Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support this motion moved by the shadow minister for Agriculture. I thank him, and also the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, who travelled to Western Australia recently to reiterate his support and the coalition's support for the industry. There is also the Premier of Western Australia, who supports the industry. The Western Australian minister for agriculture, Jackie Jarvis, also supports the industry. I note that the member for Fremantle will be speaking next. I am interested to hear what the member for Fremantle will say, because this is a particularly Western Australian industry: 97 per cent of the sheep exported out of this country come out of Western Australia.

That is because we have a geographical advantage. Comparisons with New Zealand are complete and utter nonsense. We have a geographical advantage, and we have the product that our Middle Eastern customers absolutely want. It's the premium product. I'll explain why it is so important to the Western Australian industry. For those in the chamber and those more broadly who don't understand—and I wouldn't expect many to—a merino self-replacing flock produces what is called a wether, the castrated male, who really has no value going forward, other than as a slaughter animal. A crossbred sheep, a British bred sheep or an exotic ship from Africa, is bred to produce meat. They are that nice, rounded little sheep that you will see—the roast lamb in the shop—for those of you who aren't vegans. But for those who do enjoy a lamb roast, what you would see in the shop would come from a British breed sheep. The merino wether is not bred to produce meat; it is bred to produce wool. It's not bred to become a fat animal that is suitable for slaughter here, locally. The local processors don't want that sheep, and that is why we are so desperate to retain the live export trade.

Minister Watt announced a panel that will be tasked with phasing out the live export trade, chaired by Philip Glyde, who apparently was part of the Murray-Darling Basin back in the day. The Hon. Warren Snowdon is on the panel, and I wanted to mention that because I give credit to Warren, who was in the House last week. He came to see me to discuss this issue. I certainly gave him my view on how difficult it would be to be to phase the industry out.

Interestingly, the timing of that announcement—3 March—was a few days before the Wagin Woolorama, which is the premier sheep and wool show in Western Australia. About 20,000 people visited. The Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, came along to hear from farmers. What he heard was absolute dismay and fear for the future of the wool industry in Western Australia. As I said, the merino wether is not suitable for domestic slaughter. No matter what the local processors say about, 'We can slaughter all the sheep,' that is complete nonsense. They will not buy those merino sheep if they have alternative British breed sheep available. We saw sheep in the Katanning saleyards the other day, in my hometown. The member for Fremantle has been there. We saw merino wethers with about an inch of wool on them, which is worth about $10 to $20, selling for a dollar a head the other day.

The farmers of Western Australia are desperately worried about their future. If you take this leg out of the merino sheep operation, it then becomes unviable to produce the wool and that ewes that are the other components of that operation. I'll be meeting with sheep producers straight after this. They are very concerned about the future of those 13 million sheep in Western Australia, those 13 million merinos that constitute a very significant wool industry.

Why is that important? It's because in the small country towns across my electorate, you have shearing teams. They make up a big part of the population in some of those small towns. One thing about shearers: they earn a lot of money and work bloody hard, but at the end of the day they go to the local pub and have a few beers—and they've earned those beers, I can tell you. But without those shearing teams in those towns you lose the pub, you lose the shearers, you lose the kids from the school, you lose the school. This is what is going to be the final result of this policy, which is anti-Western Australian, anti-farmer and anti-common sense. As the shadow minister said, we have the best animal welfare standards in the world which we export to these other importing countries. If we take away the Australian presence in the live export trade, those standards are going to drop away dramatically.

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