Barry Wakelin (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Would the Treasurer update the House on action the government is taking to assist rural business against damaging secondary boycott activity?

Peter Costello (Higgins, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Grey for his question. I can inform him that the government is very concerned about international boycotts that are being used against Australian wool growers to try to get international buyers to ban the purchase of Australian wool. Australia’s farmers do it tough enough already. They do it tough enough when they are fighting against drought and all of the vicissitudes of the Australian climate. They know that their wool product is the best in the world, and they deserve every help that they can possibly get from government to get their wool to market and their wool purchased by international buyers.

Unfortunately, Australian wool growers are now suffering from secondary boycotts. Secondary boycotts are where somebody tries to get a customer not to deal with a target or a supplier not to deal with the target. Quite often we have seen secondary boycotts in relation to industrial action. The current boycott—which is being organised by a group called PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—is to get the customers of Australian wool growers not to buy Australian wool. One of the spokeswomen for PETA is the pop star Pink. She is protesting about the mulesing of sheep. Whatever Pink’s singer-songwriter credentials are, it is highly unlikely that Pink is an expert on the mulesing of Australian sheep. Anybody who knows the risk of flystrike in Australia knows that the practice of mulesing, far from being exploitative or cruel treatment of sheep, is actually one that is preventative of a far worse fate that could befall Australian sheep.

As a consequence of this, the government will be amending the Trade Practices Act to allow the ACCC to take representative action for secondary boycotts. What that means is that, rather than an individual farmer having to fund the action for their individual damages—which would be a big cost for a small sum—the ACCC can take a representative action on behalf of all Australian farmers to recover damages, which collectively would be a much larger sum. The ACCC can take representative actions for other offences against the Trade Practices Act—why not a representative action for a secondary boycott in contravention of the Trade Practices Act?

The government has previously sought to give the ACCC the power to bring representative actions for secondary boycotts; unfortunately the opposition has voted this down in the Senate, and as a consequence denied this remedy to Australian farmers. The government will be re-presenting these amendments and now that the Labor Party wants to re-establish credentials with the Australian business community, we ask the Australian Labor Party to reconsider, to do something which is obviously pro-business, and to do something to help Australian farmers in this difficult situation.