Page 2668 - Week 07 - Thursday, 2 August 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Similarly, it is extremely important, in order to keep the scheme workable, for all sales or transactions of animals to be reflected in their tags, and for any identifying information to reflect the most current and correct information. There are a range of provisions in this bill that create penalties for the various situations that might arise if this information is not kept up to date. The bill requires the relevant director-general to keep a register of all stock. This must be kept up to date.
Having said all that, this is clearly very important updating legislation for this sector in our community. The Greens will be supporting this bill today.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Minister for Planning and Land Management and Minister for Urban Renewal) (4.37), in reply: I thank members for their contribution to today’s debate on the bill. I am pleased to talk about the Animal Diseases Amendment Bill 2018. The bill makes a number of amendments to the Animal Diseases Act 2005. These amendments extend implementation in the ACT of the national livestock identification system, known as the NLIS, for the identification and traceability of livestock.
I wish to explain the importance of the NLIS for biosecurity, how it impacts on the rural sector in the ACT, and the limitations in our current legislation.
The purpose of this bill is to extend the application of the NLIS to sheep, goats and pigs in the ACT. At present, our legislation requires the application of NLIS only to cattle.
The bill makes it mandatory to identify these animals with a permanent identifier, and to record their movements. The bill also requires that movement and transaction information about cattle, sheep and goats is uploaded electronically to the NLIS database. A future amendment will be made requiring pig records to be uploaded to the NLIS database once the New South Wales regulation is finalised. This will allow for cross-border consistency in NLIS requirements with respect to pigs.
These measures are being introduced for the improvement of biosecurity in the ACT. Biosecurity is a high priority, essential for animal disease control and ensuring food security and market access for our primary producers.
Australia is free from many agricultural and aquatic pests and diseases. Our clean and green reputation is a major trading advantage, so an animal disease outbreak or chemical residue incident could cripple the livestock industry and lead to the collapse of export markets.
The ability to effectively trace stock is critical in an emergency animal disease response. This was most recently demonstrated in 2017 with the blue-tongue virus incident in Victoria where property identification codes and the NLIS database were instrumental in tracing animal movements and tracking surveillance activities. They provided vital information that helped to determine the extent of the problem and informed the response plan.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video