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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-26 Daily Xml
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Yamba Quarantine Station

Mr BOYER (Wright) (15:29): Today, we witnessed a minister who was painfully out of his depth, a minister not across the detail of his portfolio, who has got away so far in this place by reciting what are now some very, very tired slogans. But you need more than a catchphrase to make it in this place.

As the member for Chaffey's signature policy—indeed, his brainchild—his zero tolerance policy on fruit fly, has slowly unravelled over the last few weeks, we have seen that at every stage his own personal insistence on commencing this policy before it was safe to do so put at risk not only the staff working at that quarantine station, not only the motorists travelling through the quarantine station, but also our very fruit fly free status.

How do we know this? We know because after waiting almost three months the department finally released hundreds of freedom of information documents that show in excruciating detail the train wreck that was the rushed implementation of this policy. These FOI documents contained the daily logs from the Yamba quarantine station, as written by the staff themselves at the station. These logs recorded every instance between the commencement of the zero tolerance policy, on 4 January, and July of this year, when that policy was suspended.

Under questioning in parliament earlier this year, the minister said that the zero tolerance policy was only suspended for 'a small period of time'—they are his own words. These documents show that between January and July it was actually suspended a staggering 477 times. That is 477 times that the so-called zero tolerance policy was not a zero tolerance policy at all. The most obvious question that arises now from this is: was the minister aware? These FOI documents tell us pretty clearly that he was.

In fact, his office had requested copies of these daily logs. Emails show his own staff asking to make sure that copies of these daily logs from the Yamba quarantine station were forwarded to the minister's office. It is becoming increasingly clear that the answer to the question about how many times the zero tolerance policy was actually suspended and why the minister told us it was only suspended for 'a short period of time' is that the minister just hoped this issue was going to go away.

The minister thought he could bat these questions away with his usual bluster, #RegionsMatter, and that these incendiary logbook entries would never actually see the light of day. I will give him a little bit of credit. The minister's agency and the minister's office have done everything in their power to stop these FOI documents from being released. In fact, the minister has still not released the FOI documents we requested from his own office. It is almost four months and they are still sitting on the minister's desk.

Let me tell you that we have had every single conceivable excuse. We have been told, 'The responsible staffer was unexpectedly called out of the office,' and, 'There were new clauses in the FOI Act that the responsible staff member had never had to use before,' and, 'We are personally driving the documents to your electorate office tomorrow'—that was three week ago, or, 'We will bring documents to your parliament office in the next couple of days'—that was two weeks ago, or, 'The documents are now with the chief of staff'—that was six days ago.

But what I know for certain is that the consistent theme through all the hundreds of documents we do have now is that the minister's own personal insistence that the zero tolerance policy commence before his own agency said it was safe to do so has put things at risk. It exposed motorists to risks—motorists who were stuck for almost an hour waiting in their cars in 40º heat.

It exposed staff to risk—staff who were dealing for hours on end with irate motorists who were unaware that they were going to be fined for having fruit and vegetables that in many, many cases they fully intended to declare, as they had done at that Yamba quarantine station for years and years. And it exposed our state to fruit fly infestation because the minister ignored the advice of Biosecurity SA to wait for all the necessary EPA approvals to be received so that all the fruit that was seized at that station could be disposed of safely.

As we have seen today, the minister still cannot tell this house or the South Australian public for how long bins full of rotting fruit were sitting around and when the bins were first emptied. I am not questioning the need for a response to a potential fruit fly outbreak, but the minister pushed blindly ahead, ignored advice from his department, ignored experts in Biosecurity SA and, in doing so, he actually put at risk our $1.28 billion industry.

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