Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The pestilence, as they used to call it then, which was a form of plague. The minister was quite right and he went on to acknowledge that at the same time there was in fact a surfeit of food being produced in Ireland—of course, also totally correct. But what I found really extraordinary was the conclusion that he drew from this. The conclusion was that this is the deadly hand of bureaucracy, as defined by politics beyond your domestic control, and the reality of where power truly lies when it comes to food. The bureaucracy? It was, somehow or other, a group of public servants or bureaucrats that decided that this food was not going to be consumed in Ireland and it was going to be shipped off overseas. That is totally wrong—and this is an important thing that we need to recognise. This is a Tea Party mantra, that we are constantly surrounded with this evil bureaucracy that is doing in our country. It has got nothing to do with bureaucracy. This was a deliberate policy at the time of the British government and the British landed gentry, who believed that Ireland was overpopulated and that the best thing that could happen for Ireland, and particularly for their interests in Ireland, was for there to be a significant reduction in their population. And, indeed, there was a genocide that occurred at that time, with probably not 400,000 but closer to a million people starving to death and another two million or so people being forced overseas—although I am one of those people who say I am glad my ancestors had the get up and go to get up and go, because I think we have a great land of opportunity here in Australia.

Coming back to my first comment, we have a strange conundrum with the minister. On the one hand, notwithstanding all his ranting and raving against 'regulation' and 'red tape' and 'just get out of the way', a la the Tea Party, he is very sensibly supporting an amendment through this piece of legislation to ensure that the Australian Animal Health Council can provide a proper emergency response when there is a requirement to do so. Then contrast that with the completely ill-informed idea that the Irish famine and the fact that so many people died was somehow or other the fault of a bureaucracy, rather than a conscious and deliberate policy on the part of people who had a lot of vested interests. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I commend the bill to the House.

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