CHAIR—Would AQIS be happy to take a couple of questions on apples or would that come under Biosecurity Australia?

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Mr Yuile—It depends on the nature of the questions.

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CHAIR—The draft ruling on apples is out. The last time we talked about this I reckoned that the ruling fell at the first hurdle and could not get up, and that was you were unable to tell me what the inspection regime was going to be of the orchards in New Zealand. You said, ‘Well, there is no model. The New Zealanders have come to us with an inspection protocol.’ Is that right?

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Mr Yuile—Senator, I had not looked at the—

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CHAIR—Or should I be asking this of—

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Mr Yuile—Certainly Biosecurity Australia, as you know, are in the process of a draft—

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CHAIR—The cavalry is coming.

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Mr Yuile—There is not a draft but an IRA. I will let Mr Cahill and Dr Roberts obviously speak to the IRA. As you know, there is an appeal and there is a process for that appeal to be assessed before any recommendations are then made to the director of quarantine. I guess what I can say, Senator, is obviously until we have the outcome of that appeal and any import conditions that might be established if it is to proceed that is the point at which you then need to operationalise those conditions. I guess I would make a couple of points. AQIS has previously responded to complex import policy and import condition arrangements for perishable imports—grapes from Chile, grapes from California, pears from China. So we are used to taking those conditions and developing with the competent authorities of the supplying country the implementation of those conditions. So that is the first thing. We do have preinspection already in relation to a number of products from New Zealand and other countries, but in the case of New Zealand in products like avocados and kiwifruit and so on. So we have that experience. Depending on the outcome of the appeal process and the final conditions that might be established—

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CHAIR—Yes, but let us cut to the chase.

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Mr Yuile—All I can say to you is once we know those things then we can—

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CHAIR—No, but we have signed off on an IRA not knowing what the inspection protocol is going to be. How can we do that?

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Mr Cahill—I might start, if I may.

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CHAIR—Mr Cahill, from the last time we met on apples the idea I took was that there is a sort of a view that—and bear in mind we are talking about the pear industry here. The pear industry is the one that is going to get wiped out, and I bet you no-one gets the sack if they do. I think there is an acceptance generally within the industry and, maybe you could correct me if not, among the scientists that it is possible for fire blight to travel on the apple as opposed to apple bits and pieces such as leaves and rubbish. Is that a fair assessment?

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Mr Cahill—That is what the draft report says, Senator.

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CHAIR—Yes. The assumption is though that it will not get from the apple to the orchard.

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Mr Cahill—Dr Roberts can speak of course, but there is a specific treatment in there that addresses the risk of service contamination.

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Senator JOYCE—Does that treatment get into the calyx of the apple?

Dr Roberts—Because the risk management measures target the fruit. There are two risk management measures that target fire blight explicitly. One of them is this inspection four to seven weeks after flowering. Now there are two risks associated with importing apples from an area with fire blight. We are talking about the fruit, of course, not the leaves, not the branches, not the trees and not the nursery stock.

There are two risks in terms of the apple. One is that you will get fire blight bacteria stuck in the calyx of the apple. The time that that will occur is particularly if the flower gets infected with fire blight but it continues to develop to an apple that is harvested. There is some risk, albeit quite small, that fire blight bacteria would be stuck deep in the calyx of the apple. It goes back to that flowering time.

So the inspection at four to seven weeks post flowering effectively looks back, because four to seven weeks post flowering is the time you are most likely to pick visible, easily detectable symptoms of fire blight if the orchard had it at flowering. What you will find is flower clusters that are blackened and dying off, and you will find new shoots that are drooping and you will have find blackened leaves and so on. The experts overseas who work on this disease have told us time and time again that you need to inspect post flowering. So that is the calyx.

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Senator JOYCE—We are not inspecting then. That is the whole point Senator Heffernan is getting at. Why can we not have a position where we say, ‘In Otago’—and I do not know whether they have apples in Otago—’you have fire blight so therefore we will not take any apples’—just like there are quarantine zones in South America in terms of TB and brucellosis. Are we just saying that this orchard has fire blight and this one does not and somehow we do not think the bees fly from one to the other.

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Dr Roberts—The assumption if you look at the IRA is that every orchard in New Zealand has fire blight. We say that at the very beginning of the analysis of fire blight. That is our starting assumption. Our inspection regime, our risk management is not based on the proposition that we are trying to find orchards without fire blight.

Senator JOYCE—What is the risk matrix that you have used to do that? And where are the hard and fast examples of this working?

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Dr Roberts—If you look at the history of trade in apples around the world, you find that there is absolutely no evidence in the scientific literature that fruit has transmitted fire blight. You can delve further into that. For example, some German researchers have looked at the pattern of fire blight strains—the bacteria itself—and characterised the individual strains because they do vary across Europe.

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Senator JOYCE—How did it get to New Zealand? Was it endemic there?

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Dr Roberts—No, it was most likely imported through planting material. There are cases where it is harder and you do not have any evidence. Most of the evidence around the world is it is transmitted by planting material. That is one of the pathways believed to have led to its introduction in the United Kingdom. The spread across to France is almost certainly associated with a movement of birds that roosted in hedge rows in the UK which were dripping with fire blight and flew backwards and forwards to Europe.

You can look at the literature and look at the pattern of strain distribution. For example, if you take Europe you find that a lot of countries in Europe have fire blight. That has occurred largely due to the movement of planting material and where you have orchards right on borders.

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Senator JOYCE—How did it get to New Zealand?

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CHAIR—I think the better question, Senator Joyce, is how did it get to the botanic gardens in Melbourne?

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Senator Abetz—I love the way you guys help each other.