Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this morning to speak on the live cattle export ban and to express the concerns of constituents in my electorate. No-one can deny that animal cruelty is wrong. The suspension of exports to non-compliant abattoirs must continue until Australian expectations of acceptable animal welfare practices are met. The coalition does not see these expectations as optional. They must be mandatory and are integral to our requirements for the live export industry. However, a blanket ban on Australian animals being exported to Indonesia will not stop the cruelty. If we turn our backs on this trade, we lose our position to negotiate and resolve the issue. The blanket ban on live exports will be disastrous for Northern Australia and particularly my electorate of Solomon.

As one constituent said to me last week, the cruelty seen in Indonesia is now being dealt out to farming families of Northern Australia. Their livelihood is about to die as cruelly as the cattle in Indonesia. I received this letter last week from one of my constituents and I would like to share it. It reads:

Dear Natasha,

My name is Karynne. I am the mother of two small children whose father has been a cattle truck driver for 30 years. I do not agree with the cruelty that is happening in Indonesia. I do not think that the Australian government have really taken into consideration the snowball effect this decision has made. I just cry everyday thinking what am I going to tell the kids when they ask, 'When is daddy coming home?' What would you have me tell them? 'Sorry, kids, we will not be seeing dad for the next six months because the Gillard government made your daddy lose his job and he has to go far away to find some money so we can have food to eat and live in this house.'

The ban has effectively destroyed the lives of apprentices, mechanics, truck drivers, station owners, diesel mechanics, tyre fitters, stockmen and many other families in the industry. These people did not like seeing the animal cruelty and they did not like seeing the animals they raised being tortured in Indonesia; however, they know that if they want to change that for all cattle we must negotiate a new way.

A Territory-wide petition has since started that urges the government to stop the cruelty and not the trade. I was recently at the Palmerston markets and people came up to me who were literally fearful of the ban. These people were not farmers. They were lawyers, accountants, fruiterers and public servants, to name a few. The ban on live cattle exports goes far beyond the fence lines of Australian cattle stations. The cruelty is what is wrong, not the trade. The Gillard government needs to ban the cruelty and save the trade.