Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to encourage support for this motion tabled in my name. I tabled this motion in October after I had been approached by a number of constituents in my vast electorate of Kalgoorlie to protect jobs in my electorate. The concern of my constituents is that there is a steady stream of misguided information and bigotry coming from the RSPCA and PETA organisations’ propaganda machines that impact directly on farmers and pastoralists in my patch, and of course Australia-wide in relation to the export of livestock. Many Australian stakeholders supporting the live export industry have similar ideologies to those that oppose it—both value the need for acceptable welfare standards. All producers have an interest in selling a beast in the very best of condition.

Under the Howard government, conditions on transport vessels improved. They are equal to or, in some cases, better than those in livestock production scenarios in Australia—fully shaded, clear water and cool air provided. We are now regarded as a world leader in welfare standards for livestock export. We raised the level of awareness worldwide for animal welfare standards. Live export is governed by the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock—the ASEL—and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.

Now for some facts: the Australian livestock export industry equals $1.8 billion per annum; it employs 13,000 Australians nationally; Australian livestock export pays $987 million in wages and salaries per annum; Western Australian livestock export is worth $471 million per annum; and cattle from the north-west alone is worth $87 million a year and employs 1,045 people. There is no economically viable alternative market for remote pastoral leases product, and they currently export out of Derby, Wyndham, Broome and Port Hedland.

The high cost of transport to abattoirs in the south of the state is restrictive. And of course you need to consider that pastoralists, contrary to the view held by the RSPCA, do not have the luxury option of planting crops. The industry underpins economic and social wellbeing in large slices of Western Australia. The live trade contributes to Australia’s social responsibility for food security in export markets and jobs in importing countries.

There are three clear market sectors for meat—frozen, chilled and fresh—and all present a strong and unique selling point in their particular niche. The Australian meat processing industry has been in long-term decline due to overcapacity and inefficient plants, plus difficulties in industrial relations and slow growth in domestic demand for meat. The RSPCA believe that live exports should be replaced with chilled and frozen products. This really is an arrogant nonsense when you consider that the wet markets in the importing countries do not have refrigeration. They need to have a wet market where they do killing on site in order to provide the product that their customers want. Those who are not well aware of the drivers in these particular industries should consider that the customer is always right, and they need to have the product presented in a manner that they can consume and store. It is no good selling into a wet market a product that has been frozen. Rule No. 1 in animal husbandry and production is that you sell the product that the market wants and can handle. I have a quote provided by a constituent:

Live export accounts for about 55 per cent of our farm income. Even if we could send carcasses there would be not enough meatworkers or abattoirs in WA to do it. I wish the RSPCA would concentrate their efforts on real cruelty.

Now the RSPCA inspectors will be trained in how to spot suspected cases of child abuse in the backyards of Australian families. Now they are an authority on global warming, claiming that climate change is producing a boom in feral cats in Melbourne’s leafy east. They tried to stop the race that stops a nation, with new whipping laws. They want mulesing ruled out by 2010. Where will it stop? The RSPCA were well respected, staffed by volunteers and supported by donations from the public, with a primary focus on domestic pets. Banishing Australian live exports will ruin my farmers and pastoralists—(Time expired)

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome this motion from the member for Kalgoorlie on the subject of live animal exports, as it gives me an opportunity to speak on an issue that is of considerable interest and concern to the people of Fremantle. Around 80 per cent of Australia’s live sheep exports, a total of approximately four million sheep annually, are shipped out through Fremantle Port. I have received and continue to receive a substantial amount of correspondence from my constituents on this issue, the overwhelming majority of whom want to see significant reform of the live sheep export industry.

The concerns raised by constituents fall into two main categories. First is the concern that WA is missing out on jobs and export income by sending life sheep offshore instead of value-adding by processing them in WA and exporting to the rapidly expanding overseas market for sheep meat. People are rightly interested in developing industries that make more of our primary products and our natural resources and that bring a healthy return to our farmers. Second, there is a concern for the welfare of the animals that are the basis of the live sheep export trade. In Fremantle this is not a concern formed at a distance, since Fremantle residents watch, smell and hear the trucks that contain sheep en route to the port. On the long sea journeys that follow, thousands of sheep die—some 40,000 last year—while many more suffer from conditions such as heat stress and salmonellosis. Those that survive the transport typically face an inhumane death, as they are slaughtered without pre-stunning.

These concerns about animal welfare are shared by organisations like the RSPCA and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and by an organisation in my electorate called Stop Live Exports, formerly known as People Against Cruelty in Animal Transport, or PACAT. I understand very well that the live sheep trade generates significant export income and is the foundation of thousands of jobs in Western Australia; however, it is misleading for those who support the unreformed maintenance of the current live export trade to suggest that proponents of reform advocate some kind of overnight change or that they regard jobs and economic activity as irrelevant. The RSPCA has said that it would like to see a phased and appropriately supported shift from the live export trade to a 21st century on-shore processing industry.

The recent ACIL Tasman report titled Australian live sheep exports: economic analysis of Australian live sheep and sheep meat trade found not only that a very low-cost or cost-free transition is possible but also that greater economic benefits are to be gained from local processing of sheep in terms of Australian jobs and sheep meat exports. The report calculates that a sheep processed in WA is worth approximately $20 more to gross state product than a sheep sent overseas for slaughter. Sheep meat exports contributed $1.5 billion to the Australian economy last year compared to the live sheep trade’s $341 million. ACIL Tasman found that an additional 2,000 jobs would be created immediately if two million sheep that would otherwise be exported live were processed domestically. It also noted that the majority of jobs currently supported by live sheep exports would still exist if the trade were transitioned to a sheep meat export trade. The interests of my constituents in seeing a change of policy in this matter is premised on a careful and sensible transition to a more productive and humane use of sheep and an industry of equivalent or greater economic value to Australia.

The Labor Party is a party of progressive change, and earlier this year I was glad to be part of the effort that saw the following statement of principle added to the platform at the ALP national conference:

Labor believes that all animals should be treated humanely and will work to achieve better animal welfare through harmonisation of relevant State, Territory and Commonwealth laws and codes to ensure consistent application and enforcement of animal protection statutes.

I also welcome this government’s initiatives to improve animal welfare within the live export trade—namely, the approved projects under the $2.4 million Live Animal Trade Program and the $3.2 million Live Trade Animal Welfare Partnership, which is to be jointly funded on a dollar-for-dollar basis with Australia’s live export industry. These initiatives show that the old dichotomy that sets economic value against animal welfare is as misconceived as the dichotomy that sets economic value against the protection and conservation of our environment.

However, there is further progress to be made. In a recent letter to the Parliamentary Friends of the RSPCA, the RSPCA said that it is keen to have a positive discussion about new opportunities for Australia’s sheep industry—Australian opportunities that will create jobs, boost the economy and markedly improve animal welfare. I believe it is necessary to have this discussion and to give proper consideration to what would be involved in delivering an Australian industry that can provide better treatment for animals and better economic and productive outcomes.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the member for Kalgoorlie’s motion. This motion supports the industry and acknowledges the significant contribution it makes to Australian farmers. It acknowledges that our non-participation in the trade will not lead to a cessation in the global sense, or even in its likely reduction. It recognises that many pastoralists do not have the opportunity to diversify and it also recognises the fact that there is a very high-level and not-so-truthful campaign run against the live sheep trade.

I must start by taking the member for Fremantle to task somewhat. The member for Fremantle represents a port, and ports survive by putting freight over their wharves. In fact, if the people of Fremantle do not particularly like ports perhaps they should not have chosen to live in the port area in the first place. It is a little along the lines of the right to farm: where an industry exists, those who enter that area enter it at their own peril. What I hope to bring to this debate this evening is a little of my background as a farmer, because I have produced sheep for most of my life and prepared them for domestic slaughter, for wool production and for export.

The live sheep trade in South Australia, unfortunately, is but a shadow of its former self. I can remember many years when I sold my livestock to live sheep exporters when in fact they were the only buyers in the market; they were the only people we could sell our livestock to. And it comes as no surprise to me, or to many of us farmers, that the national flock of Australian sheep has fallen from 190 million to 70 million. Many of us never thought we would see the day. In the end, farmers are victims in part of the economic environment, and they will and they must sell their livestock to the highest bidder. Anything else is a restraint on trade, which should be fully resisted.

I despair, particularly as one who has handled livestock, at the high-level heartstring campaigns and the scare campaigns that are run against this industry. To allege that someone of my ilk does not care for the animals that I rear for human consumption is an insult. I have spent most of my life caring for animals. In fact, there are times when I have had to put my sheep into a feedlot situation on the farm to ensure their survival. A feedlot situation is in fact very similar to a boat trip for sheep. They might be locked up for six weeks, eight weeks, even some months at a time. Try as we might, there are always some fatalities. Try as we might, when we bring sheep into a yard on any occasion there are often injuries and fatalities. It is not a bloodthirsty sport; it is just a fact of life that where you have livestock you will, in the end, inevitably, have dead stock. We do everything within our power to avoid that outcome.

As a former debater, I always think it pays to check the Oxford dictionary, because it always brings a little clarity to the situation. And when I see the word ‘cruelty’ used in relation to the live sheep trade—I will bring to your attention that ‘cruel’, as in ‘cruelty’, reads:

Disposed to inflict suffering; indifferent to or taking pleasure in the pain or distress of another; hard-heartedness and pitiless; causing or making by great pain or distress.

None of those clauses are relevant when it comes to those people who care for the livestock in the live sheep trade—those who care for and raise those animals in their paddocks and those who deal with the shipping of those animals overseas—because in the end every loss is a dead loss to the pocket. If Australia does not compete in the live sheep trade we will not see the end of it, we will just be replaced by other suppliers around the world. In fact, where we rear our animals, they live in utopia compared with the way they are raised in many other parts of the world, so we should be encouraging these exporters. If indeed, as the RSPCA alleges, there is better money in slaughtering this livestock in Australia, let those people who wish to slaughter livestock in Australia pay the price that will buy them the stock and the privilege to do so.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This certainly is a contentious area. That is, it is contentious in terms of the comparative benefits—employment, income and the production of local jobs in abattoirs for local people—of this particular form of trade versus the costs incurred principally by the animals themselves but also, more broadly, by each and every one of us who wishes to avoid cruelty and the unnecessary suffering of the animals in our care.

As the motion reads, live exports have in the past and continue to represent a substantial portion of our nation’s primary production and contributions, not only to our economy but also to the lives of thousands of hardworking Australians. The live sheep export industry is subject to ongoing scrutiny by animal welfare groups, the RSPCA among them, which have been deeply concerned by the conditions exported livestock have had to endure in transit, generally for weeks at a time, prior to being received by the trading country. Overcrowded pens aboard ships, lack of clean water and food, outbreak of disease, heat exhaustion, change in feed and a reluctance to feed, dehydration, starvation and a pretty miserable, prolonged death in transit: these are some of the concerns that have been raised for decades by those arguably most concerned with the welfare and the avoidance of suffering of the livestock exported.

The number of live cattle exported throughout this decade has averaged around 700,000 head per year. The number of live sheep exported through the same period has averaged around 4½ million head per year, down from approximately six million head per year through most of the 1980s and 1990s. Some opposition to livestock export has focused on the mortality rates of livestock in transit as a representation of the adverse conditions animals experience and perhaps manage to endure while being cooped up in transit. Mortality rates early this decade averaged around 0.2 per cent of beef cattle. That is two cows per 1,000 exported.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.