Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. I refer the minister to her answer yesterday in which she claimed that some 230 demountables had been used to provide Aboriginal housing as a justification for using a further 81 demountables for unauthorised arrivals rather than for Indigenous Australians, despite the continuing housing crisis in the Alice Springs town camps. Why didn’t the minister admit that those 230 demountables have in fact been used to house visiting professionals rather than local Aboriginal people? So I now ask the minister to provide the names of those communities where these demountables have been used to house local Aborigines, as they should have been.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is extraordinary that he is having another go after yesterday, when it was quite clear that you took all of these demountables to Alice Springs to use them in the Alice Springs town camps. How many did they use? Zero. Absolutely none. I made it absolutely clear yesterday what we were using the demountables for—you know what it is, and we know that you used none of them.