Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, that is the knife—that is the famous one.

The contempt with which this debate treats rural Australia is unforgivable. Forget about what has happened so far. It is a complete mess. This debate overlooks that you are not allowed to speak about the fact that you can get a signature on any piece of paper in Asia if you pay them enough money. We will not talk about the facilitation money that goes into all this trade or about the case in the Middle East where two lots of bribery money had a head-on collision and we ended up with a whole shipload of sheep having to be put down the chute. We will ignore all that.

The north is a mess, as Senator Boswell points out, due to a combination of factors and the collapsing of the market. Bear in mind: if you think the market at $2.15 was profitable and at $1.40 you can still do what you did before, think again. It does not even pay the freight. So we have thousands of mature cattle up there that are overweight, are unsuitable for the local domestic market and have to go 3,000 kilometres to be slaughtered. When you do that, instead of getting a cheque in the mail you get a bill for the freight. The freight is worth more than the cattle because the market in Australia has collapsed for mature age cattle, broken pizzled bulls and broken mouthed cows.

So we have a serious problem. As I have said previously in some places, we have to solve this. It is not only about putting a few cattle into the national parks, which would help. There is a lot of Indigenous sit-down country that you could put cattle into, which would help—and it would certainly help the local Indigenous Australians as long as the water is there. There are different management techniques. Some of the operations up there are in more trouble than others because of the water management. Cattle need more water points so they do not have to walk as far to get a feed, because if they have to walk too far to get a feed they cannot walk back to the water.

As Senator Boswell said, there could be one million cattle that are going to die. If the worst comes to the worst—and the Barkly Tableland and some of that country up there looks now like it usually looks in September, just before the wet—why wouldn't we, on the premise of playing no politics and so on, give consideration to what we did with the sheep years ago? Instead of saying to people, 'Send your cattle to slaughter, take up all the slots in the abattoirs and overload the grinding market,' why don't we say to them, 'We'll give you a certain amount of money'—whether it is $50, $60, $80 or $100—'to put them in a pit'? Do not wear out the trucks; do not use the fuel. This is a last resort thing. We are not there now, but we have to plan ahead because, if this dry continues and they miss the early wet, there is going to be a catastrophe. The RSPCA, Animals Australia and others will probably all go bonkers because these poor buggers will be trying to truck the poor cattle—which are not fit for trucking thousands of kilometres. I know the industry is a bit sensitive about this, but it is bloody well time someone talked about it. Why don't we give consideration to a slaughter levy to put them in a pit? Then at least they will get paid to get rid of them, rather than getting a bill in the mail for trucking them away.

The bush up there is in trouble. Some places are in more trouble than others and some are better managed than others, but we have to have a plan about the future as much as worry about the past. (Time expired)