Aust willing to let in NZ apples, except in WA

Applegrowers have twice protested outside the Australian High Commission this year in a bid for market access. Picture / Hawke's Bay Today

Australia has set out proposed conditions under which it will allow New Zealand apples to be sold across the Tasman, except in Western Australia, Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton says.

The long-awaited revised draft import risk analysis (IRA) on New Zealand apples was received by Mr Anderton from Australian High Commissioner Allan Hawke in Wellington today, before its release in Australia.

"Although the draft IRA acknowledges in principle that New Zealand apples should be allowed in to Australia, we have some serious concerns around the conditions that have been put on access." Mr Anderton said in a statement.

The Government would study the document further and prepare a detailed submission, he said.

Mr Anderton said he and NZ trade ministers welcomed the release of the draft analysis "even though this has taken far too long".

A decision by the Australian Government to allow importation of New Zealand apples would overturn the 84-year ban on New Zealand apples imposed on the grounds that apples might spread the bacterial plant disease fireblight.

New Zealand orchardists - who have said the Australian market could be worth up to $40 million to exporters -- have frequently complained that the ban is a non-tariff trade barrier.

Today's release of the draft analysis is the next step required in the process to get New Zealand apples accepted for import to Australia. A previous analysis in 2000 was effectively withdrawn from review amid protest from Australian orchardists in the run-up to last year's general election on that side of the Tasman.

In October 2000, when Australian quarantine authorities released a draft import risk assessment to allow NZ apples into the country the restrictions proposed were so strict that NZ growers complained the ban would effectively remain in place.

The proposed regime required orchards to have no evidence of fireblight infection for at least two seasons, and to be separated from other blocks of trees by a buffer zone checked for the disease. Each tree in each block would have had to be checked three times a season, and all fruit sent to Australia would have had to be dipped in chlorine to kill bacteria.

After sighting the revised analysis released today, the NZ pipfruit industry again expressed concern about the proposed conditions for access.

"Biosecurity Australia have largely ignored the findings of the WTO case between Japan and the USA in relation to fireblight," Pipfruit New Zealand chief executive Peter Beaven, of Hastings said.

"After seven years of fighting this is very disappointing outcome."

"It seems that Biosecurity Australia's risk assessment panel have ignored no less than three WTO decisions on this matter and left orchard inspections and chlorine treatment in water dumps as requirements for New Zealand supply."

Biosecurity Australia said the conditions it planned to set for NZ apples included:

* Mandatory pre-clearance arrangements involving Australian quarantine staff, including auditing the NZ certification of fruit as fit to cross the Tasman'

* Inspecting orchards for fireblight symptoms;

* Use of chemicals such as chlorine to disinfect fruit;

* Inspecting orchards after leaf-fall for european canker disease;

* Inspecting fruit in NZ for freedom from apple leaf curling midge.

The draft report also barred New Zealand apples from Western Australia, which claimed to be free of apple scab (black spot), a disease for which there was no effective risk management measures. Western Australia also keeps out fruit from the rest of Australia.

Biosecurity Australia said the 120 days it had allowed for comment, double the usual period, was because the report contained a lot of information, and orchardists busy harvesting over the summer would need time to read it.

Today's paper contains changes made in response to 200 submissions on the draft report which was caught up in the general election last year, and recommendations by the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs Committee, which was bitterly critical of moves to allow the entry of NZ apples.- NZPA