Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:11): Supplementary, sir: is the Premier satisfied that Perfection Fresh has been afforded procedural fairness with respect to orders made by this government on 23 September 2024?

The SPEAKER: That's not a supplementary; you were reading it.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:12): Well, I think the paramount consideration that we would expect our officials within PIRSA to have here is to make timely decisions to protect the industry. Of course, those sorts of decisions need to be made in a way that is entirely lawful. We have no reason to believe that is not case.

The act provides very specific authorities and powers to our biosecurity officials in order to protect the industry more broadly. I should make the point that, given the fact that we send so much of our produce interstate, we aren't just a supplier domestically for the South Australian metropolitan market or regional market—it's for the rest of the country. That is to say, because of that the rest of the country pays attention to every action that our biosecurity officials are undertaking. If interstate counterparts see a lethargic response from PIRSA or department officials, then they will be making far more adverse decisions to shut the state's industry down and stop the supply going interstate.

We have already seen restrictions put in place by Queensland and Western Australia. We want to curtail the number of instances where interstate officials are banning South Australian produce that is perfectly safe and healthy from being able to be exported to other markets. So the decisions that are made by our biosecurity-empowered officials under the act need to be timely so as to protect the rest of the industry. That might be interpreted by some as not applying procedural fairness. The opposite could be true, because a lack of procedural fairness would be bestowed upon everybody else in the industry who has been unaffected if a decision isn't made in a timely manner.