Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was saying that the minister's decision was a knee-jerk reaction to an ill considered email campaign by activists who knew little about the consequences of what they were doing or indeed the animal welfare issues that they will subject Australian cattle to. Unfortunately, the minister's action has been to penalise those abattoirs in Indonesia which, as Senate colleagues from this side have said, are performing to normal international standards and have long done so.

The best evidence that I have of this was the minister saying that he had to suspend the trade because he had no confidence about where animals would end up. I ask him then if he could tell me how the decision was made on 6 June, two days before he brought in this suspension, to disallow the shipment of 1,900 cattle from Port Hedland owned by the Northern Australian Cattle Company, a branch of Elders International, which were to go to an Elders owned feedlot on their way to an Elders owned abattoir of a calibre and quality that has met Australian standards for many years. This was two days before. Regrettably, the AQIS veterinarian involved had seen these cattle and had approved them for export. The ship was alongside, the cattle were waiting to be shipped and the veterinarian received advice from Canberra to say that he was not to sign off on that consignment of cattle to go into their own feedlot and their own abattoir. I would like to know from the minister what involvement he or his staff or indeed senior officers of the department had in interfering with normal, good, lawful trade. We still do not have an answer as to what happened. For the minister to stand here this afternoon and say that he had to bring in a complete suspension because he had no knowledge or confidence of cattle going into our approved abattoirs overseas is an absolute nonsense and it is a cop-out.

The question now to be asked of course is: what do the Indonesians do? What options do they have now that a valuable source of safe protein has been denied them? Speaking of safe protein I have to draw the attention of the Senate to the unfortunate circumstances in Europe over the last two or three weeks with the outbreaks of E. coli which has led to the deaths of more than 24 people in Europe. The Australian product is a safe product, the abattoirs that are approved for international use are safe.

Amongst other things this decision by this minister will expose Indonesians to standards of safety less than those that they can reasonably expect. But the unfortunate outcome for Indonesia, if they are denied access to our live cattle, is to look elsewhere and where they will look will be to India where there are hundreds of millions of cattle and buffalo and the country has an endemic problem with foot-and-mouth disease. The other countries that are lining up to take away the Australian trade are South American countries, including Brazil and Argentina, which also have foot-and-mouth disease. Australia worked hard some years ago in assisting Indonesia to make sure it was free of foot-and-mouth disease so that we could build a biosecurity barrier around Australia. If cattle from those countries come into Indonesia we will end up with foot-and-mouth disease in this country. The impact on animal welfare alone will be horrific. The losses of animals across Australia, including wildlife, as we try to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease will be on a scale never seen in this country. Quite apart from the fact that the best estimate is a cost of $14 billion alone and a doubling of unemployment in the first year after we get foot-and-mouth disease, quite apart from the impact on northern towns and communities from the loss of tourism and other activities, the question to be asked is: what has gone wrong? Why did this minister bring in a total suspension when all he needed to do was terminate the trade with those abattoirs that do not meet international standards? We in Australia do not think that the Australian border is the limit of animal welfare. We have an opportunity to increase animal welfare standards in Indonesia, and we must resume the trade.