David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Today, we saw out the front of the Australian parliament farmers forced to travel from Western Australia, from right across this country, to protest against the government, something they have not done for 40 years. Such is the siege that they have been under since the Albanese government was elected 2½ years ago. They feel as though their livelihoods and their future have been torn up because of the ideology of some that want to save the world but forget about their important place in producing the food and fibre of this country—those Western Australian farmers that have come across the Nullarbor, that have had their livelihoods taken away, the live sheep export industry, without an explanation. If this government has the courage of its conviction and says that it wants to shut this down because it's an inhumane industry, then go to Katanning and face these people. Look them in the eye and explain the science.

Let me explain the science for them. I was the agriculture minister when there was a mistake. The Awassi boat and the horrific incident there was fixed, and we fixed it with reform. We are the only country in the world that measures our boats in success from animal welfare standards and not through mortality. We actually measure, to the millimetre, the length of wool on each sheep before we put them on a boat and, to the kilogram, the weight of those sheep. We independently score each boat for the air flow that goes through that boat to be able to give them the carrying capacity that they can have. We've also put independent observers that actually count the pants per minute of a sheep on those boats. Once they hit a certain number, then there are measures taken to ensure that that heat stress is taken away. That is science. That is leading the world.

Instead, what the Albanese government has done is cut and run. And what that will do is see the perverse and horrific death of millions of sheep from other parts of the world, from those parts of the world that will take this market up—from Sudan, Ethiopia and South Africa. Let me tell you: they don't work on animal welfare. They don't work even on mortality numbers, in measuring any success of a shipment. They simply put as many sheep as they possibly can on a boat, and they get paid for what's left over. Those that want to shut Australia out of this industry are morally bankrupt. Those that sit there and say Australia cannot do this and Western Australians can't do this are morally bankrupt. We will see horrific animal welfare outcomes. We will see 3,000 livelihoods in Western Australia torn up all because of ideology, all because animal activists did a deal with the Albanese government to get their preferences in the last federal election.

Where is the courage of their conviction to stand up and face these people and explain that science? They won't, because they can't. For the Prime Minister to quote numbers in here that the industry is in decline—it is actually in incline. For those years that the Prime Minister talked about, where there was a steep decline, what he might want to understand is that there was this little thing called the drought. On the eastern seaboard, we de-stocked. We had nothing left because we didn't have the water and we didn't have the feed. If it weren't for Western Australian sheep producers, we wouldn't have got the two million sheep that were brought across when it started raining. They got east coast farmers up off their knees and gave them a livelihood. That's why they weren't put on a boat—because they were sent across the Nullarbor to save us. Western Australia saved the east coast straight after the drought.

But to sit there and arbitrarily say, 'Bad luck, it's all over,' without even the courage to turn up to Katanning, to have meetings at the back of Parliament House here—he didn't even have the courage to walk out here and explain the science. If you want to lead this country and you're going to take away someone's livelihood and you're going to change their lives, then have the courage to stand up there, look them in the eye and explain the science.

But that's before you even get to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, a plan that these people put in place. The Labor Party put this plan in place in 2012. That plan they have now walked away from. And what they are saying to every Australian is that they are going to take an extra 450 gigalitres off farmers and they're going to shove it down a river where they can't even physically get it down—taking away livelihoods, taking away your food security and driving up your food prices. This is the insanity of a plan that they implemented. The member for Riverina, who's sitting here next to me, proudly stood against that and voted against that, and I acknowledge him for that. But we, when we were in government, made sure that we implemented a plan that didn't go towards buybacks. They are a brutal instrument on the communities that are left behind, because the farmer takes the money and runs to the coast. It's the machinery dealer. It's the irrigation shop. It's the local CRT. It's the local hairdresser. They're the ones that are left behind with nothing. They're the ones who are left to pick up the pieces, without the jobs and without the income. They're the ones that are being destroyed by a change in the government's very own plan to take another 450 gigalitres in buybacks. Buybacks will destroy regional Australia, but they're also going to destroy Australia's food security and push up your food prices.

We stand committed to making sure that the plan that is put through here is common sense. We'll return water to the environment through infrastructure—with the smarts—backing a country with technology and science. We'll use infrastructure to give it back to the environment, not take it out of communities. That's common sense and that's what we intend to do.

We're going to bring back the ag visa that was ripped away by those opposite, the ag visa that the Vietnam government had signed up to. Subsequently, we learnt in Senate estimates that Senator Wong, the foreign minister—

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