Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kennedy for the question in my capacity here representing the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. I appreciate the perspective and the concerns of the electorate of Kennedy when anything relates to the live export industry. I have been with the member for Kennedy to Normanton and Cloncurry and met with some of the graziers and pastoralists there. It is a similar story across much of the north of Australia, going across through the Northern Territory and into Western Australia. There are a large number of jobs, family businesses and Indigenous employment operations which are underpinned by very large pastoralist industries.

It is also true that the reason that this debate has taken off in such a way over the last 24 hours is that the footage that was on television last night was just awful. I felt that watching it, I am sure every Australian felt that and I am sure every farmer felt that as well. I note the comments that have been made by the New South Wales Farmers Association already about the distress that many of their members have felt in seeing their own stock treated in the way that we saw last night at a number of establishments. The footage was only made available to the minister for agriculture shortly before that program went to air. In that time, a number of actions have been taken and shortly before we went to question time the minister for agriculture provided a detailed media conference where he went through the gravity of what had been sighted and also the specific actions which he had already undertaken and further actions which he has left the way open for.

Suffice to say of those specific establishments that have been involved and have been seen in that footage that Australian farmers do expect that their stock will be treated better than that. The Australian people expect that animals originating from Australia will be treated better than that, and the actions taken thus far by the minister have centred on those specific establishments.

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