Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise, on the last take note of answers this year, to talk about the question on the biological agent early in question time today. It seems to me that the criticism, if you analyse it, is not because there was no real fear about the white powder that was discovered at the Indonesian embassy, a country with which we are very closely associated; it was with respect to describing it as ‘a biological agent’. It was certainly biological; the difference in some people’s minds was that this disingenuously caused some fear when the term ‘agent’ was applied to the biology of it. I never knew that the powder at the time was being analysed—and it took several days to analyse it before it was discovered that it was actually flour—but fear is just as genuine when you initially believe something is dangerous and it is subsequently found to be not dangerous.

The Sydney Morning Herald described it as ‘Australia’s biggest terror scare’. That helps sell newspapers, but it is irresponsible for any media outlet, let alone one as significant as the Sydney Morning Herald, to use that phrase. It certainly was not geological, as we now know. Was it pathological? No—not now. Was it mythological? I think it probably was closest to that category. It certainly was not astrological.

But there are some powders that all look the same. It is very difficult, even when feeling them, to test the difference between different forms of white powder to which you could attach a name. Some of those white powders are quite common: flour; talcum powder; calcium carbonate, often referred to as chalk in its solid form; manganese glutamate; niacin, which is referred to commonly as vitamin B; artificial sweeteners; cement—you can get a white form of cement and, although it is dense, it feels like many of those other white powders I have just mentioned; the dust from gyprock after a ceiling has been fixed on new or repaired homes; laundry detergent; and gypsum.

These powders are all innocuous white powders. They are powders I am familiar with and have read about. I have maybe even touched most of them; I have touched some of them. I think the white powder scare at the Indonesian embassy caused us to set up a white powder room here in the basement of this parliament. Some are dangerous powders like anthrax. I recall in America some postal workers died; others became seriously ill because anthrax had been sent through the post. Some nitramines or explosives are white powders. Cocaine is something that, again, I am not familiar with, having never touched or ingested it in any way whatsoever. Diclofenac sodium, used as an anti-inflammatory, is a white powder. Ketoprofen is also an anti-inflammatory. There is boron citrate and lithium carbonate. Cyanide is highly toxic but is used in prolific amounts in the goldmining industry.

The real point I want to make today is not that the Prime Minister and others acted irresponsibly by calling it a ‘biological agent’ instead of a ‘biological’ what I am not sure—as they were accused by those opposite today—but that they would have been irresponsible had they not alerted the correct authorities which had due process, which had been laid down by this government in these matters and if that had not been followed and nothing had been said about it. If it had been a toxic or dangerous white powder then the Prime Minister and others could have been accused of irresponsibility—but not for carrying out their responsibilities in a most proficient and proper fashion, taking all those precautions necessary to ensure that no damage was done to our society.