Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have listed this private member’s motion so we can have a discussion about an issue that concerns many people in Australia, and one that is based on facts. I also raise issues of concern to locals in my area of Page which they have raised with me over the last three years. My overarching concern is for the industry—for farmers and all associated with it; for meat processing and all associated with it. My primary concern is jobs. Another concern forms part of the debate and also informs the debate, and that is the welfare of the animals, which is important. As a Labor person, jobs concern me—creating them so that we have economic and social inclusion and supporting and sustaining wealth-creating industries such as farming and the livestock industry.

I have seen some figures from the MLA claiming that if we did not export livestock or have a live export trade then it would cost a certain amount of money and impact on our overall budget. But I know that the figures are based on a cessation of it overnight, at midnight tonight, not on what this motion is about. Point (3) of the motion makes it very clear: it calls for ‘consideration of a planned and supported transition in the medium term away from live exports and towards an expanded frozen and chilled meat export industry’. There are seven parts to this motion, and that is at the hub of it.

The live export industry is a risky business. If you laid an audit template over it, it would come up with all red signals. We know that with an audit template there are red, amber and green. I do not see any amber or green with this industry; what I see are the red signals. It is not a healthy situation for an industry to be high risk in that many countries taking live exports are increasingly moving to chilled meat and processed meat. There is volatility in their markets and in some of the countries. They are also being paid hefty subsidies. That puts us at a disadvantage here, not the locals in those countries. We have also seen the impact of Indonesia’s move to a policy of beef self-sufficiency, the 350-kilogram limit, and we know what that will mean to the live export industry here.

This motion is about sustainability and the general reason I outlined above and some specifics about jobs. I will turn to jobs because it is jobs that have disappeared in large part due to live exports. We are exporting jobs from our shores and not processing, particularly in regional areas where the meat processing takes place. In my area we have the Northern Cooperative Meat Company, which is a very large employer based in Casino. They have a fine reputation and export chilled processed meat to many places around the globe. It is one of those industries we all want to protect in our area. The way the live export industry has developed in Australia, and being as risky as it is, it is risky for them but also risky for our locals.

I have a few facts here. In the past 30 years, 40,000 meat processing jobs have been lost and 150 processing plants have been shut down, primarily due to the live export trade. If those jobs had been able to be taken up because of the live export trade and had been replaced in other areas, even then I would have had some concerns, but that has not been the case. From February to August 2010, 960 full-time Australian meatworker jobs have been lost nationwide. That is an average of over 150 jobs each month. The AMIEU, the union which represents workers in the meat processing area, is calling upon the government to take action to prevent further job losses and it spells out some of those. One of the plants that closed was Killarney, which is not far from my seat of Page, just over the border in Queensland, and another was in Dinmore in Queensland, where I used to work, in the seat of Blair. (Time expired)

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Page for putting forward this motion on the meat export industry. The Australian Greens have a long history of campaigning to improve the treatment of animals, particularly those bred or farmed for human consumption. This campaign is obviously a long way from realising its goals and it is one that rarely garners mainstream attention. But as tens of thousands of animals die as a result of the live animal export industry every year, and as hundreds of thousands of animals reared for human consumption are mistreated in this country largely out of sight of the consumer, it is a campaign that is both essential and urgent. We as a society have a long way to go in improving the way we treat animals. It is a basic test of decency to see how many deaths and how much mistreatment we as a society will tolerate in the name of industry and commerce. We firmly believe that so long as we have a live animal export trade in this country we will fail that test.

The Greens are on record, and it is quite clearly stated in our federal policies, that we want to see an immediate end to the export of live animals for consumption. The government knows full well that animals sent overseas in the live export trade suffer during transportation and are mistreated upon arrival. It is presented time and time again with such evidence, yet there so far has been a lack of political will to shine a light on this industry and reject the unethical practices inherent in this trade. This is truly disappointing. And this motion does indeed take a position that supports the economy and jobs. I note that the RSPCA recently reminded members that Australia’s meat trade as a whole internationally is worth seven times more than live exports and that sheep processed domestically contribute 20 per cent more to the Australian economy than those sent overseas in appalling conditions.

Although the Greens primarily approach this issue as an ethical matter, it would seem we would be on solid ground arguing against live animal exports on the basis of local job protection alone, as the member for Page has pointed out. When meat-processing facilities continue to sack staff because of lack of access to stock, and when the international demand for frozen meats continues to improve, live exports should be taking a diminishing share of Australia’s overall meat exports. Nor is this a minority opinion: a recent poll conducted by Galaxy indicates that 79 per cent of Australians would like the live export industry phased out. In the context of this overwhelming support, I believe the member for Page would even have been justified in moving a more ambitious motion. The action called on in this motion in part (3), for renewed consideration of a planned and supported transition in the medium term away from live exports, is a measured step towards an urgent outcome.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

I will be supporting this motion, as it is clearly a step in the right direction. I implore the government not to treat this as another private member’s Main Committee motion that is quietly debated and put aside but rather to give this debate the treatment that it deserves. I look forward to the next step—to a more public debate and an economic plan put forward by the government to scale back and ultimately terminate this unethical practice. The bottom line is that there is no ethically acceptable means of transporting hundreds of thousands of animals thousands of kilometres by ship for slaughter when the journey sees thousands of animals continue to die on route every year and when the destination countries consistently treat livestock with brutality.

It was growing up in the member for Fremantle’s electorate and seeing the sights and smelling lorry loads of sheep as they went past and then sat on the dock in the ships for often several days at a time that prompted me to first inquire about the ethical treatment of animals for export and the economics of exporting live animals. Everything that I have learnt in the meantime, together with the Australian Greens policy, leads me to support this motion and commend the member for Page for bringing it to the attention of the House. I support this measured step towards the end goal of stopping the export of live animals.

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

I wholeheartedly endorse the motion moved by the member for Page and I thank her for her longstanding and passionate commitment to this issue. Like other members speaking in support of this motion, I am very happy to make the case for positive change when it comes to Australia’s live export industry.

I am not against farmers, I am not against exporters, and I am certainly not against the cattle and sheep export trade. Indeed, I am 100 per cent in favour of a thriving cattle and sheep export trade based on higher value-added production, higher job creation and greater rural and regional economic development activity. All those things will be delivered over time by a transition from a live export to a chilled meat export trade. Most importantly of all, those things will be delivered hand-in-hand with an end to the animal welfare travesty that is the current live export trade.

I want to put on record my gratitude for the tireless advocacy and dedication of a number of animal welfare groups in this cause, including Animals Angels, Animals Australia, Stop Live Exports, World Society for the Protection of Animals and RSPCA Australia.

As a parliamentarian, there are few issues that I have followed and pursued more consistently. That is appropriate because my electorate includes the port of Fremantle—through which flows 80 per cent of the live sheep trade—and because there is an overwhelming consensus in Fremantle that this trade should end.

Let my say quite clearly that it is not a nimby consensus. Last year the City of Fremantle adopted a resolution in support of a phased transition away from live exports, including the clear statement that the City would not support a shift of the live export trade from the Fremantle port to a new port proposed for Kwinana, some 20 kilometres south. The Fremantle community does not want the trade out of sight, out of mind; it wants the trade to end in favour of a more humane, more economically sustainable industry.

The Fremantle community does not want to be spared the sight of animals with broken limbs hanging from truck sides even before they are crowded into overheated ships and taken to an inhumane slaughter in the Middle East. The people of Fremantle want the entire industry to change, and to change for the better in every sense.

Strong evidence was provided in the 2009 ACIL Tasman report that a phased transition to a chilled meat export industry offers significant economic improvements for Western Australia, including the potential to double the jobs in the WA industry from 2000 to 4000 workers; the potential to increase the number of sheep processed in WA from 2.7 million to six million without the need to construct additional processing capacity; and the potential to replace a $700 million per annum industry with an industry worth $2 billion per annum. These are the economic benefits—more jobs, more sheep, more export dollars—that are likely to flow from an expanded meat processing and chilled meat export industry.

Last year I helped to host an event in Fremantle, in partnership with WSPA, Stop Live Exports and representatives from state parliament and local government in Western Australia. At that event, we heard from meat processors V&V Walsh and from the Australian Meatworkers Union, who testified to the damage that has been wreaked by the live export trade on the domestic industry in the last 35 years. More than 150 meat processing facilities have closed down with a loss of 40,000 jobs. Last year alone, 1,000 jobs were lost, mainly due to livestock shortages, not to a lack of demand.

We also heard from live export industry representatives who took issue with both the economic and the animal welfare criticisms of the current trade.

It was only a month or so later that horrible footage emerged of the gross mistreatment of sheep on arrival at a distribution point in Egypt. This footage, which was featured on the ABC’s 7:30 Report, showed live sheep being thrown and stuffed into car boots, injured sheep being mishandled, and throats being cut as animals struggled upside down at a dusty roadside. Some of these inhumane treatments were filmed occurring in plain view of signage that indicates that such cruelty is forbidden.

One of the same live export representatives who had attended the Fremantle community event was interviewed for the 7:30 Report story. You could see his certainty evaporate as he was shown footage which plainly contradicts the claims that the live export industry is consistently operating to exclude cruel, inhumane and unacceptable treatment of animals.

On that point, I believe there are urgent short-term measures that need to be considered to deliver some essential animal welfare improvements in the current trade. These include a requirement that live animals be sold into closed systems—that is, for slaughter at DAFF approved and monitored abattoirs rather than for private sale with the kind of car-boot cruelty that we know follows—and a cessation of export to countries that do not demonstrate compliance with the World Organisation for Animal Health guidelines for the slaughter of animals, and the guidelines for the transport of animals by land, sea and air.

Finally, I would simply observe that many improvements have been made over time to Australia’s agricultural sector industries in the name of better economic, social and animal welfare outcomes. To my mind there is no reason Australia should not properly investigate a phased transition from live export to onshore processing that will deliver these outcomes.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against this motion on the meat export industry. I want to touch on three points. The first is the trade implications of this motion. I say to the Minister for Trade that he needs to concentrate on his job as trade minister and forget about trying to take over as Treasurer. This motion would never have been allowed to come forward in its current form if he had been doing his job properly. For instance, part (b) of the motion says:

… chilled or frozen meat exports mean that there is not a level playing field between the two forms of export …

What a ridiculous notion. If it said that we should do everything we can to reduce tariffs on frozen meat exports, fine. We would all be happy to support that. As a matter of fact, we would call on the trade minister to do his job and do something in the trade area so that he does reduce tariffs for our frozen meat exports. That is very important. But to just contrast this with what is happening with our live exports is a ridiculous notion.

What is even more ridiculous, however, is calling on Austrade to be involved in negotiations to increase exports in frozen and chilled meat. Austrade does trade promotion. It is the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade which does trade negotiation. The fact that this motion does not even comprehend that basic fact and that the trade minister has not been able to provide some advice to Ms Saffin on that basic fact shows that his eye is off the ball. It shows that he is after the Treasurer’s job instead of doing his own as trade minister. We have seen nothing in terms of a reduction of tariff barriers on any of our exports since the trade minister has been in the portfolio. All he has been trying to do is undermine the Treasurer. He needs to stop and he needs to focus on the trade portfolio.

Moving to other aspects of the motion, I want to touch on what the live export trade means to my electorate of Wannon. There were 620,000 sheep and 62,000 cattle that went out of the port of Portland last financial year. That is a million dollar contribution to jobs and to farmers in my electorate. The industry has improved its record in live sheep exports. It has also improved its record with the live export of cattle. It is continuing to look at improvements. What we need to do in this parliament is work with the industry so that we support it, so that we can continually see improvements in the shipments of our animals but also in what happens once the animals arrive at the designated ports. If we work with the industry to achieve this, we can get good results. No-one in the world does this trade better than us; no-one has put in place better protocols once the animals arrive than us. And there is no reason why we cannot continue to work with the industry to make sure that we continually improve the trade and get those millions of dollars going back into our electorates, and in particular into my electorate of Wannon. The port of Portland does a very good job as a major export port, and this live export trade is very important to it.

In terms of the industry as a whole, this is an export industry that exceeded $1 billion for the second year running. This is not something that should be tampered with. It is not something that on a whim we say, ‘Oh, we should support this type of trade against this type of trade.’ This is a billion dollar industry that we are trying to engineer. This is not what government should be doing. It should let free enterprise and competition take its place. If there is a market for the live export trade, then that market should be able to flourish. We as government should not be dictating and saying: ‘No, we don’t want that type of trade. We will try and stop that and we will try and divert it into this area.’ Competition and free enterprise are what we should be seeking to achieve. The trade minister needs to get his eye on the ball. This motion should never have come to this place as it has. He has to stop trying to become Treasurer and instead focus on being trade minister again.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of this motion by the member for Page. I thank her for putting this motion forward for debate. I know it is a contentious issue and one that has obviously aroused strong views on both sides. There are those members who will staunchly defend the live export industry and those who will instead speak in support of the motion out of a concern for the future of the meat industry in our electorates. I am one of those members. Rockhampton is known as the beef capital of Australia for good reason. We have plenty of cattle and we have a lot of meatworkers, generations of meatworkers in fact. Through good times and bad, Rockhampton has always been and remains to this day a meatworkers town and I want to make sure it stays that way.

In Rockhampton, there are two major meatworks: Teys Brothers at Lakes Creek and the one operated by Swift and Nerimbera. But it is not just Rockhampton that I speak for today, because there are meatworks just outside the electorate of Capricornia in Biloela and also Bakers Creek, smaller towns that would face an even more uncertain future without the employment opportunities provided by those meatworks. The concerns about the threats from increased live exports to the meat-processing industry in Queensland are real. They have come to me from meatworkers and their union, the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union, and they have come to me from processors. Those people inside the industry tell me that the live export trade is changing, growing and impacting in a real way on the processing sector down the coast of Queensland in a way that has not happened in the past. They also see the distortions in the international marketplace that give live exporters an unfair advantage over Australian processors and the way that this is helping to drive the shift to live exports over our value-added products.

The figures confirm that there has been a significant increase in recent years in the number of live cattle exported from Australia. In 2009-10 the number was over 954,000—most of them to Indonesia. This was up 34 per cent on the 2006-07 trade. Cattle coming out of Queensland accounted for 170,000 or 19 per cent of that total and that represents a jump of seven per cent from 2006-07. A 34 per cent increase in live cattle exports represents a significant adjustment within the industry especially when 80 per cent of the live cattle went to Indonesia, which is an equally important market for processors exporting chilled beef. We are competing with ourselves within the same export market.

We have to listen to the processing sector when they say this is having an effect and that is what today’s motion is all about—acknowledging those concerns and seeking a considered and reasonable response through our trade and other industry policies.

I said that Rockhampton is proud to be a meatworker’s town but it is not just us with a stake in this debate and the future of the meat processing industry. According to ABS statistics the meat processing sector in Australia accounts directly for around 32,000 jobs, most of them in regional and rural areas. The last two to three years—corresponding with the period of 34 per cent growth in the live export trade—have seen pressures on processors to keep their plants running full-time. There have been job losses in the industry, which have been attributed to the increase in live exports out of Queensland—something that has not traditionally been a big feature of the industry in our state but one that has processors very wary about the future.

The Heilbron report, which is a well-known study into this question prepared for the Australian Meat Processor Corporation in 2000, certainly sounded the warning estimating that the live export trade was costing Australia GDP and around 12,000 jobs. Heilbron have updated their 2000 report. Their update for the Queensland industry last year found that in 2008-09 live exports cost Queensland 1,200 jobs and $140 million in lost income to the state.

Today’s motion is really calling for us to stop and have a good look at what is occurring in this industry and to assess what is in the best interests of the workers in the processing sector, the livestock industry as a whole and, ultimately, for us as a nation. We cannot afford to allow continued growth of live exports of the magnitude we have seen in recent years without properly understanding the consequences. We have to do that before it is too late and we reach a point of no return for the processing sector and all the jobs that go with it. I wholeheartedly support this motion from the member for Page.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This whole debate is disappointing me a great deal, primarily, the motivation for it. On the surface of it you may take the member for Page’s motion and think, ‘Here is a woman with great concern for her electorate, great concern for the future of the Australian industry.’ I find that that is so far from the truth.

As we go into this debate we find more and more from the member for Page’s own lips and from the member for Capricornia’s own lips the fact that this debate is about keeping union jobs and serving union masters. I am so disappointed to hear that because I speak for a quarter of the Australian land mass. In that quarter of the Australian landmass there is not one full-time cattle abattoir.

Members of the government need to get out and about, open their eyes, take theirs heads out of the sand, do some travel and find out what the real world is all about. It is not about tree hugging. It is not about bleating as the member for Freemantle did about the poor citizens of Fremantle that have got to look at stock travelling through their electorate—for God’s sake. It is about my pastoralists making a quid. It is about the members that live in Freemantle maybe realising why they live there in the first place—because it is a port. They all want to live with the kitsch and the cappuccinos of the port and they forget that it is a port.

If we get dinkum about that we will realise that no one with a quid in their pocket and a right mind is going to start an abattoir in north-western Australia. There is not a population centre that can staff it, for starters; we have got a mining industry that is burgeoning and draining employment away; and we have a government that does all it can to get in the way of employing 457 visa employees and skilled workers from other countries. If you put your money into an abattoir in north-western Australia you would be stark-raving mad.

The other reality is that we have a government that is supposedly very concerned about carbon emissions, carbon footprints and food that is travelling the least distance. To send cattle 2½ thousand kilometres from the Kimberley to an abattoir in Western Australia is going to add thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide in diesel emissions and add $100 to the cost of transportation of that beast.

I do not expect members of the government to understand that, because understanding is not something they are big on, but when they come into this House with a motion that proves their stupidity and clearly shows their ignorance then I have a difficult time with that.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker on a point of order, I would like to ask the member to withdraw his comment. I found it highly offensive.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She would love me to withdraw it. I hope she finds it offensive, because there is a real need here to bring to the attention of the Australian people—

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

Order! The member for Durack will resume his seat. The member for Shortland can only ask a question.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I asked that he withdraw the comment that he made about stupidity and the abuse that he has hurled at members on this side of the chamber. We all find it highly offensive and I ask that the member withdraw.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member may withdraw the word ‘stupidity’.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will not go to the dictionary definition—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will withdraw the word ‘stupidity’.

Barry Haase (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will withdraw it. I now find some of that time has been taken up when I may have been illuminating the understanding of the people of Australia. Live export is a reality. Live export is creating better conditions for the transport of cattle, sheep and goats than has ever been exercised by any other nation in the world.

The Middle East and Indonesia are not suddenly going to stop requiring wet market stock. The Middle East and Indonesia are not suddenly going to say, ‘We’ll buy frozen product,’ because they do not have the freezers, they have not got the chillers. Their customers rely on the wet market. If you are relying on the wet market, you are not going to be pulling something out of the freezer and defrosting it, it will last about four hours. That is what wet markets are about. They are about local killing of live animals to suit the culture. Rule No. 1 in any business is: know your market. If you ignore the nature of your market as a manufacturer or a primary producer, you will fail. When the market changes so will the adaptability of Australia come into play and we will change our product. Until then we need to do live export better than anyone else in the world. We need to treat animals more humanely than anyone else in the world. We need to educate the public of Australia and make them understand that if they want to live in portside situations they are going to smell and hear stock and that is realistic. If you talk about fatalities in the transportation process, stock are safer on a boat and in the transport process than they are in the paddock. Look to the stats, understand the industry and do not bring crazy motions into this House.

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

I thought that was a pretty poor contribution by the Western Australian member, and I do not think anything was gained by it. It was a short-term view—take the money and run, and do not care about the long-term issues for Australia. There are two strong reasons for the phase out of the Australian live animal export trade. Firstly, there is the dismal transport conditions of stock with their potential mistreatment on reaching their destination which is unsustainable in the long term. An unsustainable industry will not last into the long term.

Secondly, there is the continuing job loss being caused by a live animal export trade here in Australia, which is a loss to the Australian economy and to regional Australia. We need to be very conscious of the way that is occurring. Australia consistently treats animals humanely during the slaughter process and has gained recognition across the Middle East for observance of halal and those standards. By processing meat in Australia we are not threatening the important religious practices of other cultures, and we can do it all here.

Our good reputation is largely due to the skill and dedication of workers in our meat-processing sector. Those people are the human face of the live animal exports debate, the face that is often forgotten in this debate about this trade. The AMIEU, the meat workers union, asserts that 10,000 jobs have been lost over the past 30 years as a result of the live animal exports trade and more than 100 processing plants have closed in regional Australia due to this trade. Recent research shows that if livestock was retained for processing in Australia, it would be worth 20 per cent more to our economy, worth 20 per cent more to the local processing sector and to the Australian economy. Value-adding from a chilled product would give us that.

If we lose our skill base in the Australian meat industry, rural Australia will be the loser. The viability of our processing plants is at risk here. The live trade last year was worth $330 million. If we processed that meat here it would be worth $65 million more. The whole of the Australian economy would benefit. Regional areas are at risk—four works closed in the past two weeks—and the contribution from the members for Durack was an appalling indication of his ignorance in understanding the Australian meat industry. The live animal trade is a very risky trade for rural Australia. The trade is heavily subsidised by the Middle East governments. Therefore, with political unrest going on there now, that could fall over within days. So if we lose the skill base of our workforce in Australia, and if we lost the capital in our processing works, this could be a great threat for the future of our industry and for rural Australia. Cold storage is in place in the Middle East and it could grow quite easily. And, as the member for Page has said in the motion before the chamber, encouraging Austrade to be involved in negotiations to increase exports of frozen and chilled meat is the way for us to go—that is, to use our trade negotiations and our skill base to do that so that we are enhancing the Australian economy by value-adding.

A renewed focus on the Australian processing industry would certainly help to alleviate this problem and get us back to where we should be going as a nation. Giving money to a few shippers and to a few agents at the expense of building a solid longterm sustainable industry is what we should be doing. So I am very disappointed that we have not been able to have a better debate. Most members on that side have been reasonable, except for one member. In my home state of Tasmania a processing plant was recently laying off workers due to stock shortages while stock was still being shipped overseas. This is a real problem. We need to be serious about this and—(Time expired)

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion could be an opportunity to celebrate the advancements that have been made in this industry, a chance to recognise that chilled and frozen products alongside live exports are a complementary characteristic of this sector. Instead we seem to be hearing an argument that is having a go at the Gillard government’s trade minister, Dr Emerson, for not taking this matter seriously enough and not working hard enough to expand opportunities for chilled and frozen meats. And then we venture off into a trade barrier conversation, again completely within the domain of the government to address, but again here is a Labor backbencher seemingly being critical of the inactivity of the trade minister. And then we start talking about the animal welfare issues, which are very important and very concerning for my electorate. I have a very active community of concerned citizens wanting to make sure that the welfare of the animals involved in the live export trade are properly cared for. And I am pleased to be able to reassure them that there were considerable gains made under the former Howard government, putting in place the architecture through industry collaboration and proper and targeted inspection and regulatory regimes, the inclusion of vets on these journeys, the arrival infrastructure and handling arrangements that Australian taxpayers have invested in to make sure that the proper care and the welfare of animals is a high consideration even at those destination ports.

We could have talked about those things. Instead, this has been reduced it seems to an argument about chilled and frozen meat versus live exports. The reality is that we need both and we should support both. But we should also recognise in the decision here, however inspired—whether by the meat processors union, as some have suggested, or by animal welfare concerns; whatever the motivation for this motion today—that much has been gained. It is a chance to celebrate those advancements. Both the frozen and chilled export market and the live meat export markets are important to our nation’s future. We have a role to play in nurturing and supporting both.

To come in here and say only one is better than the other ignores some really sensible arguments that I thought the member for Durack and others have put forward. It is a very east coast chat, this one, isn’t it—where all the meat-processing facilities are? ‘Gee, we’d like more’, says the member for Capricornia. Of course we would like more, but where they are and where the sheep and the cattle are growing are not always neatly coincidentally beside each other. If we are interested in sustainability, the proposition that says that on pastoral land in the Northern Territory and Western Australia we should mandate or in some way engineer a requirement to put those beasts on road trains to freight them hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of kilometres so that they can be processed in meatworks, where we have had to import 30 per cent of the workforce through 457 visas, is somehow in our long-term best interests ignores the reality within the marketplace. There is an international appetite and demand for live meat exports, and we should hold up our head proud in saying that we are at least 50 per cent bigger than any country in that space. Through our advocacy and concern for animal welfare, we have lifted the standard of all those involved in that trade. We have put our money where our mouth is to support the trade and to recognise that animal welfare matters. We have dispelled this myth that somehow activity out of sight is not a concern for us by putting people and resources in place in these destination markets to make sure that our expectations—dare I say, our cultural expectations—about the proper care of livestock is respected right throughout the supply chain.

Some of these destination markets do not have fridges, they do not have Safeways and Woolies down on the corner, they do not have the neat supply chains and a convenient collocation of stock and processing facilities that might be on the east coast, that we might wish was replicated right across our continent, and that we might hope would actually be in all the destination markets as well. That is not reality. So do we turn our back on this trade? I say no, because our leadership role in raising the standards of all those involved in this trade should be something that is celebrated and advanced. I am worried the current government has not advanced it quite as vigorously as the former Howard government. Minister McGauran has run rings around his successors in making sure that right throughout the supply chain, wherever we have an opportunity for influence, we exercise that influence in the interests of a sustainable industry that has both chilled and frozen products and live exports.

The value-add argument is a good argument and I would like to see more of it, but it needs a market. It needs realistic assessment of the economics involved. We should not be talking about the aberration of the odd Ethiopian sheep; we should be talking about what is the reality of a much enhanced industry through the work of the previous government. (Time expired)

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Dunkley as opposed to following the member for Durack in this debate on the meat export industry. The member for Dunkley put forward a reasoned argument, even though I do not agree with a lot of what he had to say.

Firstly, I would like to put on the record my thanks to the member for Page for bringing this issue to the parliament and allowing this debate to take place today. I think it is an important debate. There are a number of members in this parliament who wanted to have a say about what they thought on this particular issue. It is very important to a number of electorates. It is about the livestock industry, the meat industry and whether or not we have live exports. My position is that it is not critical to the Australian economy. Sheep meat exports to the Middle East were worth $110 million more than live sheep exports to the region last year. So to say that only live exports are important is not correct. I say that we should be concentrating on expanding the sheepmeat export industry as opposed to the live sheep export industry.

It is also important to say that this is about Australian jobs and making sure that we support and protect those jobs. Australian jobs benefit most when we export meat from sheep that have been killed, rather than live sheep. That is very, very important. Australia is a member country of the OIE, which is the World Organisation for Animal Health. It is the only intergovernmental body that exists to improve animal welfare internationally. This issue is about a balance between jobs, our export market, which is very important, and animal welfare. I might put on the record here that I am a person who grew up in the country. I have a longstanding connection with people who are involved in growing and exporting cattle. I have family who are involved in the industry. I am not arguing that we should not have a strong meat industry, because I think it is very important to our country.

Despite Australia having over 30 years of industry involvement in the Middle East, our animals are still being treated brutally. Here I would like to put on the record for the House a quote by Mahatma Gandhi:

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

I think that is very important. This is an issue that has been raised with me in my electorate by a number of constituents. They are very in favour of the export of our livestock, but they would like to see them being exported once they have been killed. Live export for slaughter will never be ethically acceptable. Transporting animals thousands of kilometres by sea only to be slaughtered will never be logical nor ethically acceptable.

Australian funding may have improved ramps and feedlot conditions, but animals in nearly all Middle Eastern abattoirs are still being slaughtered while fully conscious. Here in Australia they are stunned before slaughter. Animal welfare will only be improved in the Middle East and other importing nations when there is local legislation to protect animals from cruel treatment. There should be an animal welfare benchmark before Australian animals leave this country live. This is a nonargument. Australian animals should not be exported live. We need to protect Australian jobs. We need to ensure that Australian animals are treated humanely and ethically. That will only happen when these animals are slaughtered at home.

John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australian agriculture has a lot to be proud of in the way it does things and the way it represents Australia internationally. Its greatest selling point around the world is the quality of its product and the way in which it is delivered. That is no less true of the live export industry, be it sheep or cattle. That was not always true. It was not always the best run industry, but the industry has done enormous things over the last 20 years to make it better. Currently the fatalities on board ship are less than one per cent over all the red meat industry. That figure is under one per cent for sheep and about one-tenth of one per cent for cattle. In fact, it is probably true to say that the animal has more chance of dying on land than it does when it is sent overseas.

When Australian farmers made this industry happen, unions and others tried to stop them, not because of the animals but because they simply did not want it to happen and—they said—partly because of jobs. I accept that that might have been their reasoning. But this was the first time we had had actual competition where we as animal husbandry people were not at the mercy of one market, and that competition has great benefits for the Australian industry overall. The live export trade is worth over a billion dollars a year to the Australian economy. The issue of competition cannot be underrated. Currently, state governments—apart from others—take incredible taxes from everybody who kills an animal, slaughters it and goes through that process in Australia. Live exporters escape a lot of those state—and also some Commonwealth—charges on anything that happens within our country, so there are very good reasons why the live export industry goes well.

As the member for Dunkley so eloquently pointed out, this is an important industry not just to Australia but to various countries overseas which have an even stronger cultural background in eating meat than we do but which do not have refrigeration. Not everybody has a supermarket. But they do have a real need for red meat both culturally and in what they eat, and we supply that market. A great amount of what we sell does not get sold and slaughtered for a supermarket or similar; it gets sold for individual families in one or two lots. It supplies a real need around the world in countries which are not as well off as we are.

The mover of this motion, who has every right to do it, has done it very cunningly. The motion does not actually say we must stop this, but that is what it wants to do. It wants to stop the live export industry, to the detriment of farmers and to the detriment of customers overseas. The member for Page refused to speak to the industry and refused to speak to her own constituents who have tried to talk to her about her motion. This is not about representing your constituents; this is about representing your unions.

I am somewhat horrified that I have to get up here and defend an industry which is so important to so much of Australia and to the people who receive, in the best condition of any live export anywhere around the world, Australian produce in those other countries. I cannot believe I have to get up here and defend a trade which has had its problems in the past but has dealt with those problems very strongly and very successfully. There is no-one in the world who can export live animals in the same condition and in the same way that we do.

I am very proud of Australian agriculture. I am very proud of the fact that everybody wants our product because it is delivered better than any other product in the world and because it is a better product than any product in the world. This particular product provides a heck of a lot of competition for the Australian farmer so that they are not at the mercy of a union and they are not at the mercy of whatever the domestic market wants to pay. Some 25 years ago Australian farmers marched en masse to ensure that this industry could and did have the freedom to sell the product where they were able to do so. (Time expired)

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

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.