Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is the issue of time: whether we do it straight away or whether we don't. I think the government should be given a couple more months to do this—and then there is a very strong case that the people behind me are putting up if they haven't moved to do so. This is pretty simple, really. The overseers on the boats—some people call them cowboys, but I don't like to denigrate cowboys so I won't call them that—have no qualifications and have no responsibilities placed upon them. No-one oversights what they are doing or not doing. I have spoken to a number of these 'ship stock overseers' and they say it is fine if you are doing your job properly. That bloke on that boat was not doing his job at all.

The government has been absolutely remiss here. Surely it is not complicated to set up an authorisation process so that, if you want to be a ship stock overseer, you would do a course and be subject to continuous scrutiny. Frankly, I can't see why cameras can't be put on these boats permanently. I think every Australian would agree that we don't like seeing cruelty to animals—though it is rather fascinating that in Queensland, where I come from, we are not worried about people being torn to pieces by crocodiles every six months. We are not worried about little children being murdered before they are born. We are not worried about farmworkers and suppliers and contractors to the industry who commit suicide at the rate of one a week. We are not worried about people. The lily pad leftie club, the perpetually shocked and horrified brigade, are shocked and horrified over the killing of whales but it doesn't matter how many people get killed or torn to pieces. Being killed by a crocodile is the most cruel death you can have. They are not worried about that.

Let's have a look at the live sheep trade. We have the model because you people were successful with the live cattle trade. I'll tell you what you achieved. You halved the price of cattle in this country. I would say that half the cattlemen in my electorate would have under 100 head of cattle; they are little fellows, and they probably have a job in the council. They immediately went into a loss situation. I said there was one suicide a fortnight, but it turned out that I was wrong; there was a suicide every week. Did that help the workers in the meatworks? You people say that Australians should be getting jobs. Did it help them? No, because our cattle numbers drop dramatically. In fact, meatworks closed as a result. They couldn't make a quid out of the cattle and they couldn't look after them. In northern Australia, where nearly half our cattle are, they die if you don't supplementary feed them late in the year. There was no money to supplementary feed them late in the year, so they simply died and the numbers fell. So the meat works were at a loss.

Let's talk about the people we sell to, the Indonesians. About 20 million people go to bed hungry every night in Indonesia. You say they can't afford to buy beef. Tiny little bits of beef provide a balanced diet with their rice, as does fish. Now, you cut off their food supply—an essential food supply. There is no way that they could afford to buy Australian product processed through our meatworks, with the enormous burdens placed upon our meatworks to meet all of the requirements with respect to health, hygiene and pay and conditions for our workers, but I particularly emphasise pay and conditions. The people in the Liberal Party always say, 'The problem is that wages are too high.' I have always believed that the great thing about my country is that we have the highest wages in the world. My objective is that our workers will be the highest paid workers in the world. But is it helping them? No, it isn't, because the meatworks are closing. We had nine meatworks in North Queensland; now we have one. I'm not saying all of that was attributable to this situation.

You must judge a decision by its outcomes. We know the outcomes that are going to occur. We saw what happened in the cattle industry. The prices dropped clean in half. These poor people! And don't think about the farmers. If I pick the midwestern gulf towns, there are only about 300 farmers and there are about a thousand workers supporting the industry. They are mailmen. They are shearers. They are musterers. They are helicopter flyers and technicians. So you have 300 people there. What happened with the other 2,000 people was that we went to a suicide every fortnight in the cattle industry as a result of the live cattle decision.

So you want to go and cry about animals, but the lily-pad Left never cry about people. They seem to have no concern about people whatsoever. That's the score in Queensland. That's the score for everybody to see in Queensland. Here is the lily-pad Left government—or here is their concern for human beings. It doesn't matter how many of them get torn to pieces every six months by a crocodile or how many of them commit suicide, which is going on and on and on, or how many are murdered before they're born. There's absolutely no caring about any of these things. The diabetes issue hasn't been raised by one of the lily-pad Left in this place ever. They say of our First Australians, 'Oh, we want recognition for them.' Well, get in quick because there'll be none of us left by the time we get to recognition in the Constitution. There'll be none of us left alive at the present rate. And I'll quote the figures yet again. Out of our 67,000 people, 150 die from diabetes and closely related diseases. There are probably about 300 dying from malnutrition really, but I'll just say 150 because those numbers are what I can prove. No-one here has raised the issue—not ever—yet you'll cry and howl about sheep.

I'll conclude on this note: the government knew about the situation of live cattle for four years. The minister, the department and Meat and Livestock Australia knew for four years, and they did absolutely nothing about it. Quite frankly, there is nothing in process and, with all due respect to the minister, there's nothing in process that I see that is going to change this. I listen to my colleagues here, and they have a point to make, and it's a point I agree with: we don't want to see animal cruelty. I desperately don't want to go to the other extreme and see cruelty to human beings, which, there is no doubt, they are imposing. You've got a choice of whether you want cruelty to animals or cruelty to human beings.

Well, there's a third choice: you can have cruelty to neither. It is simple: like you get a licence to drive a car, so the ship stock overseer has a licence. He is trained and he has a licence, and he makes a good income, as they do, from this job. If he does not do his job, he loses his licence; he can no longer drive the car—or, in this case, drive the ship. This is not rocket science. In the case of the live cattle industry, the government's performance was absolutely appalling. After two months, they had not sent one single knocking gun, knocking box or video screen, nor had they made any effort to authorise the proper killing of the animals in Indonesia. (Time expired)

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