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

There are some aspects of the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System that are worthy of note. Regrettably, as I have said often since it has been introduced, there are many aspects of it which are deeply flawed and we do see some of those and we hear commentary in this chamber today about them. In many ways this legislation was set up to fail. It is making completely unreasonable demands on exporters, producers and industry generally and indeed on foreign countries. In fact, it is making demands that Australians would never tolerate if they were in reverse. It is having a devastating effect on rural communities and, perversely, will probably lead to a decline in animal welfare standards in the target markets into which we operate if and when we lose our competitiveness and our access to those industries in those countries, and of course back here in Australia, which I hope to outline.

There is no precedent. What this ESCAS confers on an exporter, under threat of criminal liability, is responsibility for the conduct of every participant in the supply chain right through to the end customer. There is no other product and no other commodity in any other country that demands this. I asked the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Mr Richardson, in estimates that very question: do you know of any other commodity or product we export from this country that imposes on the exporter entire responsibility for the performance of the product right through to the end consumer? The answer is no, they do not have any such information. So what we have with ESCAS unique to the live export trade is a burden of responsibility that rests on nobody else. That is unfair and untenable and it must be changed. As Senator Faulkner just said, no other country demands any controls at all once a shipment of animals has reached either the port or the airport. They have no control, they have no capacity, they have no demand to work out what is happening in the country to which those animals are being sent.

So I ask this question: is this going to be Australia's new philosophy now for failure of policy or performance? Why should we stop at live animals? Let us take, for example, the recent revelations of corruption and waste in AusAID. Does that immediately lead then to a demand that we are to withdraw all AusAID in the same way that others are saying, because there apparently has been some failure in the ESCAS of the live export trade in the Middle East, that means we should withdraw that trade completely? Nobody would suggest that. If we have a failure of drugs amongst our Olympians, are we going to say that Australia is not going to send anybody to the Olympic Games? When we have medical and surgical failures in our hospitals, are we then to turn around and say: 'There has been a failure of policy. We must now withdraw from that market'? It is a nonsense that we would do that and it is equally a nonsense those who are calling for the suspension of the live export trade because there has been on this occasion an indication, a trial by media. We have not even yet seen the results of an inquiry and yet here we are being asked to judge.

Let me give you this analogy: let us take it from an export to a domestic situation. Let us imagine for a moment that a family went to buy a pet at an RSPCA shelter. They take the pet home and for whatever reason that family perpetrates some sort of welfare abuse on that animal. Are we then to assume that either the RSPCA senior management or those who are in control of that shelter will be criminally liable for the behaviour of somebody who purchases an animal from that shelter? Of course we would not say that! And yet we are being invited in this debate to blame exporters for behaviours which clearly would be well beyond their control if and when that investigation has been undertaken and completed.

Following the earlier two speakers, let me give you some indication of the consequences of ESCAS on producers, on support services, on communities in rural Australia and on the Australian economy generally. Contrary to what Senator Faulkner actually said when he indicated that there has been minimal effect on the export trade, everybody who was in the chamber last sitting period would know that I asked the agriculture minister, Senator Ludwig, if he could explain why live animal exports to Indonesia had halved. And, indeed, through you Madam Acting Deputy President, I also made the point to Senator Rhiannon that far from beef sales going up they had also halved. I will come back, if time permits, to debunk the myth about a stopping of live exports leading to an increase in beef sales.

On 1 September 2012 we have, as a result of this ESCAS tranche 2, lost the live export trade to Saudi Arabia, one that we have supplied for some 35 years. We now look like we have lost the sale of live cattle to Turkey, a tremendous trade and a tremendous product for the Turks. And the Egyptians are now indicating that they may not be interested in taking animals. I made the point earlier that the perverse effect of all of this is a reduction in animal welfare standards in the target markets. Why? Because Australia, alone of the 109 countries that export animals around the world, is the only one that has ever invested time and money and expertise to improve standards of animal welfare in these countries. If and when the live export trade finishes, and there are those who want to see that happen, we have no doubt at all that animal welfare standards will deteriorate to those levels that I observed when I was a veterinarian involved in this trade back in the early 1980s. And I am pleased to say that I did not observe them in Australian animals that we were shipping, but I certainly did observe them in locally bred and supplied animals.

So we have a circumstance now where, as I asked the minister the other day, we are facing the risk of foot-and-mouth disease getting into Indonesia. The Indonesian government, as a direct result of the decisions taken last year, have now decided that their beef processors and beef importers can look at importing beef from so-called foot-and-mouth disease-free zones in Brazil. History knows, and my own association, the Australian Veterinary Association, indicates very, very clearly, that when beef comes in from foot-and-mouth disease countries that foot-and-mouth disease follows. Let me remind the chamber that if we were to get foot-and-mouth disease in this country the most conservative estimate would be, apart from the slaughter of animals, a $12-$16 billion cost to the Australian economy in the first year alone.

So what happens then to animal welfare standards in those markets if we are forced to depart? The first point I want to make again is that they will not be replaced by meat sales. Some years ago in the 1980s we temporarily lost the live export trade to Saudi Arabia and concurrently we lost the meat trade to Saudi Arabia. As I indicated here in the last sitting period, we halved the supply of live animals to Indonesia recently and, at a time when they are desperately short of protein, we have also halved our exports of beef. It is not going to replace live exports. Those who would say that the live export trade has stopped the abattoirs and caused the closure of abattoirs in the north of Australia are simply out by about 10 years. The first shipment of live animals left Darwin in July 1990, and it was some five to 15 years earlier that the export abattoirs had closed in northern Australia. We just simply have not got this message right.

I have to say that every single solitary producer wants to see the highest levels of animal welfare. All Australians want to see high levels of animal welfare. Only in the last week I was going through the Wheatbelt areas of Western Australia, where we have had a shocking season and where there is very little feed on the ground. Contracts for supply of sheep to go away on the ships are now being held up and there is no feed left on the ground. Talk about animal welfare! Talk about feeding animals if we do not have the access to this trade. Senator Rhiannon knows very well that the ACIL Tasman survey of some years ago which was done for the RSPCA, indicated no loss of income for sheep producers in Western Australia, was badly flawed and was a nonsense. Producer groups are feeling it; they are feeling it in very, very hard ways. Shippers are moving their ships away from Australia, and the end result of all of this will be a severe loss not just to producers and not just to rural communities but to the Australian economy.

Madam Acting Deputy President, I thank you for the opportunity.