Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I want to reflect on the contribution the member for Paterson has just made. It must be a frustration for her to be sitting on the backbench. She quite frankly should be on the frontbench, but of course her attitudes to many of those things don't accord with those of the Prime Minister. She's more Fitzroy River than she is Fitzroy, and that's the problem here in this debate.

I do want to address contribution from the member for Bendigo. I think she was kind of critical of the number of people who came all the way to Canberra to protest. I mean, I've got constituents up there. They've driven for two days, and, unlike those at the rallies that the member for Bendigo used to organise, the people up there aren't being paid to come here to represent the interests of their community. When the member for Bendigo was an organiser for United Voice every single one of those people who turned up to protest was on the pay. So I don't think those opposite should be critical of people coming here and expressing their objection to the policies of those opposite, particularly when those opposite are led by a man so weak, so gutless that he wouldn't even walk out the front of the building and confront these constituents. Now, talk about someone who is more focused on Fitzroy than he is on Fitzroy River. Those opposite are led by exactly that person.

Now the reality here is this: the Australian live sheep export industry provides the best animal welfare standards anywhere in the world. We not only export sheep; we export animal welfare standards. What those opposite don't understand is that Western Australia producers cannot produce an animal that has the characteristics that processors want and that consumers want. You're effectively saying to these producers that they don't have a future.

The member for Hasluck is welcome to contribute. But the bigger issue is this: this industry, to those opposite—and the member for Paterson knows this—has done every single thing the government has asked it to do, and yet it has been banned. Mark Peuker, up there in the gallery, all the way from Mount Gambier, is a beef producer. He is thinking, 'Am I next?'

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