropped from six per cent to 3.1 per cent. I think those achievements are quite significant. In that $76 million allocation, more than $38.7 million was allocated to the quarantine borders themselves, $13.24 million was allocated to risk analysis, more than $5.6 million was allocated to quarantine awareness, more than $4.48 million was allocated to fish quarantine, $9 million was allocated to quarantine support, and $800,000 was allocated to the Quarantine and Exports Advisory Council.

I would like to address in a short form the major disparity, referred to by the member for Corio and others in this debate, between the finding of the Nairn committee report and the actions subsequently being taken by the federal government. That major difference is the decision not to proceed with a statutory authority, as recommended by the Nairn committee, but to proceed instead with basically the existing structure. That was set out by the government in its response to the Nairn report, which was published by the government. The minister said, in response, that the government believed that the general principles put forward by Nairn could be delivered without creating a statutory authority, which would `sever current direct links with other parts of government that are central to the operation of an efficient and effective quarantine service'.

In putting forward the argument for a statutory authority, the Nairn report created a list of about nine different points where it thought the operation of a statutory authority would be superior to the operation of a business unit within a department, which is what AQIS is now. It pointed out such things as independence from the department was an advantage, that it had a suitable structure to engender cultural change and mentioned job satisfaction, and so on.

Mr Deputy Speaker, if you analyse the argument, I think for every positive in each of those messages there is equally a negative risk. Risk is one thing which I think we have to manage very carefully in relation to the future of AQIS and quarantine services. We cannot allow risks to develop. Primarily, we need to have the capacity for instant change and instant government response.

There are a number of statutory authorities that I think members in this place could name that do not perform or communicate as effectively with government departments and with the government in general as perhaps they should. That is something very important that I think we should take into account.

If we look in the Nairn committee report itself, Professor Nairn and his group, in relation to one of the models, debunked that particular idea of dividing or separating policy from operations. The report stated:

. . . separation of the quarantine regulation and service functions would see quarantine policy development transferred to one or more of the other operating groups within the DPIE with the operational role being retained by AQIS . . .

It went on to say what the proponents of that particular model had to say. But the report then stated:

In the view of the Review Committee, the development of effective and efficient quarantine policy is compromised if divorced from implementation. In addition, it is difficult to ensure that staff achieve operational objectives if denied understanding or input into policy development.

During its visit to New Zealand the Review Committee observed this separation model in practice and noted that New Zealand authorities were experiencing a number of management difficulties. In particular, quarantine delivery staff expressed a feeling of isolation from policy.

I think that is significant because it points out exactly what would happen if we were to go down the path of having a statutory authority: it would be divorced from the entire process of policy development.

Policy development is the prime responsibility of the federal government. There is no way of getting away from that. You can have all the fine statutory authorities that you like, but they will not be completely in control of policy development. Sure, they will have input. But at the end of the day it is the responsibility of members of parliament, of all the processes of government, to come up with a strategy that will be supported by the community. In that way, a broader view is taken to that which might be preferred, for example, by a statutory authority operating all by itself in a vacuum.

In the time left to me, I believe that it is important to look briefly at what AQIS has been doing. I know that from time to time there have been some negative stories told about AQIS. But there are a lot of positives out there, and I think we should reflect on some of the very good achievements AQIS has had.

For example, looking at the 1996-97 annual report, AQIS in that time dealt with more than 70 countries developing new or expanded markets for Australian products in Asia, the Pacific, North and South America, the former Soviet Union and Europe. A whole series of Australian exports have benefited from those discussions. Things such as Australian export potatoes now are found in Korea; asparagus is going to New Zealand; Tasmanian apples are going to China, et cetera. There is a whole heap of those things now happening.

In the 1996-97 year, AQIS supervised 10,000 ship arrivals and 52,000 first-port aircraft arrivals; it processed 7.3 million passengers and aircrew, one million cargo containers, 1.8 million airfreight consignments and 151 million mail articles. There are a few other facts I could state in relation to that, but as my time is limited I will keep my comments short.

Another issue AQIS has been involved with is that of ballast water management which has come about because of alarming developments. This is another example of why it is important that we have a flexible quarantine service in this country. Under AQIS, the Australian Ballast Water Management Advisory Council was appointed in May 1996 by the then Minister for Primary Industries and Energy. There has been since then a $1 million per year Strategic Ballast Water Research Program developed by the research advisory group. To support that particular program, the shipping industry has since agreed to a levy on shipping to raise a further $2 million for 1998-99 and 1999-2000. That is just one example of industry support and cooperation and a flexible and effective quarantine policy.

I would turn now to another effective strategy that has been undertaken by AQIS and the federal government; it is one that has been strongly developed and supported by the coalition government. I refer to the North Australia Quarantine Service, which is the front line of our quarantine defence up in the Torres Strait. Torres Strait is about 150 kilometres wide and separates mainland Australia from Papua New Guinea. Within that strait there are 19 inhabited islands and many more uninhabited reefs, caves and that sort of thing. There is not much by way of heavy vegetation on those islands, and there has been a long history of human habitation in that area.

All kinds of zones have been established to produce the same kind of progressive quarantine strategy that the member for Corio talked about and that I fully endorse and that the government has fully endorsed; that is, pre-border methods, methods at the border and subsequent methods. For example, on Cape York below the Torres Strait area, there is a fence that runs across that cape, marking the northern boundary of what is called the `livestock buffer zone', the administration of which is part of the responsibilities in that area of the North Australia Quarantine Service.

A range of threats has been faced by Australia in relation to quarantine. Basically, there are those that threaten animals and those that threaten crop species. Firstly, let us look at those that affect animals.

I think the most recent example is that of Japanese encephalitis. This is a virus which is transmitted by mosquitoes. People who get Japanese encephalitis suffer from an often fatal inflammation of the brain. It cannot be contracted by humans through eating cooked meat, but it can be contacted by as simple a matter as mosquito transmission. Japanese encephalitis has an incubation period of 10 to 20 days. A person who gets that infection develops a high fever, backache, severe dizziness and finally convulsions. Any person who is diagnosed with that can be in a serious position. They could wind up handicapped after as little a time of exposure as three days. Animals such as dogs, horses, cows and buffaloes can also be infected with the virus. It is something that is quite insidious. It is out there, and it is definitely a threat to the north of Australia.

The North Australia Quarantine Service have developed a range of methods to address this particular issue, and they deserve support for the work that they are doing. They have set up what is called a network of sentinel herds in the Torres Strait and in the northern peninsula area. These are herds of pigs, in particular, and one herd of cattle that are based on places like Badu, Saibai and Darnley islands. Those animals are used to detect the presence of the Japanese encephalitis virus. That has been particularly successful, and it has been expanded by the federal government to address the problem.

There have been a reasonable number of outbreaks in recent times. That is not surpris ing, considering that the consensus of participating agencies after studying the findings of the various developments in those sentinel herds and studying the flow and the evidence from other wildlife shot from helicopters is that the incursion of Japanese encephalitis is probably due to windblown infected mosquitoes from Papua New Guinea. So every wet season we are going to face a situation where those kinds of viruses—Japanese encephalitis in particular—will be pushed south because mosquitoes will be naturally pushed south by storms that frequent the area at that time.

I want to close by making reference to the fact that Japanese encephalitis is a serious threat to the north. Just how serious a threat it is is best studied by looking at recent developments in Malaysia, where an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in the last two weeks or so has resulted in 56 human deaths at this stage. They have set about slaughtering 300,000 head of pigs because of the threat posed by the discovery of Japanese encephalitis. That has completely destroyed the pork industry of Malaysia, and it has resulted in the closure of borders between Malaysia and Singapore and Malaysia and Thailand to the pork export trade. That is a significant worry, and it is something that we have to bear in mind when we look at the threat posed by those kinds of animal diseases.

Something else that is worthy of a mention is the impact in relation to crops. There are various threats. One such threat is western flower thrips, which has appeared through the importation of cut flowers. We have to keep on our game in relation to that. The basic bottom line is that, unless AQIS is resourced and provided with the flexibility to respond immediately to threats which cannot be anticipated which can appear at the drop of a hat, we will be in a serious situation.

I commend the steps taken by the government, particularly the $76 million that has already been allocated, and I look forward to the further development of an effective working culture within AQIS to address serious problems, serious threats like Japanese encephalitis and other threats that I spoke about in relation to Australian crops, crops that provide an important living for Australians and Australian jobs. (Time expired)