House debates

Monday, 5 September 2022

Questions without Notice

Biosecurity: Foot-and-Mouth Disease

2:42 pm

Photo of David LittleproudDavid Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | | Hansard source

My question is for the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture. How many of the one million foot-and-mouth disease vaccinations promised to Indonesia on 14 July have now been administered to livestock?

Photo of Ms Catherine KingMs Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | | Hansard source

Thank you very much for the question. As you know, this government has been in office for 100 days and has actually implemented a program to prevent foot-and-mouth disease coming into this country. As you know, as I've said to previous questions before, in order to make sure we are able to deliver vaccines to Indonesia to assist them to get on top of this—and it is in our country's interest to ensure that that actually occurs—we need to make sure that we can ensure that we've got the right viral load, we know what we're doing in relation to that and we can deliver it.

In terms of the actual number, I will come back to the Leader of the Nationals , but I remind him that on 11 May, he knew that foot-and-mouth disease would be an issue in this country and did—

Photo of Milton DickMilton Dick (Speaker) Share this | | Hansard source

Order! The minister will resume her seat. I call the Manager of Opposition Business.

Photo of David LittleproudDavid Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | | Hansard source

It was a very specific question. The minister has just admitted she doesn't know the answer. She should sit down. We've heard enough.

Photo of Milton DickMilton Dick (Speaker) Share this | | Hansard source

Has the minister concluded? Order! The minister has concluded her answer.