Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

Under the Acts Interpretation Act, where funds are provided by the research and development area of government, and under the Meat and Live-stock Industry Act, any new funding agreement between the government and LiveCorp has to be tabled in parliament within 14 sitting days of the date on which the funding agreement becomes operational. Tucked away in the millions of documents that are tabled in this chamber every year I found this particular reference to the late tabling of the statutory funding agreement which commenced on 1 July 2010. It should have been reported to parliament within 14 days after that or after parliament resuming. It was not. Therefore, the Acts Interpretation Act requires that the minister must explain to the Senate why it was late.

From documents tabled I notice that, on 22 July 2010, the department advised Senator Ludwig, the minister for LiveCorp, that he should have tabled this statutory funding agreement within 14 days of its commencement on 1 July 2010. On 22 July 2011, more than a year later, the advice had not been given to this parliament, in accordance with the accountability arrangements. So Senator Ludwig, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the minister who has absolutely bungled the live export trade in Australia, wrote to the President on behalf of the Senate, saying, 'Here's a letter explaining the delay,' and he attached the letter from the deputy secretary. No other explanation is given. There is no I beg your pardon, no apology and no explanation of why it has taken this government more than 13 months after the document should have been tabled to table it.

If you have a look at these two letters, Mr Acting Deputy President, you will see they are only very short. They are stuck away in amongst the myriad documents that are tabled in this chamber. Why would Minister Ludwig not have tabled this statutory funding agreement? This is the funding agreement through which the government gives LiveCorp money, which joins with money from the industry, to allow LiveCorp to do its work. If you have a look at the statutory funding agreement, which was eventually tabled 13 months late, you will see all through it a requirement for the minister to consult with LiveCorp and for LiveCorp to consult with the minister and for LiveCorp to take instructions from the minister.

If you look through LiveCorp's website, and I encourage people to do that, you will see that, back in December last year and in January this year, LiveCorp were raising issues about dealing with cattle in Indonesia. They had implemented a number of programs and, as required by this agreement, they had clearly been discussing this with the minister. Time will not allow me to develop this so that people can fully understand but I will simply put it this way: the minister should have been aware of what was happening in Indonesia because LiveCorp was, and I am sure LiveCorp were telling the minister. But he did not do anything about it. He did not table these documents, and one would suspect that perhaps there was a reason why he did not want these documents tabled. Maybe he did not want parliament or the Australian general public to know how inefficient he had been as well as how stupid in his overall administration of the live export trade.

These documents are not a sufficient excuse. They beg the question as to why the minister did not table them in the last 13 months, and it leaves in the mind of many people a suspicion that perhaps the minister had something to hide, that perhaps he knew about all of this before the Four Cornersprogram and that perhaps he might stand condemned for his inefficiency in not dealing with this matter properly.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Macdonald, your time has expired.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This document is the statutory funding agreement I was talking about in relation to those previous two documents. The previous two documents included the letter from Senator Ludwig sending in the statutory funding agreement, just 13 months late.

Looking at these dates, as well, the agreement came into operation on 1 July 2010. Under the law Senator Ludwig should have tabled that statutory funding agreement by 14 or 15 July 2010. On 22 July 2011, which is well over 12 months later, the department eventually sent a letter to the minister saying, 'Oh, this should have been tabled, and it has not been.' That is 22 July 2011. It then takes the minister until 29 August—that is, almost 40 days after that letter was sent by the department—for the minister to then send the statutory funding agreement to the parliament along with a heap of other documents that are tabled here every day. One might wonder what took the minister 40 days to pass on the department's advice that the statutory funding agreement should have been tabled 13 months previously. Why did it take him that long?

If senators cast their minds back they will find that it was in this period of time that Senator Ludwig was embroiled in a great debate with the left wing of his party, with GetUp! and with Animals Australia on the issues following the Four Corners investigation into the live export trade. But the Four Corners explanation and investigation were not anything new to the minister, as the documents will show if you go to the LiveCorp web page, as I have—I have them printed out here but time will not allow me to go through all of these press releases by LiveCorp back in May and before that in January dealing with all of the issues relating to the way animals are dealt with in Indonesian abattoirs. One might think that with all of that work by LiveCorp, with their requirement to regularly consult with the minister, why was the minister not aware of this before the Four Corners program? In fact I would suggest to you—and I would like to hear from the minister someday—that the minister was aware of it, but he chose not to action the work that LiveCorp had already done. It was only after the Four Corners program came on and Get Up! and the ultraleft wing of the Labor Party and the Greens political party all created this huge media ruction about the live export trade and the alleged cruelty that the minister suddenly took action.

When he took action he did the right thing, in the first instance. He did what LiveCorp had been asking him to do in their corporate plan, which he had received several months before that. He banned exports to those abattoirs that were proved to be killing Australian cattle wrongly. That was the right decision. I do not think anyone could object to that. But then five or six days later, under pressure from the left wing of the Labor Party, the Greens political party, GetUp! and all of the other people who want to shut down Australia's industries, particularly the northern beef cattle industry, the minister then made this blanket ban and in so doing destroyed the lives and livelihoods of so many fellow Australians who had sunk their whole lives and their life savings into the industry.

I think there are some things in these documents and in the issues I have raised tonight that really do require an answer from the minister. People have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, as a result of his decision. It seems to me that they need have lost nothing had the minister taken action back before the Four Corners program when the minister knew or should have known about these issues. He should have taken some action at that time. I await the minister's explanation. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.