APPROPRIATION BILL
Consideration in Detail (Cognate Debate)
Appropriation Bill
State Development and Regional Industries Committee, Report
Mr PERRETT (Gympie—LNP) (3.17 pm): I rise to speak on the estimates report of the State
Development and Regional Industries Committee with a focus on agriculture, fisheries and forestry.
Queenslanders deserve answers about DAF’s work culture, biosecurity threats, staffing levels and its
impact on the capacity of the department to deliver, the war against fire ants, drought assistance, skills
and labour shortages, asset sales from the agricultural colleges, AgTech, industry best practice, feral
pests initiatives and registered biosecurity entities. They deserve answers about grants and criteria for
specific organisations, QRIDA, disaster recovery funding and Rural Economic Development Grants
programs. They deserve answers about the value of name-changing exercises, fisheries reforms,
vessel monitoring, marine pests, shark control, timber supply shortages caused by successive policy
failures, the ag visa and labour shortages.
As other departmental budgets boast record spends and staff numbers, DAF is going backwards.
Budget and staff cuts are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; they impact service delivery. The budget
and service delivery cuts make it clear that the agriculture minister is not heard around the cabinet table.
At a time when biosecurity issues pose a significant risk, it is concerning that DAF’s biosecurity
department has no additional staffing. It has been going backwards. Since 2015, animal welfare and
biosecurity inspector positions have reduced by 13, from 64 to 51. In May we learned that the
government had also failed to fill five vacant departmental positions. The budget was another missed
opportunity to address biosecurity threats from Japanese encephalitis, lumpy skin disease and
foot-and-mouth disease or FMD. Following questioning, the minister assured us that the government
can handle an outbreak despite staff cuts. When pressed on the issue, especially on the threat of FMD,
the minister boasted that ‘Queensland is well prepared in terms of biosecurity’.
However, less than two weeks later the Premier announced on Twitter an extra 10 biosecurity
officers. Those 10 positions would not even match the staffing levels of 2015 and within a few hours it
became 15. The Premier’s announcement made the minister’s boast a hollow one, designed to avoid
addressing the substance of being prepared for biosecurity threats. The minister is notorious for being
slow to act on biosecurity issues and fails to plan. The minister provided no real answers on whether
DAF has undertaken any modelling on the impact of foot-and-mouth disease. Given that all
cloven-hoofed animals are susceptible to FMD, the government does not even know how many feral
pigs are in Queensland or their geographic spread.
That provides some insight into why the war on fire ants is being lost and why the government’s
solution is to simply change the narrative from fire ant ‘eradication’ to ‘suppression’. While the
government has changed to a watered-down narrative, DAF’s website has just announced that another
60 suburbs have been added to biosecurity zones. Two days before estimates, the minister answered
a question from me by saying that fire ants had not spread because of this year’s floods and that the
floods ‘would have reduced the likelihood that fire ants have been successful in rafting to new areas.’
Again, DAF’s website contradicts the minister, stating—
Fire ants are also known to spread during flood-like conditions … They have the ability to survive flood waters by linking their
bodies together to form rafts.
Ignorance is dangerous and expensive. DAF is still spending millions to finalise the future of formerly
held agricultural college assets.
The government still refuses to conduct a regulatory impact statement on the fisheries reform
process. Industry concerns with the reform process are widely known and include the significant mental
health effects on many small and family businesses and operators. Despite government claims of
concern about mental health issues, it refuses to acknowledge the adverse mental health effects of its
fisheries reform process. Peter Coaldrake’s report raised concerns about the culture of this government
and an integrity system that, from the top down, is not meeting public expectations. Concerns remain
about an ongoing culture of cover-ups and obstruction in DAF, with the latest ones raised by the east
coast Spanish mackerel fishery working group.
Construction is being impacted by a serious timber shortage. The long-term supply chain
implications are the culmination of failed forestry policy. Successive Labor governments have
significantly reduced native timber plantations. The Premier announced a two-year study to identify
future sustainable actions. It is almost a year overdue and the minister is not taking any action. Again it
reflects a culture of announcements based on how things look and not how they are. Estimates
reconfirm that the government is slow to act because it cannot properly plan and that, for it, governing
is a cynical exercise in massaging announcements that take precedence over delivery
