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

Don't you have to feel sorry for them? As I sat here in question time I was reminded of a mob of bleating poddy calves. I was reminded of a yard full of orphaned lambs, as they struggled and bleated and carried on. It is amazing that, with references to animals, only now did Senator Wong talk about bulls. Senator Cameron and Senator Wong led this parade of 'what about the budget', as we asked intelligent questions and got intelligent answers.

Today, six opposition senators got an opportunity to ask a question. You would have thought they might have asked one on the budget. Did any of the six do that? Only in the final supplementary question from the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Wong, did they manage to get in a little bit of a question between the four pillars, to the Minister for Finance, Senator Cormann. We had Senator Dastyari and Senator Tillem going on about FOFA and Senator Sing asking the Attorney-General about Williams and chaplaincy. We had Senator Wong about the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. We had Senator Furner, and through you, Deputy President, I have to say, Senator Furner, you are a man I admire but I do not really admire the way your voice inflection attempted to make a fool of a colleague. I mean that in all seriousness, because you are a person I value highly. But you got well away from it, too, on 18C. We then had Senator Tillem having a crack at FOFA. And because time allowed we then had Senator Wong.

So here we are in question time, and with the budget out there the Labor Party would love to be out there saying Australians hate the budget, they hate the higher education elements, they do not like the health elements and they do not like the other aspects of education and they do not seem to like the seniors policy. Where were the questions, Senator Wong, Senator Furner and Senator Cameron? Even Senator Conroy managed to get in on the animal analogy when he leapt up and the funniest thing he could say was that Senator Fifield was attempting to get rid of Peppa Pig, a program that we know costs the Australian taxpayer a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year, through the ABC.

Let me stay with the animal analogy for a few minutes, because Senator Wong was inviting the Attorney-General, and criticising him, on what she was saying was an attack on Australia's agriculture, particularly Australia's exports of live animals. I would have thought that if there was one topic the Labor Party wanted to stay away from in this place it might be exports of live animals, when we reflect on the events of 8 June 2011, when they simply cut Indonesia off at its knees, and when they denied 69 million low-socioeconomic villagers in Indonesia the opportunity to get animal protein. Forget what they did for a moment to Australian producers and all those who support them.

I tell you that the full story of the conspiracies that went on has not yet been told in this place. I hasten to say that I do not believe that the Prime Minister at the time, Ms Gillard, nor the agriculture minister at the time were part of a conspiracy, but there was one, and they played into the hands of those conspirators. I am referring to the very countries in the Middle East that Senator Wong referred to in relation to Senator Brandis's apparent comments—countries that have long supported our exporters of both live animals and meat. Were they upset by some of those words? I remind the chamber of the answers given by Senator Brandis to the questions. Those were in Senate estimates, and his statement was entirely consistent with that of the foreign minister.

But I am fairly close to the industry, as you know. Was there some concern? Yes. Was it addressed? Yes. Do we still have the confidence of those markets? Yes, we do. It was the actions of the then Labor government that caused all of the problems we see in the Middle East now—the fact that we do not have trade with Saudi Arabia, the fact that we can only now re-open trade to Egypt, and the fact that we have only just announced the re-opening of trade to Iran. Let us be very sure about who put all of that trade at risk. It was not the coalition or Senator Brandis. (Time expired)