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

I present to the House a petition sent to me by Animals Australia on behalf of 40,650 Australians who are calling for an end to live animal exports to the Middle East. These 40,650 signatures are part of more than 300,000 signatures gathered by animal welfare groups across the country even before this week's shocking report on ABC's Four Corners program, which exposed the torture and brutal treatment inflicted on Australian cattle in Indonesian abattoirs.

As I said in this House on Monday in my contribution to the grievance debate, the way to protect animals from the unacceptable cruelty depicted in Four Corners is to have an immediate cessation of cattle exports to Indonesia until all the 120 or so slaughterhouses processing Australian cattle have been independently shown to comply with appropriate standards. I note that the response of the Howard government to revelations of animal cruelty in abattoirs in Egypt, five years ago, was to immediately ban the trade. That ban was in place for three years and cattle export from Australia has only resumed to one internationally controlled abattoir in Egypt.

The repeated failures of the live export industry, as represented by LiveCorp and Meat and Livestock Australia, and the overwhelming public reaction to the cruelties inherent in live export mean that the sentiments expressed in this petition need to be taken seriously. It is time for Australia to begin planning the transition out of live export and towards an expanded chilled meat industry with all of the economic, employment and animal welfare benefits this would bring.

The petition read as follows—

To the Honourable The Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives

This petition of undersigned citizens of Australia calls on the Australian Government to end the export of live animals from Australia to the Middle East.

We the undersigned therefore call on the House of Representatives to ensure that the Australian government ends this trade and, in doing, restore Australia's reputation as a compassionate and ethical nation.

from 40,649 citizens

Petition received.