Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This government supports strong animal welfare standards and believes all animals should be treated humanely. The Labor Party went to the last two elections committed to the phase-out of live sheep exports by sea. When I say that, we didn't do this ad hoc; there was an outcry from the public. We've seen over the last 10 years many images on our TVs of animal cruelty on those ships. We've seen the suffering of these animals and people in my electorate have been crying out about it. I've never received more emails on any topic apart from this one. We know that the Labor Party wants to bring in this phase-out of live sheep exports, but to do so we need to bring people along with us. There's the need for a long period of discussions with farmers, industry et cetera to have the least impact on the industry.

If we look at the industry at the moment, we know that, when it comes to meat exports, live sheep are only a small part of that. The majority of our meat goes out frozen to different parts around the world. We should also try to value-add to the industry. When I say 'value-add', if we go back 20 years in this country, in South Australia—in your home state, Deputy Speaker Sharkie, and mine—we had the Gepps Cross Abattoir, where nearly 3,000 people were employed over three shifts. They slaughtered animals for export. We can add value to the industry by ensuring that we slaughter animals here humanely, in a way that's within our control, and increase those export markets, therefore having a very small impact on sheep farmers.

The independent panel has completed the public consultations it has been undertaking to inform the government of the how, what and when it might phase out live sheep exports by sea appropriately. The panel undertook consultations to ensure that all stakeholders had an opportunity to have a say in this particular outcome. In the consultations, the panel engaged with over 2,000 attendees at in-person forums and 330 attendees at virtual forums. These were held over 80 meetings with organisations and farmer representative groups. The panel received over 800 submissions and 3,300 responses.

This government has invested millions into agriculture: $3.1 billion to protect and grow our virtual agriculture, fisheries, forestry and industries. Sheep farming is no different. We want to ensure its survival, and there are ways of doing that in a manner which doesn't upset the industry in terms of its exports. As I said, at the moment we're seeing minimal meat being exported in that live sheep cargo. We need to value-add to this industry. We need to do everything we can to assist abattoirs. We need to create new abattoirs in the country to employ people and to value-add.

We know for a fact that one particular country that we're exporting to has one of the biggest slaughterhouses in the Middle East. They slaughter the live sheep that we export to them and export them all over the Middle East as boxed frozen meat packages. Why can't we be doing that here in this nation? Why can't we ensure that people who want our meat can receive it? You might talk about refrigeration and a whole range of other things as well, but the reality is that it is minimal. The live sheep exports are minimal when it comes to exporting meat across the country. And we want to see animals stop suffering.

When you see thousands and thousands of sheep on these ships—and we've seen all the images on TV and in the newspapers—every Australian will tell you that they are cruel images. We want to see value-adding to help farmers be able to export more meat, ensuring that it's done in a humane way and in a way that most people would accept and that is not cruel to those animals.

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