Peter Gallagher

The same brown-shirts that daily lec­ture, prod, sniff and x-ray tourists and return­ing cit­i­zens at the bor­der will swarm all over the inno­cent fruit, no doubt push­ing the landed-price up to uncom­pet­i­tive lev­els in the name of our ‘con­ser­v­a­tive’ quar­an­tine system.

“The quar­an­ti­ne­mea­sures include:

• exports only from areas that demon­strate low pest prevalence
• reg­is­tra­tion of export blocks
• inspec­tions to detect the pres­ence of any diseases
• ongo­ing inspec­tions of blocks and fruit, includ­ing by Aus­tralian Quar­an­tine and Inspec­tion Ser­vice inspectors
• dis­in­fec­tion and fungi­cide spraying
• manda­tory pre-clearance arrange­ments with the pres­ence and involve­ment of AQIS
• inspec­tors in the Philip­pines in apply­ing quar­an­tine con­di­tions in the field, includ­ing in pack­ing houses
• audit­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion by AQIS of sys­tems and processes used by the Philip­pines to cer­tify any exports
• detailed data and doc­u­men­ta­tion to be pro­vided by the Philip­pines for con­sid­er­a­tion by Aus­tralia prior to any exports to ver­ify and val­i­date quar­an­tine mea­sures under­pinned by lab­o­ra­tory and field exper­i­ments and com­mer­cial trials.”

Extract from Biose­cu­rity Australia

The import ban has been a ridicu­lous impost on con­sumers. It has also hurt our com­mer­cial and trade rela­tions with many of the devel­op­ing coun­tries of our region that pro­duce com­pet­i­tively priced, high qual­ity bananas (Philip­pines, Thai­land and the Islands of the South Pacific). All this for an indus­try whose annual value is a pal­try $300 mil­lion at the farm-gate—about 1.5 per­cent of crop pro­duc­tion— and whose exports are zero. That should cause every tax­payer to ask what value we have had from this very expen­sive nine year odd­essey through the minu­tiae of banana pathology.