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

I would like to compliment the one-term member opposite for her contribution. If it's all right with her, I might put that on my Facebook page so that I can explain to my constituents exactly what's wrong with this place at the moment! Why don't those on that side just say, 'I don't know any details about this. I know we're going to get votes for it'? But we had a patronising contribution like that one! The member opposite just said that to get a better price for farmers, we're going to reduce one of the markets for their sheep, which is for live sheep.

Yes—I don't know what market that would be. And, oh, yes, she said that the market has declined. Does the member know how many sheep crossed the Nullarbor after the eastern states' drought? One of the reasons fewer sheep moved out of Western Australia was because they were put on road trains and moved across. One of the reasons that Roger Fletcher can process so many sheep now is because the eastern states' flock was built by buying sheep from Western Australia a couple of years ago. But does the member over there know anything about that? We're talking about boats here. They've all jumped on this 'stop the sheep' boat and there aren't enough lifeboats. You've already hit the iceberg, and you're going down. This is a political decision, and any attempt by those opposite to make out that it's anything else, that it's about animal welfare—well! They say: 'It's because we care for farmers. We went to Western Australia, and we listened to the farmers, and we did nothing; we just listened to them.' Seriously! The member for Fremantle said, 'Oh, this is only one per cent of the product of Western Australia.' But it's 100 per cent for some of those farmers that are getting cut off. We are just going to sacrifice them at the altar of feeling good about ourselves.

It seems to me that every day in this place we have to stand up and defend the people of regional Australia as they come under attack from those opposite. It's just ridiculous. The idea that—

I am not even sure where the member is from, but I'm sure he knows a lot about this. These sheep are put on ships. They are cared for, fed and air-conditioned. There are vets on board. They arrive, and they get to the other end in a healthy condition, and they supply a market. This idea that we have a processed market or a live sheep market—one or the other. We need both. What happened to the idea in this country of actually increasing our markets? We can kill more sheep and sell them to the chilled and frozen meat market. It doesn't mean that we have to shut down another industry to do that. It doesn't mean we have to do that.

There's no concept of the farming systems where these sheep come from. These are wheat and sheep mixed farming operations where the sheep play a very important role in having rotations on those farms so that they use less chemicals and less fertiliser, and they fit just nicely into that market. To have that ripped out like this—I saw this with the cattle. Overnight, we saw this with the cattle. I think I got 170 emails in one night on the cattle from people in the cities. Not only did that devastate and is still devastating the northern Australia industry; that flew right down through the eastern states to Victoria, devastating that cattle market, and this decision is going to do the same.

There won't be one healthier sheep. You won't be able to take me to Western Australia or anywhere else in 2028 and point to a sheep that's somehow healthier, better cared for, or has a better life. Are we going to have maybe a book club for sheep in Western Australia so they can expand their minds because they are not going to be put on boats and sent off to the Middle East. This is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.

I'm listening to interjections of the one-term member over there, because I've been here long enough to see people come that are quite yappy, but they really don't stay here very long. I hope you enjoy your interjections because they are not going to be going for long. (Time expired)

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