Monday, February 23, 2015



Fruit flies and austerity

Foreign fruit flies are rampaging (OK, buzzing quietly) through Grey Lynn, putting our $6 billion horticulture export industry under threat. The government is likely to spend tens of millions on a response. So how did we get here? As 3News' Brook Sabin points out, its because the government has systematically cut frontline biosecurity. Sabin highlights cuts to staff numbers and container inspections. He attributes this to the government viewing biosecurity as "red tape" and wanting to speed things up for cargo and passengers - and that's certainly a factor. But there's a bigger picture here, around cuts and austerity.

Since coming to office, the government has tried to cap government spending, handing out sub-inflation increases to pretty much everyone. So, from 2010 to 2014, border biosecurity monitoring funding went from $75.1 to $80.4 million - a 7% increase vs inflation of 9%. Against that 2% cut in real terms, international visitor numbers rose from 2.53 to 2.86 million, an increase of 13%, while international cargo imports [infoshare - you'll need to poke it] rose from 41.9 to 50 million tons - an increase of 19%. So, our biosecurity staff are being expected to do ~15% more work with 2% less funding. And that's simply not sustainable. The cost is that mistakes happen, bugs get through, and then we have to spend tens of millions on expensive cleanup efforts, while imposing huge disruptions on people's lives. Or kiss our export industries goodbye.

Still, it could have been worse: it could have been foot and mouth disease. But given the cuts, that's probably only a matter of time...

Meanwhile, with starved government departments leading to major service failures, its beginning to feel like the late 1990's all over again...