Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I notice in this debate that a coalition MP posed the question: 'Why are we even debating this legislation?' The reason we are is that the legislation itself is crucial. It's not just about protecting livestock or agriculture. Biosecurity matters. It saves lives. It protects Australians. It has a very important place, in the broad range of things, particularly during a pandemic where we should be ensuring that the biosecurity of all Australians is protected.

This government—particularly this minister, who is here in the chamber—should hang their heads in absolute shame for the grossest dereliction of duty we have seen through the course of this pandemic. This minister, who is responsible for this bill, demonstrated the astounding incompetence of being unable to know what aspects of his own legislation covered the protection of Australians and their health. This minister now is saying that he wants to bring in a whole range of measures that make ordinary Australians feel like crims, but when he does the wrong thing he's not held accountable for it. It is embarrassing that a minister of the Crown is so spectacularly incapable of knowing what his own act is responsible for and still holds his job.

I want to make it absolutely clear that none of the critical remarks I make in the course of this debate are directed at those public servants who do the public a great service at our airports and ports, and who do the right thing to help protect Australians. My criticisms are not directed at them; in fact, my greatest compliments are directed at them for their public service. The greatest criticism should go to their bosses. The greatest criticism should go to the ministers who failed the Australian public. Under the regime that's been put in place here, every Australian tries to do the right thing when they come back from an overseas trip. The pen hovers over the card, and people try to work out which box they should tick to do the right thing. They are made to feel that pressure. There are TV crews in Australian airports that monitor them, making ordinary, average Australians feel like they're doing something wrong.

But when it came to the big issues of protecting the country during the pandemic, we found the department of agriculture and this minister wanting—this minister in particular, along with the Prime Minister and the Minister for Home Affairs. When biosecurity mattered in a pandemic, they were found wanting. In particular, everyone in the country knows about the 2,700 people who were affected by coronavirus on the Ruby Princess, the 700 people who were infected by coronavirus on the Ruby Princess and the 20-plus Australians who lost their lives because they contracted coronavirus on the Ruby Princess. They lost their lives. They paid the price.

I get worked up about this issue when I think of all those passengers who went on that trip. They were just ordinary, average Australians. Many of them were older Australians who went the hard slog in their jobs, paid off their mortgages and raised their kids. They have grandchildren. They took a cruise, like a lot of Australians do. They treated themselves. They went on those cruises thinking they would have a great time. When they boarded and when they went to get off the cruise, they depended on the government to do the right thing and look after them. They depended on the cruise operators to do the right thing and look after them. They were massively let down through the course of this incident, and the lapses in biosecurity were critical in impacting on the health of ordinary Australians. Those ordinary Australians who took that cruise should have had full confidence that their health and safety would be protected and that, when they got off their cruise, they would not be attending a funeral. I genuinely feel for those people. I genuinely feel that we let them down and I genuinely feel that at no point did this government ever step up. The government that is quick to point fingers at others never stepped up to take responsibility for themselves.

In May we heard that, on the evening before passengers were allowed to disembark, federal authorities were aware of 128 sick people aboard the Ruby Princess, including 24 with a temperature. That's what the Senate COVID committee was told. The Australian Border Force—which said, as a result of the Prime Minister's declaration in mid-March, that they would control which cruise boats came in or didn't come in—didn't tell the harbourmaster what he should or shouldn't do, and Australian Border Force claimed they had no legislated authority to do that in regard to a biosecurity threat. The minister laughed a few minutes earlier about whether or not he was accountable. When quizzed on RN Breakfast on 14 August about an act he was responsible for, this minister—agriculture minister David Littleproud—who is responsible for this legislation and these protections, said:

Well let me make clear, that federal agricultural agency only looks after plants and animals; they don't look after human health.

Really? His own website, the department of agriculture website, says:

The … Biosecurity Act 2015—

which is going to be amended by the legislation we're debating here today—

explains how we manage biosecurity threats to plant, animal and human health in Australia and its external territories.

This is an act that this minister administers, and he doesn't even know he is responsible for human health. It's not that he didn't know; it's that he didn't want to admit that this was what he was responsible for, because there have been lapses between various government ministers in accounting for biosecurity threats with what happened with the Ruby Princess.

It is often put that there were no federal representatives on the Ruby Princess when it went to dock. They claim in many instances that it was NSW Health. But that is just wrong. There absolutely were representatives of Agriculture or the federal government on that ship. On top of that, the minister responsible for this act has repeatedly failed to explain the exact times that officials from his own department gave approval for people to disembark the Ruby Princess and, therefore, spread coronavirus in this country. It reached as far as Tasmania and triggered the lockdown of that state. That is a result of lapses that can be attributed to the minister responsible for the Biosecurity Act.

When the minister was quizzed on TV about when they gave approval, he said: 'They gave it on 19 March. The exact time I don't have in front of me.' It is one of the most seismic events in the course of the pandemic and he didn't have the detail. It's just like the aged-care minister, who didn't know the number of people who lost their lives in aged-care facilities in this country. We had another minister who didn't know crucial details involving the disembarkation of the Ruby Princess.

Again the minister responsible for this act has refused to acknowledge or apologise. His departmental secretary conceded to the committee that the department itself failed to do the required traveller-with-illness checklist onboard the Ruby Princess. Ordinary Australians are forced to look very carefully at the things they're filling out when they come back—the things that are being debated in this legislation—but the minister's own department don't do the same thing when it's up to them.

What happened at the start of the pandemic when the Queensland Premier wrote to the Prime Minister about the traveller identification cards that had been handed up—the very cards that we're debating in this legislation? They said that they wanted to keep more data on travellers for contact tracing. As we have all become very aware, contact tracing plays a crucial role in containing the spread of coronavirus. The Queensland Premier wrote to the Prime Minister and asked to get these cards. Samantha Maiden from news.com.au wrote in September:

As the states dealt with the influx of international passengers, they were shocked to learn that incoming travellers' passenger cards were essentially thrown in the bin or unable to be accessed on privacy grounds.

These are the same cards that we've been told today play such an important role in biosecurity. Yet, when the states asked for access to them to enable more efficient contact tracing to limit the spread of coronavirus, this government failed to do the job. We're being asked to improve the penalty regime in this legislation, but this minister can't even do his job.

Ordinary Australians—just like those passengers on the Ruby Princessexpect that governments will be there to protect them, but they're not. At no point has the Prime Minister, the Minister for Home Affairs or that minister over there stepped up and accepted responsibility. Why? Because they've spent too much time playing political games and trying to blame the states. They've been involved in blaming states for what's not happening in the shutdown—blaming them for this recession, in effect. We had this spread of coronavirus that triggered a whole set of shutdowns and lockdowns and all this economic spend, and yet we get asked, as the Labor Party, why do we call it the 'Morrison recession'? The reason is choices were made—or not made—that had an impact on people's livelihoods and had an impact on the economy. The government should be held to account for the depth of this recession. They should be held to account for the amount of money that they've had to pay in the budget to help save the economy because of a biosecurity threat that they triggered when they failed to do the right thing on the Ruby Princess.

I've heard the member for Higgins blame the Victorian government for this and that, despite the fact the federal government didn't do the right thing on aged care, despite the fact the federal government were quite happy for self-isolation rather than quarantining. The states had to step up to do quarantining because the feds wouldn't do it. And on top of that we had the Ruby Princess, a biosecurity threat that was not managed properly by this government. Every single one of them should hang their heads in shame for those ordinary Australians that copped it because of them. Instead of accepting responsibility, all they did was shift it somewhere else. It's just wrong! For example, the Minister for Home Affairs said: 'I don't employ a doctor or nurse at airports and ports to help with biosecurity. That's the responsibility of the Victorian health department, the Queensland health department, the New South Wales health department. It's nothing to do with Australian Border Force. They look at the documentation. They want to make sure people have valid passports and people have valid visas, that they are not criminals coming into this country. They do not conduct testing and they do not conduct temperature tests et cetera. That is not their responsibility.' It's just not true.

The failure of the federal government to be accountable is letting Australians down. This government's failure and dereliction of duty is hurting Australians, it has caused the death of Australians, and that's why this government doesn't accept responsibility. When it comes to the realisation it has done the wrong thing, it doesn't want to accept responsibility. All it wants to do is shift it, and this bill is another example of that. This minister is another example of the incompetence that led to the deaths of Australians, and this government should absolutely hang its head in shame for the way it let down ordinary Australians in this country.

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