Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against the Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024. The introduction of this bill represents a complete and utter betrayal of Western Australian farmers and regional communities. There is simply no scientific, economic or animal welfare justification for ending the WA live sheep trade. Those opposite are shutting down a valuable Western Australian industry—sadly, for their own political benefit.

Those opposite have completely misrepresented the industry in terms of standards and scale. One example is their insistence that the live sheep trade is disappearing on its own. This is just another fabrication. A submission by LiveCorp to the standing committee inquiry demonstrates that the industry is growing. In 2023, the number of live sheep exported from Australia was 30 per cent higher than the year prior. Their reintroduction into the Saudi market provides huge growth opportunities. I also have no doubt that the industry would be able to grow even further if the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry—you know, that department who's supposed to support the industry—actually did support it.

Middle Eastern and North African countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, have high demand for live sheep imports due to the limited growth potential for local production. They have a preference for local, freshly slaughtered, halal meat for use in religious observance and daily diets. The broader region was forecast to import around five million head of live sheep and goats in 2022. This number is forecast to be around 7.3 million head by 2027. The growing demand won't go away if Australian producers are forcibly removed from the market.

This takes me to my second point, regarding animal welfare. Australia's live export industry has the highest standards in the world. The Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock set out conditions for the export of livestock, and the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System, known as ESCAS, requires exporters to enforce Australia's strict animal welfare standards in importing countries. This means that animals being exported from Australia are protected throughout the entire process, from Australian paddocks to the point of slaughter in international markets. As these welfare standards are enforced in the feedlots and slaughterhouses of destination markets, sheep that are held and processed abroad are treated the same as our Australian sheep.

Australia's live sheep trade is exporting the highest animal welfare standards to the world. This is not just a Liberal Party or an industry talking point. It is a fact that the standards are recognised by international animal welfare bodies. The World Organisation for Animal Health and Welfare have stated, 'Australia has taken animal welfare improvements to the rest of the world, and for this Australia has the organisation's unequivocal support. The live export trade in Australia is leading the world in animal welfare and provides benchmarking.'

As the coalition members of the standing committee made clear in their dissenting report to the recent inquiry, for Australia to just simply cut and run from this industry will certainly lead to worse international animal welfare standards, with no more welfare benchmarks and more sheep being imported from developing nations who do not have the same standards or, in many cases, any standards at all.

Another important issue that has been overlooked is the impact that this bill will have on our global reputation and our trading relationships. The Middle East is an important market not just for live sheep but also for other agricultural commodities. Grain Producers Australia have indicated:

This ban will also have negative impacts on our trading partners in the Middle East who also buy Australian grains, including for feed stock, and our overall international trading reputation.

Labor's own Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have confirmed that a linkage had been made by an unnamed Kuwaiti company between Australia's grain exports and the phasing out of the live sheep trade.

This bill will only lead to more needless suffering for both regional communities and sheep. So it begs the question: why is it being done? Well, this bill is nothing to do with sheep. This bill is all to do with politics. Labor are worried that standing with those hardworking Western Australian farmers and communities and this vital industry will reduce their chances of holding off the Greens in the inner-city seats on the east coast.

Humanity is often brought up when we have this debate. But where is the humanity for my Western Australian farmers and regional WA communities more broadly? Where's the humanity for them? The message from regional communities across my electorate of Durack, the member for O'Connor's electorate and the broader Australian agriculture sector has been clear: do not take away our industry; do not take away our livelihoods. And they're not going to give up. In just a few weeks, the grassroots campaign in Western Australia called 'Keep the Sheep' has had over 60,000 people sign on to the petition to keep the sheep. The focus of this campaign is to spread awareness of the human impact this bill will have on communities across Western Australia.

But it's not just on farming families, many of whom have been farming families for generations, it's also on the local businesses, the local schools and the local sporting clubs. Those opposite are taking the livelihoods away from at least 3,000 Western Australians but, obviously, this also impacts entire communities spread right across the Wheatbelt in Western Australia and beyond. I recently joined the Leader of the Opposition for a roundtable discussion with industry stakeholders in Perth and, not surprisingly, we heard from the farmers and also the truckies. But an important point made by Darren Spencer from the WA Shearing Industry Association was that, at times, the shearing industry is the largest employer across many of the affected regional towns. Darren indicated that this will have impact on the:

… hardworking people of our shearing industry, including shearers, rousies, pressers, cooks, classers and shearing contractors … The live sheep industry provides work outside peak periods and keeps them in the industry. The forecasts have sheep numbers going as low as nine million next year and seven million in 2026. So we'll lose nearly half our workforce.

With the decline in sheep numbers, which is an inevitable impact of this legislation, those opposite are simply taking away the jobs that are simply not going to be replaced with a shift to cropping—which we're already seeing. Less employment means less money flowing into the local pub or the local bakery. It means people will be forced to leave these communities. That's what the 'Keep the Sheep' campaign is all about: getting that message out there of the human side to this dreadful decision. The Prime Minister claims to be on the side of Western Australia. Honestly, he beats his chest about, 'I'm the friend of WA; I've been there this many times.' I'll say that it doesn't take much for him to sell out Western Australia. Western Australians are watching, not just where he goes or what he says but what he does. They're watching.

The minister for agriculture has announced that the ban won't come into effect until May 2028, so there is no need for the government to gag or guillotine debate on this bill and I hope everybody gets an opportunity to have their say. This bill must be subject to a comprehensive Senate inquiry that will hear from all impacted communities, members of the industry and those involved in the supply chain. I implore those opposite to show some common decency and to announce a legitimate Senate inquiry. The recent charade that was the Standing Committee on Agriculture's two-week inquiry was an absolute insult to regional Western Australians. Honestly, how can anyone justify giving farmers, industry stakeholders and concerned community members just four working days to make a submission to the committee? Honestly, it's a joke, and it's incredibly disrespectful to the people that I represent. Those opposite clearly have no respect for or understanding of our farmers, who feed and sustain this nation. Even though there were only four days to make a submission, incredibly, 13,000 people made submissions. Given that only a fraction of those have been processed and published, it is unbelievable to me that there could possibly be careful consideration of these submissions prior to the writing of the inquiry report. This was simply a box-ticking exercise for the government, with the result never in doubt. I hope that a legitimate Senate inquiry, with a reporting date that allows for a thorough examination, will allow concerned farmers and stakeholders in my electorate to finally be heard.

Even though I believe this inquiry was a true waste of time, I was proud to attend and to speak at the single hearing that took place in Western Australia in the small town of Muresk within my electorate.

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