Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak of my great concern for regional Australia and the future of agriculture in this country. I recently joined my colleagues from the coalition agricultural policy committee to do what the Prime Minister and his agricultural minister have failed to do: to actually listen to the West Australian farmers impacted by the decision to phase out live export of sheep. I joined the committee first in Merredin and then in York, and it was so great to hear from so many locals who came to make their voices heard and to tell us how this reckless decision has affected them. We heard terrible stories of farmers being forced to leave the industry, to sell their sheep at a loss, or, worse yet, having to kill their animals and bury them due to the crisis in the domestic sheep market.

The Albanese government has fundamentally failed these communities—my communities. They've failed to listen or to consult, and now they refuse to release the report which was meant to detail the future of this industry. Shamefully, that report has been sitting on the agricultural minister's desk for months, and I speculate that that report doesn't say what the government wanted it to, which is the reason it is buried in the in-tray.

The arguments to abolish the live sheep export trade are not based in fact, and I believe this decision is simply a method to win metropolitan votes from the Greens political party. Let's be clear: this is nothing to do with animal welfare.

The WA hearings highlighted the necessity for farmers, young and old, to get organised and to share the reality of the industry today, particularly with urban voters. I'd like to thank my colleagues who travelled all over the West Australian Wheatbelt to hear from our wonderful WA farmers for taking up this fight with us. I'd like to particularly thank the chair of the committee, the member for Grey. During the hearings, the member for Grey highlighted the extensive list of this government's attacks on regional Australia. These range from the abolition of the live sheep trade to cuts on infrastructure, to the introduction of new taxes like the biosecurity levy and, of course, more recently, the family car and ute tax. With these actions, it appears that Labor has forgotten the fundamental importance of agriculture to our nation's prosperity. So many decisions that they have made are making it harder to produce food and fibre in this country. Honestly, do we want to transform from a nation that feeds the world to one that relies on imports to feed ourselves? That is the direction that we are heading in.

Those opposite just seem oblivious to the harsh realities of what it's like to produce in regional Australia. Take, for instance, the long period of rainfall deficiency that has decimated so much of my electorate. While a drought has not been formally declared, and recent rainfall may have somewhat helped, the situation still remains dire for many. I have heard from Will Baston, a pastoralist from the Gascoyne Junction, who has described what feels like a never-ending cycle of hardship. In recent years, he and his family have faced fires and floods and now face extremely dry lands. This is occurring at the same time as prices rise and returns fall, which has seen him struggling to keep his animals alive. Will is a councillor on the Shire of Upper Gascoyne and sits on the emergency management committee for the shire. He is extremely concerned for his and other pastoralists' futures. While some stations closer to Carnarvon have had a welcome recent soaking, many other parts of the Gascoyne have only had approximately 10 millimetres in recent weeks, which has only just been enough to keep the dust down and has not soaked in at all. It is my understanding that the soil has now become hydrophobic, due to the long period of dryness, and it will take more effective rain for circumstances to change.

These are the types of issues that weigh heavily on the minds of farmers and pastoralists in my electorate. Dealing with the natural environment is hard enough, both professionally and emotionally, and yet this Labor government demonstrates again and again that it wants to make the regulatory environment harder still. The agricultural industry sustains not only our national economy but also our way of life in the regions and in the cities. I say to this government: come and listen to the communities that you are hurting. Start with our WA farmers and all those different businesses in the supply chain. Maybe then you will realise that you need to have policies that support, not hurt, regional WA.