Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

If we're talking about the facts here, we have introduced the toughest biosecurity measures ever used in Australia. We have remained calm and focused on maintaining strict biosecurity quarantine protocols to keep this virus out of Australia, which is what we intend to do, which is what we will do with the measures that have been put in place.

We have strengthened the biosecurity measures. We have a $14 million biosecurity package. We have deployed sanitised foot mats, as we've discussed. We have additional frontline resources at the airports and in mail centres. We have enhanced the mail profiling and inspections. We have added biosecurity officers boarding planes on arrival. We have increased the information flow. Everything is being done to make sure that this issue is being managed and that we will not have an outbreak in this country. We have the support of the major stakeholders, who also believe that we are dealing with this appropriately. So I don't think that there's room for the opposition to be looking at this situation as a joke, as a shouting match. There are facts here. The facts are fully available. We are taking appropriate action and this country will remain safe. Our relationship with our international friends and partners is something that the Labor Party has worked very hard on, and has made fundamental improvements in, in the last number of weeks since it took government.

I would also range to the issue of the questions from Senator Chandler around young people. At the point at which Senator Chandler started asking her questions, and all the yelling and shouting and heckling was going on, the entire gallery was full of school students. I'm pretty confident that the kind of behaviour they saw in this chamber is not the behaviour that they would be allowed to get away with at home or in the classroom. Heckling is something that goes on every question time, but not listening to the answers is not something that I believe we did.

I will also take you to the fact that when we're talking about the economic future of young people, and the situation they find themselves in, we have experienced a decade of energy policy paralysis. That is why we have got issues with our energy prices. We have spent a decade under the previous government with the wrong investments in skills and local manufacturing capacity. We have not boosted the jobs of the future. We have not invested in our young people. We have not provided them with appropriate training to build their careers and foster a positive future for themselves. This country, under the previous government, just totally put those young people aside and did not provide them with the opportunities that they deserve.