Senator TROETH (8:12 PM) —The Quarantine Amendment Bill 1998 is a major advancement, ensuring that Australia has an appropriate regulatory framework into the next century. This bill is essential for the protection of our vital agricultural industries and our environment from the introduction of diseases and pests and for the sustained growth in competitiveness of our agricultural exports. The bill provides a framework for tighter border controls to reflect the extreme importance of quarantine. New powers include the power to order the re-export of goods to ensure that quarantine risks remain offshore and a more appropriate emergency power to ensure a rapid response to the entry of new diseases and pests.

The bill provides a more efficient approach to the performance of quarantine by providing a more flexible and updated approach to the treatment of imported goods. The bill replaces the prescriptive approaches to treating goods and allows for the selection of the most appropriate treatment for an import. It also provides a better framework for properly monitored industry involvement in quarantine activities undertaken on a commercial basis by the private sector.

The delegation powers have been rewritten in a more modern style, but these new provisions do not have a significantly different effect from the current delegation provisions in the act. They are also not significantly different from other delegation provisions used elsewhere in Commonwealth legislation. The rewritten provisions do not change the doctrine of responsible government, which is that a minister of the Crown is answerable for the actions of the department of state for which he or she has ministerial responsibility.

Australia has traditionally followed a highly conservative approach to the management of quarantine risk. In its response to the Nairn review of quarantine, the government said that Australia must continue to practice a managed risk quarantine policy. The bill introduces the concept of level of quarantine risk. The introduction of the concept of level of quarantine risk explicitly into the legislation makes it clear that the implementation of our quarantine policy is risk based. We have international obligations as a member of the World Trade Organisation to base our quarantine measures on an objective scientific analysis of the risk.

The bill has been subject to scrutiny by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee and the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee. Both committees support the Senate's passage of the bill.

Debate on this bill was interrupted on 22 April this year. In the intervening months, the government has reviewed a couple of aspects of the bill. As a result, I foreshadow some amendments: firstly, on the referral by the Director of Quarantine of certain decisions to the environment minister; and, secondly, on the position of Christmas Island. I understand that the amendments have not been circulated early enough for honourable senators to properly consider them. As a result, I am happy for the debate on this bill to be adjourned so that those amendments can be considered in a proper time frame. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that consideration of the bill in the committee of the whole be made an order of the day for the next day of sitting.