Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Once again, I thank Senator Keneally for her question and continued interest. I will take the specific nature of your question on notice and I will make sure that I provide you with a very timely response. But there is absolutely no doubt that cruise ships have posed a very unique issue to manage during the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it be cruise ships in Australia or Australians on cruise ships that have been around the world. Obviously, we took very strong action to ban international cruise vessels from docking in Australia some weeks ago. However, we have had some vessels that were already on their way here. That ban is to make sure that Australians who were on board many of these vessels are protected and also to make sure that we can continue to protect Australians from this disease that is ravaging the world. Australia has been working extremely hard to make sure that our transmission levels have been kept at the absolute lowest through the very strong management of the—