Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Today's West Australian front-page headline, 'Labor's war on the West', absolutely nails it, calling out the devastating effects that Labor's nature-positive bill and IR laws will have on WA. This follows last week's front page, 'Silent on the lambs', which called out Labor for bringing their cabinet to WA minus the agriculture minister. Labor's live sheep export ban continues to wreak fear and uncertainty across regional WA but faces a wall of silence from Minister Collins. The Prime Minister claimed that he had met with sheep farmers from Kalgoorlie, but the Goldfields has been devoid of sheep for decades.

WA's grassroots industry movement Keep the Sheep has again made the pilgrimage to Canberra for a chance to be heard. On Tuesday they joined their eastern states' counterparts, converging on the nation's capital to protest this Labor government's anti-agriculture agenda, at the national ag rally. Coalition leaders, MPs and senators showed up en masse, but I did not spot a single Labor parliamentarian. Truckie and face of Keep the Sheep, Ben Sutherland, led a convoy of heavy vehicles thousands of kilometres from my electorate of O'Connor. The project coordinator, Paul Brown, amassed a 'Farmy Army', whose Keep the Sheep message was prominent in the crowd. Meanwhile, their e-petition has collected over 100,000 signatures and their fundraising efforts have broken through $600,000.

Keep the Sheep's message to the government is simple: reverse the live export ban or pay the price at the next election.

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