The Minister knows the 2001-16 Fire Ant Program was a disaster. It wasted $400m of public money trying to eradicate a well-entrenched infestation and made the infestation twelve times worse. The Minister knows the new $411m Ten-Year Eradication (2017-27) is a disaster because the program constantly fails to treat areas scheduled for treatment, fire ant are infesting dozens of new housing estates and development sites in south-east Queensland and many significant detections of fire ants have been found outside the program’s operational boundaries. The Minister knows the program is a disaster because the Risk Committee has listed the many, extreme, high and long-standing risks threatening the poor: no functioning information system and no performance data, poor governance, performance, operations, workforce management, procurement processes, engagement with industry, community, funders and government and a reliance on the highly speculative remote sensing surveillance technology to save the program. The Minister has breached Queensland Right to Information Act 2009 which says government information should be released to the public as a matter of course to enhance the accountability of the Queensland government. Minister Furner has misled the Queensland Parliament and the Queensland public and must be held to account.
Minister Furner has instructed the Fire Ant Program Steering Committee not to upload any Fire Ant Program documents onto the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries’ website without his approval. Consequently, the program has not made public any Fire Ant Program progress or financial reports since December 2018. This is because Minister Furner knows the program is a disaster.
The Minister know the first Fire Ant Eradication Program from 2001 to 2016 was a disaster. He knows it has never been feasible to eradicate the well-entrenched infestation found in south-east Queensland in 2001. He knows >$400m of public money was wasted on a program that made the infestation more than twelve times worse.
The Minister knows the first year of the new $411m Ten Year Eradication Program, (2017-27) was a disaster. The program managed to apply only two of the three rounds of bait scheduled for the high priority area in the west, gave up spot treating persistent infestations in the east because the program was swamped with reports from the public and nine significant detections were found beyond the program’s operational boundaries.
The Minister knows the program’s first quarter of 2018-19 was a disaster. Another six significant detections were found beyond the program’s operational boundaries and fire ants were spreading wildly through the many new housing estates and large development sites in the Gold Coast Corridor.
The Minister knows the program’s second quarter of 2018-19 was a disaster. Treatment started late because the program had not ordered the bait on time, the program managed to finally apply the third round of bait over the high priority area in the west, treated a fraction of the eastern area but totally abandoned treating the advancing western edge of the infestation. And there were another ten significant detections found outside the program’s operational boundaries by December 2018.
The Minister knows the program is a disaster because the program’s new Risk Committee has listed the many extreme, high and long-standing risks threatening the program: no functioning information system and no performance data, poor governance, poor performance, poor operations, poor workforce management, poor procurement processes, poor engagement with industry, the community, funders and government and a reliance on the highly speculative remote sensing surveillance technology to be the silver bullet that saves the program.
Minister Furner has breached the Queensland Right to Information Act 2009 which says the release of government information to the public should be done, administratively, as a matter of course, as part of the democratic process, to enhance the accountability of the Queensland government.
Minister Furner has misled the Queensland Parliament and the Queensland public. The Minister needs to be held to account for this biosecurity disaster that threatens the national and for the waste of another $84m of public money.