Getting the pip

April 17, 2010
With the scrap over New Zealand selling its apples to Australia entering a new round this week, Geoff Collett seeks out an Australian view on the long-running debate.
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IT IS tempting to imagine that the mere mention of the name "John Corboy" will have eyes rolling and curses muttered on orchards throughout New Zealand.
Any apple grower who has paid more than passing attention to the never- ending dispute over whether Kiwi pipfruit should be sold in Australia, and whether it poses a biosecurity risk, must have come across the name of the frontman for the Australian fruit industry's campaign to keep New Zealand apples and pears out.
For upwards of a decade now, Mr Corboy has been leading the tub- thumping over the risk supposedly posed by New Zealand apples and pears if they're allowed into shops over there - the risk, according to the Aussies, of carrying the tree-killing bacterial disease fireblight into that country's fireblight-free orchards.
The debate has frequently descended into a trans-Tasman slanging match. The Aussies insist - typically with a healthy dose of indignation - that any risk is too great to bear, such would be the devastation fireblight would spread. The Kiwis counter with varying degrees of incredulity, frustration, outrage and righteousness that the Australians are using shonky science to put up trade barriers; that they are scared of competition and so are rorting the rules to suit themselves.
The debate got another kick-along this week, with leaked reports that New Zealand has succeeded in an appeal to the World Trade Organisation challenging the Australians' restrictions. The familiar arguments have been wheeled out, and Mr Corboy has once again found his phone ringing constantly as journalists seek his response.
Judging by the file of his 10 years of previous comments, he's having no trouble sticking to message this week, as he takes 20 minutes out from running his substantial fruitgrowing business in the Victorian fruitbowl region of the Goulburn Valley to once again have a crack at the New Zealand campaign and insist that he and his fellow orchardists are motivated by nothing more than a concern for their families' livelihood.
"I make no apologies for our position, " he says early on in the interview. "I don't say it tongue in cheek, but put the boot on the other foot - Jesus, your guys would be bloody climbing the wall. They'd be belting the hell out of anybody they could to make sure that their interests are protected."
Which sounds, it needs to be said, like the precise tactics he and his orcharding colleagues have been practising in their lobbying efforts, to convince Australian politicians to keep the trade barriers up.
On this side of the Tasman, it is occasionally suggested that those growers take every advantage of their leverage in marginal electorates to secure political support for their campaign, and could be expected to do the same in this year's Australian general election.
Mr Corboy doesn't exactly deny the charge. "We've certainly been ensuring as much as we can that the processes are adhered to, and we don't make any apology for that. If New Zealand takes offence at that, I'd say look at your own back door - you haven't been too bad at influencing where you need to."
The fireblight debate has been mired in years of ponderous and arcane arguments over statistical risk, scientific analysis, the bureaucracy of biosecurity and the finer details of WTO trade rules. It's hardly gripping stuff, but Mr Corboy can, in his bluff, blunt-spoken style, boil it down to something more attention-grabbing.
When it's idly suggested that after devoting so long to campaigning on the issue, he might be over it by now, he responds: "If somebody's got a gun pointing at your family, are you ever over it?
"My family relies on the business. That's an ultimate motivator for everybody. If you take the pear industry out of the Goulburn Valley, by jove you'd leave a massive hole."
Goulburn is Australia's biggest pipfruit growing region - the source, he says, of 87 per cent of that country's pear crop. Australia grows far less pipfruit than New Zealand, and isn't a huge consumer of the stuff either, but Mr Corboy compares the significance of the industry in his region to Nelson or Hawke's Bay.
While fireblight can be managed on New Zealand orchards, he and his industry colleagues argue that in Australian conditions, it could spread far more vigorously, and devastate pears in particular. He likens it to foot and mouth in cattle to reinforce the point.
If his concern is dismissed on this side of the Tasman - or at least, rejected on the grounds that there's no credible evidence that such devastation could be caused by importing mature New Zealand apples - Mr Corboy is confident that he's got the Australian public with him.
"The percentage of public support has been very high. If you put it in the right way, it's something people can identify with fairly clearly.
"There's two schools of thought out there in the general public. One is, 'Well, s..., you shouldn't take that risk'; but there's quite often a rider of, 'Look, we don't need the apples anyhow'. I'm not saying that's a justified position, but certainly in the general public, they seem to be fairly fascinated as to why we've got this big s...fight going when in their mind, we don't need any more apples."
Which leads to the sideshow aspect of the great trans-Tasman apple debate: a mine's-bigger-than-yours scrap over whose apples are better, the Kiwis inevitably insisting that ours leave theirs in the dust.
Mr Corboy offers his verdict. "I don't think there's much difference, to be frank. Look, it's similar to in Australia - in different areas, different varieties are grown better, but if you line up the best areas in Australia for gala vis-a-vis the best areas in New Zealand, to be frank, I can't tell the difference.
"I don't reckon you get close to us on pink ladies. Your granny smiths I don't reckon match ours. Your fuji possibly beat ours."
What really matters, he reasons, is the market realities. For one thing, the Australian apple market is heavily dominated by the granny smith and pink lady varieties (about 60 per cent of the total between them, he says). "You're not going to be shoving a lot of them over here."
For another, "I'm also a stonefruit grower and I've also been involved in the kiwifruit industry, and I've seen New Zealand come into Australia on both of those products, make an awful lot of noise and a big splash and then go home. And that's what's going to happen with apples".
So is that an acceptance that, after 90 years of keeping the doors shut, he is finally resigned to Australia letting Kiwi apples into its fruit shops and supermarkets? "That's an open bet. You won't get a categoric no from me."
He is cagey around the question of what the WTO report means for the orchardists' arguments, saying he hasn't seen it, so can't respond - before launching into a spiel about how robust he reckons the Australian case was, and how if any part of it has been overturned, it will be a travesty.
But even if there is an element of resignation in the man who's led the battle to make sure New Zealand apples remain the forbidden fruit of Australia, if they should finally arrive, the principles will remain the same - it's just the tactics that will change.
"We would have to make sure that any fruit that came into this region, the chances of it causing an outbreak were minimised.
"We would be saying to the Australian public that yes, New Zealand fruit's here, but we think ours is better than theirs. We'd be going to chains and saying if you're going to stock New Zealand, you'd better label it.
"We would insist as much as we can on labelling if New Zealand fruit comes here. That's fair that the consumer knows and can compare. That's a clear indication that we're not frightened of New Zealand fruit being better than ours."