Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I have said in every single meeting that I've had with representatives of sheep producers and the whole sheep industry supply chain in Western Australia that this is a policy that the government took to an election not just once but twice. We didn't win the election the first time we took this policy to an election, but we did the second time. I think it's important that governments keep their promises, and that's what we're doing. What you are asking us to do is to break an election commitment, and we're not going to do that.

The question was: why are we doing this? That is why we are doing this; we are implementing an election commitment that we were voted in to deliver, and that's what we're doing. But we are going to do it in an orderly way, in consultation with the industry. I look forward to receiving the panel's recommendation about how and in what way we should implement this policy.