Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is my 10c here, member for Wills. The member for Makin said that this is some sort of win-win situation. We are way past ever having a win-win situation on this. We are way past not having some sort of permanent effect. The truth of the matter is that the cattle that are leaving Australia now will not be killed for three months. That is ample time to sort out the issue with where they will be killed at the other end. These are store cattle that have a limited window in which to be mustered, put on a boat and sent to Indonesia. A short break is not possible; the whole season has gone. Those cattle will not be suitable next year, so where are they going to go? Where are they going to end up?

This is an intolerable situation. I am not justifying cruelty to animals. What we saw on Four Cornerswas horrific, but I want to know why Four Corners did not go to the larger abattoirs that are processing a large percentage of the cattle that are in Indonesia at the moment. Why did they not show footage of what is being done there on a humane basis? Why did they not put the other side of the story, that there are companies now that have traceability, have full control in the feedlots and have full control in the abattoirs and have cattle going there?

The initial response from the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator Ludwig, was appropriate to ban trade with the abattoirs that were not up to scratch.

Opposition members interjecting—

Exactly. The member for Makin touched on it: they were spooked by the emails. I got hundreds of emails. I do not know whether the member for Makin read his but mine were all remarkably similar. As a matter of fact I think that most of my emails were written by two people, and I think that they came through at three o'clock or four o'clock in the morning. I am yet to do some research but I would suspect that a lot of them were generated from a central base.

Are we going to run this country by mass emails from fringe political groups or are we going to look at people's livelihoods, what is good for the national economy and what is good for the cattle industry of Northern Australia? Are we going to look at what is good for the Aboriginal communities of Northern Australia that have finally got some way of having a respectable job that they can take some pride in and that they are doing well, a job that has been cut out from under them? I cannot believe that on this day, after all this time, we are still debating this motion. I would have thought the honourable thing for the member for Melbourne to do would have been to withdraw this motion when he saw what devastation had been created because of the ill-conceived and ill-timed way the situation was handled.

Did anyone from the government go to Indonesia and speak to the government there? Is this how we govern the country? We see a TV show and then we make an announcement! What happened to internat­ional diplomacy? Why couldn't the world's greatest Minister for Foreign Affairs have gone to Indonesia, spoken to his counterpart and tried to sort this matter out? The Indonesians have been slighted by this and we are going to see a kickback not only in the cattle trade but in other trades that we do with their country.

This issue might be burning hot in the retirement homes of the electorate of the member for Makin, but I can tell you that it is burning red hot in the electorate of Parkes. People cannot believe that a government could be so incompetent. I have to say that I do not believe that it is all members of the government. I believe that this side of the House has been hijacked by the loopy left.

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