Red imported fire ant

Is anyone else getting a feeling the Victorian government's approving a lot of renewable energy projects before the state election? It's approved two of three battery energy storage projects, one right next door to dairy farmer Craig McWhinney's property.

Also, two nests of the very aggressive red fire ant have been detected in Sydney.

Their stings can be fatal to both people and livestock.

You'll hear about the dangers and whether or not they could make it further south.

Just don't green light everything and let every proposal through.

We're skips land dairy farmer Craig McWinnie speaking with Country Today's Daniel Brewer.

To one of the nastiest of insects, red fire ants and two nests of the invasive species, which originates in South America, have been detected in Sydney.

There are already established populations in southeast Queensland.

Well, as you're now aware, we told you this issue about red imported fire ants out at Enfield was apparently under control.

I asked the Minister Tara Moriarty about it last week and her instant reply was, yep, everything's sweet, we've got it under control.

This morning, though, we're told that these ants, which can cause serious health issues with their painful bite, may be more of an issue than first thought.

G'day, Jack.

G'day, great to be with you.

Mate, first and foremost, tell us more about these red imported fire ants and how dangerous and problematic they can be for a community like ours.

Yeah, look, fire ants are one of the world's worst invasive species.

Unfortunately, when they get into an area, they can really quickly dominate that area.

Um, in part one, if you haven't listened, we talk mostly about how fire ants were likely introduced to the Southern United States.

We talk kind of about the history of fire ants, when it started with black imported fire ants, and then the red imported fire ant, uh, uh, to arrive later and sort of take over the entire scene.

And the most interesting part of the origin story that we talked about was how we are our own worst enemy with a lot of this, that the changes that we kinda brought to the Southern United States in terms of trying to modernize agriculture, and in terms of big- building bigger cities, and increasing the nursery industry all helped to play kind of right into the fire ants' tarsi.

Um, they, they found new places to live.

The disturbances that we created, uh, were really close one-on-one matches with what they're used to in their native range.

There's o- every problem can be sprayed out.

Like, we can always figure it out with the chemicals, what we always seem to, to land on.

Um, so there's a, a war with the fire ants, and it's a war that we lose, spoiler alert.

Thank you and I thank the member for New England for that question.

I know as a former Minister for Agriculture he does understand how serious the red imported fire ants are.

I would also say to the member that my office has offered him a briefing and reached out to him today and I look forward to having those discussions with him or my department briefing him.

Can I advise that the detection of the red imported fire ants at the Enfield Intermodal Logistics Centre at Strathfield is something that we are of course taking very seriously.

We have acted with the New South Wales Government, and as he would know as a former minister, under the biosecurity arrangements, the New South Wales Government is responsible for managing the on-ground response and also for providing the public with updates, which I understand they did do yesterday.

This logistics centre is a privately run facility and is responsible for upholding strict biosecurity standards in line with Commonwealth requirements.

The detection of the suspected fire ants was made on 23 September by biosecurity officers of my department as part of their routine surveillance work.

The next day, the 24th of September, my department notified the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries of this detection.