STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr JOYCE (New England) (13:33): I was wondering what I was going to speak on, and it's become absolutely imperative to bring this up. Just then, on the television, I heard that fire ants have been found in Sydney: Solenopsis invicta. The issue is that I thought they'd just been discovered, but they were discovered a month ago, at the intermodal.

This is an incredibly dire issue for agricultural Australia and for the recreation areas of Sydney. Every year, people die from fire ant bites. But, more important than that, areas become completely inoperable for recreation—for kids, for parks, for houses and for whatever people do.

If it gets into cattle areas, the cattle keep walking. They can't stop, and your production levels go down. The same thing goes for sheep.

But, if you go to our native fauna, where they will absolutely have a devastating effect is on koalas, because the koalas' capacity to go down the tree and travel to the next tree is completely and utterly smashed by the fire ants. This is an issue; it's not made up. You can go and have a look at what's happening in the United States and at the loss of production and at people's loss of recreational capacity.

Do the people of Sydney realise that this is happening? Do the people of Sydney realise how absolutely derelict the government has been in trying to deal with this incredibly important issue?