Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While I have the attention of the member for Blair as my seconder, I move the second reading amendment which has been circulated in my name:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes the Turnbull Government’s failure to protect Australia’s reputation as an exporter of clean, green, safe, high quality and ethically produced food”.

I will read the amendment into the record for the benefit of those participating in the debate. It reads:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes the Turnbull Government’s failure to protect Australia’s reputation as an exporter of clean, green, safe, high quality and ethically produced food”.

That's a good point from which to start. I've said in this place many times before that Australia's key competitive advantage in agriculture is our representation as a provider of clean, green, safe, high-quality and ethically-produced food. I make the point that those last two words, 'ethically-produced', are becoming more important over time as community exceptions on animal welfare issues grow, not just here in Australia but right around the world, and as people put more value as consumers on the idea that our food is ethically produced. We've seen consumers already being prepared to pay more for eggs and other products which they know have been raised in an ethical way or produced in an ethical way.

So, this is really, really important. And of course if we lose our key competitive advantage as a country, then Australian agriculture will not fulfil the aspirations we hold for it. This is a particularly important issue we are discussing tonight. I think most of my colleagues on both sides would agree that rarely does an issue come along that so agitates the Australian community as have recent events in the live sheep trade. I've been in this place for a very long time and I've seen a number of events do just that. But I think the recent Awassi Express incident, as shown on 60 Minutes, has caused more traffic—email and other correspondence and telephone calls—to members than any other issue I've encountered in this place in my 22 years here. Sure, it has become easier for people to access their members of parliament in more recent years. Obviously more and more people are using email. I do take account of that, but I believe I can confidently say that no other issue in our community has been bigger than this most recent one around live trade.

Before I move to the bill—which, I should say, Labor will support—I should explain the opposition's position on this trade and what future we see for it. I want to begin by saying that there is a big difference between the live cattle trade and the live sheep trade. I know that those opposite—in a foolhardy way, because they only make the community debate more difficult—will say, as sure as night follows day, that it'll be sheep today and cattle tomorrow. If only they understood how damaging that divisive approach to this debate is for the cattle industry. If only they realised that they only risk stimulating a debate in the community about cattle, rather than saying, 'Well, we don't agree with the Labor Party on this issue, but we're very pleased to learn that they have a different view about the cattle trade.' We don't want to have a debate about the cattle trade. We don't want it to be a divisive issue. We don't want that permeating in the community and therefore putting at risk a $2 billion industry in this country.

The cattle trade typically involves shorter voyages into less-harsh climatic conditions. In the cattle trade it's in the interests of both the sellers and the buyers to have those beasts arrive at their destination in good shape, in good health, ready to be fattened for markets in other countries—typically, in this case, Indonesia. In 2011 an event came along that those opposite like to talk about regularly. Whether they're talking about child care or agriculture, they seem to raise it out of some sort of attempt at political gain. But in 2011 we had a big problem. We had shocking cruelty towards animals in Indonesian abattoirs, and we had to do something about it. Quite frankly, the industry didn't give the government of the day much choice. It was a case of do everything or do nothing. So, the Gillard government was really left with no choice but to suspend, for a four-week period, a number of abattoirs in Indonesia.

What came out of that traumatic event was a new assurance scheme, embraced by the industry—out of necessity, because surely no-one can tell me that the industry would have embraced ESCAS, the assurance scheme if the suspension wasn't in place; of course they would not have. But for the all pain of the pause of 2011, it allowed us to put the cattle trade on a sustainable footing, and it's been pretty much incident-free since. There'll always be isolated incidents. There's a report of one today. But I think we can control isolated incidents, and we've proven we are able to do so. Labor recognises that northern producers in particular rely on live exports of cattle, because they can't grow the cattle to slaughter weight; they just don't have the natural resources in the far north of our country to do so. We acknowledge all of these things, and we support the cattle trade on an ongoing basis.

The sheep trade is much different. Its model is broken. The balance and weight of the scientific evidence tells us that you can't pack 50,000 or 60,000 sheep on a vessel for a four-week voyage, into the hottest temperatures, into the highest humidity known to man, and expect not to have breaches of animal welfare expectations. The Australian Veterinary Association, the RSPCA and many others have said that you just can't do it. It doesn't matter how hard you regulate, it doesn't matter how high the penalties are, it doesn't matter how much you threaten the exporters or anyone else along the supply chain, you just can't do it. It's the equivalent of saying, 'You can't leave three dogs in the car in the searing heat while you duck into the supermarket, but you can leave two dogs in the car.' It's not too good for the two dogs that are still in the car. The outcome is the same. It is just too hot and humid for those sheep to survive. I don't want to repeat descriptions of all the terrible scenes we've seen, not only on the Awassi but elsewhere.

The model is broken. Now we do understand there are many sheepmeat producers, particularly in Western Australia, who rely heavily on the trade. We do acknowledge that the live sheep trade produces price competition for them. They've got two potential points of sale: they can go to the meat processors in Australia, and if they're not giving them a good deal or the deal they would like then they can go to the live exporter. There is strategic price competition. We acknowledge that. But what is happening in this trade is that the exporters are externalising animal cruelty. They're jamming more and more sheep on ships to make more and more money. They give the farmer a drink, a proportion of that premium, and what happens then? Now our domestic processors are at a disadvantage. We want more sheep processed here in Australia, creating Australian jobs, adding value here. This is good for the Australian economy. And we don't want them in an environment where they face unfair competition because someone's externalising animal welfare breaches, externalising animal cruelty. It's not a good model.

Labor have said if we're elected to government we'll get rid of the summer trade at the first possible opportunity. There are no standards that can be put in place to meet community expectations on that summer trade. There would be probably a five-year period—the number is yet to be settled on, but I expect it to be a five-year period—where we would make a transition to something better. It will be something better for farmers, something better for processors, something better for the economy and, of course, something better for animal welfare standards. We will work with producers. We will work with unions. We will work with processors. We will work with international partners to further develop and expand overseas markets in chilled and frozen lamb and mutton, and of course in red meat more generally. This is Labor's plan.

The government's plan is a little different. The government's plan, if they were being honest in their contributions tonight, is this: rather than be upfront and honest and give the industry certainty about what lies ahead, they're going to drive them out of the industry using economic tools. We know the plan: make the regulations so tough that the trade becomes economically unviable. Where is the accompanying strategic plan for the industry that goes with that? How is this shock to farmers going to be dealt with and cushioned? If we have already started using stocking densities on voyages since the McCarthy review, as the minister asserts, then how is that affecting sheepmeat producers and how will that affect sheepmeat producers in the coming months or years? I haven't heard the government talk about that. I certainly haven't heard the government talk about what it will do to cushion that impact for sheepmeat producers. We've had no conversations in this place about that.

Immediately before the Awassi Express incident was exposed on 60 MinutesI say 'immediately before' because the minister had the benefit of seeing the footage prior to the Sunday night airing—the minister feigned outrage; he swore on our national television screens—swore! He said this was unacceptable. I was delighted to hear him say that. I extended a bipartisan hand and said: 'Look, what we need to do is fix this thing and we need to fix it on a bipartisan basis. It's the best way to get the outcome we're both looking for, and it's the best way to put in place certainty for the industry so that we don't have governments changing hands and, therefore, changing the rules down the track. If the major parties agree on a construct then changes of government won't matter.'

The minister got off to a pretty good start. He, in fact, commissioned four reviews. One was into the ASEL—a review triggered by a former Labor government in 2013 but not pursued by this government until early 2018. He put in place what I think he likes to call a cultural review of the department. The department, of course, is also the regulator. He put in place the McCarthy review into the northern summer trade, which I made reference to. He put in a review of the regulator's conclusions on the Awassi incident.

I remind members that the regulator found no breach with respect to the Awassi incident. Of course, the Australian community were just gobsmacked. Having seen the footage on their televisions on that Sunday night they were simply amazed to learn that the regulator had reviewed the voyage and found no breaches of animal welfare standards. That can mean only one of two things: the animal welfare standards aren't sufficient or the regulator hasn't adequately and appropriately investigated the event.

We still await the review of the Awassi incident. We await that review with great expectations. We ask ourselves two months after the Awassi incident: what has changed? I do acknowledge that out of the McCarthy report new stocking densities have been proposed, as I said earlier. We now have observers on the vessels on voyages. I think we've done something in the area of vets and a few things around ventilation, water troughs et cetera. But the construct all remains the same.

Tonight we debate a bill that imposes new fines and increases current penalties. The opposition will support those changes. Obviously, they will do no harm, but the problem is that we know that historically penalties are very rarely imposed. I suspect that there has been somewhat of a moral hazard here because the regulator looks at the events and wonders whether the heavy fines are proportionate to the crime in its mind. I suspect that increasing fines and penalties might, indeed, make the situation worse.

How can it be that fines haven't been imposed? How can it be that breaches in the sheep trade continue to emerge? How can it be that the Awassi incident wasn't in any way a breach? I put it to the House that it's all about culture. Culture in any industry and within any regulator is all important to outcomes. Of course, when you have a minister who sends a very clear message to the sector and to the regulator that it should have pretty much a free pass, an unconditional pass, to continue the trade no matter the circumstances, then these are the sorts of outcomes you can expect.

I remind the House, even though I've highlighted this point before, that in its first four years of government the Abbott and Turnbull governments did 10 things to retard our efforts on animal welfare. Remember that I started my contribution by saying that the community expectations on these matters are exponentially on the rise. The best way you protect the industry is by responding to those community concerns by putting appropriate safeguards in place. That's how you protect the industry. That's how you put it on a sustainable footing. That's how you build for it a social licence. But, no, the new government ignored both industry and animal welfare group warnings on systemic failures, delayed the review of the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock—the ASEL I was talking about—and rejected Labor's commitment to review ESCAS. Labor put ESCAS in place. We thought by 2016 it might be due for a bit of a relook and a bit of a refresh. I thought that was a reasonable thing to do, but both the government and the NFF on the day said, 'Oh, no, we couldn't support that. We couldn't support a review of the auditing system. We couldn't do that.' They abolished Labor's inspector-general of animal welfare.

As the minister in September 2013, I announced the Labor government would put in place the Independent Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports. That seemed a very reasonable thing to do. Why did we do that? It was because we could see community concern rising again about live exports, and we thought it was an opportunity to help both the sheep and cattle sectors to build on that social licence. We were able to say to people, 'That's okay. We've got a statutory independent officer looking at these things.' As we know, rightly or wrongly, the department is often accused of having a conflict of interest. People argue that the department can't be both the regulator and a promoter of the export trade. Its inherent goal in life is to export more Australian produce.

Now, we don't need to resolve that argument tonight, but we do need to concede that people need to have confidence in the system and be able to see that there's an independent statutory officer looking over the regulator, checking that it's properly investigating breaches of the standards and taking appropriate action imposing appropriate sanctions, et cetera. But this government rejected that. I appointed an interim inspector-general, but he or she had to be consolidated by legislation. The election came along, the Labor Party lost, Barnaby Joyce just let it go through the keeper and the inspector-general was no more.

I gave notice today of a private member's bill, which I will introduce in the next sitting fortnight. I'll be inviting members opposite to join with me in supporting that bill. It does no harm. There's no regulatory burden, necessarily, on the sector and particularly not the farming sector. The inspector-general looks over the regulator. Let me give you an example of something else: we have the Inspector-General of Biosecurity. I've never heard anyone complain about the red tape involved there. In fact, the recent IGAB review into biosecurity demonstrates what great work the Inspector-General of Biosecurity does. He or she doesn't just look over the regulator; he or she also looks at what's happening in the process of looking over the regulator. When the white spot disease outbreak came along in Queensland, the inspector-general not only checked that the regulator had done a proper job of investigating why we had that outbreak but also made recommendations about how we might make sure it doesn't happen again. It seems like a pretty sensible thing to do. It sounds to me like something the industry should be welcoming of.

Sadly, when we announced that we would reinstate the inspector-general during the 2016 election campaign, the National Farmers' Federation rejected it out of hand. They said, 'Unacceptable. It's regulation, red tape and a terrible thing. We can't have that.' I bet they wish they now had it. I bet they wish they had an inspector-general before the Awassi Express came along. I'd like to think we wouldn't have had an Awassi Express if we had the Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports. I'm pretty confident, actually, that if we had that inspector-general then we wouldn't have had an Awassi Express.

I proposed that the minister give regular reports to parliament about live exports. It's a pretty simple thing to do: in quarterly reports, how many were exported this fiscal or calendar year, how incidents there were, how many alleged breaches and what the regulator did about it. This government couldn't accept that. They didn't think that was a good idea—nor did the National Farmers' Federation. They abolished the Australian Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, they defunded the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy, they abolished the animal welfare unit within the Department of Agriculture and they allowed exemptions from animal welfare standards without review or sunsetting clauses.

Now, the member for Gippsland knows a little bit about this. We now know that sometime last year—I think it may have been in September; I'm not sure now—Wellard Rural Exports, one of the live exporters, wrote to the member for Gippsland when he was the minister for transport.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's not true, Joel.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister is saying it's not true. I will say that I have read reports of Wellards' letter to the minister. I'm wonder if the minister is saying it was a different minister, because I've actually had a conversation with Wellards about that matter and I understand it to be true. But I will acknowledge that the minister has challenged me, out of courtesy to him. Wellards told me that they did send a letter to the government of the day, saying, 'You've got to do something about these exemptions with no sunset clauses. We have vessels at sea that were given exemptions many years ago and the exemptions just remained in place ad infinitum. If you don't do something about this'—and this is one of the live exporters—'then there is going to be a catastrophic event in the sector.' What did the government do about the Wellard letter? Nothing. The first we learned of the Wellard letter was sometime after the Awassi Express incident, and we would still not know about it if parts of the industry hadn't started defending themselves against other parts of the industry.

I will just go back briefly to the summer trade while I'm talking about the industry. Graham Daws, the CEO of Emanuel Exports, the exporter involved in the Awassi Express, said on our national television screens, 'No matter what you do, you can't do anything about the northern summer trade.' His words were effectively, 'No-one can do anything about these climatic events. They just happen.' Well, I think that was the Labor Party's point. That it doesn't matter how heavily you regulate or what the standards are, they just happen. They're unpredictable, and when they come, you'll have significant mortality rates.

And with more on mortality rates, can I say again—and I do welcome the McCarthy review acknowledging this—that mortality rates aren't a measure of animal welfare standards. What we've been saying is that it's all right for 1,800 sheep to die, because that's within the mortality rates. If 2,500 sheep die, that's okay—don't worry about the other 58,000, who probably wish they had died because they suffered the whole trip. The ones which died were probably the lucky ones. But this is not a measure of standards, and McCarthy has recognised this. The government has embraced it and, of course, there will be a new way of measuring the animal welfare issues within these matters.

I'm talking about culture. Culture is all-important. When you have a minister who does all of these things with the full authorisation of his Prime Minister—and let's not single out the former, the almost former, member for New England—he was just the minister of the day. Those of us who have been in cabinet know that these are decisions of government, and these were all authorised by the Prime Minister of the day. Again, I suspect that members of this government regret allowing those two things to occur on their watch, because it did them no good whatsoever and it has been damaging to the trade.

I said that this is cultural; the minister's attitude affects the culture both within the regulator and in the industry. But it goes beyond that. It can also affect the culture in the research sector. LiveCorp is the RDC for the live export trade. We asked them a few questions at Senate estimates last week. We asked them, for example, why the language has changed about mortality rates in the live trade sector. In one initial report, the language changed from 'substantial increase' to something like 'minimal increases'. But, more particularly, they told us:

One high-mortality voyage each for 2013 and 2014 will not be included in some analyses, as the high mortalities occurred under exceptional circumstances, and would distort the study of long term trends.

What LiveCorp are saying is that when they have an 'exceptional' event, as they call it—and, no doubt, the Awassi Express incident was an 'exceptional' event—they don't include it in the data because it's an exceptional—

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's an outlier!

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's an outlier—it's an exceptional event. What a ridiculous thing to do! We on this side of the House want evidence based policy. We want to rely on the science in this case. McCarthy rejected the science, the science shared with us so competently by the Australian Veterinary Association. We want evidence based policy. We don't want a government which sends the signal to researchers that it's all right to change the data to get the outcome you're looking for. That's exactly what we don't want.

I want to inform the House that when we get to the in-detail stages of the debate on this bill, I'll be moving another amendment—a very serious amendment, which I want others opposite to give very genuine consideration to. I've chosen not to do it by surprise in the House—I could have snuck one in during the in-detail debate—but I wanted to give members opposite the time to sleep on it. That amendment, which I will move before the third reading vote, will in effect institute the Sussan Ley bill, or the bill proposed by the member for Farrer. It will put a stop to the summer trade at the first immediate opportunity, and it will phase out the live sheep trade over a five-year period. I'll put that tomorrow, assuming the government allows us to get to the in-detail stage of this debate now, and I do ask members tonight to have a think about that.

The member for Farrer's bill is a perfectly reasonable one. Again, it takes immediate action on the science. The science is in on that northern summer trade. As I have argued, it gives our sheepmeat producers and others plenty of time, with government support and strategic guidance, to transition to something better. I want to particularly make an appeal to those people on the other side who have already publicly expressed their very deep concern about that summer trade in particular, and expressed the view that this is a broken model and there is no long-term future for this sector.

So I'll put that amendment tomorrow. Again, I want to guarantee members they'll have the opportunity tomorrow to study the bill drafted by the parliamentary draftsmen, or I'm happy to give it to them tonight. In fact, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, I'm happy to table the amendment now, which I have with me, so that members do have access to the amendment tonight and can reassure themselves that it is an exact replica of what the member for Farrer has proposed in her private member's bill. I'm sure the minister will allow me to table that document.

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

Is leave granted? Leave is granted.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The live cattle trade is worth close to $2 billion. It's a very significant industry in this country, and I made the point earlier that so many of our northern producers in particular rely upon it. Labor supports it. Labor wants it to thrive. But Labor wants to protect it as well. And Labor want those opposite to work with us in doing so. I don't want those opposite thinking just about the amendment I propose to move tomorrow; I want them thinking about that inspector-general.

The Productivity Commission recently recommended something very similar in their report—commissioned by the government, of course—on regulation of the agriculture sector. We don't hear much about the PC report on regulation in the agriculture sector. Remember, that was one of the government's key themes: red tape. We even had a red-tape reduction day. Do we still have those?

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Review days, no.

Opposition members: No.

No, not anymore.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't think we have those anymore. But we had a PC report. It was a very good report. It identified enormous issues that could be tackled by this government. But it said a couple of things the government didn't like, like recommending independent oversight and regulation of live exports, that the sugar code was a pretty dumb idea—I think most of us agree with that—and there were a few more as well. So, where is the PC report? It's gathering dust somewhere. You can be sure of one thing: if we win government—and we don't take anything for granted there, far from it—we'll be dusting off the PC's excellent report and revisiting some of those issues that this government has chosen to ignore.

We support the live cattle industry, but we want to help it build and maintain its social licence, and we believe independent oversight is very, very critical. I ask members to think about, God forbid, an event in the cattle trade. How would we explain to people that we were serious about overseeing these things? An independent cop on the beat, the inspector-general, will allow us to do that, and I believe that person can do that job very effectively.

As for the live sheep trade, we acknowledge how important it is to some people. But, again, we want to work with them. It's unsustainable. Live sheep exports are on the decline. Our overseas markets are looking for something better. So the demographic is changing and the market is changing; there's an inevitability about this, in any case. Let's be honest with the sheepmeat producers: let's tell them where we want to take them and let's take them to a better place.

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

Is there a seconder?

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the Export Legislation Amendment (Live-stock) Bill 2018. I thank the member for Hunter for foreshadowing his motion and putting it on the table. I was going to accuse him of being a wolf in sheep's clothing, pardon the pun, but to the people in my electorate he's just a wolf!

The intent of the legislation is to increase criminal penalties and introduce new criminal offences and civil penalties for conduct that is unacceptable for livestock exporters. Those who obstruct or hinder an accredited veterinarian or authorised officer, or dishonestly influence any person performing their functions or duties or exercising power in relation to an export program, will be penalised. Exporters who commit an offence, intending to obtain a commercial advantage over their competitors or, by committing an offence, cause economic consequences for Australia will face severe penalties. Under this offence a company would face a fine of whichever is the greater of $4.2 million, three times the benefit gained by the company or 10 per cent of the company's annual turnover. A director of a guilty company could face 10 years in prison or a fine of $2.1 million, while an individual convicted under the same offence would face 10 years or a $420,000 fine. Other penalties will increase from the current five-year prison sentence and/or a $63,000 fine for an individual to eight years prison and/or a $100,000 fine. For a company the fine will be increased from $315,000 to $504,000. These are very serious impositions. A criminal offence with a jail sentence of up to 10 years shows that this government and this minister are very serious about tackling poor practices in the livestock industry.

Why is that important? It's important to me in particular as the member for O'Connor. The live export industry exports around 1.9 million sheep out of the country, and around 1.6 million of those sheep come out of Western Australia. Of those numbers about 65 per cent, or about 1.4 million sheep, come out of my electorate of O'Connor. This trade is worth around $220 million to WA, so around $150 million to the people, businesses and farmers across O'Connor. I've had it put to me that 1,800 jobs are reliant on the export trade, but I would contend that many more people partly rely upon the trade, whether they be farmers who derive part of their income from the trade, livestock agents who derive part of their commission income from the sale of sheep in the live export trade, or truck operators who derive part of their income from trucking sheep from the Great Southern through to the feedlots in Perth and then loading them onto the boats.

We've heard a lot about the trade, and the previous speaker, the member for Hunter, made mention that community standards have moved on. He's absolutely right. I think all of us who have received the emails would accept that community standards have moved to the stage where they will no longer accept the sort of incident we saw on the Awassi Express. I absolutely agree with the member for Hunter on that, and that is exactly why the government is instituting these very tough measures.

But we do need to talk about some of the issues where the industry has been kicking some goals. Firstly, the ESCAS has been a great success. We are one of a hundred nations that export live animals. We're the only nation that has an export supply chain assurance scheme. That export supply chain assurance scheme has lifted the standards in all of our destination countries not only for our animals but for animals from other nations as well. I think Australia as a nation can be very proud of that. If we pull out of the live sheep trade, there will be no-one left in the Middle East setting that standard.

The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that mortalities on these voyages have fallen from 1.9 per cent per voyage in the mid-1990s to 0.7 per cent in the last five years. So that's a significant increase in the success of these voyages—a significant decrease in the number of mortalities. That shows that we can improve standards, and we need to continue to work to improve standards.

Regarding the Saudi market, the Saudi market in 2008-09 imported around thee million sheep, including around 20 per cent Australian animals. When ESCAS was imposed, the Saudis declined to be part of it, and so Australia withdrew from that market. I've just had a look at some recent figures. Between 2015 and 2017, on average, the Saudi market imported five million animals per annum, so that's about a 40 per cent increase in the number of animals that the Saudi market imported. Not one Australian sheep now goes into Saudi Arabia. So, those people who suggest that by Australia withdrawing from the live sheep trade somehow there will be no more incidents for sheep from other destinations in the world are kidding themselves, to be quite frank. I think that what will happen is Australia will pull out of these markets—if the member for Hunter gets his amendment up, and I'll discuss that in a moment—but if anyone thinks that if we pull out of these Middle Eastern markets that they will stop buying live sheep, that is a complete furphy. The trade will go on; the animals will be imported from other countries. Just to go back to the Saudi example, most of those sheep come out of the Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti. They're not countries known for their high animal welfare standards. They may well be, for all I know. I don't want to prejudice those countries. Maybe some members on the other side know of some animal welfare initiatives in those countries concerning live trade. But certainly there's many, many animals coming out of the Horn of Africa and going to the Gulf States at all times of the year, including high summer.

This is not the only move that the minister and the government are imposing. The minister, on Thursday a week ago, accepted in full all 23 recommendations of the McCarthy report. The key recommendation from McCarthy was a reduction in stocking rates, and there's quite a complex formula that will be applied to boats that arrive at a destination in the Middle East, or in the Northern Hemisphere generally, during the months of June and September. These stocking densities will, generally, reduce the amount of animals on board by roughly one-third. So that will make a significant difference to the animal welfare of those animals on those boats.

The member for Hunter mentioned that the sheep in those hot conditions looked to be suffering—those that didn't perish—and no doubt it was very hot. But I will say that across the Great Southern and Central Wheatbelt part of my electorate on a hot summer's day you'll see a lot of sheep standing in the shade of a tree, and they'll be panting, because that's how they deal with extreme heat. I'm interested to see whether the member for Hunter and some of the harder-left members of his side will want to see farmers running sheep in a broadacre situation in the Great Southern penalised when the temperature reaches over 40 degrees, and those animals, just like the human beings who handle them, are suffering from heat distress. It is what happens in the farming industry across my electorate.

Another measure from the McCarthy report will be independent observers on board. With the Awassi Express incident, which happened in August last year, for some reason the footage was unfortunately not released immediately. It was held back and released at an opportune time by Animals Australia, so instead of it being possible for action to be taken immediately, we had another eight months, effectively, of the situation continuing without the government being made aware of it. So an independent observer on the boat will make sure that any of these incidents are immediately reported to the government and action can be taken immediately.

The member for Hunter has foreshadowed that he will be moving an amendment in the immediate future to suspend the trade in summer months and to phase out the trade over five years. We all know that capital these days is very fluid. International capital will find its best home, and most of the live export operators out of Australia are internationally based. There's no more liquid or fluid capital than a live export boat, which can be directed to any port where the owner sees that it's going to make its best profit. So to say that we will phase out the industry over five years and somehow we'll adjust and there'll be this gradual phasing out is a complete furphy. It's complete nonsense. What will happen is that the exporters will see that they have no future here in Australia, and they will withdraw their ships and their capital almost immediately. That is my feeling of how things will go.

While I'm on the topic of furphies, there are some facts that have been put about in this place which I just want to challenge—firstly, that the price of mutton in WA is 20 times higher than it was 20 years ago, in 1998. Why choose 1998? You can go back to 1990 or 1991, when farmers were destroying sheep because they couldn't find a market for them. That was when the single desk for wool, known as the reserve price scheme, was abandoned and the Australian sheep flock fell from around one billion sheep; it has stabilised at about 335 million. That's about a two-thirds contraction in the industry, and obviously over that period there was a great deal of pain for growers as they transitioned out of sheep into cropping and other enterprises. So, yes, there was a period where we suffered extremely low prices.

However, throughout that period there has always been a premium paid by the live exporters. Just the other day I had a case of an exporter who told me that he may have to divert some sheep that he purchased to slaughter. Because of the new rules, he may not be able to get them on the boat. He indicated to me that, while the live export price was around $110 per head, the maximum that he could make out of them as slaughter sleep was around $75 a head. So that's an indication of the premium that is in the market for the live export of sheep.

If you close the industry down effectively overnight, which is what the member for Hunter is foreshadowing with his amendment, you will not see the price fall by $30 to $35. With 1.6 million additional sheep to be processed on the market, out of a turn-off of about 3.5 million or 3.6 million in Western Australia, you will see the market collapse. As I said at the start, it would be wrong to say that every farmer relies on the live export trade for their livelihood, but every farmer who runs sheep would rely on the live export trade, and also the processing market which spins off the live export trade, for a significant part of their income. It might be their profit for the year. It might mean the difference between making a profit and a loss. It's the same for the truckie. For the truckie who carts sheep, that extra work that he gets carting sheep off farm up to the feedlots at Baldivis and then loading the sheep on the boat might be the difference between him having a viable business and not having a viable business. For the stock agent who earns his living out of commission sales, losing that $110-a-head sale and seeing the market overall come back by $30, $40 or $50 means a significant amount of income that comes off his livelihood.

So I commend the bill to the House, because we on this side of the House accept that changes need to be made. This bill does implement serious changes. It will make live exporters— (Time expired)

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Export Legislation Amendment (Live Stock) Bill 2018 is about export legislation, it is about the treatment of livestock and it is about the conditions upon which we as a civilised society allow farmers and businesses who are engaged in sheep husbandry to export those animals overseas. I want to note at the outset that the way in which we treat our animals—animals that are within our care—is an insight into our own humanity. It is not always a direct indication of how we will treat fellow human beings, but it is a pretty good indication of our underlying values as a society. I believe that we have an obligation to be good custodians of animals within our care, whether they are domestic animals or animals that are raised for the specific purpose of adding to our food supply. It makes no difference. We have an obligation to be good custodians of these animals.

On 24 May this year, the government introduced this bill into the House, a bill to amend the Australian Meat and Live-stock Industry Act 1997. We will support the bill, but it doesn't go anywhere near far enough. Labor have announced that we will end the export of live sheep. If a Shorten Labor government is elected, we will end the live export of sheep. We will phase out that export over a five-year period and we will work with the industry to ensure that it is able to adjust. To be very, very clear: a Shorten Labor government will phase out the export of live sheep and we will do it because it is simply not sustainable on a humanitarian basis.

The government is claiming that these amendments will ensure that the penalties and sanctions available are sufficiently high to provide a level of deterrence and punishment necessary to protect animals carried on livestock export voyages. We are only here because of the footage that was aired by the 60 Minutes program on 8 April this year—a program which exposed the horrendous treatment of animals crammed into a boat, sent on an extraordinarily long voyage in unbearable and intolerable conditions. The significant loss of life, which I will detail shortly, led to a predictable public outcry. People are saying: 'This should not be done in our name. As a country, we are better than this.'

The act purports to put in place a set of conditions and arrangements, and the bill puts in place some additional penalties that aren't currently available within the act. We are going to support them, because they do no harm to exporters who are doing the right thing. However, the new penalties and sanctions will do nothing to reduce the suffering of sheep, which will continue if we allow the voyages during the Middle Eastern northern summer.

I've got to say to those members opposite who are complaining that they have somehow been hijacked by this issue that, in many respects, they have nobody to blame but themselves and their own inaction on this issue. The live sheep export industry has been controversial for decades. Indeed, the industry has been in substantial decline for decades as well. In the 1980s, we were exporting somewhere in the vicinity of nine million head of sheep compared to the two million head of sheep that are exported today. Australian live sheep exports fell by 1.97 million in 2013—the lowest recorded level since 1975. Now, whilst only six per cent of the sheep production market goes to live exports, 82 per cent of that disembarks from Fremantle. So you can see from this that the West Australian producers are overwhelmingly more reliant upon it than their eastern state counterparts. The major markets for live sheep exports are the countries of Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Oman. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have also been significant export markets during the past 10 years.

To say that this issue has crept up on the government is simply dishonest. It is not true. There has been significant public concern. It has been a matter of debate within this place and you could not have been a member of parliament over the last decade and not have received emails and letters from constituents who are deeply concerned about practices within the live sheep export trade. It has continued to attract significant public concern, and veterinary and other animal health and welfare sector concerns. From the 1980s onwards there have been ongoing incidents, reviews and reports into the welfare standards of the live export trades. These have recommended—serially—greater veterinarian oversight, more-comprehensive standards and mandatory reporting of incidents. I give you one example: back in 1985, a review of the live sheep trade by the Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare found:

… if a decision were to be made on the future of the trade purely on animal welfare grounds, there is enough evidence to stop the trade. The trade is, in many respects, inimical to good animal welfare, and it is not in the interests of the animal to be transported to the Middle East for slaughter.

This was the finding of a committee in 1985! Here we are in 2018 debating the same issue. Neither the industry, the exporters nor the members opposite who defend the practices, could complain that this issue has crept up on them. It simply has not.

The export incident that has sparked the latest round of concerns occurred on a ship that the company Emanuel Exports used to ship sheep from Fremantle to the Middle East in August 2017. Around 2,400 sheep died on that voyage. The overwhelming majority of them died of heat stress. We know that this is not an isolated incident. What is revealed is that despite many chances the live sheep trade has been unable to demonstrate that it is capable of meeting reasonable animal welfare standards.

Exporters and the National Farmers' Federation—and it's worth noting that it is both the exporters and the National Farmers' Federation—when asked if they could guarantee that there wouldn't be such incidents in future have said that, no, they could not. Well, faced with a history of incidents, faced with overwhelming—overwhelming—evidence, we have to ask, 'Why is the government introducing a bill today that is so modest in its reach?'

I want to go through a chronology of some of the events. In 1980, one crew member and more than 40,000 sheep died when a Lebanese-registered livestock carrier, the Farid Fares, caught fire and sank en route from Tasmania to Iran. In June 1985, a Senate report into animal welfare, specifically on the live sheep export trade, was released. In 1989-90, trade with Saudi Arabia was suspended after two vessels, in July and August 1989, were prevented from unloading due to a scabby mouth infection of the sheep on board a ship. In 1996, one crew member and 67,000 sheep were killed when the Uniceb, registered in Panama and chartered by Wellard Rural Exports, caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean while travelling from Fremantle to Jordan. In January 2004 we had the Keniry report, which said that the industry needs to improve its standards and that drastic reform was needed. In September 2012 Kuwait and Bahrain rejected sheep shipments due to claimed outbreaks of scabby mouth. Bahrain blocked the Ocean Drover, which was subsequently diverted to Karachi in Pakistan, where the sheep were culled by Pakistani disease control authorities. In January 2014, 4,000 sheep were reported to have died heat stress aboard the Bader III travelling from Adelaide and Fremantle to the Middle East.

From this chronology of events you can see that there has been occasion upon occasion where the industry has been sent a clear warning that the behaviours are not sustainable, that the practice is not sustainable and that change is necessary. Instead of apologising for the practices and stonewalling the inevitable change, we call on the government to do the right thing. The government could bring on for debate a bill before the House this week, introduced into this House by one of their own rural and regional backbench MPs, the member for Farrer. Members of the Labor opposition have said they are willing to have this bill brought on for debate and for it to be voted on in this House. That can be done at the next sitting of this parliament, so there is no need for further delay. We call on the government to do the right thing and ensure this private members' bill gets debated and voted on in this session of parliament. We do not need to wait until the next election to have this issue determined.

In my own electorate I asked my office staff to do a count of the number of emails, letters and phone calls we have had from constituents since the April incident. There were a full 1,054 letters, emails and phone calls of complaint from constituents on this matter. When compared to most of the other issues that I hear about through my office, this is one of the highest numbers of complaints I have received. On this alone we should say that the parliament needs to respond to deeply held community concerns. We should take the opportunity provided by the member for Farrer and her private members' bill to have this issue put before parliament. We would do it differently, but we respect that the member for Farrer has brought a bill into this place in good faith. We can vote to end this cruel trade, we can do it within the next sitting of parliament, and we should do it. Our constituents demand it, and it is the right thing to do.

The way that we treat animals in our care is an insight into our humanity. We have an obligation to be good custodians of the animals within our care. Whether they be domesticated animals, pets, or animals we are keeping to supply our food chain, the obligation is the same. I commend to the House the second reading amendment moved by the member for Hunter and again call upon the government to allow its members to vote on the private members' bill, moved by one of its own members, on this issue.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm proud to say I'm here to support WA's sheep farmers, their small businesses and the communities that rely upon them. The Export Legislation Amendment (Live-stock) Bill 2018 will significantly increase criminal penalties and introduce new criminal offences and civil penalties for livestock exporters. The bill ensures that penalties and sanctions provide the deterrence and punishment necessary to protect animals on export vessels, penalising those who would obstruct or hinder an accredited veterinarian or authorised officer. Exporters who commit an offence for a commercial advantage over their competitors will face penalties. A company would face a fine of $4.2 million, three times the benefit gained by the company or 10 per cent of the company's annual turnover. A director of a guilty company could face 10 years in prison or a $2.1 million fine. An individual could face the same prison sentence or a $420,000 fine. There are additional increased penalties and fines for individuals and companies. Courts will be able to name and shame those who commit offences or contravene civil penalties.

Well, I don't want to see our farmers, small businesses, and rural and regional communities punished by closing the live sheep trade. Of the hundred-plus countries that export live animals around the world, Australia is the only country that is invested in, and continues to invest in, people, training, welfare and education. Added to that, this legislation introduces some of the highest penalties in the world. However, the Australian Meat Industry Employees Union wants to shut the live export industry down, so, of course, Labor wants to shut the industry down as well. Labor's shadow agricultural minister was quoted in the WA Farm Weekly as saying, 'Labor will shut down live sheep export.'

My state of Western Australia has the most to lose. A third of WA's sheep go into the live export market. Shutting it down would have a massive impact in Western Australia. WA has averaged nearly 85 per cent of the total of live sheep exports over the past five years: 1.6 to 1.7 million sheep. Critically in our state, there is a direct interdependence between trade lamb, mutton and live exports markets—something that's not well understood outside Western Australia. The live sheep exported are mostly older sheep; they're mutton. The chilled-box sheep trade is mostly lamb. They're two different markets. We have a very small domestic market compared to the far greater domestic demand on the east coast. The east coast also has a distinct freight advantage into the US market. But, of course, as we're hearing tonight, those on the east coast actually know much more about our market in Western Australia than our WA farmers do.

The live export trade in WA is worth $250 million. It supports jobs and economic development in our regions. With our predominantly merino flock, the flow-on effect on prices would be substantial. It would force people out of sheep production. Some believe there would be a collapse in sheep values that would have most impact on our producers in WA. A report I read recently put the cost between $80 and $150 million—it could be more. There's a lot of support for competition in Australian markets, but rarely, as we see from the other side, is there support for competition that improves farmgate prices. We're hearing it tonight repeatedly. This is a classic example. Labor will leave sheep producers with only one option—to sell to a meat processer and, certainly, to sell their oldest sheep. There is absolutely no question this would force prices down. The processors are probably rubbing their hands at this. But the producers know they will be absolute price-takers. There will be no competition. There is no magic transition here. The Gulf States ministers and livestock importers have said that if they're forced to look elsewhere for live animals, they'll look elsewhere for chilled meet also. Effectively, this means that, if Labor shuts down the live trade, the chilled trade would likely contract and our farmers could lose both selling markets. Just consider those who would be affected.

Let's look, for a start—for the first time tonight, perhaps, apart from my colleague the member for O'Connor—at the human cost of shutting down the industry or cutting millions of dollars from the industry. There is the effect it will have on individuals, small businesses and small regional communities, primarily our farmers, but also farming contractors; shearers; livestock transporters; feedlots; those who grow, supply and process feed for the live shippers; pellet manufacturers and staff; those loading the livestock on the wharfs; tyre dealers; mechanics; welders; fuel distributors; fencing contractors; and the countless other small businesses and their workers in rural towns and communities that rely on local farm incomes coming into their businesses. What about livestock agents? There are over 1,200 agency businesses across Australia who play a very important part in the livestock and wool sectors. There will be families who lose income and will not be able to afford to send their kids away to school. What sort of risk are we seeing already? I was talking to a contractor carting sheep feed out the back of Darkan, and he said the word from the farmers was that the banks are already nervous. I wonder how the banks are actually pricing the increased risk sheep farmers and those dependent on the industry are currently facing when they're applying for a loan.

In WA, this will impact right across the state, from the Wheatbelt through to Williams, Narrogin, Northam, York and Esperance, just to name a few. Take 35 per cent off farmers' incomes, and they cannot spend this in their small regional towns and businesses. They can't support the emergency services and the sporting and community service clubs in the same way. And how about the mental health issues? It's a massive issue already in rural and regional Australia. We're tight for feed in WA right now. Here's another layer of pressure for our farmers.

It doesn't matter how the members opposite try to package this and say there'll be some sort of magic pudding transition. We all know that there will be businesses that won't survive. It's not okay for those opposite to just shrug their shoulders and say, 'They're just collateral damage.' They are farmers like me. I didn't come into this parliament to put farmers and small businesses out of work, and I didn't come into this parliament to make decisions that put at risk, erode or destroy small regional communities.

Labor has said it will shut the industry down. Well, I was in this parliament in 2011 when the Labor government suspended the live cattle trade to Indonesia. It was disastrous for Australia's cattle industry. It destroyed some pastoralists, and I know only too well the impact on farming families in regions right around Australia and the impact directly on beef prices in the South West of WA. So Labor's ban on live cattle exports proved without a doubt that the live export market underpins the meat-processing trade prices. When live exports ceased, livestock prices crashed. When the live trade resumed, domestic prices in sale yards increased significantly. But what about that human cost? I saw the trauma and frustration of our farmers, graziers and small businesses.

There are direct parallels between what Labor wants to do to the live sheep industry in WA and my dairy industry, and I speak from personal experience. The industry deregulated in 2000. I'm the only dairy farmer in this parliament and the only person who's experienced what happens when there are sudden or ongoing cuts to farmers' primary source of farm income. The price for our litre of milk supplied to a processor went from 48c a litre to 28c a litre. It was said at the time that $28 million to $30 million exited the Harvey shire overnight. We had around 300 dairy farmers in the industry at the time and around 125 in the Harvey shire alone. Now there are barely 150 in total in the WA dairy industry and very few left in the Harvey Shire.

Of course, when you cut between a third and a half of farm incomes, it directly affects the farmers, their workers and the whole community. I was president of the local AFL footy club. We were fundraising to build our first clubrooms. Those cuts to our local farmers' incomes meant that we were down $30,000 a year on our fundraising. The local dairy farmers who supported us with hay, cattle and personal donations couldn't afford to do it anymore. The local businesses—the rural agency, the hardware store, the newsagent, the furniture shop, the car dealer, the supermarket, the local mechanics, the welders and the local cafes—were all affected when what was the local major industry took such a hit, just like the sheep industry. Those same businesses suffered reductions in their income and either reduced or completely cut their donations as well.

This was an industry that at the time underpinned much of the local and regional economy. In the very small town of Brunswick Junction, where I grew up, there was a strong contingent of viable dairy-farming families who underpinned the local community. The local supermarket was thousands of dollars down in its turnover in the first week following deregulation. The majority of those small dairy businesses did not survive, and the farmers left Brunswick. These were the people who were very committed to and active in the local community, just like our sheep farmers. They're the ones who financially and physically supported the local primary school P&C. One of the farmers used to coach the kids in sport and in basketball and take them to and from games. They supported the local volunteer St John Ambulance and fire brigade fundraising. These families had to sell their properties for what they could get and left the district. What a gap they left, both financially and physically. We really miss their commitment to the community. In other communities we saw local sporting, community service and emergency service organisations struggle for numbers of volunteers as well as financial support. It had been the farmers who provided the physical and machinery power to get the jobs done—something a lot here take for granted.

As someone who tried so hard to support those dairy-farming families during this time, I saw and dealt with the massive mental health problems. This was the real human cost and the risk involved in what those opposite are proposing. It's what you can't see behind closed doors that matters. There were both men and women who would break down and cry whenever I met them in the street or in a paddock. Some of those people never ever recovered. They carried to their graves the anger and frustration, particularly for some industry representatives and for the politicians who failed to stand up for our farmers—those who failed to understand just what a devastating effect this decision had on their families, their lives and their communities.

There is no question that dairy farmers in WA are now absolute price takers. We have three major processors, and last year we saw three dairy farmers told their milk would no longer be required. There was an excess in the market and they were put out of business. No other processor would take their milk. They had nowhere to go and they had a perishable product, so they had to shut down.

I look at the parallels with the live sheep industry. Labor wants to take millions out of the pockets of our sheep farmers, particularly those in Western Australia. We've heard talk in this place about transition, but transition to what? I've lived it and I've been there. Is it transition to processors? Well, why not come and walk a mile in my shoes. Let's have a look at what happens when I am reliant on processors; I am an absolute price taker in my industry. There is no magic pudding in this space, and there will be no magic for our sheep farmers. That's why I am very proud to come into this place and stand up for every one of those farmers and our farmers right around Australia.

Unfortunately, we have a lot of people who take for granted where their food comes from, how well it's grown and, equally, how much of the rest of the world we feed. It is a very important job, and, unfortunately, what we see here is people taking farmers, their businesses and those small communities for granted. Look at some of those more remote and small communities it's going to have a massive effect on. If it's what I saw in Harvey and Brunswick, in those towns that actually have many more people and small businesses than those rural, regional and more remote areas in the Wheatbelt region, the compounding effect will be huge. But what about the human cost?

Those opposite think that farmers and those communities really don't matter. Well, they do. They absolutely do. Their mental health matters, their contribution to our economy matters, their contribution to the Western Australian economy matters and each one of their families matters. So I'm saying to those opposite: you be very careful what you're actually proposing here. I've been through massive change in an industry, and I know what's ahead for our sheep producers. I also know what's ahead for those small communities and for the organisations, emergency services, sporting clubs and community groups that actually rely on those fantastic farmers who support and underpin so much of our regional economies.

I'm desperately concerned about the human cost of what is being proposed. It is not simple and there is no magic transition. I've lived it and, as I said earlier, I did not come to this place to put farmers, small businesses and those that support them out of business. I didn't come here to see small regional communities further eroded or more people leave rural and regional Australia. I am always proud to stand up in this place for our Australian farmers, and I do so in this debate.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the member for Forrest leaves, I'd like to assure her that she's not on her own in this place. I'm the daughter of a mixed farmer. We grew grain, dairy, sheep and pigs, and I too lived through a crash in a market. It was a crash in dairy in Victoria that resulted, ultimately, in my father's death. But that's not what the Export Legislation Amendment (Live-Stock) Bill 2018 is about. This bill is not about crashing a market. This bill is about ensuring that Australia has a reputation as a clean, green, safe, high-quality and ethical producer of food. That's what the amendment to this bill is about. We come into this chamber to debate a bill that this government has put forward as a fix-all on what has residents in my community incredibly concerned.

Like those Australians, farmer's child or not, I was deeply disturbed and disgusted to watch the now infamous footage of sheep on board the Awassi Express. What is more disturbing than the footage itself, though, is the fact that this was not a one-off incident. The 60 Minutes program on 8 April showed on-board treatment of live sheep over a series of voyages. This segment shed light on an ongoing issue that is being left to spiral downward, without a regulator and without the teeth and the grunt for enforcement. And I don't believe that the legislation that's before us tonight will seriously change those practices.

The segment also shed light on the failures of this government, and, in particular, the series of ministers for agriculture who have done nothing. They have sat back and have allowed these incidents to occur without any kind of intervention. This government have continually failed in the live sheep export space, first with the former minister, the member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, and now with Minister David Littleproud. In fact, let us go through a brief timeline that demonstrates the government's repeated failures over the past couple of years.

It is too late now to cry, 'We need to fix this,' in terms of taking a long view and suddenly increasing fines to make things change. The behaviours haven't changed. What Labor is proposing is a transition period and a government that would work with the farmers to ensure that we can stop the summer trade and come to a situation where live exports and the farmers can continue but without the scenes that we have seen.

In October-November 2016, footage obtained by Animals Australia showed cruelty to Australian sheep in Malaysia and in the Middle East. Fast forward to 2018, April, and nothing had changed—same harm, no regulator. In August 2017, reports revealed that 3,000 sheep died due to heat stress on a single voyage to the Middle East in July 2016. So it took a year for that to be exposed. In November 2017, concerns that unfit ships were being used for live exports to the Middle East prompted the Western Australian government to seek to send a government official to inspect a live export vessel in the Fremantle Harbour. This attempt was unsuccessful. The result: the status quo remained and sheep continued to be loaded onto ships with inadequate ventilation on long-haul voyages in those summers.

In February, the Western Australian government commenced an investigation into a voyage by Emanuel Exports in which four per cent of the shipment of 63,000 sheep died. In March 2018 it reported that the live sheep export trade to Saudi Arabia was set to resume by mid-2018. In April 2018, the notorious footage of conditions on board an export ship bound for the Middle East in August 2017, released by Animals Australia, emerged. Approximately 2,400 sheep died of heat stress in this footage, and this footage was disturbing. I don't believe there's a member in this place that could see that footage and not be disturbed by it—as disturbed as members in my community.

I would remember the words of the member for Hunter—after the decades that he's served in this place—and his comments about the amount of contact he'd had from Australian citizens. I would echo that, that in the five years I have been in this place, I have not seen the amount of emails, the amount of letters or the amount of phone calls to my office on any other issue. And I want to share some of those here tonight.

One is from a local vet: 'I want to see Australia protect our farmers and protect our animals from this cruelty by stopping the live sheep animal exports and expanding a sustainable trade in chilled and frozen meat instead. We need to stop May-to-October exports now. We need to halve stocking densities now. We need highly trained, independent observers on all voyages now. And we need to plan how to end long-haul live animal exports for good.' These people aren't writing lightly. These people aren't similar to those in the past—just sending awful photos in the post. These people are thinking through the issues and contacting their local members to urge us to do what commonsense says we should do. Here is another from my hundreds of emails: 'I'm dismayed by the suffering of animals that I saw on the 60 Minutes program. It has absolutely stunned caring people everywhere. Temperatures well over 40 degrees, packed so closely they can't move, cooking alive. You wouldn't wish this on your worst enemy.'

There is no doubt about the impact that this footage has had, and there's also no doubt, in my mind, that this situation has worsened under this government. They have turned a blind eye to what has been occurring, not just on the AwassiExpress voyage but on other long-haul voyages. The cruelty to the animals involved in this trade needs to be pulled back and pulled into line. The farmers in this business need to be supported through a transition. I have people who work with animals in my electorate; farmers have said to me that they were disturbed by it. This should not become an argument about: it must go on or it must stop. This has to become something that this place can work and find a solution for.

This government now has the responsibility to legislate meaningful reform. The crux of this bill is to ensure that penalties and sanctions are high enough so as to provide a level of deterrence and punishment necessary to protect the sheep exported. The sentiment of that is welcome. But you have to ask: where has the regulator been? Why are we seeing this footage on our television screens, backdated, and nothing's happened in the interim? These are the questions the Australian public wants answers to. They want to know why so little, so late. And they want a different answer to this question. They're not going to accept an increase in penalties when it appears there hasn't been a regulator in place to oversee and ensure the penalties are actually placed when the breaches are occurring. This bill does nothing to address the ventilation issues, it does nothing to prevent the same kind of cruelty that we saw on our television screens from happening right now. We can't go far enough into the cruelty. The people who are writing to me are not people who normally pick up a pen to write about animal welfare. They're people who have been shocked and disturbed and don't understand how we can put profits above the way we are going to be perceived internationally for the way we treat our stock.

This bill needs to do a lot more than it already is doing. It was deeply disturbing to read two weeks ago that the ship at the centre of the latest live export scandal passed 39 inspections over five years. Deputy Speaker Andrews, if you thought the letters had stopped, once that became public knowledge they began again. Because, rightly, people are concerned that a ship can fail to comply with the ventilation requirements but can have 39 inspections over five years and be passed. Clearly, as the people writing to me have said, something's wrong with the system.

The system needs to be changed. We need to be legislating to ensure that the sheep at the centre of this scandal are treated humanely on their journey to the Middle East. That means stopping the summer trade. That means finding new solutions. Minister Littleproud saw the footage and said on the record:

I've seen the footage and I was absolutely shocked and gutted. … This cannot go on.

Well, hear, hear. That's what the residents in my community have said: 'This cannot go on.' Yet, for all the emotive language from the minister, we haven't seen any real and meaningful reform to ensure that we don't continue to see the horrifying footage of sheep suffering on those long-haul voyages.

The outcry from residents in my community about the issue has been overwhelming. We have received hundreds of emails and letters. On social media, it is hard to scroll for a few seconds without seeing a post about this issue. It is very real and very alive in my community. And I stand with those members of my community on this issue.

Those opposite want to talk about the past. They want to talk about the Australian government, the Labor government, having to stop live export in the meat industry in the past because of cruelty happening in abattoirs at destination points. I echo the member for Hunter's sentiments: things changed as a result of that pause. Things changed on the ground. And the level of animal cruelty was reduced dramatically. The industry won't change unless government acts.

I'll finish with a few more points that my local residents have made. 'Banning awful sheep live export means so much to me. People are disgusted by this cruelty, yet the government continues to ignore what the public wants.' I don't believe that the person who wrote that to me will be satisfied with this legislation—with an increase in fines but without the surety that there will be regulation of some kind. And I don't think that, at this point, the Australian public is going to be satisfied with anything but the cessation of the summer trade.

To quote another local vet in my community: 'I want to see Australia protect our farmers and protect our animals from this cruelty.' I don't think I can say it any better than that. We need to know, in our communities, that this trade has stopped—that what we saw on our television screens will not happen again.

We need to look at the mechanisms in this trade. Is the trade flourishing, or is the trade, in itself, reducing? Is this government just waiting for this trade to peter out? In the meantime, we'll continue to see these shocking images on our television screens—post-dated, of course, by some months. It is too late now to say that we can change the density on those long-haul summer voyages. It's too late for that. We need to stop the long-haul summer voyages. Then we need to look at a real regulator in the industry. We need to transition. We need to create, working with the farmers, a reasonable transition, to ensure that their livelihoods are protected but also that our country's reputation as a grower of ethical, high-quality food is maintained.

Damian Drum (Murray, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This certainly is an emotive issue and one that has hit the interest of the broader community. We need to make sure that we fix this industry—and by saying 'fix this industry', I don't mean 'ban this industry'. It's such an easy target just to make decisions here in Canberra that we're going to ban this industry, and to not understand, as Ms Marino has said in this House, the true human cost of the decisions that the people in this parliament are prepared to make on this issue. Banning this industry is not going to stop sheep being imported into the Middle East. The countries have explained very, very clearly that there is a strong demand for the live sheep trade to Kuwait, Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries. If they can't get that produce from Australia then they will look to other countries to secure that produce—countries that have a far poorer animal welfare standard than the one that we enjoy here in Australia and the one that Minister Littleproud is going to work exceptionally hard at trying to strengthen over and above what we currently have.

Minister Littleproud has acted quickly in relation to these revelations. The footage is certainly shocking. I think, yes, we all saw the footage and we were all appalled by it. But, again, as I said, when the Labor Party did this back in 2011 with the beef trade after some shocking vision of the slaughterhouses of Indonesia was seen, the beef trade was shut down for approximately six months. It was only when the true cost of the human pain here in Australia, the human cost in Australia, was revealed to the Labor government at the time that they realised that they had to get this industry up and going again. Of course, what happened then was that the Indonesians said: 'Sorry, we've already found our markets elsewhere. We've already got our suppliers coming in from other countries.' We have been paying for that knee-jerk decision from the Labor government ever since.

As previous speakers have said, this trade is not about the lamb trade. Australia is well-renowned for its lamb, and we sell our lamb all around the world. Most of it goes in chilled boxes. However, in the Middle East, they have a strong demand for mutton. This is more to do with the wool industry. This is more to do with the wool farmers of Australia. As the sheep get older, they are only good for mutton. We eat very little mutton here in Australia, but we can actually sell it into these export markets for a substantial premium compared to what it's worth here in Australia. Make no mistake, if the Labor Party get their way and they shut down this trade, they won't stop there. They will just keep coming after the farmers. They will go after the beef industry. It has been very, very clear, as Minister Littleproud heard firsthand when he was in the Middle East last week, meeting with ministers from Qatar and Kuwait, that, if Australia is going to back away from its live sheep trade export, these countries are also going to look elsewhere for their chilled meat. It's not as though they're prepared to replace one with the other.

We need to find ways to fix this trade. We've been down the path before that Labor wanted to go. We were then made aware of the human cost associated with the extra pressure that we were going to put on our farmers in Western Australia and predominantly in South Australia, which are the two major states that enjoy the opportunity to export their mutton, their older sheep. We understand that we have to fix this trade. I will go through some of the penalties that this livestock bill is going to introduce for those who think that they can get away with poor animal welfare in the process of exporting our sheep. These new penalties are substantial. What we have to continually look at are the facts. As Minister Littleproud has said, we need to make sure that we go through this with a very calm head and that we make decisions that are based on science and evidence, as opposed to emotion. As I said, last week Kuwait were very clear in their explanation to Minister Littleproud that, if they are forced to look elsewhere for live animals, they will also look elsewhere for chilled meat. So, if Australia wants to phase out the live trade, the chilled trade would likely shrink, and Australians could lose selling on both markets.

This happened in Bahrain, where the removal of a government subsidy saw the end of Australia's live sheep imports in 2015. Australia's exports of chilled meat to Bahrain then shrank from 11,987 tonnes in 2014 to just over 8,000 tonnes in 2015, and was not even 7,500 tonnes in 2017. Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE import between 80 and 90 per cent of their meat. In 2016, Australia supplied Kuwait, Qatar and UAE with 60, 86 and 28 per cent respectively of their live sheep, and 68, 78, and 56 per cent respectively of their chilled sheepmeat. So these countries are currently very heavily reliant on Australia for their sheepmeat.

Further, as I said earlier, the sheep exported are mostly the older sheep, the mutton, whereas the chilled sheep trade is mostly lamb. It must be understood very clearly that once we take this option away from our farmers we are going to leave them with one option, and one option only. And that is that they will be at the mercy of the processors here in Australia. We understand what happens then, that the farmers become, yet again, price takers. Again, having no option but to succumb to the price offered by the local processors is what waits for our farmers if the Labor Party is to have its way on this issue.

It's quite pointed that the citizens of these Middle Eastern countries believe they have a right to freshly-killed meat. They have already reduced their live sheep import levels as much as they can, and they want to keep their current import levels where they are right now. They want to keep them there. So it's wrong to claim that the sheep trade is in terminal decline. The MLA analysis indicates that total global sheep exports into the Middle East have increased, with more supply from countries such as Romania, India and Georgia, as well as unknown numbers from countries such as Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. This concept that the live sheep trade is in terminal decline and that we may as well just hurry it up anyway is simply a false claim.

There's also the claim that the Australian export of live sheep is in terminal decline. That's also false. Sheep exports from Australia declined over the past decade in line with the shrinking of the Australian sheep flock and the wish of some Middle Eastern countries to reduce their huge reliance on live sheep from Australia. And that's happened now—that happened years ago. Our sheep flock is now stable and our live sheep exports to the Middle East have hovered between 1.8 and 2.3 million tonnes per million sheep per calendar year. That has been constant since 2012.

The other claims that we hear, that this demand only comes due to government subsidies is also false, because due to a combination of historical, cultural and economic factors, locally slaughtered animals are still perceived to offer the freshest meat in the Middle East. And these markets are calling out for the freshest meat that they can possibly get.

So, as I said earlier, Minister Littleproud has put together a raft of penalties to ensure that no-one will be looking to take these penalties on, thinking that they can do this as part of business as usual. This will no longer be seen as the cost of doing business, to be happy to pay for these fines. We understand that under the offence, if a company were committing an offence intending to obtain commercial advantage over their competitors by committing the offence, and causing an economic consequence for Australia, they would face penalties to the tune of $4.2 million for a company and $420,000 for an individual. A director of a guilty company could face 10 years in jail. These are substantial fines, and the fines for every other offence in this are consistent with what we have here.

This is a very, very serious issue. I implore the people of Australia to look beyond the emotion, because this is a very emotive issue—as we understand, the vision was shocking. However, if we can improve the welfare of our sheep through those summer months—give them additional space, put the independent monitors on these ships and look out for the welfare of the—

Debate interrupted.