Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll also take note of pretty much all of the questions. I'm not thinking about us rewriting history; I'm just trying to think about how the good senator is trying to rewrite the questions in question time that just happened now—in particular, the question from Senator Cadell. The senators on the other side, and Minister Watt, in their responses, didn't actually answer the questions of Senator Cadell. He wasn't asking questions about fire ants in Queensland. He was asking questions about fire ants in New South Wales. Not one single point of answer was addressed to fire ants in New South Wales—only to answering a question that wasn't asked about fire ants in Queensland. The issue is that three fire ant nests have now been located in South Murwillumbah, 13 kilometres south of the Queensland/New South Wales border in New South Wales. They're unable to actually understand the difference between a problem in Queensland and a problem in New South Wales and so unable to actually answer the question that was asked about a problem in New South Wales. As a senator for New South Wales, it is very important to me that the minister is actually able to answer a question about a problem in my home state.

But it's not a problem that impacts just my home state. The whole country has been put at risk of fire ants because this Labor government was, once again, too slow to act. The funding should have been committed back in July—not on 22 October, but back in July. Nothing, all the time—and also not understanding the difference between New South Wales and Queensland when answering a question, but that's another matter.

So, again, we understand that the Labor government doesn't understand the difference between a problem in New South Wales and a problem in Queensland. It also does not understand what a massive threat this is. To that end, the National Red Imported Fire Ant Eradication Program Strategic Review estimated that at least $200 million to $300 million per year was required to deal with this massive problem. So what does this government do? It dallies, for a number of months, and then commits $268 million over four years, when you need $200 million to $300 million per year. So let's have a big think about that and what impact that is going to have on our communities. Unbelievable!

The next thing I'm going to talk about is the cost-of-living piece. I heard a couple of senators talking about how the coalition's done this and the coalition's done that, where we're not focused and how we haven't agreed to support legislation that would cut cost-of-living pressures. It was all very confusing to me, particularly when Senator Green said that the coalition 'hates cheaper medicines'.

The coalition doesn't hate cheaper medicines. What the coalition hates is using community pharmacies in this country to fund government policy, when this government is unable to create its own policies to cut the cost of medicines without harming local family community pharmacies. And most of those community pharmacies are owned by women. So this government would like female small-business owners to fund the cost of cheaper medicines in this country. That's what this government should be embarrassed about. That's what this government should be ashamed of, on top of the fact that it has been totally incapable of providing any meaningful policy to stop the pain for Australian families and Australian mortgage holders, who have faced 13 interest rate hikes. There has been zero impactful or meaningful policy change from this government to stop that.

Question agreed to.