Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

This issue is of critical importance to Western Australians. I'm glad to be able to make a contribution to the debate. In WA, the ships that depart from the Port of Fremantle that service the live sheep trade are not tucked away in some industrial area; they are in the very heart of the city of Fremantle. The trucks that drive the 65,000-odd sheep that are put on just one ship come from the farms in the east of our state. They drive through Perth's suburbs to the port. Everyone in the community can see these trucks making this journey. They've often been the subject of public debate. We often see protesters down at the port. We often see people very visibly making their livelihood from the live sheep trade, because we see the sheep being transported in these trucks. It's not so much the visibility of sheep in the trucks, but the vision that we've seen of these sheep dying at sea. It has led to resounding calls nationwide, including in Western Australia, for clear action on this issue to address the suffering of these animals. My office, like all of yours, has been inundated with emails and phone calls. Clearly during the recent by-elections in Western Australia, this was an issue that resonated with voters not only in Fremantle but also in Perth.

I certainly believe that the Animal Export Legislation Amendment (Ending Long-haul Live Sheep Exports) Bill 2018 is in line with community expectation on how animals should be treated when being exported. However, the government are not delivering action on this. Despite their much-lauded statements that they would support action, they have now visibly completely gone to ground. We've seen the government not allow debate on a similar bill introduced by one of their own members, the member for Farrer, and nor will they allow debate on Labor's amendments to that bill. We have here a government so worried about disunity among their own ranks that they are denying the will of the people. Indeed, I believe they will ultimately damage industry. They're denying the will of the people to be appropriately represented in the House of Representatives and have this bill debated. We've seen a refusal to bring on debate on the bill and the amendments already introduced in the House, which has meant that the will of the parliament to phase out this trade and to stop the trade during the Middle Eastern and northern summer is being effectively denied. People like the member for Farrer can see that we need to move on this issue, so why can't this government?

Again, we have a government that is vastly out of step with the community. What they are doing is delaying action on this issue, which will ultimately see industry itself suffer. The simple fact is that we have a long and proud history of sheep production in Australia. My own grandmother came from a wheat and sheep farm in Western Australia. The simple fact is that when you have such a clear and resounding community concern that says, 'There is no community mandate to allow animal exports or sheep exports in these conditions,' to continue to export sheep in those conditions in the face of that can only do the industry further damage. What it does is lock in the sentiment against the industry so that, when future issues catch up with the industry, it will be locked out, and the reaction of the community will become even more punitive. The mandate for the sheep industry and for the export industry will decline even further. That is exactly what has happened historically in this debate.

The bad behaviour of exporters and the terrible incidents that have happened at sea previously have been well exposed. They've been very, very well exposed. We were supposed to see action back then. Instead, we now find ourselves having witnessed even more egregious deaths at sea of these animals and a very, very clear loss of mandate for this industry. If we don't get on with the job of transitioning the sheep industry and the sheep export industry now to create meat-processing jobs locally and to create higher animal welfare standards for sheep that are exported during the phase-out, we will be letting the industry down. No-one wants to see the continuation of exports in their current form. The evidence—the science—is absolutely crystal clear on these exports. The Australian Veterinary Association has advised that it can't assure the farmers, the Australian people or the parliament that sheep won't continue to suffer from heat stress and die during voyages between May and October, because that's when extreme heat conditions are almost guaranteed to occur. That was the evidence given to Senate estimates, which is that farmers don't want animals which they've raised and cared for to be mistreated.

Unfortunately the industry has been too slow to act on this, and this is why we need to step in and act for the community and the animals in question, and also to restore faith and the good reputation of Australia's agricultural producers. We can see now that the industry does seem to be coming around. Even the National Farmers' Federation has said there may be a need for pause over the northern summer. So I can only encourage the government to get its act together and to support the legislation before the chamber today.