Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I will say at the outset that I am deeply, personally offended at the remarks of the member for Forrest. That she would come into this place and accuse other Western Australians of not caring is a disgrace. The member for Forrest is leaving the chamber—that's wise. It's not fair, it's ridiculous and it's wrong. We have always worked for regional Australia. In my electorate, I have the CBH Group, Co-operative Bulk Handling Ltd. That is the largest export industry in the state agriculturally, putting wheat out of Kwinana. We always care for the farmers. We have to have their industry because it supports our towns, our towns that we created. Sure, Rockingham and Kwinana came after Brookton and Corrigin, but they were still a very important part of the development of Western Australia.

If we reflect on that footage, we saw how everyone in Australia—quite rightly—was shocked and just disgusted at the cruelty done to sheep that mainly came out of Western Australia and were exported out through Fremantle. On the way to Fremantle, those sheep stop in my electorate. They rest for a time at Baldivis before they are packed tightly onto trucks and sent through the streets of Fremantle to get on these second-rate, overcrowded and underventilated ships that then spend many, many months in the hot summer going up to the Middle East. With that footage we saw, it's important to note that these incidents are not uncommon. That disgrace that we saw and that animal cruelty that we saw did not constitute a breach of the current regulations. What does that mean? It's disgraceful.

Where were the member for O'Connor, the member for Durack and the member for Forrest when the former minister for agriculture, the member for New England, was dismantling the regulation that sought to keep this industry alive?

There is a culture of complacency that the former minister put in place, and disregard for government regulation—this regulation was needed to keep this industry alive. Where were they? Why weren't they talking to the then minister about what should be done to protect the industry? The industry itself came out a long time ago and said there was a problem. Local WA operators saw the writing on the wall. Wellard in my electorate, who operate in Baldivis, do some of the exporting, and Wellard senior executive Fred Troncone has said:

The reputation of our industry rests on how well the industry is regulated.

That's the industry itself calling on you as a government to help them. And what did you do? You did nothing. What did the member for Forrest do then? She would have seen that letter. If she's so tight-knit with that industry, why didn't she do something about it? Why wasn't she listening? It is the same with the members for O'Connor and Durack. They have been caught sitting on their hands, doing nothing. It's just ridiculous. It's a disgrace that they would come into this place and have the gall to have a go at every other Western Australian member in this place—because of their own inaction, and their own wilful blindness to the disgrace that became the regulation of the live sheep export trade in this country. To conflate this industry with the cattle export industry is ridiculous. We know they are different export markets. That's the truth.

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