Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Before I directly answer Senator Birmingham's question, I want to pick up this point he keeps making about vaccines. As you may be aware, when the Prime Minister visited Indonesia shortly after the election he made an offer of vaccines to the Indonesian government. At that point in time, they decided, as is their sovereign right, that they would obtain those vaccines elsewhere for the time being and would begin a domestic production program around vaccines. We have of course since offered a million vaccines that have been accepted; they have been ordered. They will be provided to Indonesia in August. In terms of biosecurity officers, I will get you the exact number but my advice is that they have begun being rolled out into airports and mail centres now.

While I've got 10 seconds left, I do want to make the point that those biosecurity officers will not only be deployed into airports; they will be deployed into mail centres as well because the mail centres are the highest risk we have.