Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

I heard a correction of you on television, Minister. I am told that it is 'Boo Boo' rather than 'Boo', so one of us will stand corrected. I think it is very interesting on this day that the minister would choose to run out the doors and divert attention by bashing up on Johnny Depp and his party, who are making such a significant economic contribution to this country, by the way. By doing so, the minister is highlighting the fact that the system broke down here. The minister, by his own admission, said we only found out about Boo Boo and Pistol because they were seen going into a dog-grooming salon or whatever it is called. That is an admission that these dogs were not picked up at our border. I am not blaming anyone for that directly, but this consequence could be a manifestation of this minister's and this government's cutting of quarantine funding in the department. It is all right, Minister, to go out there and grab yourself a headline by bashing up on poor old Boo Boo and Pistol and, indeed, Johnny Depp. That is a bit like attacking Santa Claus, I would suggest, but that is your decision. It is getting you a run, so I suppose you have secured your objective on a day when you should be talking about the very heart of this bill.

The very heart of this bill is the inspector-general. I welcome the minister's significant backdown on this issue. When I raised the issue of the effective removal of the inspector-general in this bill in this House during question time, the minister ridiculed me. He started banging on about Michael Bond, who is the interim inspector-general, being not James Bond but Michael Bond. He had a big laugh about it and made out it was an insignificant issue and tried to suggest that I was wrong and that the inspector-general still existed and that he was alive and well et cetera. But now—

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