Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, if the parliamentary secretary had courteously been listening to all my speech, he would have understood that I had already covered that aspect. But I extended the courtesy to him of allowing an intervention.

The worst aspect is that people on those coastal areas, whether they are the fishermen or the Aboriginal communities, think that we on the east coast are indifferent to the problem and do not care. I want to place on record that I do care. It is a decade-old problem. It should be tackled. It is a disgrace that it has not been. Again, if you think one patrol boat from the Australian Navy and one from Indonesia will solve the problem, you have rocks in your head. I would love to be able to pose a question to the parliamentary secretary, but the forms of the House do not let me. In the last 10 years that Mr Downer has been Minister for Foreign Affairs—

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