Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, I'm not going to continue on video games, because I'm going to continue on the other topic that's of great interest to me—perhaps not quite as good a news story, but one that is very important to my home state of WA, and that is how bad this Labor government and the state Labor government are for the bush. It really is disgraceful that we have a Labor government in Canberra seeking to shut down the great Western Australian sheep industry. Australia and Western Australia rode on the sheep's back not that many decades ago, and now we have a federal Labor government that is hell-bent on closing down the live-export component of the trade which feeds directly into the overall economic viability of the sheep industry, not just in my home state of WA but over the entire country.

And what's this based on? This is based upon, supposedly, the government's claim that somehow the industry has 'lost its social licence', whatever that means.

Yet, let's look at the ABC Vote Compass. I'm not sure anyone in this place would say that the ABC Vote Compass is massively leaning our way. What percentage of respondents on ABC Vote Compass said they voted on animal welfare issues? Anyone want to guess? How about zero per cent—that's the level of interest from the Australian people that was expressed on the ABC's own Vote Compass as to this industry. Now, we've seen surveys from respected bodies—funded by the industry body LiveCorp, but independent surveys—that show that only 35 per cent of Australians actually want to stop the trade, and that is on the basis of a lot of misinformation in the public domain.