HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Member Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-11-28 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Question Time

Minister for Primary Industries

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:12): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier have confidence in the Minister for Primary Industries? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: Today, tomato growers, many of them here today with us, have stood on the steps of parliament to protest against the government's handling of the crisis. Hundreds of jobs have been lost. Our growers have lost millions of dollars in revenue and have faced, frustratingly, long test delays since tomato brown rugose fruit virus was first detected in August.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:13): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. The short answer to his question is: absolutely, without qualification. Minister Scriven is a diligent and hardworking minister. I feel very grateful that she is part of the cabinet.

In respect to the substantive issue of the tomato virus, which has been causing a great degree of pain and loss to a number of people who have been affected, the government is very conscious of the fact that the adverse outcomes of this disease have been very real. I must say that sympathies might be shallow on one level, but my thoughts are very much with the hardworking people in this industry. They are hardworking family businesses. They employ people, who themselves are individually quite hardworking. We have seen a number of workers redistributed who have lost their jobs, particularly at the three sites that have been most adversely affected.

So, I do not diminish for a moment the legitimate suffering these organisations, these people, are going through. To that end, it is important that the government's response to the virus is commensurate with the degree of difficulty that those people are experiencing. The government has sought to take a number of actions ever since this virus first emerged. There have been elements that have gone well and elements that have been more frustrating.

One of the things that became clear early on is that the lack of a domestic testing regime in the state of South Australia for this particular virus was a deficiency. The samples had to be sent to interstate jurisdictions, particularly Victoria and New South Wales, and that brought some complexity. As a result, SARDI got to work as quickly as possible to establish our own testing compatibility at the Waite campus; that has now been stood up. That is the first of its type. Naturally, the analogy of flying the plane and putting it together at the same time I think is appropriate here. They had to establish a testing capacity. They had to establish a testing capacity, and then start to process as many tests as possible.

Currently, I am advised, there is an average waiting period for the testing period—and it's an average, so there will be some that are more than this and there will be some that are less than this—of anything from 14 to 16 days. That's an eternity. That's an eternity because a 14 to 16-day wait in order to be able to get access to the two markets that require this additional testing, being Western Australia and Queensland, is a long time because two weeks in fresh produce is everything; that's business.

We know that the other markets are now open and able to send their produce too, which is good. Queensland and Western Australia retain this requirement, so the need for that testing regime to be sped up is acute. I know that's what the team at Waite are working hard on. The testing options available in Victoria and New South Wales are maintained, but we do need to see that testing turnaround time improve. The test itself actually only takes around about 48 hours. The problem is the backlog and the capacity, and it takes a while to churn that through. We do need to address that.

There are other areas that the government is seeking to address, not least of which is seeking to advocate to both Queensland and Western Australia that they adopt a more progressive approach to the restrictions in the same way that we've seen from other jurisdictions in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT