Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (15:50): I rise to support the Biosecurity Bill 2024. I believe this bill had its genesis back when we were in government in 2019; it was being formed up. It is absolutely vital for our primary industries—for the health of South Australians, in fact—that we do get biosecurity right. I note it is quite a complex bill and hopefully it will lead how we manage biosecurity into the future for better outcomes.

As I indicated, this bill is there to ensure South Australia's biosecurity system remains effective, contemporary and adaptable for future needs. A new Biosecurity Bill has been drafted to update and improve the existing legislation.

The bill proposes to ensure protection from pests and diseases that threaten our economy, terrestrial and aquatic environments, or may affect public amenities, communities and infrastructure, and also to provide South Australia with a modern, flexible and responsive biosecurity framework. It will bring consistency to the management of biosecurity across industries by incorporating a number of biosecurity-related legislation. It will also promote shared responsibility for biosecurity among government, industry and the community.

A technical directions paper in consultation was performed under the previous Marshall Liberal government in 2020, and feedback received was compiled in a consultation summary on the building of a new biosecurity act for South Australia. Stakeholders subsequently had the opportunity to provide further feedback based on the summary. Submissions from these initial consultations were considered when developing the draft biosecurity bill. The draft bill was released for public consultation over an eight-week period, from 1 August 2023, on the YourSAy website. This feedback was further considered and some updates made before the Biosecurity Bill 2024 was introduced to the parliament in the other place.

The creation of a select committee to inquire into the bill was discussed by our side with industry bodies and raised with crossbenchers due to the scope of the changes and in response to the concerns raised by industry. It was raised with the opposition and crossbenchers in regard to the government's response to the recent outbreak of tomato brown rugose fruit virus. Following consultation with stakeholders and industry bodies, the feedback was a recommendation that the bill be progressed in order to update the legislation to meet current conditions and consolidate the state's biosecurity efforts into a modern framework.

We on this side continue to advocate for an independent review into the government's response to exotic disease outbreaks and, if the minister refuses to commission an independent inquiry, we will work with the crossbench in an attempt to establish a parliamentary inquiry.

In progressing the bill, however, fine details within the bill were sought to provide clarity and strengthen the proposed legislation to support industry. Some amendments that were moved in the other place did not make it through here. Some of those involved looking for clarity around third parties accessing land for primary production who could be assumed to present a biosecurity risk and what steps may need to be taken to reduce that risk.

Another amendment was put up by the Hon. Nicola Centofanti regarding employers' liability for employee offences, which would remove the liability of employers in situations where a security breach has been committed by an employee and where that employee has directly contravened instructions when committing an offence. There was also another amendment around using software or artificial intelligence to automate decision-making. As written, the legislation does grant the ability for a computer program or AI model to be used in order to make automatic determinations.

A couple of amendments did get through that obviously we support here, that are in the legislation as transmitted from the other place. An amendment to do with clause 306 is the creation of further biosecurity levies. It is around regulations, notices and instruments, that any additional levies imposed through the bill will require consultation with all relevant stakeholders and a ministerial review before gaining approval. It is pleasing to note that that amendment came through.

Another amendment in regard to the Dog Fence Board is that the proposed legislation ensure the entirety of current Dog Fence Board provisions through the biosecurity act. However, a provision for the Dog Fence Board to raise contributions in clause 21 of schedule 2, which despite being present in the original Dog Fence Act since 1946 has never been enacted, seems a point of contention in the updated legislation by the Local Government Association.

This amendment seeks to retain the provisions in clause 21 for the raising of contributions through local councils when required, but attempts to tighten the situation in which this can occur and ensures the provision must have ministerial approval and approval from the Treasurer of the day. Hence, this measure would only be enacted following consultation with the Local Government Association and the approval of both the minister and the Treasurer. This amendment has been consulted on with the Local Government Association and the Dog Fence Board, seeking consensus on this provision.

Industry groups were sent a copy of the bill and asked for feedback and position statements. Those consulted include Primary Producers South Australia, Grain Producers SA, the SA Dairyfarmers' Association, the Dairy Industry Association of Australia, the South Australian Wine Industry Association, the Wine Grape Council of South Australia, Wool Producers Australia, Egg Farmers of Australia, AUSVEG SA, SA Chamber of Fruit and Vegetables, Fruit Producers SA, Summerfruit SA, Pork SA and Livestock SA.

As I indicated and as a landholder, it is absolutely serious that we get our biosecurity protocols in place. We have recently seen how the breakout of the tomato virus was managed. I am sure some of that was managed well, but there did seem to be protocols in regard to the reporting of outbreaks, the testing, some of the false positives that came through, and the lack of testing facilities. I acknowledge Macro Meats—Ray Borda's company—for getting another lab online to test for these.

I refer specifically to the major growers and the nurseries involved in the tomato industry, where it is reported that up to 500 people lost their jobs in regard to bans on either selling produce or obviously seedlings to be used to grow tomatoes into the future. We certainly believe that the government needs to have its own review of its practices in this space, because we had producers reporting to us inefficiencies and issues with how it was managed and you can easily see why people got upset because this is their livelihood that is on the line. When you get told you are shutting down and if there is even one false positive it can have not just a huge effect on the industry but a major effect—possibly a career-ending effect—on that grower involved in the tomato industry.

There are some very sad stories with regard to this about the impact it has had on growers. Yes, I do acknowledge sometimes you have to be hard in the management of potential threats, but you have to make sure that you have got the people, the preparedness and the systems in place so that you can get the right outcomes, because, as I said, this could mean the end of people in the industry.

Certainly there is a whole range of pests that we need to deal with and there will be more pests coming as time goes by. Certainly varroa mite is something we need to be very mindful of in the honey and bee industry and with the number of plants that need interaction with bees so that they can pollinate properly to grow fruit or almonds—especially almonds. There are schemes where bees are basically run on a commercial basis throughout the almond orchards to get that pollination in place. There are many thousands of hectares of those that have gone in over the years, but it is not just them; we have to be mindful that there have been outbreaks just across the border from South Australia.

Another thing that we have seen recently is the abalone virus threat and certainly the Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome (POMS) which has had a significant effect in the oyster industry over time and the restrictions that have had to be put in place to make sure that seed stock were not brought in from an area that was affected by POMS. It does create serious issues for these multimillion dollar industries and for the livelihoods of people who are doing their best not just to put food on the table but to support the economy here in South Australia.

Fruit fly seems to be something that we are having to deal with forever at the minute. There were outbreaks not just throughout the city but throughout the Riverland, and the member for Chaffey will be able to give more information about what happened in the Riverland, or what is happening in the Riverland. It is something we have to be very mindful of so that we can keep that fruit fly free status into the future. I know we as a government spent many, many millions of dollars in keeping the orange army involved not just to let people know of their obligations under the restrictions and managing fruit fly but what they had to do legally to comply. Certainly, and it is across both colours of government, people have been upset with the tough conditions on the border. I get it. You can have an apple in the car, and I think the fine is several hundred dollars—three or four hundred dollars.

Mr Whetstone: $405.

Mr PEDERICK: It is $405, I am informed. There are plenty of signs, plenty of warning, and you just have to make it obvious that you have to look after not just industry but the health of South Australians and the South Australian economy.

Certainly, another issue that we have been aware of, well, all the time but in the not too distant past, a couple of years ago, was the threat of foot-and-mouth disease coming to Australia. This would be absolutely devastating to our sheep and cattle industries here in this country. As I have indicated before, I happened to go to Bali at that time, so I encountered the restrictions on the way in, which were not too bad. I walked through the rubber mats with the liquid on them. Before the group that I was with came home, we had toothbrushes out. I said, 'You clean out every skerrick from whatever shoes you wore, or you leave the shoes behind,' because I certainly did not want to be the one responsible for bringing it into the country.

These things have major economic impacts on our industry if they come in, especially something like foot-and-mouth disease. It is why we need to keep spending so much money to make sure that we do have those biosecurity outcomes with the other disease threats across the board.

Other things that have caused a great impact on Australian more generally are cane toads. They were brought in to fix one problem and created their own problem. They have been marching across Queensland and the Northern Territory. Trying to find a way to eliminate them has been a major issue for this country and those states and territories involved.

Something that is affecting the egg market across Australia are outbreaks of avian flu interstate, where I think at least two million chickens have had to be destroyed. We certainly have a major chicken industry here in South Australia, not just in my electorate but up around Port Wakefield. Obviously, Ingham's processing in Adelaide and north of Adelaide is a vital industry here in South Australia.

In my electorate we have the major feed mill that Ingham's operate, putting many thousands of tonnes through every week and feeding the multitudes of sheds in the area. Each one of these sheds, which are up to 160 metres long, represents well over a $1 million investment, and there is a lot of compliance to put these sheds, these chicken farms, in place. They obviously have to have firefighting systems in place so that you can virtually save yourself. It is not just the fact of building sheds; you have to put in that water reticulation and make sure you have access to that water in the event that something goes wrong. We certainly hope it does not. Not far from my place, Ingham's have a breeder farm out the back of Yumali, which is a big part of the industry.

It is said that there is a truck on the freeway every 20 minutes carting chickens to the process plant in Adelaide. I have been having discussions with the council and am hopeful that there will be investment by Ingham's into the future locally at Murray Bridge so that we do not have to have that freight through to Adelaide and that the chickens can be processed locally. It is a major industry for my area and a major industry for this state, going across multiple electorates.

Certainly the pig industry is very mindful of biosecurity measures. I have many friends who are involved in the pig industry, the intense pig industry, and there is lots of animal welfare progress that has been made in how sows have their litters and the management of that and then the way the pigs are raised in the eco shelters into the future. It is probably a far more effective and efficient way to grow pigs, and certainly a more animal-friendly way, than to just have them directly in sheds. Obviously when they are born and farrowing, they need to have that extra protection.

It is not unlike the chicken industry, and I have visited both types of facilities. There are deep protocols in place for visitors to these plants and these growing facilities, obviously with mats soaked in disinfectant so that no diseases are brought on board. Certainly in regard to processing at the facility at Murray Bridge, they have truck-wash systems in place, essentially mats for the trucks like the mats the people need to walk through, to make sure that we keep that area disease free to keep that vital industry. They contract-process there for Coles. There are hundreds of millions of dollars invested across the state in the pig industry, a very vital industry for South Australia. And look, there's a little bit of overseas capital involved in some of this. We even have some Chinese investment in one of the piggeries at Coomandook.

So, in regard to all of our industries, whether it is the intensive industries, whether it is the broadacre industries, we cannot let our guard down. We need to know whichever government is in control has the back of the people and the producers of South Australia to make sure that we can keep up that food production to feed the world. We had our challenges during COVID, when we were in government, and as was said: we were building the plane as we flew the plane. There were lots of restrictions on the management. It was more about people then, which obviously is not part of this bill, but it just showed the level you can get to with working out the best ways to manage a threat to the community.

Certainly, we must be mindful. I know the figure of $18.5 billion has been mentioned that the agriculture industry in South Australia generated in 2022-23, but that is 18 months ago now. As I have indicated in this place before, we have just come out of what I believe to be the worst drought in over 100 years—in fact, some rainfall records have it at least at 110 years—and it has been a shocker.

I know that the family who operates my farm under a lease arrangement had the worst year they have ever had, and they are not alone by any means. There would be hundreds, thousands of stories across the state on the impact it had on people's incomes.

It does not matter whether you are broadacre or intense, it is because the input costs are so high. When you are in that dryland, broadacre environment, and whether it is running stock, whether it is cropping or both, you are under the pump, you are right under the pump. Some of the issues I believe that people had to interact with were these forecasts that were coming out of the Bureau of Meteorology. Some of these long-range forecasts were saying that we were going to get plenty of rain in September and things were going to be great, and farmers were going out spending hundreds of thousands of dollars minimum on nitrogen, whether liquid or urea, and guess what? It did not rain.

We had a shocker. Stem frost across the board, and it happened at my place and we have never seen it before. Cutting 80-foot windrows—what is that, about 25 metres of windrows—to get a decent windrow so you could get a roll of hay rolled up because otherwise if you cut it with a normal mower, you would not have had enough length of crop to rake it up and you would not have got anything.

But there were certainly some surprises for people who thought all was lost in September and October with some of the standing crops, and they were not huge returns, but I know one example of people with a canola crop where it went 850 kilos a hectare, which in a drought like that was just amazing, but a lot of crops yielded 200 or 300 kilos a hectare or less and people were literally scraping what they could of lentil crops off the ground to get something. I am well aware of bean crops at 200 kilos a hectare and less, and I know a lot of that was left in the paddock right around the state. The only good thing out of that is that it can become sheep feed.

But there is also the dire need for stock feed for those people with livestock enterprises. We saw the Aussie Hay Runners do multiple runs and that kept the core of people's livestock operations going. A lot of people either sold all their stock or got down to the vital core that they may be able to breed out of their core stock, their bulls and cows or their rams and their ewes, to build again into the future but it has had a severe impact on farming in this state. As I said, a lot of it is attributed to the high cost of inputs for people to operate.

There are only a couple of saving graces in this conversation around dryland agriculture which is that wool prices have not been too bad and livestock has not been too bad. But the thing is, once you sell the stock, you cannot get it back, and if you sold most of your breeding stock, you are going to take a long time—multiple years—to get that back to fruition. What I am saying is that we cannot do much about the weather, that is true, but we need to, as with what has been attempted here with the Biosecurity Bill, get things as good as we can for all of our primary producers, whether they be our intensive farming primary producers, the more broadacre primary producers and the like, and people who are running livestock.

We need to make sure that they can get the best outcome they can knowing that if there is a threat of any virus, any disease coming in, and they can be plant-borne diseases, that the legislation and the government of the day have their back because farmers in this state—well, farmers across the country but certainly in this state, the driest state in the driest continent—do a magnificent job.

I have said it here before, if it were not for the forward thinking and the technological advances that we have seen over the last 30 or 40 years, and the one-pass farming using glyphosate, or Roundup, which is the commercial term, and other chemicals to do that one-pass farming, conserving moisture at every instance—even with the poor crops that came off right across the state, people were straight out with their boom sprays to get rid of any bit of green that would suck moisture out of the opportunity for this year's crops. Farmers are still investing, but they are not investing too much, I can assure you, because the cheque books went into the office and most of them got locked up from September.

What I was getting at with those technological advances is if we had had a year like this last year's season 30 or 40 years ago we would have seen the old footage that we had back then where farms used to get cultivated multiple times—eight, nine or 10 times—and you would have had graders grading bitumen to get the dust off the roads. Thankfully, we were nowhere near that because of what farmers do through those advances, working in farming groups, working with consultants, and working with their own knowledge that they learn over time to make it better. They need to be rewarded for what they are doing, as I said, whether they are dryland operators or more intensive operators where they need to bring in feed and water.

We certainly support the Biosecurity Bill. We want to see that it gets enacted in the proper way. We would certainly like to see improvements into the future as to how threats are managed and to make sure that PIRSA is appropriately resourced and that there are procedures put in place so that some of the issues we saw with the tomato rugose virus can be eliminated to give producers the best outcomes. We need to make sure the national protocols are right. I know it is a fine balance between what producers want and what we need to do with disease management but we need to get it right so that we can all progress into the future and have a better time with disease management into the future. With those few words, I commend the bill.