Farmers Want Tougher Biosecurity Penalties

Read More

Farmers have called for increased penalties after an Indonesian man was caught attempting to smuggle six kilograms of duck and meat products into Australia.

The traveller failed to declare 3.1 kilograms of duck, 1.4 kilograms of beef rendang, over 500 grams of frozen beef and nearly 900 grams of chicken in his luggage.

The man who was caught at Perth airport in mid-October had declared on his incoming passenger card that he was not bringing any meat, poultry, or other food into Australia.

The Indonesian national was deported and fined $2664.

Last month the federal government introduced harsher penalties banning people from bringing meat into Australia from countries dealing with highly contagious foot and mouth disease – which poses a major risk to Australia’s agricultural industry.

But New South Wales (NSW) Farmers say there needs to be a serious rethink on punishments given the severity of risk posed by foot and mouth disease (FMD), which was detected in Bali in early July.

“A $2664 fine and a ticket home is hardly justice given the seriousness of this act,” Peter Arkle from NSW Farmers told AAP.

“If this was six kilograms of drugs, this person would be sitting in a jail cell right now,” Arkle said.

The chief executive of NSW Farmers said a rethink would “give travellers pause for thought whether smuggling in some duck is worth time in a jail cell.”

West Australian Farmers have also raised concerns about a lack of biosecurity resources at airports.

“We’re not seeing enough sniffer dogs at the airports,” chief executive Trevor Whittington told AAP.

“While the state and federal governments have put more funds into biosecurity since the FMD outbreak in Indonesia, we’re not seeing this translated into a doubling or tripling of the number of dogs.”

He said when he travelled from Bali to Perth in July he didn’t see any sniffer dogs despite around 800 people returning on different flights.

“Three flights came through Perth airport at midnight, from different parts of the world, and there wasn’t one dog there at that time,” he told AAP.

“We just need an awful lot of people and dogs to run over the boots and the bags,” Whittington said.

But federal Minister for Agriculture Murray Watt said Australia’s biosecurity system was the strongest in the world.

“This person was caught doing the wrong thing and was deported from the country because of it,” he told AAP.

“They were not allowed past the border,” he said.

In response to calls for stronger penalties, the minister said deporting the traveller was “a far stricter option than putting them in jail, and it won’t cost Australian taxpayers for the privilege.”

Mr Watt said his government had committed $11 million to fund 20 more detector dogs and handlers.

“We can’t rest on our laurels; that’s why we’ve fast-tracked funding to improve it.”