Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the ministerial statement on live animal exports.

I remember 8 June quite vividly. It was one of those moments that had a significant effect not only on the Territory but also on the cattle industry and on regional and rural Australia. We will always remember where we were when we heard the message from the Prime Minister that the live cattle trade to Indonesia was being ceased. The only person I saw nodding their head in support was the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Henderson, as he stood next to the Prime Minister.

We have moved on since then and we should have learnt a lot from that since it was not only the cessation of the trade but also the cessation of business in Indonesia. I was in Indonesia a very short time later. It was very distressing to walk around the markets and speak to the people who did business with Australia. They were very charitable and kind to me personally, but they were really quite miffed and they were looking for some explanation about what they had done to so offend us. They thought that perhaps there was something they did not understand about our culture that made us respond in this way and, out of the blue, put our foot on the throat of a vital supply of food to the people of Indonesia.

It has impacted on not only the relationships we have with business and with the people of Indonesia but also, most importantly, the relationship we have with the government of Indonesia. The govern­ment of Indonesia have responded in a number of ways, and I think they have responded quite correctly, as would any nation that suddenly had their food security threatened. It does not matter what you think about live cattle or what you think about animal welfare. The simple issue, from the perspective of the Indonesian government, is that they had so many people relying on a source of protein that had for many years been a constant supply. The trade had built up over time and Indonesia and Indonesians relied on it seasonally for protein. They also relied on it for jobs and for part of their economy, but it was absolutely essential and they could rely on it. The relationship with Indonesia now is such that they can no longer rely on it and they have responded. They have said, 'We now need to be independent.' You cannot blame them. They have to feed their people. They need to be completely independent of others, particu­larly the unreliable source that Australia sadly has become. We have gone from being a completely reliable country to a sovereign risk as far as Indonesia is concerned.

You wonder whether we have really learnt anything from that. The government has been through a bit of a hard trot. Every now and again you do get a bit of a slapping in this game and you get it completely and utterly wrong. We have already discussed in this place just how badly the government got it wrong and the impacts on animal production in Australia and the impacts on our relationship with Indonesia.

The government then moved with all its wisdom to ensure that some of the animal welfare concerns extended to the Middle East. Of course, they are the sorts of things we should be doing. I accept the argument that this is not only about protecting animals but about protecting our industry, but you would have thought the government would have understood and learnt something from that. So, when we announced the supply chain assurance processes to go to the Middle East, one would have thought you would have ensured you did the only thing we did not do the first time around with the cattle debacle. The worst thing in Indonesia was that they were the last people to know. Nobody picked the phone up and rang Indonesia. So, in Minister Ludwig's office or in the Prime Minister's office, perhaps this is time for a 'note to self' on the fridge: 'Next time you are going to do something ugly with someone's trade, you should probably give them a ring.' It is pretty ABC stuff. But, sadly, that does not seem to have been the case.

When we were introducing the new supply chain assurance scheme, they did not really talk to people in the Middle East about it. So they now have to suddenly do a bit of an emergency trade mission over there to ensure that people have some understanding. The DAFF Middle East importers document actually says that there is no requirement for governments to undertake any action to implement the new arrangement. I mean, talk about offensive! It is a complete fallacy that, in the absence of government-to-government communications, you can implement a comprehensive and complex supply chain assurance scheme. It is difficult enough dealing with it in our own country, let alone over in the Middle East. It is simply lunacy to imagine that a supply chain assurance scheme can be effectively rolled out without the assistance of government. This level of misunderstanding almost beggars belief.

I know that the Greens are very keen, as I am, on ensuring that we successfully roll out mechanisms to ensure that people can eat Australian animal protein in a manner that is consistent with Australian standards and the way we wish those animals to be treated. But we are never going to get there unless we have a decent relationship with the countries we trade with. What we generally call 'the Middle East' is dozens of countries with vastly different cultures and vastly different circumstances in terms of infrastructure. This infrastructure is, most of the time, essential to the principles of animal handling. We need animal yards, but some people do not even have them. There are very different circumstances.

But, in the rolling out of this, there has been an assumption that you can put one rigid system into place, almost overnight, and somehow it is going to be implemented by a whole range of different countries. What this sounds like to me is that we are setting industry up to fail. With all our knowledge of the appalling stuff up we made of the live cattle trade and the absolutely appalling impact it had on the men and women whose lives and futures depend on the live cattle trade in Indonesia, even after that outrageous mistake this government made, how can they possibly stand in front of the Australian people and say that they are in any sense competent when, immediately after that, when they have to do the same thing again, the first thing they do is say: 'We don't really need to talk to the government we trade with; we're just going to make this a dictate and off we go.'

We know that the implementation of a through-chain supply assurance system is a very complex and difficult thing to do. But what this government has done is decide that there will be an arbitrary date at the end of the system. And the system does not end because it is finished; it does not end because the infrastructure is there; it does not end because we have completed the supply chain assurance. It ends simply because this government has been stupid enough to put an arbitrary date on it. They say, 'Here is the arbitrary date and, if you don't meet that date, it's all over.' I am not necessarily saying it should be endless. But given the complex­ity of the systems and the complexity of the cultures, given the disrespect from this government about their approach to the implementation of a series of standards from Australia into another country, given the lessons that should have been learnt through the appalling mistakes of the destruction of the live cattle trade from Northern Australia into Indonesia, one would have thought it would now be a case of 'forewarned is forearmed'.

But it is not so. Again, not only have we damaged our relationship with the government of Indonesia and the business people of Indonesia—that is the legacy—but we have moved to ensuring that the smarts of Senator Ludwig's department will be to say: 'We've done it to that country. We haven't even fixed it yet. We're going to move on and destroy trade in another country by setting arbitrary limits.' They do not recognise the differences in culture and they do not engage with the other government about ensuring it understands and assists with the implementation of what is probably one of the most complex assurance systems you can design. This is setting the industry up for complete failure. (Time expired)