Senator BROWN (12:42 PM) —I, too, support the Quarantine Amendment Bill 1998 , but the Greens are bringing in a series of amendments to tighten it up with regard to the protection of Australia's environment. We believe that this legislation in simply requiring the quarantine officers, where a matter of Australia's environment is at stake, to decide whether or not they will notify the minister for the environment and then decide whether or not they will take advice from that minister is simply not good enough. We believe that if there is a quarantine matter which threatens the Australian environment then not only should the minister always be advised but also the advice from the minister should be taken. I will come back to that a little later.

Quarantine is absolutely essential to this nation. Just up the road from my place at Liffey under the Great Western Tiers of Tasmania—and I know that you, Madam Acting Deputy President Reynolds, know that beautiful region well; I understand it is under snow from a fall the night before last—is one of the most wonderful walking places in the world where pencil pines grow. They are a unique pine to Tasmania, but they grace the beauty of many of the posters of Tasmania, particularly those that show off places like Cradle Mountain and the Walls of Jerusalem. Yet at the start of this decade I noticed that one of these was dying by the highway—the only place where a highway goes near pencil pines in the world. Consequent investigations have found that there is a phytophthora. A rootrot germ is attacking those trees which apparently comes from alpine areas in the Northern Hemisphere, maybe America. It was not thought that phytophthora would touch alpine regions until now. The threat of this is enormous—that is, the extinction of the species.

If you go to 1,200 metres elevation on the Lake Highway above Liffey you will find barricades and fences, and beautiful little picnic spots that were a past delight to people from Launceston and elsewhere are now blocked off. The quarantine services are trying to prevent the spread of this disastrous blight on the highlands of Tasmania, which probably got in on somebody's boots or on somebody's machinery. We have to be able to put in effective prevention, because otherwise it is not just environmental disaster but economic disaster that comes out of such a blight, such an exotic pest, getting into our wonderful environment here in Australia. That is what this bill goes some way towards preventing.

Debate interrupted.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Reynolds) —Order! It being 12.45 p.m., we will now move to non-controversial legislation.