Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (NT, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support Senator Roberts's motion. I absolutely and utterly reject accusations that we on this side of the chamber are politicising this issue when this current government has sought to scrap the committee for northern Australia which deals with supporting issues exactly like this.

As a representative of the Northern Territory, I find it deeply insulting. It's insulting to suggest that such an important issue is something that we would play politics with. I would also like to remind the President—through the chamber—that, prior to being sworn in as a senator for the Northern Territory, I was very proudly part of a coalition announcement on 23 March that we were providing funding of $61.6 million to boost our biosecurity efforts in northern Australia, which would take our commitment to $1 billion. I also reject comments from Senator Whish-Wilson made yesterday. I certainly would not support his comments around the fact that we're behaving childishly in front of children in these chambers, given that they are a party that supports drug use and actually encourages our school leavers to smoke marijuana, noting the effects that that has in terms of marijuana induced psychosis. So I don't take to those sorts of comments very kindly, nor the government's accusations that we're not taking this issue very seriously.

Again, as a representative of the Northern Territory, I'm very, very aware of how important this industry is for the Northern Territory. In the Northern Territory, the cattle industry and related services industries contribute $1 billion annually to the Territory economy. There are 2.2 million cattle across 45 per cent of the Territory's land mass. The Northern Territory pastoralists manage up to 700,000 square kilometres of the land mass. The average Territory herd size is 8,000 head of cattle. The average Territory cattle property is approximately 3,000 square kilometres and, on average, around 600,000 cattle are turned off Territory pastures annually. And let's not forget the fact that the port of Darwin is the busiest live export port in the world. So these measures are very, very important. It alarms me that Minister Watt is more concerned about governing through social media than he is about governing through his portfolio, claiming that senators on our side of the chamber didn't make mention of this issue through their social media and that that is enough of an argument to show that we don't care. I reject that. I utterly and absolutely reject that.

I would also like to remind the chamber that, on 15 July, Minister Watt made the following public statement. He said, 'Foot baths are not particularly effective.' This is laughable considering that now they are claiming that they are the champions of foot baths. He went on to say: 'Often people have got more than one pair of shoes. The chemicals for effective foot baths are dangerous to human skin.' These are his very own comments made on 15 July. On 15 July, I happened to be at the Katherine show, speaking directly with members of our pastoral industry, who are gravely concerned about this issue and who, as a result of these comments, were extremely fearful that this government was not taking this issue seriously enough. They were so concerned.

And it is not us pushing this fear agenda; it was these very comments that sparked action by the pastoralists, members of the Northern Territory cattle association, whom I haven't heard the minister refer to at all as someone he's had consultations with. Perhaps he has, but he's failed to mention them in this chamber, probably because northern Australia isn't important to the government. Hence we had to move a motion yesterday to refer the scrapping of the committee to an inquiry. But his comments created a reaction whereby the pastoralists, the Northern Territory cattle association, then, at the showgrounds themselves, established foot mats for the purpose of demonstrating to this government—well, the fact that they really don't have a clue about the importance of this issue—that foot mats and foot baths are not dangerous to human skin. Comments were made to me directly that they were gravely concerned that we need to jump on this, that we need to bring to the attention of the wider community of Australians that citric acid is a naturally occurring acid. You can use it in your everyday households. But clearly the government doesn't have any idea about the fact that this could certainly be a biosecurity measure to support the industry and that it is an effective tool when used in this way and is not harmful to human skin—or to animal skin, for that matter.

I would like to give a reminder—obviously the minister is not here, but I'm sure he will catch up with these comments later—that it was these very comments, made on 15 July, that prompted the industry to demonstrate, out of fear and out of deep concern for the industry, that he was wrong and that they needed support. It demonstrated that the government was not taking this seriously enough. That was on 15 July. Since the minister is more concerned about governing through social media, he might want to join my Facebook page and view the post I made on 15 July about speaking to a vet who delivered a session on the biosecurity concern that day, at the show in Katherine, on the importance of this government acting promptly to deal with this issue.

So I will not accept that we on this side of the chamber and those of us who represent northern Australia and the interests of those within the industry are playing politics with this issue. We are gravely concerned, because it is our backyards that are in the direct firing line should this get out of hand. It is our backyards that will suffer. It is those within our industry. And we know this will have further effects within our industry. When our pastoralists, when our agriculturists, when our farmers are down on their luck, it's not just about the industry and how it'll affect the wider Australian economy. This is about people's livelihoods, this is about their lives, this is about their ability to care and look after their families. When people feel so destroyed under these sorts of circumstances, it can very well lead to issues such as suicide. We don't want to see that occur for anyone within our pastoralist industries, within our cattle industries. So I find it deeply insulting that it would be suggested that we're playing politics on this issue.

Again, I ask this government to take very seriously the issues relating to northern Australia. We need a voice in these chambers just like everybody else. We are affected by decisions made and decisions that aren't made by this government going forward. It is our responsibility to hold this government to account, and that is exactly what we are doing on behalf of these industries, on behalf of the little people and on behalf of those who would be affected.