Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Deputy Prime Minister's bid to relocate the APVMA out of Canberra into his electorate of New England has got the green light. This is a shameless and blatant display of pig-headed pork-barrelling which has never had a shred of merit around it. On Friday, we learnt what we long suspected: it is all cost and no benefit. The cost to the taxpayer will be $25 million to relocate the agency. The cost to the Canberra economy will be $157 million a year and the 365 jobs that will be ripped out of it. The cost to the agency and the sector will be the loss of expertise, which will take years and years to replace and will add years to the approval time frame of new chemicals. But what I am most concerned about is the cost to the Canberra community and the cost to the 175 families whose kids must now be pulled out from their schools, whose partners must now resign from their jobs here in Canberra and who must now say goodbye to their friends and relatives and their lives here in Canberra.

The Deputy Prime Minister floated an obscene proposal—and it is an obscene proposal—that will cost the sector, the city, the staff and my community, all to help himself. And the Turnbull cabinet ticked it off. What an absolute disgrace—to sign my name and say, 'I don't care who it costs or what it costs, as long as it benefits the Deputy Prime Minister.' (Time expired)