THE Federal Government says it will continue to rollout reforms to Australia's quarantine system, despite a major financial set-back in the Senate last week.
This vote, sections of the media reported at the time, had 'robbed' the government of the opportunity to order full cost recovery of export certification fees and charges to help pay for an AQIS overhaul.
Federal Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, this week, however, has confirmed the Government will press ahead with reforms to the country's biosecurity and quarantine arrangements, as recommended in the Beale review into those systems, but it will have to do so with less money.
The news comes amidst reports AQIS is prohibiting officers from working overtime to accredit exports because of the cost, leaving some exporters fearful of the ramifications for extended demurrage costs expected if export loads can't be processed outside usual business hours.
Mr Burke admitted his department is looking at a range of cost-saving measures in the wake of the disallowance motion in the Senate last week which refused to allow the removal of a 40 per cent rebate for export certification, which would have helped fund reforms to IT within AQIS.
He said overtime would be considered in those savings measures, but nothing had been decided upon yet.
He said the Beale Review report made 84 recommendations, which the Government accepted in-principle, and when the legislation is in place Mr Burke believes a lot of those recommendations will finally be met, although could still be limited if more cost-recovery is not introduced.
New reforms, announced on Tuesday, will now be funded internally for the next financial year, but Mr Burke warned there would be further attempts to move towards further cost recovery for quarantine services, as recommended by Beale.
The reforms include an already-flagged overhaul of the AQIS information technology (IT) systems, with a plan to streamline more than 75 different systems and upgrade the technology said to be more than 10 years old.
New or improved quarantine facilities for plants and animals entering Australia will also be part of the reforms, budgeted at almost $15 million for the next year, Mr Burke said.
A Biosecurity Advisory Council will be established later this year as the key source of independent biosecurity advice to the minister.
New legislation will be introduced sometime next year to replace the 100-year old and repeatedly amended Quarantine Act which will help guide further changes recommended in the review, Mr Burke said.
Mr Burke said the myriad of 75 IT systems would not be reduced down to one, but would still need to be reduced significantly and would be "a massive job to get there".
"The problem has been that if one part of some pretty clumsy technology were to fall over we will then than have issues of how we manage risk at all," Mr Burke said.
"This is where we're taking the Beale reforms within the financial year."
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