The New South Wales government has placed restrictions on the movement of certain materials after fire ants were detected about 5 kilometres from the state's border with Queensland.

It was confirmed last week that the invasive pest was found at an equestrian centre at Tallebudgera on the Gold Coast.

NSW Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said biosecurity controls were put in place and high-risk materials near the infected site would need to be inspected before leaving Queensland.
"The nests have been destroyed but it's too close for comfort for NSW," she said.

"We can't risk these ants coming into NSW so I've put this order in place in order to stop that."

Ms Moriarty said materials such as mulch, woodchip, soil, compost, sand, gravel, baled hay, turf and other high-risk material could not be moved from within a 5km radius of the site where fire ants were found unless it had been inspected and issued with a certificate by the Queensland Agriculture Department.

Serious threat
Fire ants were first detected at the Port of Brisbane in 2001.

They have been found increasingly close to NSW in recent months, with the Tallebudgera site the closest yet.

The NSW DPI said the ants were aggressive with a severe sting.

"Large numbers of ants will swarm onto a person or animal stinging over and over, causing the sensation of being on fire," the DPI website said.

Ben Spann is a cane grower at Rocky Point in Queensland and knows first-hand what it is like living with red fire ants.

"I parked one of my tractors directly on a fire ants nest and my father went to do something underneath — he was bitten 50 times.

"They get on your body and they bite, turn 40 degrees and bite again."

He recovered but Ben Spann has given up on harvesting hay due to the extra control measures required by the authorities.

He thinks while the ants will get into NSW soon, the biggest concern is if they spread to grain-growing regions.

"They're on top of Toowoomba at the moment, up at Highfields; they just have to climb down to the bottom of the hill and away we go."

"If they reach grain-growing regions, it will be easy for the ants to spread across large areas on harvest machinery."

Ms Moriarty said the ants were "very dangerous" to the agriculture industry and to the wider community.

"They can chew through electronic materials, they can bite animals and cause allergic reactions, and most importantly they can cause an allergic reaction in humans, so they do cause a significant threat," she said.

"And they do have an impact on our ability to trade because other countries are monitoring what happens with these ants."

Work to eradicate
The state government committed $95 million over four years to manage and eradicate the pest.

Ms Moriarty called on other states to urgently assist with the national eradication program.

"NSW is the most sensitive to this at the moment given how close they are to the border, but this is a national problem," she said.

"We want to make sure they don't spread across Australia because that does affect our industry across other states but also our ability to trade internationally."

Northern NSW residents have been advised to be on the lookout for fire ants and report any sighting to the NSW DPI.

The DPI described fire ants as dark reddish-brown with a darker black-brown abdomen and from two to six millimetres long.

The nests look like mounds of loose, crumbly soil up to 40 centimetres high with no obvious entrance holes, though they can also appear as flattish patches.