Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Listening to the honourable member for Cowper, my only response can be, ‘What absolute rubbish.’ The only thing the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Public Health and Safety) Bill 2010 is designed to protect is his political interests. This bill is not necessary. The referral was made to the federal department, and approval has already been granted. The department cannot approve anything that is not referred to it. My position, as I kept recommending to the state authorities, was that this is not just about the federal government but about both federal and state authorities—primarily state—getting their acts together and referring it. That took a long time, and I was surprised to see that.

I will take you through this issue. The honourable member for Cowper takes the cake in political opportunism—not a political opportunism designed to advance the needs and interests of the community but one designed solely to seek political advantage. You may be surprised to know that the honourable member for Cowper sought to make me, the member for Page—a neighbouring electorate—responsible, and even spent money writing to my constituents saying, ‘Janelle Saffin believes she is not responsible for the bat debacle because Maclean High School is not in the Page electorate.’ Surprise, surprise: Maclean High School is not in the Page electorate; it is in the honourable member for Cowper’s electorate.

The honourable member for Cowper also sent a letter to all of us asking whether we would speak on this bill, and he said, ‘Maclean High School is in my electorate’—meaning his electorate of Cowper. Yet he spent an inordinate amount of time seeking to have me do his work. I am busy doing my work for my constituents in the electorate of Page. If I were the member for Cowper, I would be embarrassed if I had to ask a member of parliament in a neighbouring electorate to do the job that he could not do. It was absolute incompetence and ineptitude. I responded because the school community asked me to assist. At the time, I said to the local newspaper:

Luke has lost the plot because he was proven incompetent in getting a solution to a problem in his electorate. They are desperate actions of a desperate man. I’d be embarrassed if I had to get another MP to work out a solution in my electorate.

I went on like that—and I said ‘Luke’ there rather than ‘the honourable member for Cowper’ because I was quoting from the local newspaper.

Stepping back a bit, in 2008 I was asked by the school community if I could give assistance, and I said that I would. However, it was a state issue. The state had to apply for a licence so that they could deal with the bat problem. Everybody agreed that it needed a short-term solution, a medium-term solution and a long-term solution. That is the reality of living where bats are. My primary concern, as is everybody’s, is with the health and safety of the school community. I have made that an absolute priority, and I said that what had to be in place was a process for a licence at state level to deal with the multitude of problems around it and then a referral to the Commonwealth.

We are talking about a bill that was introduced by the Howard government and supported by the coalition. It was supported by the then opposition, the federal parliamentary Labor party, and it has bipartisan support. I take it that it has the support of the Independents as well. In 2001 there was an amendment to it that dealt with the particular bats that reside at Maclean High School, grey-headed flying foxes, so this is not a new bill. It dragged on and on and it got all messed up in political debate and the honourable member for Cowper sending out petitions in my electorate attacking me. It was said that I wanted to move the school, that I loved the bats and did not want to move them, blah, blah, blah.

I supported a whole range of solutions, with everybody sitting around the table, working this out together, and not dealing with it in a politically opportunistic way—and that is what I have done. I then spoke to the federal minister at least five times that I can remember. I spoke to his advisers; I spoke to officials. They kept waiting for an application. If an application does not come, approval cannot be given. Then there was a whole lot of rubbish spread around the electorate—and I hate to say it, but the honourable member for Cowper was part of it—saying that there would be no approval given. How would you know that? That is absolutely ridiculous. It was absolutely clear that the primary concern was the health and safety of the school community and they were waiting for the referral to come here.

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