Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

He was right to do it, member for Wannon, indeed he was. The coalition will reverse this ridiculous, insane decision. We will reinstate the live export industry when next we are elected to government and hopefully that will be at the next election. I admire the police officer in Western Australia who is riding around on his motorcycle with a 'Keep the Sheep' sticker on his bike. That takes guts, that takes a bit of courage and well done to him for doing that. This is just a nonsense. Even the fact that after the consultancy panel, an independent panel apparently, developed a report on the phasing out of the industry, submitted its final report to the Minister for Agriculture on 25 October, it took Labor more than six months to release it. Why the secrecy? Because they knew about the backlash that they are going to cop and will cop right up until the next election and beyond for doing this, for phasing out live sheep exports. It's simply not good enough in this day and age when we've got the animal husbandry provisions in place. Those ships are very safe. In fact, those ships are so safe for sheep that more sheep die in paddocks on Australian farms than on those ships going to sea to those Gulf states.

Debate interrupted.

See this speech in context