Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's been fascinating to sit and listen to Senator Brockman and his obvious complete and utter lack of understanding of what's going on here, but I'll come to that. Let me first say that farmers are the backbone of our agricultural industry, and we do listen and engage with the industry. In response to the fanciful commentary that no-one invited went to meet with the farmers, I had a quick poll around this side of the chamber; no-one was invited. When did we see that happen before? That might have been the last time that Senator McKenzie rallied a bunch of farmers here and told them that invitations had been provided to various ministers. I also checked with those ministers. Invitations hadn't been provided. Making up stuff like this is just so ridiculous. It's so desperate.

Let me just provide a little fact for those opposite. They don't really like facts these days. They seem to have departed from that somewhat. In 2014-15, 2.1 million sheep were exported. Who was in government then? I think that was you lot. Then, in 2021-22, that number had dropped to 450,000 sheep exported. That seems like quite a significant drop under the timeframe of those opposite, the Liberal-National government. Yet Senator Brockman stands there quite cheerfully and blames all the reduction in those exports on us.

When the Libs and the Nats stand up and say that this is all shock, horror and amazement, let's just be clear. There are no surprises here. The Labor Party went to the last two elections committing to phase out live sheep exports by sea. We didn't hide it. We were very clear and very honest about what we were going to do. And, when we got into government, that's exactly what we did.

I also refer to Senator Brockman's entertaining comments that ending live sheep exports would lead to the closure of sheep processing. Where to start? Live sheep are, not to put too fine a point on it, live, right? So they're not going to the abattoirs. They're not going through processing. Live sheep that are not exported stay here and can be processed, right? So, yes, let's keep the sheep. Let's keep them in Australia. Let's process them here. Let's process them here for our market, or we can process them here and export them—because Senator Brockman seems to have misunderstood the whole idea of live sheep exports. It's not a sheep export ban; it is a live sheep export ban.

I would also draw the senator's attention—in fact, the whole chamber's attention—to the fact that there are two WA abattoirs and processors that I know of that are expanding their operations. There's an increasing sheep supply. What they're seeing as the move is happening is that there's more processing. As part of the move to not exporting live sheep by sea, they are seeing more sheep to process. So they are ramping up their businesses. They are investing in their businesses to process those sheep. In fact, one of them is adding an entire extra shift and 200 new jobs. The other one has invested $50 million in a cold storage as part of its expansion because it sees the industry growing. They see greater opportunities for them to take those sheep that are no longer going to be exported and to process them here.

But let's be clear—there's $107 million on the table and four years to make the transition. It looks like those abattoirs in Senator Brockman's home state of WA are doing pretty well. They are looking at the opportunities here and making the most of them. I would suggest that those opposite stop trying to politicise this issue and stop using the farmers for their own political pointscoring and get on board with supporting them. That transition in the industry is going to make a difference. There are going to be more jobs in WA, and there are going to be more opportunities.