Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, she shouldn't be speaking to me; she should be speaking through you.

Senator Rhiannon does not, on any occasion, make any reference to the alternative plan. Here they are, wanting to create yet another bureaucracy. We have got some of the sharpest regulations and legislation around biosecurity and the management of animals, the welfare of animals, anywhere in the world. We are world leaders in these areas. And don't take my word for it; you need to take the word of a number of your colleagues. At the live export exchange conference, held in Darwin in November 2015—I'll bet you a carton of beer that nobody from the Greens was in attendance to have a look, to meet the people, to come to understand the industry, to make a contribution; I'm happy to be proven wrong but I'm pretty certain about that—Dr Temple Grandin, who's a world-renowned animal behaviour expert, in reference to Australia and the conditions in which we operate, stated that we were light-years ahead of anyone else in the world with our handling and animal welfare under the Export Supply Chain Assurance System—anyone else in the world!

What gets a bit inconvenient for the contributors to this debate is PETA—and we all know about PETA. I'm not talking about Peter Pan; I'm talking about P-E-T-A, an organisation that I think it should be illegal to participate in. Nonetheless, PETA and the Humane Society of the United States give an award. Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA, said:

I applaud Dr Grandin … I admire her work—

I'm sorry; I referred to her before as a gentleman—

in the field of humane animal slaughter.

So, as I close, let's consider something. Senator Rhiannon has made a contribution in the chamber. It is crystal clear that none of her colleagues agree with her and they have not joined her in this enterprise. They're listening—they can scurry down here in their dozens if they think they can. Nobody here agrees with Senator Rhiannon. Nobody in the Labor Party agrees with the thrust of her arguments here today. The crossbench is absent; nobody from the crossbench agrees with her. The humane society for animals in the United States doesn't agree with her. PETA doesn't agree with her. Leading world experts don't agree with her. The people don't agree with her. The industry doesn't agree with her. Australians don't agree with you, Senator Rhiannon, otherwise you'd have seats in the bush.

You need to give away your soft little seat in the Senate—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President—and I'll give away my soft seat in the Senate, and both of us will run for the seat of Kennedy. How's that; you, me and Bob. We'll have a crack—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President. We'll see just how many votes you garner in Kennedy. You'll have to put a mo and a wig on, otherwise, if they recognise you up that way, you'll be riding on the tail of the kangaroo on the back of the plane! You wouldn't be on the inside!

This is ridiculous. This is a consistent thing. Senator Rhiannon reminds me of one of those toys I bought for my kids, where you punch it, it goes down and up it comes—those ones that are weighted in the bottom—because this isn't the first time this argument has been made and it's not the first time it's failed. It will fail each and every time that she brings it into this chamber. Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President: all the Greens should stop listening to the elves and the gnomes and start listening to the Australian people and people in industry, and maybe at some stage they'll get something right.