Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand proudly today as the member for Paterson in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, which has a lot of agriculture, but I'm even more proud to be the Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Agriculture. I want to take a moment to thank all of the committee members that joined me to conduct the advisory review of the legislation that went through the parliament last night to end live sheep exports here in Australia.

In another life, I came from talkback radio, and I can tell members of this House that this is the issue that, in recent decades, has received by far the most incoming correspondence. Whether people are for or against the export of live sheep, it is something that brings up a lot of emotion. I can still remember those days on the radio, talking to people about this practice. I received a lot of calls, and, interestingly, they were not just from 'woke inner-city greenie types', who have been labelled as the vegan underground trying to cut live sheep export—

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