Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday, in this place, we witnessed what has to be one of the weirdest responses to a question time question I've ever heard. Even more bizarrely, it came from the Acting Prime Minister—yes, the person they've left in charge of running the country. When he was asked about federal government action, or lack of it, on the national mouse plague, which is now affecting four Australian states and is estimated to be costing a billion dollars in losses for farmers, we had the Acting Prime Minister say:

They should be rehomed into their inner-city apartments so that they can nibble away at their food and their feet at night and scratch their children at night.

This is what we got from the Acting Prime Minister yesterday. I kid you not! He wants to rehouse mice into inner-city apartments. It just goes to show the contempt with which that side of the House is treating farmers and the seriousness of this mouse plague. We have a Deputy Prime Minister, a member of the Nationals, who says the words 'farmers' and 'regional Australia' a lot but doesn't do much about helping them when they really need it. The New South Wales agriculture minister has asked the federal government for help. He's written to the government asking for help, yet the government is sitting on its hands and doing absolutely nothing about this mouse plague. We're talking a billion dollars in losses and four Australian states, and the national government is doing nothing.