Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's answer.

I have to say that the minister, Murray Watt, is so out of his depth with regard to this. He could have had more to say on the opposition benches, but, now that he's actually on the frontbench and he has to respond to this in his ministerial role, he's so far out of his depth. He lives on the Gold Coast. He's possibly never even looked a cow in the face. He's never birthed a calf. He wouldn't have a clue what he's talking about.

Talking about advice, we've all been through the COVID pandemic. He says he's listening to the experts. Well, experts have actually shut down our country and stopped people from having jobs. He thinks that he knows best what's right for this country. He actually said yesterday that it is the strongest response by any government. Again, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

This has not been the strongest response that we've seen from any government to any biosecurity threat in our national history, as the minister said in this chamber yesterday. He's forgotten about the COVID-19 pandemic, where we actually closed the borders to protect our country from COVID. Apparently the minister has no knowledge of history: in Australia's response to the influenza epidemic a century ago, ships were quarantined, schools were closed and millions of vaccine doses were produced here.

In his efforts to deflect attention from his misleading the Senate, he's misled us yet again. Foot-and-mouth vaccines stored in the United Kingdom cannot be used to inoculate animals in Australia until they are brought to Australia. Bring them now. That needs to be done. He talks about how there are apparently one million vaccine doses. That is not enough for these figures: 74 million sheep, 26 million cattle, 2.6 million pigs and 1½ million dairy cows in Australia. We knew how many doses of COVID vaccine we had in the country. Why don't we know how many vaccines we have for the animals? Why isn't he telling us that? Oh, for security reasons. Why? I don't understand security reasons here. He doesn't want to be seen to have such a minimal amount of vaccines for the number of cattle, sheep and pigs in this country, because we have nowhere near the vaccines needed to protect us.

Let me also tell you that, if this gets out, we have over 24 million feral pigs in Australia. Probably none of you know that pigs are virus factories. When it comes to foot-and-mouth disease, they produce 3,000 times the quantity of the virus that a cow does. They're everywhere. National parks—you shut the national parks down. You haven't culled them; you've done nothing about the pigs. If the virus gets into the pigs, you actually have a real problem in this country. Then you've got the camels. We have over a million feral camels in Australia. We have about 2.3 million feral goats and about two million wild deer. All of these can be carriers of the virus. Yet you're not talking about this.

This is an important matter. The minister tells the chamber that he has support from these industries. The NFF? Really? Do they really support and speak on behalf of a lot of these farmers? I don't think so. They don't. I will tell you another thing. I just finished speaking with the dairy corporation here in Australia. They are really concerned about this. They said that, if it gets into the dairy herd, it's worse than it can be for beef cattle, because they will not be able to put dairy cattle on properties for three years. It is very hard to breed the dairy cattle that we need for the production of milk. It takes a lot longer. You have no idea of the damage that can be done to this country if we get foot-and-mouth disease in here.

Also, think of the exports. We are, regardless, clean and green. If we get foot-and-mouth disease in here, Japan and other countries won't take our produce. We will lose the dairy industry. Then there's the export of meat. But that's right up your alley—right up the Greens alley and probably the Labor Party's alley too. The fact is that you want to—