Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in opposition to the Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024. I listened to some of the debate on the other side. I've been around for a while, and it always seems to be that when people want to make improvements it always impacts on someone else; it's never their constituents. I'm one of a few people in this House that's actually had quite considerable experience in raising and farming sheep. Indeed, I have spent most of my life working in the sheep industry. I've got to say, looking after sheep is not easy. They are an animal that requires a high level of management and care. I've been listening to some of the debates, and I know the member for Paterson, who's one of the more practical members on the other side—it must be sticking in her throat having to toe the party line on this, because I'm sure there are constituents in Paterson who would not be happy with this line of legislation that's going through.

As I listened to the member for Newcastle, we're going back into ancient history in picking out some of the disasters that have happened in the past and also the worst-case scenario at the other end. Whereas, in recent years, there have been considerable improvements to the transportation by sea with the facilities on board, the monitoring by veterinary staff, the air conditioning, the flow of air and the close scrutiny of the welfare of those sheep, including the diet that they're fed. So, in actual fact, during their passage on the water, the sheep actually improve in condition. They actually put on weight.

I can tell you from experience, if a sheep is stressed or they're in an area that is uncomfortable, they will not put on weight. They talk about canaries in the coalmine. Sheep quite often fit that role because, if things aren't going well, it shows up in their health. These ships, now, are world class and better than anywhere else.

At the other end, some of our markets now have abattoirs set up that meet the cultural requirements of our customers. In this debate, we seem to have forgotten about our customers, the people who rely on it for a couple of reasons, whether it's cultural or the fact that they live in an area where they rely on freshly killed meat—the refrigeration or electricity might not be as reliable or indeed present. These people rely on being able to purchase healthy sheep to be slaughtered in a culturally sensitive manner that meets their requirements and also provide the necessary protein and nutrition for their family.

If Australia stops this trade, we're going to see sheep from other countries, notably probably African countries, where there are no requirements. If we're looking for welfare outcomes, does not a sheep from Africa require the same amount of welfare as one from here? There's a big difference. Then, if we go into the producers—I happen to have been here under the Gillard-Rudd era when Senator Ludwig, overnight, pulled the live cattle trade from Indonesia, and the devastation that was felt from that decision is still being felt in the cattle industry. I live in New South Wales, a long way from where those cattle were exported from, and the flow-on effect to the markets in the southern eastern states was dramatic. Not to mention, the welfare of the cattle that were left with no market to go to—you've got to understand that livestock production is continually moving forward and continually revolving. You can't just stop the production line, because you would end up with people being overstocked and with real welfare conditions. So this decision for Western Australian sheep producers is absolutely catastrophic, particularly for those who have no other option because of the landscape of where they live but to run sheep. This market has been a valuable market for them to sell their cast sheep as they make way for younger sheep or lambs coming through. It affects whole communities—the shearers, the truck drivers, the livestock agents, the feedlot operators near the port—all the people who work in that sector. I'm sure the member for Fremantle is very concerned about the employment of the people who work in this trade in his electorate. They will have that ripped out from under them as well. The flow-on effect beyond the sphere of people who are directly impacted goes to those communities.

Country towns already are struggling to keep their numbers up with the mechanisation of agriculture, particularly in the cropping sector and others. This will be a death knell for some of those communities, particularly in Western Australia. When there are not enough shearers and no truck drivers, their children won't be attending the school, so there'll be a reduction in numbers. The people presenting at the local health service will decline and so on. It's a snowball effect.

I see this in this place time after time after time. Whether she realised it or not, the member for North Sydney belled the cat on this. She said, 'Oh, my goodness, the people of North Sydney do not like this trade,' without having one single clue—with great respect to her constituents—about it. Once again, the people of the regions get traded away in this place for the votes of those who live in the elite, leafy suburbs of our capital cities. It happens time and time again. In my electorate, with reforms to the Murray-Darling Basin, for ideological, political, but certainly not practical reasons, we're starting to see productive water removed from communities in my town. We see it here. We've seen it in the energy debate, where it's okay for farmland to be turned into wind factories in my part of the world but it's not okay to have them where people of the cities might see them. This is another classic example of that.

The rate of death of sheep on an export ship is lower than the rate of death on a property—a well-managed property—and that is testament to the processes that are in place on those vessels, which are world-class. All those people concerned about the welfare of the sheep, where were they a couple of years ago when the sheep were struggling in the drought and the farmers were struggling to keep those sheep alive? Where was the concern then?

What we see is we see animal welfare concern when there's political advantage for some to show their virtue of saving animals when in other places there might be livestock in real peril because of drought or, in some cases, flood. Where's the concern then? No, it's only when it's a visible thing that doesn't impact them so they can show their constituents: 'Look how virtuous we are. We've stopped sheep getting on boats.' What they don't say is they've destroyed the livelihood of thousands of farmers, they've reduced the social cohesion and welfare of country towns and they've deprived our customers of a valuable resource. We saw that with the cattle in Indonesia, and it's only now that we're starting to get a relationship back over the last couple of years with Indonesia because of that.

Those countries in the Middle East are major customers of ours—people who pay the bills through the balance of trade for the other things that we decide on in this place, whether it's welfare, disability, education or defence. It's us selling things to people and customers overseas that pays those bills.

We need to do it in a humane way. There were issues in the past that have been addressed. But, no, we're seeing this legislation come through now to show the virtue of those opposite but no real concern, quite frankly, for the sheep—or, more importantly, for those producers of the sheep that rely on live export.

Somehow, it's thought that there's a heartless coldness in this, that the people who are in the sheep industry are somehow cruel, heartless people. I can tell you, as someone who has been a livestock producer all their life, that there is no-one who cares about the welfare of their livestock more than the farmer. They have been supporting this industry because they know that those sheep are cared for, fed and nurtured right up until the point of slaughter.

There might be some in here that don't want to see sheep slaughtered, quite frankly. I can remember one of our colleagues here in the live cattle trade speaking to someone about what we should do with the cattle that don't go to Indonesia. 'Couldn't they stay with their families on the farm?' I think there's a bit of that in here, quite frankly: the belief that farms are places with butterflies and little lambs prancing around, and we're all happy-go-lucky. But the reality is agriculture is a business. They rely on breeding animals, nurturing animals and selling them to an end user. What we've seen now is that the end user, the main market and the main buyer of this product, has now, not through their request, with no misbehaviour of the livestock producer and no real scientific evidence—no scientific evidence at the moment that this trade is bad for animal welfare.

I'll defy the member. I know the member for Fremantle is nodding over there, but the scientific evidence, as of now—we're not going to have a history lesson, like we had from the member for Newcastle—is that this is a humane way to dispose of sheep. If you don't want to see sheep killed, I guess you probably will not support this.

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