Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is unfortunate that the opposition wants to play politics with this issue and to focus on the hendra virus as the reason for it. As Senator Sterle pointed out, he and I and Senator Back visited the high security facility at Geelong run by CSIRO—the premier facility of that sort in the world—where research into and diagnosis of the presence of hendra virus takes place. It does not really matter in a sense what others are doing, because the only place I would want the virus being researched in any way, given its consequences in infecting humans with an over 60 per cent fatality rate, is at that Geelong facility and nowhere else. And I am sure the CRC would have felt the same way.

It is self-evident from the fact that we were there and they were researching it that research is going on at that facility into that virus and into the transmission of that and other viruses, and we have received some very interesting information about the role that bats potentially play in the transmission of diseases such as hendra but also avian influenza—another matter that was raised with us—and that bats may well be the vector for a range of other diseases. I would want that sort of research to be conducted in a facility where we are virtually guaranteed there can be no escape from the facility of the vectors we are trying to research—it is prevented from entering or spreading in our environment.

In terms of the CRC situation, it was the Howard government that introduced the competitive model for CRCs. It introduced a system where there was effectively a bidding process for funding. That has been continued, and so I am a little bit surprised that the coalition are now criticising the continuation of a process that they initiated and supported.