Mr ANDREN (6:57 PM) —It is good to enter a debate where there is so much consensus on such an important issue. I listened with great interest to the contributions by the member for Blair and the member for Corio prior to that. I am sure that the member for Lyons will make a similar contribution. As has been pointed out, the Quarantine Amendment Bill 1998 reflects many of the recommendations contained in the report from Professor Malcolm Nairn's review into the quarantine system. The Nairn report, as the minister states in his second reading speech, found Australia remains relatively free of many major pests and diseases of animals and plants, despite the massive increase in international trade and movement of people and—and this is important—the dwindling government financial support for quarantine services at that time. Thankfully, this situation has been addressed to a significant degree by this government.

The Nairn report called for a new focus on quarantine and a shared responsibility between government, the industry and the general public. These are excellent sentiments, but I argue it is the very challenge we as an island continent face from the international marketplace that represents the greatest threat to our almost disease free status. In the increasing competition of the marketplace, we in Australia have an advantage others around us envy and would want to bring down. Our quarantine standards to date have delivered us a natural marketing advantage that we may not have exploited enough but which will surely deliver us an edge in the marketplace if we jealously guard that advantage and not succumb to the forces that wish to destroy that advantage.

I refer particularly here to the import risk analysis for apples from New Zealand. Much has been said in recent years of the threat that fire blight would pose to our pear and apple industries. The member for Murray is one in this House who has eloquently argued the case against any capitulation to the arguments of New Zealand on this issue. I do not have to elaborate on the infamous discovery of fire blight in the Melbourne and Adelaide botanic gardens—discoveries that said more about the extent to which our Tasman neighbours will go to open up markets than it did about our quarantine system.

Yet the member for Murray and I and other members of the parliamentary committee who received a briefing on this matter from AQIS were appalled at the innocent naivety with which Australia was prepared to accept the New Zealand scientific analysis on this allegedly infected Australian cotoneaster plant taken back to New Zealand. Why would you let the thief provide the security report on your store? That was the attitude prevailing until objective assessments were sought further afield on this so-called naturally occurring fire blight outbreak.

Let me recall a meeting I had with apple growers at Nashdale near Orange in 1997 on the night I remember President Clinton was here at a dinner in Canberra. I was listening to another American in Nashdale, a scientist telling local orchardists and me of the devastation fire blight has caused to a significant portion of that country's orchard industry. While New Zealand scientists were wanting us to believe that some 10,000 cells of erwinia bacteria were needed to cause any spread of fire blight, scientific papers prepared as long ago as 1930 consistently show that as little as 10 cells are required for such spread. Let us base our import risk assessments on science, but let us beware of selective data which former partners and now competitors on the international stage will be only too anxious to quote.

Let us remember a report from ABARE in 1996 which estimated that the spread of fire blight into Australia could cause crop losses of between 20 and 30 per cent and said it was uncertain whether fire blight could be restricted to one region by quarantine and control measures, should it arrive. Fire blight has the potential to devastate all plants in the Roseaceae family, including roses and thousands of ornamental berry trees.

Now the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has submitted a revised import access proposal for the importation of New Zealand apples. The submission, accord ing to correspondence from AQIS, requests the review of available risk management options with a view to establishing phytosanitary measures that are the least trade restrictive in respect of New Zealand apple exports, while ensuring the level of protection deemed appropriate by Australia is met. AQIS is simply following the accepted procedure in this review.

This is the third occasion in recent times that New Zealand has sought a way through or around our quarantine position on fire blight. The cotoneaster scare cut short the developing Fuji apple export trial to Japan, something that was only resumed at Christmas after a heartbreaking period for the Tasmanian growers. One good outcome was that Japan was impressed by the way we went around the fire blight detection process to establish that the disease had not taken hold outside the dubiously infected areas it was discovered in by visiting New Zealand scientists. As I have said before, New Zealand has a very questionable record on disease control and eradication and seems to believe that a level playing field is one infected with every disease. That sort of attitude must be taken into account in blindly accepting that international rules and standards will always act in our interests in this important area.

A strong case can be argued to the World Trade Organisation against a country with such strict quarantine standards because we could be seen to be using our island status in an anti-competitive fashion. And so we are, but not for the reasons our competitors would argue. We must not give in and accept the lower denominator, because our trade might be at risk.

Clean and green will mean billions of dollars in export earnings in the years ahead, more than it has in the past. To sacrifice or risk it now on the altar of free trade would be an absolute disaster. Yet I note we are now grateful to New Zealand for again accepting into that country Australian watermelon after such imports were banned in June last year following the detection of live fruit fly larvae.

According to AQIS's March bulletin, we are now hopeful the New Zealand ministry of agriculture may reclassify the fruit fly pest as one requiring on-farm control under `the New Zealand import health standards'. They would not, I hope, ever become typical of Australia's standards—allowing the pest into the country and then making it subject to on-farm control. I think it says something about the New Zealand quarantine standards. I shudder to think what clout this allowing of fruit fly infested fruit into New Zealand may give to their argument that fire blight represents no threat to the Australian fruit growing or horticultural industries.

I wonder whether we are being sucked into this fruit fly trap, the reverse side being an argument that because New Zealand accepts our watermelon risk we should therefore allow in their apples. I say, and the fruit growers and nursery operators in my electorate say, that there is a major threat. They are concerned that we are weakening rather than strengthening our resolve and our laws to prevent such infestation.

So small are the margins for error in this new era of free trade, one need not go further than the current risk analysis for Korean pear. As AQIS advised many of us and the industry in November last year, a delay had occurred in the finalisation of the import risk analysis on Korean pear due to the detection of a new disease of Asian Pear. This stem blight disease was reported at an international workshop on fire blight diseases in October. We are lucky we had a representative or at least a spy or reporter there.

This disease, we are told, is similar to fire blight. AQIS requires further information from Korean quarantine authorities in order to progress this IRA. And so say all of us. Had that workshop not occurred, what if this erwinia disease had not been detected until it arrived on the shelves of the supermarkets and green groceries in Murray or Calare electorates? It shows what we are risking if we relax for a moment our own surveillance of imports and exports.

In its response to the Nairn report, the government wisely rejected a recommendation that a new statutory body, Quarantine Australia, be established. The government rightly argued that the objectives such as community ownership of quarantine, cultural change and more efficient use of resources can be achieved without creating a statutory authority. Such an authority would have run the risk of severing direct links between AQIS and the wider community and other parts of government such as customs, health and indeed state governments.

The government wisely implemented a $76 million funding package in 1997 that included over $38 million in the ensuing four years to boost border activities. It is interesting to note that the latest Northern Australia Quarantine Strategy news highlights how the early warning network for fruit fly detection is paying dividends in the Torres Strait, with 787 specimens of exotic fruit flies already detected on islands throughout the strait between November last and the first week of February this year. Of the flies detected, all but five were papaya fruit flies. This fruit fly trapping exercise across 23 islands—and one wonders how many might get through to the mainland—is being coordinated by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, an example of the necessary nexus between AQIS and state governments to ensure as tight as possible a link between federal and state authorities on this critical issue.

The National Farmers Federation was among those organisations which welcomed the government's response to the Nairn report. The NFF said at the time that a more open import risk assessment process would help deal with many of the issues that have surrounded contentious quarantine decisions in the past. But this should not be read as any encouragement for New Zealand, Canada or any other country to try to circumvent our quarantine standards by using the non-tariff barrier argument at the WTO. It simply means the peak farm organisation in this country recognises the need for our scientific analysis and risk assessment to be more open to public and trading partner scrutiny, nothing more. That is what AQIS is doing now in its risk analysis for Korean pears and New Zealand apples.

No-one has an argument with that, but one does, I believe, have an argument with the quarantine standards employed by our so-called trading partners when assessing the risks of their exports. If our risk analysis conflicts with export risk assessments from other countries, that is no reason our standards should be necessarily so severely challenged. Rather, the standards and motives of those exporting countries should really be under the microscope.

I do disagree with the NFF argument that AQIS should have been severed from government. The federation argued that cultural change would not occur unless AQIS was divorced from the Department of Primary Industries. It fears this could lead to an increase in WTO challenges to quarantine decisions. If it is good enough for the US to insist on a government funded quarantine system where that government picks up the tab, why should it not be good enough here? What would a privatised inspection service right across the board offer other than perhaps at some stage to succumb to the dictates of market forces? Is it not better for AQIS, with the full clout of government backing, to argue any case before the WTO backed up by the objective government endorsed research?

Other parts of this bill are eminently sensible and should attract little opposition such as proposed section 5A, which enables the minister to declare by notice published in the Gazette an area to be specified `special quarantine zone'. Such power is not subject to disallowance by parliament. While I am a passionate advocate of the need for ministerial accountability to parliament, one must surely concede in a case like this that the minister should act quickly and decisively.

Similarly, in new section 12A, where emergency quarantine measures are specifically detailed, similar provisions are required. However, parliament would reasonably expect a report at the earliest possible sitting day after the ministerial declarations. Again, in sections 10 to 10B, the delegation of powers by a minister, departmental secretary or director of quarantine is entirely acceptable in the situation of a quarantine emergency.

However, I have grave reservations about the provisions relating to ministerial responsibility. Where the minister delegates his or her powers, the proposed provisions do not allow for the minister to be personally responsible for decisions made by the holder of the delegated powers. This, to some degree, I believe, passes the buck. It is not good enough to saddle responsibility with the secretary or director of quarantine, and I would be interested to hear the minister's justification for that particular section.

We will have a similar washing of hands that occurs with statutory authorities like CASA. The responsibility must stay with the minister. In the same way as I have grave doubts about parliament's ability to review the activities of commercially operated quarantine premises, so too am I opposed to a minister washing his or her hands of responsibility for decisions on quarantine measures.

The Nairn report recommended commercially operated quarantine stations only in respect of animals. This bill extends that commercial operation to goods including animals, plants and any other article, substance or thing. The degree of parliamentary surveillance and scrutiny of such commercial operations in such a competitive commercial environment with the risks associated and the ministerial responsibility handed over to a delegated individual does not say to me that quarantine risk is adequately measured or responsibility is accepted where it belongs with the minister of the day. As for quarantine surveillance in section 34 of this bill, one wonders whether the financial penalties imposed—a maximum fine of $2,200—is really onerous enough to discourage people who risk importing infected matter, whereas section 38 provides for very strong penalties which do send the right message.

I am aware of the need to wind up this debate so the minister can sum it up. I say then, in summary, that I have no real problems in any of these areas except my major reservation in the area of delegation by the minister and some of those areas of privatisation. With these reservations and a feeling that inexorably our quarantine standards will be white anted by our competitors unless we are ever vigilant because those competitors who have previously been partners under former trading arrangements are not partners in a true sense anymore, I commend the bill to the House.