Page 2541 - Week 07 - Thursday, 18 June 2009
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As members have discussed during their contribution to the debate on this bill, the bill amends the Animal Diseases Act 2005 to clarify the operation of aspects of the act and to facilitate the control of future outbreaks of animal diseases in the territory. I consider this a very important bill for a number of reasons: first, ensuring animal diseases do not breach the borders of our country is an important priority for all governments around Australia.
Here in Australia we are free of many of the diseases that inflict the rest of the planet. There are many reasons why it is necessary to control animal diseases or to stop them getting into Australia. These cover, of course, not only the health and wellbeing of our animals but also to protect people. There are some exotic diseases that can cross into human populations, such as rabies or mad cow disease, and, fortunately, Australia remains free of them. I draw the Assembly’s attention to the fact that Australian governments and industry groups have agreed plans to fight these and other diseases should they find their way to Australia.
But in addition to human and animal health concerns, we also have to ensure that animal diseases do not jeopardise Australia’s international trade. Animal disease outbreaks in one country are sometimes used by other countries to justify slapping import bans on the country where the disease has broken out. While sometimes these bans are justifiable if they are a genuine attempt to control the spread of the disease, sometimes they are nothing more than a form of back-door protectionism. Trade can be halted for some countries when a disease of significance spreads through their primary industries, and even when it does not. Only last week, 15 nations including Russia, China, Thailand, Indonesia and several Balkan nations banned pork imports from Mexico and the United States of America based on their concern about the spread of swine flu. This is despite medical expert opinion, indeed, all opionion, being that there is no link between pork products and the swine influenza.
I raise that example to show how tenuous trade can be between countries. Even when there is no good reason to prevent a product from being imported, bans sometimes are still put in place. In order to ensure that Australian producers are not adversely affected by any global animal disease outbreak, all governments of Australia need to ensure they take appropriate steps to ensure we can keep exotic animal diseases out of the country and to respond quickly and effectively if they do break out. Although the ACT’s international agricultural trade input is small, our impact on Australia’s international trade would be significant if we did not have the ability to detect, prevent and control an exotic animal disease outbreak in the ACT.
I mentioned on tabling this bill that the ACT is a signatory to the emergency animal disease response agreement. This response agreement between Australian governments and relevant industries outlines arrangements for emergency animal disease preparedness and responses to outbreaks of recognised diseases. The response agreement categorises a range of animal diseases and addresses cost sharing between Australian governments and industry for the control or eradication of each recognised disease. The proportion of costs borne by government or industry varies for each disease. The response agreement is underpinned by a number of AUSVET plans which provide the technical response to each disease.
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