Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

There is no accountability and no scrutiny of that accountability because the government and the Greens continue to deny senators the opportunity to discuss this. Whilst I appreciate that Senator Milne has something to say on this Asian honey bee business, it does seem a little trite to me that she then gets up and takes 10 minutes of the Senate's time in debating this issue, preventing other speakers apart from Senator Colbeck and me from having a say on this, when she is one of those who supported the motion this morning to make it impossible to properly scrutinise all of these documents and reports such as this. I get very angry about that. One of the real roles of the Senate is to look at all of the government documents, to hold the government accountable, but how can you do that when the Greens and the Australian Labor Party take away those opportunities with what is becoming monotonous regularity?

As Senator Colbeck says, this needs a lot more investigation. It should be debated much more fully in the parliament, but it will be February before anyone else gets a chance to make a comment on this issue. This shows a government that have no interest in these issues. It is the out of sight, out of mind approach: 'Oh, the Asian honey bee will only come to tropical North Queensland. Who cares what happens up there?' Little did they think that it could destroy the horticulture industry by destroying the honey bee. And, as Senator Milne rightly says, little did anyone bother about the fact that it could have a real impact on our biodiversity. Those things just went over the minister's head. For a lousy couple of million dollars, research was stopped. What is worse, as Senator Colbeck points out, when the committee inquired into it, it seems—I was not on the committee, but it seems—that some of the witnesses might have even been gagged, and that in itself should be a reason for a full-scale debate on this in the Senate. But are we going to get that opportunity? Not this year. And, by the time next year comes around, it will be clearly too late.

There is the other issue raised in the debate about the Wet Tropics Management Authority. I would like to say a few words about how their funding has been cut back over the years, and perhaps that is why they did not get the opportunity to alert people to this beforehand.

For all of these reasons, we should have more time to investigate this report. I am just disappointed that the guillotining stops that.