Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution in the second reading debate on the Animal Export Legislation Amendment (Ending Long-haul Live Sheep Exports) Bill 2018. Essentially, this bill replicates the private members' bill that was introduced by the member for Farrer, the honourable Sussan Ley, and Labor's amendment to the Export Legislation Amendment (Live-stock) Bill 2018, which the government is currently refusing to debate in the House of Representatives. I suppose, to go back to Senator Cameron's contribution, this does highlight some tension and division in the current government. They have a member of their own side, a former minister, proposing a way forward which has caused division in their ranks and has caused the orderly and proper conduct of the parliament to be disrupted.

Every member of the House of Representatives and the Senate has received an inordinate amount of emails on this particular subject. There are very few emails that are coming in in support of the live export trade continuing in its current form, but there is an enormous amount of community wide feeling about animals being treated in an inappropriate way. So I think it's important at the outset to just put on the Hansard, on the record, some of the fast facts which you can obtain from the Meat and Livestock Australia fact sheet. There are 37.2 million head of breeding ewes aged one year and older as at 30 June 2016. That's from the ABARES agricultural commodities report. The gross value of Australian lamb and mutton production, including live exports, in 2016-17 was estimated at $3.9 billion—once again, from ABARES agricultural commodities, June 2017. Lamb and mutton production, including live exports, contributed six per cent to the total farm value of $62.8 billion in 2016-17. Once again, those figures are sourced from the ABARES agricultural commodities, June 2017, report.

So, clearly, we have more sheep than we can eat, even though Australians have amongst the highest per capita consumption of meat. So we need to export it. That's very, very clear. In fact, in 2016-17 Australia exported 57 per cent of the total lamb production and 92 per cent of the total mutton production. The total value of these exports was $1.94 billion, and the value of mutton exports was $720 million. Australia's live sheep exports were valued at $234 million in 2016-17. We produce approximately eight per cent of the world's lamb and mutton supply, we are amongst the largest exporters of sheep meat in the world, and we are the third-largest live sheep exporter. I think it's important to get those facts on the table, because what we've been asked to do is immediately—immediately—cease live export. I think what we should be doing immediately is not to export in the Northern Hemisphere summer. It is unconscionable to put many, many thousands of sheep into intolerable conditions, such as 50 degree heat.

I have had the opportunity of visiting the Middle East with the Honourable Sharman Stone, Ms Teresa Gambaro and Ms Maria Vamvakinou. We went there on a trade delegation, and one of the issues we looked at in Kuwait, in the United Arab Emirates and in Saudi Arabia was the live sheep export position. It became very clear as we went through those Middle Eastern economies that they do buy lots of sheep from around the world. In some places, like Kuwait, they're slaughtered by halal methods and then distributed back to families. A family will, if they like, go to the abattoir and pick out the sheep that they particularly want, and then it gets slaughtered and delivered to their house.

In Saudi Arabia we came across a vastly different situation. In Saudi Arabia they have enough resources—their bank accounts are full enough—to purchase whatever they want from wherever they want. They were very, very critical of Australia putting in place animal welfare standards. They said: 'We buy the sheep; it's our business what happens after that. You shouldn't be looking down the line.' Our position was to respectfully push back on that and say: 'Look, we are exporting sheep, but we're not going to export them in an uncontrolled way. Our experience in the live export of cattle was catastrophic. We need acceptable standards in the way that our animals are delivered to other parts of the world.' It's fair to say that, after an eight- or nine-day trip, we were no closer to agreement. The Saudis, in their world, have their standards, and we have our standards—basically, we were never going to meet in the middle. I think what really was unsaid in all of those discussions was that the fact they weren't buying as many Australian sheep is more driven by the value of our dollar. As our dollar came off a higher rate and went down to a more long-term average of about 70 cents, all of a sudden our sheep became much more attractive to them, and they looked at getting the trade back to where they had it historically. But we do know that there are farmers who are heavily reliant on turning off mutton and making a profit out of their agribusiness.

This is going to be challenged all the way over the next few years. It's very clear. I can't win the argument in my own household. My sons, daughters and grandchildren look at me askance if I try and defend the live sheep export trade; they just see animals suffering. They're not putting up with it and they'll vote, clearly, with the way they feel about animal welfare. So change is coming; there is no doubt about that. The industry needs to change. It's not a simple argument. If you look at the statistics in this agribusiness, people are going to have to transition. We're going to have to have high standards if we continue to export live sheep.

It's simply that the model that we've relied on is fundamentally broken. It's got three basic flaws. It is heavily reliant on the dreaded Northern Hemisphere summer trade—a trade which is basically incompatible with reasonable welfare standards. There is no real prospect of getting reasonable animal welfare standards in that Northern Hemisphere summer. Don't be emotional about it; the science will tell you that. There's no way you can pack a ship full of that many sheep, take it into 50 degrees and have any sort of welfare standards. So it should be immediately banned in that period of the northern summer. There's no argument about that. I think the science is telling us that.

The trade externalises animal welfare cruelty. The premiums earned by exporters as a result of cruel conditions like excessive stocking densities are externalised in the form of higher-than-normal payments to sheepmeat producers. This, in turn, can place local processing at an economic disadvantage. So consumer preference and community tolerance for the poor treatment of animals is not going away. It is not going away. It is a widely held, deeply felt, supported position right across the whole community. You can have a discussion about it in your own family or you can have a discussion about it in any group that you're in, but 90 per cent of people now are looking at improved, humane animal welfare standards. That's just a fact of life.

I digress a bit, but one of the great things I had the opportunity of looking at when I visited a school in Cummins in regional South Australia was a led-steer competition. In rural Australia, this is the sort of activity that goes on. A led-steer competition involves a young student who's charged with looking after an animal, a bullock. The competition is called 'Hoof and Hook'. They look after a steer for the entire seven or eight months. It's their job to make sure that it's in good shape, that it's putting on enough weight and that it's fed properly, and then, eventually, it's taken to the abattoir and the quality of the meat is judged. I dare say, there are not a lot of students in Australia who have the opportunity to go through that type of economic activity. I dare say that this is predominantly a rural activity. But I would say that those people have a great regard for animal welfare and a great understanding and respect for meat, which we eat: safer, better quality and with better taste. You generally don't get that in your suburban school.

What's happened is that a member of the government, the Hon. Sussan Ley, has proposed a private member's bill in the other House and it is likely to have some capacity to be supported. It's very clear that it has support and it's caused enormous division in the other place, with some of the other members of the Liberal Party and the National Party saying, 'Look, we make a quid out of live exports. We're just going to keep doing it.' That's caused division in their own party. The government took the legislation out. Despite the fact that we didn't have four members in that place, they were still at risk of losing. It highlights the division and the dysfunction of the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull's government; it really does. Members and senators from no fewer than five of the nine parties represented in the Australian parliament have expressed support for the objectives of the bill: an immediate stop to northern summer live sheep trade and the phase-out of the balance of the trade within the next five years. I think that's a very important point. Mr Acting President Sterle, as a Western Australian senator, you would well know that there are many agribusinesses in Western Australia that are heavily reliant on this trade and we need to help them transition away from it because, clearly, the Australian community will not support images of sheep effectively boiling in their own skin. That is not what Australia is about; that is not what anybody in this country is going to put up with, and they make that very plain, almost every day, in an email chain to my office.

During the last sitting of the House of Representatives, the member for Hunter foreshadowed his intention to move the main provisions of this bill as an amendment to the bill the government had introduced to increase penalties for the breaches of animal welfare standards in live export. However, the government withdrew the bill from the House program following the member for Hunter's announcement. It was a bill that, at one time, they described as urgent. It looked like getting up, despite the fact that we were down four members in that place, and it looked like getting up and overturning the government's position, so they withdrew it. The only reason they withdrew it is that they were fearful that the member for Hunter's amendments would succeed. In other words, a sufficient number of coalition MPs would defy the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull and support the amendments. That was despite, as I said earlier, the Labor Party being four members down in the House of Representatives, pending the by-elections, and despite the absence of Rebekha Sharkie, the member for Mayo—another well-known supporter of the amendments. Basically, as Senator Cameron touched on before, the government are clearly dysfunctional. A member of the government brought on a private member's bill to take action on an important issue. The government are paralysed and can't act like a normal, clear-thinking executive.

It's very, very clear that the Northern Hemisphere summer has had catastrophic consequences. We cannot close our eyes to that. It is very widely held and deeply felt in the Australian community that something needs to be done. That something that needs to be done is to immediately stop sending sheep to the Northern Hemisphere summer. That's very, very clear. But we also need to be cognisant of the fact that people make a living growing sheep and they're allowed to sell sheep—but the current regulations need to be changed.

A very important review was done into this trade, and I think it is instructive to put it on the public record. The review stated:

Overall, this review concludes that the live export industry is at the crossroads. What has occurred in the past must not happen in the future, and industry must therefore retreat to a ‘safe’ position, consolidate and then build a new way forward based on science, trust and performance.

The central issues relevant to sheep health and welfare during shipping to the Middle East in the months of May to October are stocking density, ventilation and thermoregulation in the sheep.

That is very succinct and clear advice from the eminent person who reviewed this, Dr Michael McCarthy. It is very, very clear, succinct and easy to understand, and I think the agribusinesses that are involved in this trade understand these issues.

But it appears that the minister, the Hon. David Littleproud, has been incapable of taking reasonable action against people who are not obeying the regulations that currently exist, and that is an absolute disgrace. It is another sign of the dysfunction and disunity in this government. If the shipping company is not obeying the regulations and if, as was reported, the department is not policing this and ensuring that the regulations are honoured, we have a catastrophic situation—we have a perfect storm. We have good producers caught up in the crossfire of a department that hasn't fulfilled its obligation to ensure that things are done in a proper and coherent way; we have a shipper who's not done the right thing; and then we have a minister who says, 'Oh, I can't do anything about it; I can't enforce this.' He was critical of his department, but he should have shown leadership and taken ownership of this issue and moved to immediately refuse to issue permits to people who were not complying with appropriate regulations. Secondly, he should have introduced regulations that would take the prospect of sheep being boiled alive in the Northern Hemisphere's summer off the table—just off the table.

This argument is not going away. This is a well-resourced, well thought out campaign by the animal welfare people—and they've got plenty of stuff to work with. It's impossible to defend the current situation. You'd have to turn a blind eye to absolute inhumane cruelty, and no-one in this place should do that. No-one in the community wants us to do that and no-one in the community is doing that. I would not have a day go past when I don't have an exhortation from a constituent in South Australia saying, 'Act now and get rid of this live export trade.'

We have to act promptly and we have to act humanly, but we do have to recognise that it is a very large business and people may need to transition away from it. I am not talking about transitioning away from cruelty. Cruelty should be stopped. The inhumane treatment of animals should be stopped. That should be done by regulation and enforcement by the department and the minister. We should act very quickly on this issue of exports in the Northern Hemisphere summer. It is incomprehensible that the Prime Minister hasn't grabbed this issue by the—for want of a better word—horns and just said, 'No; Northern Hemisphere summer exports are out.' That would defuse some of the tensions in this argument. It won't defuse all of the tension in this argument, but it will defuse some of the tension in this argument. The Prime Minister should also look at some of the producers, particularly those that I have read of in Western Australia, who would be hurt by this decision. They should be encouraged to look at other ways of dealing with their mutton, particularly.

I know that a number of countries in the world simply want live exports. That's always going to be a contested space, unless we can do it humanely and professionally and ensure that the regulations we put in place are carried out right to the end of the chain. I know that that is a really difficult task. I think we've made substantial improvements in the export of live cattle. I've spoken to many people in the Northern Territory who are in the export of live cattle; they want to see their animals get to the end of the chain in a good shape and be slaughtered in a professional and humane way.

The challenge in the live sheep export is enormous. We saw the catastrophe of the sheep that were diverted, I think, to Bangladesh and slaughtered there because there was a disease issue and they were refused entry to a Middle Eastern port. We know what can happen. It can be catastrophic. The government should get its act together. It should take the challenge up. The Prime Minister should take this challenge up. Show some real leadership. Put this whole sector back on a more even and humane footing.