Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about the impact that the impending phase-out of the live export trade will have on our trade relationship with our long-term friends in the Middle East. I spoke earlier in the week about the impact on our farming communities and sheep producers across my home state of Western Australia, but tonight I want to expand that conversation out to our trading relationships.

Kuwait is our largest importer of live sheep. We have a 60-year history of trading with Kuwait. In the decade from 2012 to 2022, Kuwait imported 5.6 million sheep, worth in excess of $652 million. They were mostly out of my electorate of O'Connor in Western Australia, but certainly there have been sheep come out of the member for Durack's electorate as well.

How do we treat these very good friends and long-term trading partners? Well, I have here a letter from the Minister of Commerce and Industry of Kuwait addressed to the Hon. Murray Watt, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in the Albanese government. One paragraph says: 'Last year, representatives from your government visited Kuwait to confirm Australia's intention to phase out live sheep exports by sea into the Middle East by 2025. This greatly concerned us, given the significance of live sheep imports from Australia to Kuwait. It came to our attention that the Australian delegation'—and that would be the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Mr Metcalfe—'met with a representative from the Kuwait Public Authority for Food and Nutrition and the Kuwait public authority of agricultural affairs. However, the Minister of Commerce and Industry is the main authority for all matters of trade, especially live food exports, and all policies relating to food security for Kuwait.'

So here we have a senior public servant, representing Australia, blundering around the Middle East telling customers of 60 years standing that they are no longer welcome to do business with us. I think the Kuwaitis, certainly from the tone of the letter to the minister, are quite offended by that. I don't blame them.

Why is that important? Why is Kuwait important to Australia, and in particular Western Australia? Mr Speaker, when the Chinese government in 2021 banned imports of barley into China—five million tonnes of barley out of Western Australia—it was the Middle East trading partners who stepped up. Kuwait took $199 million worth of barley. That's just shy of a million tonnes of barley. They took $168 million worth of wheat. That's about 500,000 tonnes of wheat. Of course, they took their usual quota of $49 million to $50 million worth of live sheep.

The other important aspect of our relationship with Kuwait is that they invest $12.7 billion here in Australia. Under this government, we've seen the Japanese government become very concerned about sovereign risk. We're now seeing countries in the Middle East who've invested heavily in Australia start to become very concerned with the sovereign risk of investing here in Australia, where their investments, made in good faith, effectively can be cancelled out overnight by pressure from various activist groups.

The other key partner in the Middle East that I want to talk about this evening is the United Arab Emirates. In government, we were progressing the comprehensive partnership agreement with the UAE. They are a very significant trading partner of ours, with over $10 billion of trade pre-COVID. Once again, they are very large investors in Australia, at $14 billion. It is with great pleasure on Thursday—if given leave by our whip—I will be meeting with His Excellency Abdulla Alsaboosi in Perth and escorting him, amongst others, on a tour of a live feedlot down in Baldivas and I will certainly reassuring be him and his country that a coalition government will support live export going forward.