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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-10-15 Daily Xml
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Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (Leader of the Opposition) (14:43): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Primary Industries on the topic of the tomato brown rugose fruit virus.

Leave granted.

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI: During a PIRSA update in Virginia late last week, growers were told that a SARDI testing facility was in the process of being accredited in Waite and approval was imminent, and that sampling would be required by growers in certain circumstances—for instance, if they were wanting to send their tomatoes to Western Australia or Queensland.

However, the department also announced that individual growers would have to pay the full amount for that testing, and they were told it would cost approximately $100 per sample. To put that in perspective, PIRSA testing processes involve 300 leaves per greenhouse, 10 leaves per sample, so 30 samples per greenhouse at a cost of $100 per sample. If you do the math, that is a $3,000 cost to growers per greenhouse to get their crops sampled so that they can sell their tomatoes to domestic markets. For a medium-sized grower of 10 glasshouses it is potentially $30,000 per annum to satisfy government compliance arrangements.

My question to the minister is: will she as Minister for Primary Industries commit to subsidising the testing requirement for growers to satisfy government compliance arrangements and, if not, why not?

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, Minister for Forest Industries) (14:45): I thank the honourable member for her question, even though it is vastly inaccurate on such a number of different matters. First of all—

The Hon. N.J. Centofanti: Are you kidding? I was there.

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN: We have an interjection that the Leader of the Opposition was there. I also had a member of my office there in addition to, of course, PIRSA being the ones that were running the grower information session. They were not advised, according to my information, that they would have to pay for the cost. My understanding is that a grower asked how much it costs to do testing. That doesn't mean that the grower will be bearing the cost.

Secondly, the honourable member is referring to such cost as 'to satisfy government compliance arrangements', which clearly indicates that she has a fundamental misunderstanding of why the testing is required. The testing is required to be able to enable market access. If she had been listening to discussions over the recent weeks about this virus, a very important topic that affects so much of our industry here in South Australia, she would be aware that different states have had various different restrictions on access to their markets. New South Wales, for example, has agreed for our growers to be able to send to them if they are able to show proof of freedom from the virus or be able to show negative test results. So this is a market access issue.

In terms of paying, as I said it was not said at that meeting, according to my information, that growers would have to pay, and in fact the government has made a decision that they will not have to pay—that that cost will be absorbed by PIRSA.

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