Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

On Sunday we read that the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts had harpooned his own whaling envoy. Today we are hearing porkies over parrots. Let me deal with both of these issues under the general question of a minister’s duty to administer his portfolio with a moderate degree of competence and in Australia’s national interest.

What have we heard just today from Senate estimates? I want to take the House firstly through Senate estimates and secondly through what occurred in question time today. From Senate estimates on the question of the poor whaling envoy who has been harpooned, we know that the envoy’s contract was only ever until March, and yet it was denied as such. The appointment of an envoy was promised, not in 2009, not in 2008, but on 17 September 2007. Was the envoy appointed in January or February or March or May or April or June or July 2008? Not even August or September? No, it was in October 2008. And what had happened in the meantime on this grand whaling issue which had been promised? Where we had been told there would be action in 2008, what we saw is very simple. The ships were late. They spent the summer in the port of Fremantle before arriving for the tail end of the season. They missed the action. The planes never flew, other than for a couple of flights where they made no contact with the principal Japanese whaling fleet. The envoy was missing in action.

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