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

Mr Acting Deputy President, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Australian Meat and Live-stock Industry Act report on livestock mortalities for export for the period from July to December 2012 and once again, despite very difficult circumstances faced by the industry, to congratulate the industry on the remarkably good figures that we have seen for survival, particularly of sheep and cattle, to our destined markets.

I was interested in Senator Rhiannon's comments about loss of market, because that is exactly what has happened, regrettably, to our markets over the last six to 12 months, and the way things are going it probably will continue. Long-trusted markets—45 years in the case of Kuwait—such as Doha in Qatar and Oman are now being lost to Australia simply because of the unreliability of what had previously been an incredibly safe, high-quality market, which was that supplied by Australia.

If I may, as I often do in this place, I will debunk that theory that says that, if Australia ceased to export live animals, we would be able to replace the trade with the meat market. Let me give you a lesson in current affairs and history. When Australia lost the live export trade to Saudi Arabia some years ago, we had a very active sale of meat—boxed meat and frozen and/or chilled meat—to that country. History records that, when we lost the live export trade, we also lost the boxed meat trade. I come forward to 2012-13 and draw your attention to Indonesia, where, of course, as a result of a decision of Ms Gillard and Senator Ludwig in 2011, we all of a sudden terminated the sale of live cattle to the Indonesian market, thus denying some 69 million low-socioeconomic Indonesian people their right to beef protein.

If you listened to Senator Rhiannon, you would have thought that once the trade restarted under some limited conditions, including dropping the sale of live animals to that market, and there being a continuing demand for beef protein, logic would tell us that we would have seen an increase in the sale of chilled or frozen meat to Indonesia. But of course exactly the history that we saw in Saudi Arabia has been repeated in Indonesia—that is, while the number of live cattle going to those markets has halved, so indeed has the tonnage of beef going to those markets. At a time when the price of beef has increased tenfold, the average consumer, the low-socioeconomic Indonesian consumer who once so heavily relied on the Australian trade, has now been lost.

We now have a circumstance in my state of Western Australia at the moment where, as a result of the drop in the number of live animals that are leaving the state, prices for sheep have dropped dramatically. Those of us who know anything about markets and trade would always know that when a competitor leaves—in this case the live export competitor—it affects the market. So we now only have the one buyer—that is, the meat industry—and the meat industry will never sustain the prices.

In drawing attention again to these remarkably high survival figures for animals that are travelling from Australia to our Middle East and Asian markets, I simply make the point that Australia is the only country in the world that invests heavily to ensure that animal welfare standards in all of our target markets remain very, very high. And should we be forced to leave the live export trade, one can only assume that standards of animal welfare in those countries, countries which we have serviced for many, many years, will only dissipate. I leave the chamber with the message that it is an absolute myth that if we were to remove the live export trade there would all of a sudden be an increase in opportunities and employment in the meat industry around Australia.

Question agreed to.