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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-09-26 Daily Xml
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CITRUS INDUSTRY

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:17): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries a question about the citrus industry.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: Citrus Australia, SA Region, has raised a number of concerns, and two of its main priorities are increasing biosecurity and expanding the marketplace. Biosecurity is the single biggest threat the citrus industry faces, and the committee has stated that managing biosecurity risks is increasingly falling on growers who are already struggling with increased production costs. Threats of the deadly citrus disease huanglongbing has the potential to wipe out entire orchard and regions that become affected.

The committee has focused on lobbying the state government to do all it can to maintain South Australia's fruit fly status. Industry has also indicated that there is a strong need to look at the national fruit fly strategy developed in 2008 yet largely sat idle since being formed. Furthermore, as market opportunities increase to China, South Australian growers are disadvantaged by Chinese authorities not recognising the Riverland's fruit fly status. My questions are:

1. Does the minister believe that the National Fruit Fly Strategy needs to be reviewed, and what actions will the minister take to ensure that the national fruit fly strategy is well balanced and effective in South Australia's agricultural industry?

2. While the minister travels to China quite often, how will the minister ensure that South Australia's fruit fly status is recognised to all exporting markets, particularly China, which does not recognise South Australia's fruit fly free status?

3. What actions were taken by the minister, in conjunction with industry and relevant authorities, to address South Australia not being recognised as fruit fly free in China?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for State/Local Government Relations) (15:19): I thank the honourable member for her most important question. Our citrus industry is a very important industry to South Australia. It is obviously particularly important to the Riverland region—it has a very large focus there as a dominant industry—and not just to that region but to the whole of the state. Indeed, our biosecurity protections are, I think, a real testament to the very hardworking and diligent officers of PIRSA who work in the biosecurity section and other sections, who have worked very hard for many years to ensure that we have biosecurity measures in place that prevent the influx of fruit fly into this state. Where it ever does appear, it's eradicated immediately, and we have seen that these programs have been extremely successful over many years.

It's also a testament, on the other hand, to the industry itself because the responsibility is a shared one—not just with industry but with the community broadly as well. I particularly want to acknowledge the diligence and commitment of the citrus industry sector and horticulture industry generally. They have worked very hard, in cooperation with Biosecurity SA, to ensure that the biosecurity measures, public education measures, etc., and vigilance have occurred in an ongoing way.

As I said, it has been a real success story. We remain a fruit fly free state—the only mainland state to be fruit fly free. We continue to successfully run public education and information awareness programs, we continue with our security roadblock and checking arrangements, we also continue with our monitoring arrangements and trapping, etc., to ensure that we remain fruit fly free.

So, that's the contribution that we have made in the past and that's what we continue to do. I have spoken in this place on many occasions about the additional measures that we have undertaken since the changes to the biosecurity arrangements in Victoria and New South Wales. We have taken some additional measures here, and I have talked about those at length, so I'm sure that honourable members don't want me to go over all of that detail again.

In relation to the recent discussions with the industry, I met with an alliance group who had indicated a range of measures that the industry were looking at to improve their level of activity around fruit fly prevention. It was a very fruitful meeting—excuse the pun. We came to an agreement that our officers would continue to meet, that we would continue to work up a program whereby the industry would be able to identify priority areas for PIRSA's activity and that the industry would continue to identify activities it could also undertake.

The National Fruit Fly Strategy has been a considerable challenge. As with many things that we try to do nationally, the states and territories are ferociously independent, and unfortunately, as we have seen, not all jurisdictions view the approach to fruit fly prevention and eradication with the same level of commitment as South Australia. So, we continue to try to work with other states to ensure that they also invest in appropriate biosecurity measures.

I would certainly encourage the Hon. Jing Lee to correspond with her colleagues in the new federal Coalition government and urge them to pursue further development of the National Fruit Fly Strategy. I will certainly be continuing my efforts in relation to my activities on those federal ministerial councils.

In relation to the issue to do with China not recognising our fruit fly free status, I have written to the former federal minister (minister Fitzgibbon), raising issues of concern and requesting that the federal government continue their efforts to ensure that our fruit fly free status is recognised so that we don't have to implement unnecessary protection measures. I certainly took any opportunity I could whilst I was in China to raise that issue with officials as well, reminding them of our fruit fly free status and how it was an unnecessary impost to be requiring further protection activities on our citrus in particular.

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