ADJOURNMENT

Mr PASIN (Barker) (16:28): Communities in Barker are asking serious questions about bird flu, and they deserve serious answers. Since bird flu was detected in a wild greater crested tern at Robe, I have attended community information sessions at Robe and at Port MacDonnell. I've also attended a briefing here in Parliament House.

So I've listened carefully to the experts, and, despite all these briefings and information sessions, there are still too many unanswered questions. People in coastal communities are being told the risk to human health is low, and that's reassuring, but telling people not to worry is not the same thing as failing to answer their questions. In communities where many households rely on rainwater, people want clear and unequivocal advice about whether their water remains safe when infected wild birds may be present on roofs or in the catchment area otherwise.

What should people do if they find a dead bird on their property? Who is responsible for collecting it? How quickly will it be collected?

These are practical questions. They deserve practical and detailed answers. I'm also concerned about the question being raised by our poultry growers.

Local growers have raised concerns with me about preparedness, communication, compensation and what happens on a farm if bird flu is detected. Compensation needs to be spread more widely, rather than just being paid to the big end of town. Growers and farmers are asking who carries the cost of the clean-up and if they'll be compensated for their losses and for the costs of getting the farm back into production.

These aren't theoretical questions; farmers are living with this uncertainty every day. They go directly to livelihoods. They go directly to food production and biosecurity.

And I don't want to see this threat talked down simply because dealing with it properly is difficult or, in fact, expensive. We know governments can mobilise significant resources when biosecurity threats are treated as a priority. The people of the Riverland, who I have the great privilege of representing, have seen this firsthand in dealing with fruit fly incursion.

For many years, enormous effort and resources have gone into surveillance, into eradication, into movement restrictions and into community education. I've strongly supported those efforts because fruit fly threatens growers and it threatens market access, and an industry as important as citrus to an electorate as strong as Barker's is worth defending. But people on the Limestone Coast, a completely separate part of the greatest electorate on earth, are entitled to ask this question: where is the equivalent urgency when it comes to bird flu?

I'm not suggesting these two biosecurity threats are identical. They're very, very different. But I am asking whether the level of surveillance, communication, resourcing and practical support that is offered to citrus growers and the communities throughout the Riverland matches that which is being offered to coastal communities along and around the Limestone Coast, who are facing bird flu now.

Barker is an agricultural powerhouse. We have commercial poultry, internationally significant wetlands and coastal environments, and communities that depend on agriculture and, importantly, tourism, which is often forgotten in the bird flu discussions. We can't afford complacency.

People aren't asking me for alarmism; they're asking questions, for transparency and a response that's proportionate to the risk. Their questions are reasonable, and they need accurate and timely answers. Until those questions are properly answered, I, for one, will keep asking them.