MOTIONS

Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (17:10): Right now, the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is considering applications for the importation of pineapples and bananas in particular—fresh goods that, if approved, could have devastating effects on Australia's farm sustainability and would be a massive biosecurity risk. You must ask yourself: Why are we even entertaining this?

Who does it benefit? It certainly doesn't benefit the farmer. It certainly doesn't benefit the regional communities that grow these crops, particularly with respect to jobs.

Mr Katter: As always, it doesn't benefit the consumer, either. Ms SHARKIE: And it doesn't benefit the end buyer, as the member for Kennedy just said. It can only benefit the supermarkets and the ability for them to increase their margins.

It's not that they particularly sell the goods cheaper when they're imported; they're just increasing their margins. Let's look at pineapples. For the pineapple industry, there is a federal proposal by the department to allow fresh, decrowned pineapples imported from India and Indonesia.

Australian pineapple growers face high compliance, environmental and labour expenses, because pineapples take 20 months to grow and are largely harvested by hand. How could our growers possibly compete with Indonesia and India on a product that has such a high labour input? Let's think about the diseases and exotic pests.

The draft assessment identifies eight quarantine pests linked to imports from Indonesia and India—specific threats such as trilobite scale and six mealybug species such as the papaya and grey pineapple mealybug and cotton thrips. There are also chemical limitations because growers note that Australia lacks registered chemicals to combat many of these foreign pests if they spread locally.

Then, of course, there's market displacement. The Australian pineapple growers association warned that cheaper imports could displace domestic fruit and threaten rural jobs. There are 35 million pineapples grown across Queensland at a value of around $80 million, so protecting this industry is crucial.

If we look at bananas, as the member for Kennedy mentioned, that too has got a proposal in front of it, and that would be to import bananas. That would be potentially devastating for our nation—not just for Queenslanders who grow the crop but for the rest of us that enjoy eating bananas. Exotic diseases from regions like the Philippines could introduce devastating illnesses to our crops such as moko disease and black sigatoka.

We know that there is no zero risk. Industry groups like the Australian Banana Growers' Council maintain that quarantine and inspection protocols can never reduce import risk completely to zero. Bananas are a huge industry for us—$1.3 billion annually, 540 growers and 18,000 jobs across Queensland, New South Wales, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

So why are we doing this? The member for Kennedy raised the prawn industry and white spot. You might say, 'Why is the member for Mayo talking about this?' Well, I care about agriculture in my community, and I can tell you that in South Australia we have seen the impacts of when there have been imports—often cheap imports—and the devastating impact on our farms.

Mr Katter: Citrus— Ms SHARKIE: If we look at citrus in South Australia, we had cheap imports in the 90s and early 2000s of juice concentrate that came from Brazil. That had a massive, devastating impact, and it made juicing of our own product largely uneconomical. Then, of course, there are the biosecurity threats, as the member for Kennedy raised, with respect to citrus canker and citrus greening disease.

We need to look after Australian farmers. We need to put Australian farmers first. Now, even entertaining the idea with respect to pineapples and bananas is not doing that.

I would also just mention, away from horticulture, pork. Right now, try and find Australian bacon on our supermarket shelves. Around 75 per cent is imported.

We have cheap importation of our pork. If it doesn't have a bone in it, it's largely imported. Why do we do that?

I don't know, because it's no good for our pork industry, and it's no good for our farmers. They are on their knees. Australia must think about what happened during COVID-19.

We rely on Australian farmers. We must support them better.