STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator CANAVAN (Queensland—Leader of the Nationals) (13:41): I'm sure as the weather gets warmer that many of us may enjoy a beautiful, fresh Australian pineapple, but many would not know that that great Australian industry is at risk from the Labor Party's plan to import pineapples from India and Indonesia before the minister right now. There's a well-developed plan at the moment within the Labor government to bring in pineapples from India and Indonesia and to do so in ways that put at risk the safety, health and viability of our great Australian pineapple industry.
This weekend, my local town of Yeppoon will celebrate Pinefest, a wonderful festival of a great Australian industry. Yeppoon and the Capricorn Coast account for about a third of our pineapples here in Australia, and I'm very proud to always go out and see the great work that those farmers do. This import plan puts at risk their livelihoods and all their jobs in it because India and Indonesia have diseases in their pineapple industry that are not here and could put our industry at grave risk, including diseases like exploding pineapple disease.
That's what it's called. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be sitting around the Christmas table and having a pineapple explode. It doesn't seem particularly fun for me, but it will be much, much worse for our pineapple industry if those sorts of diseases come here.
Extraordinarily—that disease's technical name is heart rot—the government is saying to the pineapple industry, 'Don't worry, we've already got a form of heart rot here,' but it's a mild form that doesn't involve exploding incidents. There are other strains of this disease overseas in India and Indonesia that the government would be exposing us to if they let this in.
Today, I stood with the pineapple industry to start a campaign, Protect Our Pineapples, and we have given a bottle of beautiful, fresh Australian pineapple juice to every Labor MP. I know another backflip would be hard to swallow for the Labor Party, but it will make it much sweeter to go down if you just scrap this plan to import pineapples from India and Indonesia— (Time expired)