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

I too rise to take note, and I will focus mainly on the answer to my question to Minister Watt. Before I do, I'm going—as I usually have to in this place—to correct the propaganda and misinformation from those opposite with the truth about wages under the previous Liberal government. Real wages went up; until the COVID pandemic struck, real wages actually went up under the coalition government. And real wages are plummeting under this Labor government. They're plummeting in the face of a high inflation rate. That is the truth and the Australian people should know it, regardless of what those opposite say time and time again. It's misinformation and it's propaganda.

My question was about my home state of Western Australia, particularly about the agriculture industry—which I hold very dear—and the sheep industry, which I have been a part of through our family farm. I mentioned a number of communities in Western Australia. I talked about Wagin in Cranbook. I talked about Kojonup, Katanning, Beverley. I talked about Williams and Darkan and there are so many more that I could name. Towns, families, farming families, family owned businesses that are having their future threatened directly by this Labor government.

I asked about the flights from Western Australia because this minister, this government, have said, 'Oh, well, but the industry can transition to chilled and box meat.' Not if the flights aren't there. This chilled and boxed meat has to go out in the belly of an aircraft. If the flights aren't there to the Middle East, it can't happen. It's not a realistic transition pathway for the industry. In fact, if you know anything about this industry, which clearly this minister doesn't, you would know that the nature of the industry, the time you turn off stock in Western Australia is very different to any other state, which is why the live export market by ship is so important to the industry in Western Australia and so important to those regional communities I have talked about today.

Minister Watt talked about how they took it to an election—well, to two elections. They did, but let's just go through that. The first election they lost, so they can't justify anything on the basis of the first election. The second election, they kept this policy extraordinarily quiet. The local regional newspaper in my home state of Western Australia asked every Western Australian MP and senator from my home state of Western Australia what their position was on the phase-out. Silence. They didn't get one answer in response. They were ordered from headquarters not to respond. In fact, the now minister—the shadow minister at the time—kept silent on the issue. I can show you the headlines. The media were writing articles saying, 'Is Labor still opposed to the live export trade?' We don't know. Minister, tell us.

The only reason it came out during the last election campaign was because at Labor campaign headquarters a junior staffer got a survey from an animal rights group which had a check-the-box: Do you support the ban on live export of sheep? That box was checked and that's how the policy actually came into the public domain. Until then, radio silence from the Labor Party. You've got no mandate for this policy. You have no mandate to take the livelihoods of Western Australian sheep producers, Western Australian truckies, Western Australian vets, Western Australian stockies. You don't have any right to take their livelihoods away from them. The minister for agriculture stood up in this place and tried to defend the indefensible, tried to defend a policy which so directly attacks the heart of the sheep industry. Not that long ago Australia rode on the back of the sheep industry. If we had not had a sheep industry in the sixties and seventies, there would have been no Australian economy. So to have a Labor government attacking that industry in this way is a disgrace.