Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm glad to make some remarks in support of the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports Amendment (Animal Welfare) Bill 2023. It is a welcome reform. It's another case of the Albanese government delivering on the commitments it made to the Australian community. I respect the contribution the member for O'Connor made. He speaks from the heart for the interests of his community. I have travelled with him in Western Australia, including in the south-west in the O'Connor electorate and to the Katanning sheep yards. I will address in a minute some of the things the member for O'Connor said.

This bill essentially expands the scope and resources of a role which shall be known as the Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports. There are lots of good reasons for the role to exist. It is very hard to understand how it is that the coalition have reached the point of saying that they won't support it. It doesn't really relate to most of the things that the member for O'Connor was just saying. I can't understand how the coalition can get to the point of not being prepared to support something that unquestionably will improve animal welfare outcomes across the board, particularly in the areas that the Commonwealth is responsible for, which is the export of live animals, noting that broader animal welfare responsibility is generally handled by the states and territories.

It's good that this reform is occurring because of that Commonwealth responsibility and because we know that there has always been an inherent conflict to some degree as far as the departmental responsibility in this space is concerned. The department obviously has an interest in supporting agricultural production and the economic outcomes that come from that. There are lots of instances you can look at when it comes to large-scale agricultural production where the push to make it bigger, better and more profitable does put animal welfare at risk. So having a department that is entirely responsible for both of those things is not ideal. Having an independent role that looks at those things is a much better arrangement. That's one of the reasons the government is taking that step.

It is also the case in the interests of our farmers, Australia's agricultural production sector, that high animal welfare standards are part and parcel of who we are, of our character, of the way we relate to the world and of the way we promote our products, sell them and export them overseas. Our agricultural sector and our farmers, quite rightly, have an absolutely excellent reputation abroad. They have that reputation because they care for animals, because we apply high animal welfare standards in keeping with community expectations, because of the quality of the produce that results and because of a range of other areas that I guess go under the banner of sustainability that the farming sector is embracing. While the government makes this reform specifically in the area of animal welfare, of course it's also doing things to make sure that the work that farmers do to reduce carbon emissions is recognised, supported and rewarded and that the work that farmers do to improve country, restore the environment and provide greater protection for biodiversity is recognised and rewarded.

It's certainly the case that live animal export brings with it some particular risks. It's appropriate that we have the proper oversight mechanisms and regulatory arrangements to guard against those risks. We haven't always been prepared to acknowledge that fact. Unfortunately, those opposite have almost always preferred to be in denial of the reality of the live animal export trade and sometimes indulged in a form of wilful blindness and in some cases been apologists for things for which there should be no apology. That is despite all the evidence of the risks and despite those risks being manifested in a litany—an endless parade, frankly—of terrible animal welfare atrocities, and it's despite all the expert assessments of those risks.

That is not something that we have woken up to in Australia in the last five years. As long ago as 1985, the Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare held an inquiry that concluded:

… if a decision were to be made on the future of the trade purely on animal welfare grounds, there is enough evidence to stop the trade. The trade is, in many respects, inimical to good animal welfare, and it is not in the interests of the animal to be transported to the Middle East for slaughter.

That was in 1985, 38 years ago. More recently, following the case of the Awassi Expressjust one of many very extreme animal welfare disasters that occurred through the live sheep export trade, almost all of which goes through Fremantle, my seat—the Moss review back in 2018 stated:

By its nature, live animal exports present a high risk to animal health and welfare. There have been instances of non-compliance with animal welfare standards and instances of animal cruelty that have not been anticipated by the regulatory framework or evoked an appropriate regulatory response.

That was the conclusion of the Moss review, which the former government had to commission after the Awassi Express once again showed the reality of the live sheep export trade.

Frankly, on that basis I was quite surprised to see the shadow minister for agriculture, the Leader of the Nationals, get up and say that the coalition will not be supporting this sensible change to improve animal welfare protections, but maybe I shouldn't have been. Maybe I have too much optimism about the potential for people to learn and change. I guess what surprised me is that the member for Maranoa—the Leader of the Nationals and the shadow minister for agriculture—has every reason to understand the depth of animal welfare regulatory failures that existed in the past, under his watch, and every reason to understand why making some changes to those arrangements is absolutely required.

The former Labor government saw that pretty clearly and took steps to put an independent Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports in place towards the end of that government. It was one of the first things that the former coalition government decided to junk when they came to power, and then, of course—five or six years later and a few more disasters later and a few more tens of thousands of mistreated sheep and hundreds of terrible voyages later—after the Moss review and various other things, they had to put an Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports back in place. But it was a relatively underresourced and weak form of that office, and that's what this bill seeks to correct.

What was interesting in what the shadow minister for agriculture, the member for Maranoa, had to say—and I guess it goes back to the point I was making about denial and wilful blindness—was that he was talking about mortality rates and how they had improved as a result of the summer moratorium, the reduction in stocking densities and a few of the other changes that had been made when the industry was belatedly dragged to do some half-sensible things, including improving ships that had been barely maintained to modern maritime standards over the course of 20 years. He kept pointing to mortality rates when he knows full well that one of the things that happened when he was the minister was that we recognised that mortality rates are not the measure by which we should judge animal welfare. It shouldn't be hard for people in the community to understand that whether animals are being properly cared for is not just a matter of whether they die. You can starve an animal close to death. An animal could be subject to extreme heat or extreme cold or various other kinds of mistreatment and still live. That doesn't make that treatment acceptable.

The reality is that the assessment we now use is a heat stress measure, and there is lots and lots of evidence that almost every voyage to the Middle East involving live sheep that occurs involves unacceptable heat stress. It's certainly the case that, for all of the decades in which those ships travelled to the hottest part of the world at the hottest time of the year, every single one of those voyages would have involved subjecting animals to unacceptable heat stress, in sealed, close-confined decks below the waterline, for weeks and weeks at a time. That is not acceptable to the Australian people. It shouldn't be acceptable to anyone, anywhere. It is inhumane. It is wrong for us for economic purposes to subject animals to that kind of treatment. It's cruel. It's a kind of torture that's being inflicted on animals, and the Australian community won't have that anymore.

The member for Maranoa and people on that side, I suspect, including the member for O'Connor, know that that problem of subjecting animals to heat stress for days and days and sometimes weeks at a time continues now. They know that, despite the changes that have been made, the industry still doesn't manage to have independent observers on every voyage as they say that they're prepared to do. They know that the former government massaged the heat measurement parameters, knowing that if they didn't do that the moratorium would have needed to be longer. So they didn't follow the initial departmental advice on what the heat parameter should be; they massaged those parameters to make it more acceptable than it otherwise would have been.

They know that the heat measurements are not taken on the decks where the animals are kept; they are taken up on the top of the ship where the humans are, where the wet bulb temperature is significantly less than what the sheep experience. The member for Maranoa knows that, and, I dare say, the member for O'Connor knows that. Certainly the departmental people, and anyone with some time and experience in veterinary expertise in this area know all of those things. That is the case with the industry today.

I'll turn to some of the things that the member for O'Connor was saying. He said that there are very dark days ahead, that there's a very dark future ahead, that there are going to be catastrophic impacts if the live sheep trade should come to an end. I understand that as an expression of concern from the member for O'Connor and, perhaps, the member for Maranoa about the communities they represent, but it's the kind of catastrophising we see too often from those opposite—rather than a preparedness to look the reality in the face and take responsibility for a transition that has been underway for some time.

It's very hard for someone to make an argument that the shift from what is currently 500,000 animals a year to zero will be a catastrophic shift when the live sheep export trade has already declined from seven million animals to fewer than 500,000. It's declined by 92 per cent. It's less than one-thirteenth of what it was 20 years ago. And all of the things that the member for O'Connor talks about have just not happened.

People talk about how the sheep flock will be dramatically reduced. In 2010-11 the Western Australian sheep flock was 13.7 million animals. At that stage, we were exporting more than three million live sheep annually. Get to 2019-20, virtually a decade later, and the live sheep export trade, which had halved between the turn of the century and 2010, had more than halved again. So we're talking fewer than a million live sheep. And what was the WA sheep flock a decade later? 13.7 million animals—exactly the same number of animals. Wool production out of WA in 2010 was 67 million kilos. Last year, in 2022, at a point when the live sheep export trade had declined by a factor of seven, wool production out of WA was 67 million kilos—exactly the same.

We keep being told that schools will close, pubs will close and, God knows what, the sky will fall in. This is an industry that's declined 92 per cent in the last 20 years and that has not occurred. We're constantly told that 3½ thousand jobs will be lost when the trade has declined to one-thirteenth of what it was at the turn of the century. Where is the evidence that those jobs have been lost? In fact, the member for Maranoa received departmental advice, when he was the minister for agriculture in 2019, that said quite clearly that when we finally make the last part of the transition out of the live sheep trade more Australian jobs will be produced.

Yes, it is a challenge. Yes, there are adjustments that need to be made. The points that the member for O'Connor put forward, about the need to increase labour to ensure that the abattoir capacities are there, are things that are challenges, but they're challenges that can be addressed. The question of how you feed animals to the correct weight is something farmers have always wrestled with. Some of the catastrophising the member for O'Connor was doing about what might need to happen on farms involving sheep, guns and various other dark and terrible prospects—he was talking about this year. The live sheep trade still exists. Those are challenges that farmers have always had to deal with. That's the nature of the trade in Western Australia. He referred to your circumstances, Deputy Speaker Stevens. There's hardly any live sheep trade that comes out of South Australia. There's no live sheep trade that comes out of all the other parts of Western Australia that are involved in sheep production. New Zealand has got out of the live sheep trade altogether.

The proposition that we cannot get out of the very last skerrick of the live sheep trade has no basis whatsoever. This government is improving welfare for Australian animals, and we are taking on the responsible task of managing the transition out of the live sheep trade.

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