Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We're here to debate the definition of a 'lamb'. A great deal of concern for me is the need to diversify our markets out of Western Australia. We have a small domestic market for chilled lamb, and we export predominantly to China, which is fine—they've been an excellent market for us—but 48 per cent of our product now goes into China. I think most sound businesses would be thinking that they're getting a little bit top-heavy in the one market and that we need to expand. Of course, one of our longest standing, most important and most loyal markets has been our friends in the Middle East.

Unfortunately, just last week I received a letter—a copy of a letter—from the Widam Food Company, a company which imports chilled meat into the Middle East. They also import live sheep. In October 2019, when I was on a personal trip to Europe, I called in and met the Widam CEO, Mr Al-Marri, and was taken on a tour of their newly installed feedlot and the abattoir they were building that was only weeks away from being commissioned—state-of-the-art facilities built specifically for receiving live sheep and slaughtering them there in the Middle East.

The announcement from Widam that they would be no longer importing Australian chilled meat will have a severe impact on one particular abattoir in my electorate, Hillside Meat Processors, which provides about 12,000 to 15,000 carcasses for the airfreight trade. These are lightweight lambs, member for Fenner, that will now have to find another market. Of course, the market that's there and ready to go, and the exporters that are ready to service it—that's the live sheep trade.

We need to support our exporters. We certainly need to see that product exported out of Western Australia, whether it be as chilled product or live product, but there is demand for the live product, which takes me to the Saudi trade. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the largest importer of live sheep in the world. It imports around eight million head per year from all over North Africa and the Black Sea—countries which don't have anything like the animal welfare protocols and requirements that we do. We have been locked out of that market since 2011 because of some of the protocols that this government sought to impose on the Saudis. But it was with great anticipation that the industry looked forward to the conclusion of negotiations between the Australian government and the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment for some protocols to resume the trade.

These negotiations were concluded in April 2020 and the industry was looking forward to the resumption of the trade. Unfortunately, since then there have been some additional conditions applied by the department of agriculture around the scabby mouth vaccination, which many farmers conduct in the lamb marking cradle. I have done many thousands of lambs myself. What happens is the lambs are restrained in the cradle—they're quite small at that stage of their life—and the vaccine is applied. There's a little vial with a needle and you scratch the lamb—just a little scratch under its armpit—and the vaccine enters the bloodstream and vaccinates the lamb against scabby mouth.

What the department of agriculture has told the live export community—and this has not been asked for by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—is that animals will need to be scratched within 30 days of them going on a boat. For an 18-month-old, 60 kilogram wether, the animal will have to be restrained and scratched within 30 days of going on the boat. In practice, the Scabigard vaccine is actually highly toxic and it's quite dangerous to use. The lambs are restrained in a marking cradle so they can't kick and wriggle, but a 60 kilogram wether would throw me to the floor without a blink and I would probably end up stabbing myself with the needle and giving myself a dose of the Scabigard vaccine, which is highly toxic for humans.

It's a great disappoint to me—and to the rest of the industry—that the ag department has imposed this condition, because it wasn't requested by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There are protocols in place from pre-2011 for dealing with any issues around scabby mouth. I'm sure that the department is concerned about a repeat of the Cormo Express incident of 2003—and none of us wants to see that—but the memorandum of understanding that was signed in 2005 does take account of those sorts of issues and there is a protocol and a series of actions that can take place under those arrangements.

I just want to conclude my comments by coming back to the legislation and saying this has been a great initiative by the government and it makes a real difference in most seasons to the farmer's bottom line. It means that farmers can retain their lambs for a little longer and get them a little heavier—which is actually what the market wants; they want the lambs as heavy as possible—without running the risk that that lamb will be devalued the minute it cuts its lamb's tooth.

I particularly want to commend the government and the minister for that legislation and reform to the industry. I want to remind the House that this is a $4.5 billion industry. There are 31,000 sheep farmers across this nation who benefit from this industry. In the heat of the COVID pandemic, back in March and April, one thing Australians did not have to worry about was whether the farmers of Australia would be able to feed our people and, to a large extent, that was because of the success of our farmers and particularly our sheep and lamb industry. Without any further ado, I commend this legislation to the House and I look forward to the support of the opposition for the bill.

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