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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-04 Daily Xml
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Varroa Mite

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (Leader of the Opposition) (14:32): Supplementary: my question to the minister was regarding the applications for hives within 25 kilometres of a known varroa detection and the individual assessment that would be used—the risk assessment that PIRSA use—to allow those hives into the state. So can the minister please inform the chamber what underpins those assessments and the number of applications that her department has received, approved or declined? And, again, is the minister confident that her department is well resourced to respond to these increasing biosecurity incursions and, if not, has she made a formal request to the Treasurer?

The PRESIDENT: Minister, you choose to answer?

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development, Minister for Forest Industries) (14:33): Thank you, Mr President. First of all, it is important to note that the hives that have come in from Queensland and have had the detection of varroa mite were not from an area with a known varroa outbreak. We have had additional varroa officers who have been employed over recent months—I would have to check exactly; I know I announced it here in the chamber at one stage when the new varroa officers were being appointed—who have been able to spend a lot of their time travelling the state, providing workshops and providing education to beekeepers.

My feedback is that that has been well received. A good number of beekeepers certainly feel far more equipped to be able to deal with varroa now that it is here than they did 12 or 18 months ago. It was inevitable that varroa mite would get here eventually. When it was determined that it was no longer feasible to eradicate and move to management, that was expected and I haven't heard anyone yet, apart from the member for Chaffey, say that it was anything other than inevitable, such is the nature of a mite that, essentially, hitches a ride on bees, and bees of course move around independently.

I do think it is worth mentioning that in various media the member for Chaffey, presumably in consultation with the Leader of the Opposition here in this place, has suggested that, apparently, more should have been done to keep varroa out of South Australia. The only way to interpret that is that the member for Chaffey is advocating for no hives to come into South Australia: that is the only way to stop or even attempt to stop varroa mite coming into the state. As I have said, that would have brought the almond industry to its knees, it would have brought multiple horticultural industries to their knees and in fact destroyed a good part of South Australia's economy because they are reliant on pollination services.

The requirements to come into South Australia are robust. Those opposite often talk about having inflexible red tape, yet here they are now suggesting, implying, that to have any kind of ability to do something that is not necessarily ticking every box, using alternative risk management strategies, is somehow problematic.

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