7 May 2016

Jeremy Rockliff, Minister for Primary Industries and Water

Recruits’ tale of success over adversity

After hitting the ground running over the busy summer months, Biosecurity Tasmania’s newest recruits today received a certificate to celebrate them joining the ranks of our frontline.

Tasmania has nine detector dog teams patrolling the frontline at ports, airports and mail distribution centres, as a result of our $4 million investment in biosecurity frontline initiatives.

This represents an increase in our detector dog team capacity of 50 per cent, from six teams to nine, and was the first recruitment of handlers in almost a decade.

I am very excited to welcome Lily, Ruby, Ava, Sash and Major to our team and I commend our hard working biosecurity team who have expertly trained the dogs.

While all the recruits are beagles, they each have a truly great tale of how adversity leads to success.

• Lily “Bulldozer” left a trail of destruction, including furniture, carpets, gardens and fencing. She was surrendered by her owners, but is now using her powers for good.
• Ruby lived rough on the streets as a stray until she was picked up by the Lost Dogs Home. After failed adoptions, she is now one of the most energetic members of the team.
• Ava was inherited by an elderly lady, but proved a bit too much of a handful. She was surrendered and was likely going to be put down, but for her recruitment to our ranks. A national expert has described her nose as “world class”.
• Sash “Princess” was another surrendered pup. Described as a nose on legs, once she realised treats were involved with detective work there has been no stopping her.
• Major “Major Issues” was a surrendered hunting dog.  He had major issues with humans, with food, being inside and being on a lead. But after a lot of patience and skill he’s on the beat, after the biggest transformation of any dog sourced for the unit.

These dogs are now part of an expert team that will ensure our world-class agriculture and seafood sectors are better protected and continue to grow and support jobs.

This is especially important as recent figures show our trade grew by almost 10 per cent in the year to February, and our tourism sector records record after record.

In fact, last year our biosecurity front-line screened 364,842 interstate and overseas postal items, 175,764 were referred for X-Ray and 285 prohibited items were detected. At our airports, more than 7,000kg of material was collected from amnesty bins, more than 4,000kg was declared to inspectors and almost 200kg was seized from passengers. And, around 200,000 containers of domestic cargo was subject to varying levels of intervention depending on risk.

We take very seriously our responsibility to protect Tasmania’s relative disease free status, our safe and premium produce and we are committed to keeping it that way.

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