Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Criminal Code Amendment (Agricultural Protection) Bill 2019. The Morrison government is committed to keeping Australian farmers and their families safe and allowing them to go about their business without harassment and invasion of their property. Farmers and primary producers are the backbone of our economy and incredibly important to our regional communities, including in my own state of Tasmania.

As a government, we are backing our farmers through major investments in infrastructure, delivering trade agreements which open up new markets for our farmers' produce, delivering the multibillion-dollar Future Drought Fund to secure our farmers' future and many other investments to support farmers to grow their business. Our government has a plan to lift agriculture, fisheries and forestry to a $100 billion industry by the year 2030. In my own state of Tasmania, we have a significant role to play in achieving that aim, and that's why we are investing $100 million for new irrigation schemes, which will dramatically increase the productivity of large areas of agricultural land.

As a nation, we have the best farmers in the world, which is why we have the best produce, the best meat and the best seafood in the world coming from Australia. But it's never easy for our farmers, with the challenges of drought, flood and fire and the variables of global market conditions. That's why the last thing our farmers need is law-breaking activists making it harder for them to do their job.

Unfortunately, in recent years we've seen a disturbing trend of radical activist groups choosing to organise and carry out trespass onto agricultural properties, chaining themselves to farming equipment and doing whatever they can to disrupt the lawful business of farmers and producers. For some reason, certain groups of people who choose not to eat meat believe that their dietary choices give them a moral superiority and the right to trespass on agricultural property and steal livestock in an attempt to convert all of us to a vegetarian diet.

The bill which we are debating today introduces new offences for the incitement, via carrier service, of trespass, property damage or theft on agricultural land. The bill introduces serious criminal penalties to ensure that farmers and their families are protected, with offenders facing up to five years imprisonment if they break these laws.

The vast majority of Australians—and, I hope, the vast majority of those in this Senate chamber—would agree that farmers should be protected from trespass, property damage, property theft and biosecurity threats which can result from deliberate, organised invasions of their properties. It's clear that these actions are not just the result of a couple of local activists banding together and deciding to cause trouble at their nearest farm. They are organised activities, by groups who are deliberately and methodically targeting farmers in the meat and livestock industries.

A recent example of this was the publication of the names and addresses of farmers by the protest group Aussie Farms in a deliberate attempt to incite trespass and harassment which appalled fair-minded Australians. This campaign directly targeted not just the farmer or property owner but also their families and children, who often live at the same address. Imagine, just for a moment, being a farmer and having to explain to your children that your name and address have been published online and groups of strangers are intending to break onto your property. Imagine just how traumatic and invasive that must be for those families, whose livelihood is dependent on their farming businesses.

But this isn't just an imaginary hypothetical. This sort of terror has occurred on our farmers' properties. For example, Australian dairy farmers have reported that farmers are scared to leave their elderly parents at home to take care of the farm in case of activist incursions on their property. It's an appalling situation that, in a country where we have free speech, where we have the right to protest and where we have a multitude of media and social media avenues to express views about these issues and engage in dignified debate, these arrogant, entitled activists feel the need to resort to trespass and break-ins which, quite understandably, cause fear and concern among people's families and children who live on the property.

The overwhelming majority of Australians, including those in my own state of Tasmania, are disgusted with this behaviour, and they welcome the government's commitment to strengthen laws to stop these actions. There are many areas of the law where it is an offence to incite or organise criminal behaviour, and it is appropriate that we respond to clear evidence of organised criminal activity by formulating laws that target those who are responsible, and that is what this bill we are debating today is seeking to do. Having listened to hours of contributions from activists during the hearings of the Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, which inquired into this bill, about why they didn't support the bill, I must say that I found these arguments remarkably thin. We were told consistently by activists that existing state laws against trespass are already adequate. Indeed, the contributions we've had from the Greens today have reiterated the view of their party—that they think state laws are already adequate and are already targeting the risk of this behaviour.

In what sense are these laws adequate, when we've seen a targeted escalation of farm trespass activity as a result of publishing this sort of information online? They're clearly not adequate to deter activists from farm invasion, and existing laws clearly do nothing to stop activist groups from using the internet and social media to coordinate trespass and invasion of farm property. Furthermore, it's an incredibly self-serving argument for activists to say that a law that they are prepared to break is adequate and that a tougher law is no longer required.

A similarly self-serving argument put forward by activist groups that are opposed to this bill is that the invasion of farms is justified for animal welfare reasons. Everyone deplores the illegal mistreatment of any animal, whether it's a pet, a wild animal or livestock. That's why we have strong laws in this country, both state and federal, governing the treatment of animals and livestock, and it's why there are appropriate authorities to enforce those laws and, when necessary, prosecute breaches. However, that does not mean that individuals with a personal aversion to eating meat have the right to carry out vigilante-style invasions of farms in an attempt to get their point across, in an attempt to convince the Australian people that they shouldn't be eating meat.

The rule of law dictates that if you suspect that a crime is being committed then you report it to the appropriate authority. If you believe your neighbour is breaking the law, do you dial 000 and report it to the police and allow the appropriately resourced authorities to handle the situation in a lawful way, or do you break into your neighbour's house to gather evidence for yourself or indeed provide some sort of determination of your own of a personal penalty against your neighbour on the basis of what they're doing? According to the logic of many of the activist groups that presented to the Senate committee, you should just kick down the front door, film what's going on inside the house and liberate some of the property on the way out—which is what these activists are arguing that they should be rightfully allowed to do on farming properties.

One of the other very important issues to consider in relation to this bill—and this goes particularly to the issue of animal welfare, which was raised extensively while this bill was undergoing committee inquiry—is the biosecurity threat and the potential to introduce disease pathogens to livestock and food contaminants to the processing chain as a result of protest activity on agricultural lands. When you listen to the experts, there is absolutely no room for doubt that biosecurity failures have the potential to damage our economy and decimate farming businesses, if not entire industries. Modern biosecurity processing facilities of food and meat, as well as on farms, are extraordinarily comprehensive, and they need to be, because the risk of disease and contamination if these processes aren't in place is very real, as has been witnessed in many countries around the world when diseases have broken out on farming properties and have killed tens of millions of livestock, birds and fish. Such outbreaks, if they were to occur in Australia in one of our industries, could cost our economy billions of dollars and have significant adverse impacts on the livelihood of our farmers. Indeed, the Department of Agriculture confirms that entry of unauthorised people onto properties breaches on-farm biosecurity and increases the risk of animal-to-animal, animal-to-human and human-to-animal disease transmission, which is a threat to animals, farm workers and, quite frankly, trespassers as well; they're putting their own lives at risk.

This was supported by the Australian Veterinary Association, which told the recent Senate committee inquiry that its support for the bill is primarily based on its concern about the high risks to animal biosecurity and welfare that are involved with unauthorised entry by these activists. The Australian Veterinary Association also expressed concerns about diseases that are carried on shoes and clothing. These include foot-and-mouth disease, for example. Australian Dairy Farmers agree that foot-and-mouth disease is a significant concern, referring to research conducted by the CSIRO, which estimates that the cost of an outbreak to the Australian economy would be around $50 billion over 10 years.

Anyone who has visited a meat-processing facility would be familiar with the extent of biosecurity controls that need to be in place to protect against contaminants. I've certainly visited a meat-processing facility in my own state of Tasmania and I have firsthand experience of the types of controls that were in place to prevent biosecurity outbreaks: hand and foot washes not only when entering a facility from outside but also when moving from one room to another, depending on what is being done in each room; checks to ensure that you don't enter a facility if you've recently had certain illnesses or diseases—there's quite an extensive questionnaire that I recently had to fill in, detailing any foreign countries I might have been to or any illness I might have had, because, if you allow in some people that have been unwell or have visited certain foreign countries, again there is a risk that these people will bring a disease onto one of these properties—and pressurisation of certain rooms in these meat-processing facilities to ensure airborne contaminants don't flow in from outside when a door is opened. There are a number of extensive controls in place at these facilities to ensure the safety of the produce that is being processed. At the end of the day, it's because the Australian public will at some point be consuming this produce when it is in their meal as a nice steak dinner. We all think Australian people should have the right to know that the food that they're eating has been prepared in accordance with biosecurity standards.

Breaking into a property, cutting through fences, cutting locks and breaking into sheds clearly represent major breaches of proper biosecurity controls. I'm not convinced these activists, when breaking into, say, a meat-processing facility, are taking the time, in the dead of the night at 2 am, to make sure that their hands have been washed, that they're wearing gloves and that they have put on their hairnet. I seriously doubt this is happening. It is the height of hypocrisy for people professing to care deeply about animal welfare to potentially expose livestock to diseases which could wipe out millions of animals. What is the response of activist groups to these biosecurity concerns raised by experts such as the Australian Veterinary Association? They said that, when they break into farms, they wear overalls and foot coverings. If it wasn't so serious, it would be laughable just what an inadequate and insufficient response this is to a very real threat. Unfortunately, I just don't think your old pair of overalls and a couple of sets of gumboots are really going to cut it in terms of biosecurity.

Let's be very clear: people are perfectly entitled to choose not to eat meat if they want. They're entitled to encourage others not to eat meat—I don't suggest they make that attempt with me, because I love a good steak. But these people are not entitled to break into private property to steal livestock and to damage property or equipment and, in doing so, significantly threaten the livelihood of farmers, because they see that as the most effective way to push the views that they have about the meat industry onto everyday Australians. The people who organise and incite such criminal activity should be held to account by the law. Given the increasing frequency of such criminal actions, it is clear that our laws should be updated to ensure that this is the case, and that's what we're discussing here today.

The Criminal Code Amendment (Agricultural Protection) Bill 2019 is a necessary response to the threats and harms caused by incitement of activist trespass on agricultural land. I congratulate the Attorney-General for bringing forward this bill, and I'm proud to be part of the Morrison government which stands up for farmers and understands and respects the value of what farmers do for our country. I strongly urge the Senate to support the bill.