Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (Senator Evans) to a question without notice asked by Senator Scullion today, relating to the Northern Territory intervention and comments made by Senator Crossin during the debate on the address-in-reply to the Governor-General’s opening speech on 11 March 2008.

I asked quite a simple question of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship in the Senate today. I simply asked him to repudiate the outrageous remarks of Labor’s Senator Crossin. It was a very simple question. It may have even gone to an error. She was a little bit excited with the hubris of winning the election and may have made an error, I am not sure. The context of this particular remark does need some sort of explanation. She said:

So the dramas and charades and the attention that was sought by the previous government in relation to child sexual abuse and child neglect, I believe, were seriously overstated.

Well, that can be a belief—I do not have too much of a problem with that—but I think she is sadly mistaken. I am not denying that is there, but when you have only 50 that statement clearly diminishes. Whether it was accidental or not, I hope that Senator Crossin takes the opportunity in this place to correct the record.

In the answer given by Senator Evans, he indicated that we have a completely bipartisan approach in these matters and that I should simply just get on the program. Labor, of course, completely supports the intervention! With respect, I understand that that was with a couple of particular points that they made, and they made those through the election. But basically they would completely support the intervention. I have to say that, during the election campaign, I met a considerable number of intervention sceptics. In fact, pretty much wherever I went I found people—