Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Dunkley as opposed to following the member for Durack in this debate on the meat export industry. The member for Dunkley put forward a reasoned argument, even though I do not agree with a lot of what he had to say.

Firstly, I would like to put on the record my thanks to the member for Page for bringing this issue to the parliament and allowing this debate to take place today. I think it is an important debate. There are a number of members in this parliament who wanted to have a say about what they thought on this particular issue. It is very important to a number of electorates. It is about the livestock industry, the meat industry and whether or not we have live exports. My position is that it is not critical to the Australian economy. Sheep meat exports to the Middle East were worth $110 million more than live sheep exports to the region last year. So to say that only live exports are important is not correct. I say that we should be concentrating on expanding the sheepmeat export industry as opposed to the live sheep export industry.

It is also important to say that this is about Australian jobs and making sure that we support and protect those jobs. Australian jobs benefit most when we export meat from sheep that have been killed, rather than live sheep. That is very, very important. Australia is a member country of the OIE, which is the World Organisation for Animal Health. It is the only intergovernmental body that exists to improve animal welfare internationally. This issue is about a balance between jobs, our export market, which is very important, and animal welfare. I might put on the record here that I am a person who grew up in the country. I have a longstanding connection with people who are involved in growing and exporting cattle. I have family who are involved in the industry. I am not arguing that we should not have a strong meat industry, because I think it is very important to our country.

Despite Australia having over 30 years of industry involvement in the Middle East, our animals are still being treated brutally. Here I would like to put on the record for the House a quote by Mahatma Gandhi:

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

I think that is very important. This is an issue that has been raised with me in my electorate by a number of constituents. They are very in favour of the export of our livestock, but they would like to see them being exported once they have been killed. Live export for slaughter will never be ethically acceptable. Transporting animals thousands of kilometres by sea only to be slaughtered will never be logical nor ethically acceptable.

Australian funding may have improved ramps and feedlot conditions, but animals in nearly all Middle Eastern abattoirs are still being slaughtered while fully conscious. Here in Australia they are stunned before slaughter. Animal welfare will only be improved in the Middle East and other importing nations when there is local legislation to protect animals from cruel treatment. There should be an animal welfare benchmark before Australian animals leave this country live. This is a nonargument. Australian animals should not be exported live. We need to protect Australian jobs. We need to ensure that Australian animals are treated humanely and ethically. That will only happen when these animals are slaughtered at home.

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