Fruit Fly

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:15): My question is to the minister responsible for agriculture and biosecurity. Does the minister believe that the 50 million fruit fly pupae to be produced at the new sterile fruit fly facility at Port Augusta will be enough to cover the national demand?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (15:15): It's 50 million a week. That's 50 million a week more than we've got at the moment, so that's a pretty good start. That sterile insect facility that we went up and turned the first sod on the other week is a tremendous boost for agriculture, not just here in South Australia. Of course, South Australia is the only mainland state that is fruit fly free, but we want to make sure that we can help those on our borders to the east in particular where fruit flies have come into record numbers. We want to make sure that we can go and join the battle on that side.

A lot of people have been involved in this. This isn't just the government. We're the ones putting up the money to build the facility. It's a $3.8 million or $4 million facility and we're putting up $3 million of that, so it's not a decision that we've taken lightly, but we're also working with our researchers at SARDI, the universities around Australia and the horticultural groups around Australia as well. The exact number of these fruit fly we will produce each week—and it's a big number—is something they would have all worked on.

I must congratulate the architects, Phillips/Pilkington, who have done a terrific job on the design of the sterile insect facility. They also built the $20 million Waite plant genome accelerator, so they're very good at this sort of stuff. It was terrific to be up there with so many members of the opposition, including Senator Anne Ruston, the member for Chaffey, and the member for Stuart (it's in your patch). There will be 10 full-time jobs associated with this for people in the local area, plus all those building jobs over the next eight or nine months.

Of course, we had the member for Hammond there and the member for Flinders, as well as Mr Ridgway from another place. It was good to see the bipartisan support. If you think we should have more than 50 million flies a week, let me know the basis for that and we will keep working together on that one, but I reckon 50 million is not a bad start.