Some years ago, I brought a family pet dog to Australia. This involved considerable expense and a total of eleven months in quarantine, but that's what you do when you're moving a household including children.
When dealing with the various agencies and kennelling sites, I was told on several occasions that I was crazy to have done all of this... for a few hundred dollars I could have had my dog brought in with a race horse, in its stall, by air.
I happen to support the quarantine principles and wouldn't have done that anyway, but in recent weeks, I have wondered whether this happens and what the consequences for quarantine might be.

The book that comes to mind here as essential contextual reading is "National Insecurity: The Howard Government's Betrayal of Australia" by Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon and John Mathews (Allen and Unwin, 2007). In this disturbing book, in Chapter 3, "Rural Industries" , the authors analyse in detail two rural industry case studies - pork and beef, concluding (page 67):

"both show this government's willingness to place American interests over and above Australian economic and health security purportedly in the name of advancing our special relationship".

When quarantine border security ceases to be an absolute, professionally determined regime and becomes something to be traded off in trade negotiations with other countries under vaguely worded WTO "rules" that open up dangerous negotiating territory, the national interest loses. It is an irony that a government that in 2001 made such a fetish of maritime border security - punishing boat people without papers, at huge costs to human rights - has covertly presided over a cumulative watering -down of Australian quarantine standards to the point where whole industries - beef, pork, apples, and thoroughbred horsebreeding and the racing industry now crippled by equine inflenza - the disease brought in by a government-led relaxation of a previously watertight quarantine regime for the importation of horses - are seriously threatened or damaged.

Why has the Howard government elevated freedom of movement for products of present or potential export interest to American producers above the maintenance of essential quarantine protections? Why under the Howard government do WTO trade rules always trump prudential quarantine regimes? I wonder why the Howard government's unpatriotic, deliberate, weakening of effective Australian quarantine regimes has not yet become more of an election issue. Perhaps it will yet become one.

Tony Kevin , Canberra

The story of the bees in the US is quite complex and not covered very well in this article. I suggest you try the link below.

http://abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2007/1987155.htm

This is what happens when amateurs are put in charge of the country. Things might change if the proposed legal action goes ahead. If the legal action finds the government at fault any compensation paid out should come from the politicians' super fund.

I think if McGauran applied the same dedication to his portfolio responsibilities that he did when fiddling his travel allowance he might look a little better than he does at present.

This article is a bit of a crock really. While there are no actual falsehoods in it, the way it's presented seems quite biased. I would have preferred like to find out what actually happened with the horse flu outbreak and exactly how it got here, who broke the rules and why, before it could be said that the policy is to blame. A minimisation of trade effects policy is responsible for people wanting to shift horses here for racing and breeding in the first place, there are other countries that they could be sent to if the policies were too harsh.

And as for the bee breeding industry, if they were to be refused, which wouldn't actually make any sense but that never stopped pollies before, would anyone notice including the beekeeping industry?

Quarantine policies have long been used by many countries as non-tariff trade barriers and bargaining tools. Viewed in this light a lot of nonsensical policies start to actually make sense. Try it sometime Selwyn.

Talking about diseased New Zealand apples now being allowed in Australia, it is just part of the downgrading that was surely to happen when we joined the WTO followed by somewhat thoughtless opportunist bi-lateral trade deals.

It was George Negus who tried to make us aware of this problem when on SBS Dateline he used movie-shots showing poor Bio-Security regarding foot and mouth problems in South America, particularly in Brazil where diseased cattle can wander in from an adjoining state.

But what Negus was out to prove was how our new slap-dash trade arrangements had allowed a shipment of banned Brazilian carcase meat to be landed in NSW unbeknown to our Bio-Security officials.

According to a free-lance journalist's report from Queensland John Howard is credited for performing the most efficient hush hush media ban ever credited to any Australian PM.

As an enquiry to SBS proved, according to the journalist, the Dateline feature should never have been shown because it would have lowered the reputation not only of our Bio-Security but also the Federal Government.

Many of our OLO supporters knew about the foot and mouth abuse also, and wonder whether more Bio-Security abuses will be covered up in the same way?

This is especially so, considering that it is now well known that it is the present lumping togther of all sorts of countries in trade deals that is weakening Bio-Security, especially when we have our government Ministers also too friendly with other government officials making things far worse.

In 1872 there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Australia, and later in evidence to the then Commission in Melbourne, E M Curr, Chief Inspector of Sheep stated : " At present, as in the case of pleuro and foot-and-mouth disease, disease is allowed to enter the colony, and when it has a fair start efforts are frantically made to undo the evil. It has always appeared to me that a general provision against any disease would be a wise thing to have in the country............."

Thank you Selwyn Johnston for keeping this very real issue of the introduction of exotic diseases into Australia and the subsequent implications they would have on our vital agriculture and horticulture industries, in the forefront.

Nothing political about it cost cutting and a cut in standards bought about by the current federal government gave us this horse flue.
Let us hope we will soon know how it got out, and spread so fast.
That question, what so badly hurt our fourth biggest industry must be answered.
Even now horses are moving around Australia long prison terms are called for not fines for such criminal acts.

Terrorists do not only need bombs and bullets. It can be used in an ecological way also. DPI and AQUIS are bureaucratic entities with most able to find someone to blame for their lack of due diligence. It is all to easy for anyone to bring in say (sugar can smut , citrus canker , horse flu ,bee mites ) and to many more to name.The problem is with the departments that use a reactive response and then try to pass the buck or blame somewhere else instead of seeing the problem for what it is and enacting a full ,fast and far reaching response. We need quick action on these problems not a lets wait and see head in the sand look on it. People are paid allot to make quick decisive decisions on these matters and then we only get excuses. When a problem is found ,get on it,fix it and then look for the source.