Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Regional Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Georgiou, for your question. As a Western Australian senator, you know too well the value that the sheep export industry provides to your state: $250 million. Ninety per cent of the live sheep trade leaves Western Australia, employing 10,000 Australians through that industry. We know that there have been difficulties within the industry, and it is why the minister for agriculture commissioned both the McCarthy and the Moss reviews to look at the regulatory issues and, indeed, how we can sustainably ensure that this industry delivers not just the protein that is required by the Middle East nations who seek to purchase these sheep—Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Jordan, Israel and Malaysia, totalling nearly two million head a year—but, indeed, to ensure that that is done sustainably, and that means ensuring the highest level of animal welfare standards. We have been unashamedly putting those regulations in place as those reviews have been handed down. As you will see, we will now have an independent observer on each and every ship that leaves Freo over coming months carrying live sheep trade to the Middle East. To ensure that the department, as the regulator, is well versed—