Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation) Share this | Hansard source

The judgement that people ought to make as to whether or not an opposition is mature enough to gain government should be made on the way it approaches national emergencies such as the one we are looking at with equine influenza. Senator Kerry O’Brien has comprehensively failed that test. He does not acknowledge the cooperative response of state Labor governments in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. He does not acknowledge, for example, that we have in place protocols that are very good but that we are willing to look at them.