Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was in this chamber earlier today when the member for Paterson delivered the parliamentary committee majority finding. I was also here when the member for O'Connor tabled the dissenting report. I believe the member for Paterson; I found her a fine person. She's a nice lady. I think she works hard for her electorate. But I am really surprised. She has a significant agriculture sector in her electorate. I know it's the Labor Party and dissension is simply not allowed, but I would be surprised if her heart was in that finding that the committee delivered today.

She was in Western Australia recently with the committee. Around 2,000 industry representatives confronted her there at a recent hearing. She must have heard the same voices I heard when I led a coalition agriculture backbench committee to Western Australia in March to meet with growers, shearers, truckies, stock agents and young women in the sheep industry to discuss the government's proposed ban on sheep exports. She and that committee must have heard the same story.

Let me say that this is seen as a Western Australian issue. It is not only a Western Australian issue. I don't currently farm, but I own a farm in South Australia, and part of that farm has sheep on it. Following the government decision last year—I think it was back in about March—to announce the phase-out of the industry with, at that stage, an unknown time reference to just how they were going to go about it, there has been a collapse of confidence in the Western Australian sheep industry in particular.

Growers are sick of interference and not just on this issue. Whether it be managing staff, maintaining and managing their machinery, farm practices or water management, they're sick of interference. The government has their fingers in the pie at every level, and this is another insult on top of all those things before. That's why farmers in Western Australia are fed up: 'I can't handle this anymore.'

Not everywhere do people have the opportunity to say, 'I'm not going to run sheep anymore.' Perhaps they could run cattle. But, in fact, this decision affects the cattle industry too, because the cattle in Western Australia, in the south, that are exported out live are actually travelling on the live sheep ships. So there'll be no ships for them, and I expect this to kick through to the cattle industry as well, when the boats cease. They don't all have that option, but a lot of them do. There's very fine agricultural land throughout Western Australia. They can grow crops instead, so, in terms of feeding the world, I suppose others will argue that the farmers are still growing stuff and whatever. But what they're not allowed to do is actually run the farming system that they want to run. This is taking away the options. It's taking away balanced management of farmlands, and that's very important.

At that time, when that confidence collapsed, they started pushing stock over the border to South Australia. I don't know what the current rate is of stock coming into South Australia. I was talking to a prominent Western Australian agricultural identity the other day; he was in South Australia, drumming up support for the Keep the Sheep campaign—I'll get to that a little bit later. He said: 'I feel bad. I've punted 6,000 lambs over the border through to Thomas Foods down at Murray Bridge. We had to get rid of them. We had to get them off the properties because everybody is trying to unload sheep in Western Australia at the moment. I know that's had a serious effect on the South Australian market. I feel bad telling South Australian growers that, but it is really between a rock and a hard place.' I said: 'Don't feel bad about it. I think everybody understands in South Australia that you are being forced into this position.' It's worth noting it costs about $35 a head to ship sheep from Western Australia to South Australia, and some of them are going through to New South Wales—I presume that's $55 or $60 a head—and the farmer has to absorb that cost. It's smashed the South Australian market, so it's much more than just a Western Australian issue. There is interest in South Australia in bringing the boat trade back for exactly the same purposes that exist in Western Australia.

Last year the government appointed an independent committee to go to Western Australia and advise the government on how they were going to phase out the industry—not if they were going to phase out the industry but how they would go about it. They sent this independent committee over there—no minister, no Labor backbenchers and no courage to go and face Western Australians and tell them to their faces that they were going to abolish the industry. In that light, the coalition backbench ag committee, of which I am the current chair, decided it would go to Western Australia instead. First of all, we held a meeting in Adelaide. Around 100 people turned up for that; people say this is a Western Australia thing, but we had 100 people turn up in South Australia. As part of that meeting I organised for a grower from Western Australia, Steve Bolt, to come to South Australia. He's in the eye of the storm. He's a producer, and he's been one of the public faces of the campaign in Western Australia. He put it in a nutshell for me. He said the Western Australian industry on average produces 125 per cent of the requirement of their slaughter chain. This means that, in a time of undersupply, they have enough animals available for the industry to keep their slaughter chain open all the time. What happens when you've got undersupply in that situation? The price goes up and the ships disappear; they go and ship sheep from other countries. But when you've got an oversupply situation, and the price trends down and farmers need to offload their sheep but not pay $60 per head to get them through to New South Wales, the ships come back. They put a floor in the market, which is about $120 or $130 per head. That's why it's the safety valve that Western Australia needs. It is perfect. It covers back and puts a floor in the market. Currently, because they can't keep up, it's down well below that point.

The problem is the government thinks you can build new abattoir capacity. The abattoirs will thrive when there's an oversupply situation, but what happens when, inevitably, there is an undersupply situation, when we've had a recovery of drought or whatever it might be? You close the abattoir—somebody has invested millions and millions of dollars to build an abattoir—and put the staff off. I can tell you: it's hard enough to staff an abattoir on a good day, let alone to tell your workers to nick off for 18 months or so while the sheep trade comes back and then be expected to re-recruit skilled staff at that stage. It simply will not work. This will be a death spiral for the industry. When they've got undersupply an abattoir, a slaughter chain, will shut. And when they've got oversupply farmers will start to exit the industry. It's difficult for me to see how the WA industry thrives without this safety valve.

There was probably an average of 100 people arriving at seven different meetings across Western Australia. They were confused, angry and unbelieving that a government would scuttle an industry which had turned itself inside out meeting new requirements coming towards it. There is no science that can possibly justify this phase-out. We have lower stocking rates on board. We have increased ventilation. We have onboard vets. We have specifically designed feed. We have a northern summer ban. And we have—get this, Deputy Speaker Goodenough—onboard stock hospitals. When vets are wandering past pens on a daily basis and they see a sheep that is looking a bit peaky, not on it's feed, then they'll get that little beastie and take him up to the hospital and give him a shot of this or that. That's why the onboard mortality rates now are equal, are on the same level as an on-land feedlot, which is first class and which is not much different to having sheep out in the paddock, quite frankly. So there is no science, there is no good reason to shut down this industry anymore. It is a purely political ploy.

This industry supplies more than 3,000 regional jobs. Not jobs in large, central abattoirs; these are jobs out in the regions. And I can tell you, as someone who represents regions, one of the toughest things I have had to confront while being the member for Grey is the decline of our inland towns. Anything that takes jobs out of a small inland town, I'm against. I cannot stand by and let that happen without passing judgement on it, and I do in this particular case.

For those who have friends in the city and want up-to-date information on what the live export industry looks like, I urge them to visit the Livestock Collective website where they can see video footage of stock on board today and not, as the parliamentary committee heard about recently, from 13 years ago, from a vet that worked onboard ships between 2005 and 2011 or thereabouts. The committee accepted information from a vet who hasn't been on board a ship in 11 years as being up-to-date. It simply is not up-to-date. It is old news.

This is a first-class industry. It sets the standard, as the member for Cowper talked about, with our ESCAS, which actually traces our livestock overseas and has led to investment in new abattoirs and better handling practices in other countries. We are the only country that insists on down-chain upskilling of workforce in the handling of stock. Shutting down the Australian export trade will not lessen the numbers of those that actually go on ships around the world. It will just mean they don't come from Australia and they're not treated in an appropriate manner.

At those hearings in March, we heard the cry of Western Australian farmers. We said to them: 'We will fight your battle here in Canberra to our utmost, but we can't win on our own. You've got to be prepared to fight as well.' They've taken that advice on board, or perhaps they were going to do it anyway—I don't claim to be the author of all of these great outcomes—and they have now launched this Keep the Sheep campaign. Over 60,000 people have already signed the petition, and it's raised around $400,000. The Keep the Sheep campaign is determined to take this battle into the next election and to the marginal electorates in Western Australia. We think there are five or six of them that they will campaign in. They will wear T-shirts that will say something along the lines of 'Keep me on the land.' 'Support Keep the Sheep.' 'Keep the industry that supports you, that supports Western Australia.' I imagine there are five or six Western Australian Labor members right at this moment that are going: 'What the dickens have we done? Prime Minister, do we really have to do this?' Let's hope they can change their minds, but it doesn't look they will because we know what happens to insurrectionists in the Labor Party. They get thrown out.

And it's not just live sheep that's under siege in Australia. I talked about growers being sick of interference. There's the recommencement of indiscriminate water buybacks along the Murray-Darling Basin. There's the closing of the fully sustainable Gulf of Carpentaria gillnet fishery. There's the building of 10,000-plus kilometres—maybe 28,000 kilometres—of high-transmission lines and energy parks across the farmlands of Australia. There's the abolition of the Native Title Respondents Scheme, and this was brought up with me by three councils last week that feel as though they have been completely disempowered. There's the reduction in the instant tax write-off, and imposing biosecurity levies on farmers. We've simply had enough, quite frankly.

I don't think that the Labor Party hate farmers. As I said, I started off talking about the member for Paterson. I think they actually quite like us. I don't think they want to abolish farmers. I'm pretty sure they realise that farmers are quite useful to the nation. But I do think that they think farmers and agriculture are a totally tradable chip. It's a chip in a game of poker. They think farmers drive four-wheel drives and they've got big budgets to put those crops in. They send their kids away to school. They think they're, obviously, filthy, stinking rich. They think farmers will whinge for a while because that's what farmers do, but they'll be alright. Well, they're wrong. You can only push them so far.

I know many farmers that are struggling to balance the books. It's not easy being a farmer, and the input costs are through the roof—and a lot of those are actually delivered courtesy of the government. And then the farmers find that the Labor Party did a deal with the Animal Justice Party for preferences at the last election on the basis that Labor commit to phasing out, getting rid of, the live sheep trade. And guess what? They are now negotiating—this is the Animal Justice Party, not me—to get rid of the live cattle trade. This is a disgrace.

See this speech in context