Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to highlight this government's incompetence in tackling the potentially fatal disease Hendra virus. It was firstly identified in Hendra in Brisbane. Hendra virus is a major problem in rural and regional areas. The potentially fatal virus is transmitted to horses by contaminated excreta from bats and flying foxes, and from horses to humans, through infected tissue and secretions.

This virus was first found in Hendra in Brisbane and has now spread across southern and western Queensland as well as into northern New South Wales. Biosecurity Queensland has now quarantined a property at Mount Alford, 50 kilometres south-west of Brisbane. This marks the third contaminated outbreak of the bat-borne disease in Queensland and northern New South Wales in less than a week. A total of no less than 23 people will wait weeks before knowing whether they are infected with this virus which has a 57 per cent mortality rate amongst humans. The virus has killed four people in the last few years. Seven humans have had contact with the disease; half of those were in fact veterinarians.

Firstly, during the last federal election, the coalition committed to funding personal protection equipment for vets and their assistants at risk from Hendra virus infection. The kits would have cost about $100 each, and Labor has failed to match that commitment. We also need to make these kits available to private vets because in the last 12 months there have been some 125 exclusion zones that have needed these kits to be used by veterinarians.

Secondly, we need to fast-track the vaccine against Hendra virus. We need to make sure we can cut through the red tape so that this vaccine can be in the field and working to protect humans from this potentially deadly disease that is carried and spread by fruit bats.

Thirdly, we will also make it compulsory for horses attending gatherings such as gymkhanas, camp drafts, polocrosse and going to stud to be vaccinated when the vaccine is available. This vaccine will protect, as I said earlier, humans from this potentially deadly disease.

Fourthly, I say that the monoclonal antibodies need to be made available to those highly exposed to the Hendra virus. It cannot just be in the case of Queensland right now that it is Queensland Health alone which decides which people will receive these antibodies; they need to include the people who are exposed and potentially have the risk of dying in this decision-making process. Those people need to understand the potential risks of not having these monoclonal antibodies and also the side effects.

This Labor government have got to put human life ahead of the bats. They have to act quickly on this issue. There are people who will wait four to six weeks to find out whether they have got a death sentence or not, and it is time that this government put rural and regional areas ahead of some of the Greens agendas that they are running. (Time expired)