Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present two ministerial statements relating to:

David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the Defence Security Authority vetting report.

This is a very, very important report. It is a report by the Inspector-General of Intelli­gence and Security commissioned by the Prime Minister. In March 2010, whistleblow­ers wrote to three government ministers through their local Labor member, the former member for Forde in Queensland. They set out a pattern of conduct in the granting and administration of security vetting that involved a number of things, including bullying and harassment. They also raised the issue of corrupted vetting practices.

Defence's response and the response of the members of parliament was to simply ignore them. But worse still the Defence report went on to treat them as if they were cranks in a most arrogant and offhand way. It was not until the Lateline program in May 2011 raised these issues that the whistleblowers were taken seriously and the Defence administrators and, indeed, those people higher up the chain were brought to any form of account to set out what had been going on. We now know that more than 20,000 security vettings have been compromised—that is, people who work in the Prime Minister's office, people who work with the Minister for Defence, people who guard bases. And let us not forget what happened with respect to the terrorism plot over Holsworthy. These compromised vettings include people who guard embassies, embassies that can be troubled in terms of their current and previous political histories. Defence Minister Smith says that he only heard about this in May 2011. I want him to clearly state that he did not have on his desk in any other shape or form any knowledge of this matter until that time. If he did, he is complicit in what is a shocking scandal of maladministration in a very important area that the public needs to have some confidence in as it goes to the government's credibility.

The Secretary of Defence, when this was raised with him in estimates, slapped it down, flicked it away and said that he was totally oblivious to the significance of the issue. He said on the record that a flaw in the data input did not necessarily lead to a flaw in the security clearance. We now know that the flaws in the clearances from Defence went all the way into the ASIO system. This department's maladministration not only corrupted its own processes but also, through the electronic transfer, corrupted the ASIO understanding and capacity to review who is who out there doing sensitive and important security based jobs. There are 5,000 top-secret security clearances that have been compromised. The simple question that we all must ask is: who is accountable? Who is responsible? There is nobody that this government has pointed to as being respon­sible. It is always a review, adverse findings and 'we'll fix it now'. Nobody is accountable. This is an absolute disgrace.

These whistleblowers were treated with contempt. They have now received the Inspector-General's report. The first line of that report is that there should be an ackno­wledgement that what the whistleblowers said from day one was true and correct. We owe them a debt of gratitude. The parliament owes these three brave people a great debt of gratitude for coming forward in the circum­stances. They were derided and treated as cranks. Indeed, when I first raised this issue in estimates I was told in no uncertain terms there were no workarounds; there were no compromised security vets. We now know that what I was told in estimates was completely and utterly wrong. If ever you want to see the smoking gun of a group of officials with no idea what had been going on, have a look at the questions and answers on this matter in the Senate estimates of last May. The evidence has been overwhelming that there has been endemic, entrenched maladministration.

But the point that I want to finish on is the inspector-general's report. It is damning, it is a scandal, it is a disgrace—but nobody is accountable. Not only have these three good citizens been treated appallingly but also nobody has been brought to account. This is the way this government bumbles and fumb­les and incompetently manages very import­ant and sensitive security matters in this country. It is an absolute art form in incom­petence. Of course, the minister says, 'Oh no, I know I did not know anything about it,' yet three of his colleagues were told 12 months before. I was told at Senate estimates, 'Oh no, Senator, you've got that wrong.'

The Prime Minister was asked to commission this report because these three might have been in breach of the law disclos­ing what they disclosed. The inspector-general has the power of a royal commis­sioner. The Prime Minister had to convene this review and, as I say, it is damning. The Black report that we have had in Defence recently says there is a crisis in accounta­bility in the Department of Defence. I must say I think it is going to improve with the new secretary and the CDF. But somebody, surely, must be accountable for this. This has cost a lot of money. People have been ignored in circumstances where alarm bells seriously should have gone off. This report makes fascinating reading as to a level of incompetence that is Olympic gold medal class.

I seriously cannot believe that this is not front-page news on most newspapers. There are 5,000 top secret security vets that have been compromised. Several thousand of them have been worked through, but we are two or three or four years away from resolving what has gone on here. It beggars belief, and the minister was on television last night saying, 'Look, people have made mist­akes and we all bat on.' It is just appalling and it fits wholly and solely into the track record and the performance standards of this government. It is just a disgrace.

Question agreed to.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the ministerial statement on live animal exports.

I remember 8 June quite vividly. It was one of those moments that had a significant effect not only on the Territory but also on the cattle industry and on regional and rural Australia. We will always remember where we were when we heard the message from the Prime Minister that the live cattle trade to Indonesia was being ceased. The only person I saw nodding their head in support was the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Henderson, as he stood next to the Prime Minister.

We have moved on since then and we should have learnt a lot from that since it was not only the cessation of the trade but also the cessation of business in Indonesia. I was in Indonesia a very short time later. It was very distressing to walk around the markets and speak to the people who did business with Australia. They were very charitable and kind to me personally, but they were really quite miffed and they were looking for some explanation about what they had done to so offend us. They thought that perhaps there was something they did not understand about our culture that made us respond in this way and, out of the blue, put our foot on the throat of a vital supply of food to the people of Indonesia.

It has impacted on not only the relationships we have with business and with the people of Indonesia but also, most importantly, the relationship we have with the government of Indonesia. The govern­ment of Indonesia have responded in a number of ways, and I think they have responded quite correctly, as would any nation that suddenly had their food security threatened. It does not matter what you think about live cattle or what you think about animal welfare. The simple issue, from the perspective of the Indonesian government, is that they had so many people relying on a source of protein that had for many years been a constant supply. The trade had built up over time and Indonesia and Indonesians relied on it seasonally for protein. They also relied on it for jobs and for part of their economy, but it was absolutely essential and they could rely on it. The relationship with Indonesia now is such that they can no longer rely on it and they have responded. They have said, 'We now need to be independent.' You cannot blame them. They have to feed their people. They need to be completely independent of others, particu­larly the unreliable source that Australia sadly has become. We have gone from being a completely reliable country to a sovereign risk as far as Indonesia is concerned.

You wonder whether we have really learnt anything from that. The government has been through a bit of a hard trot. Every now and again you do get a bit of a slapping in this game and you get it completely and utterly wrong. We have already discussed in this place just how badly the government got it wrong and the impacts on animal production in Australia and the impacts on our relationship with Indonesia.

The government then moved with all its wisdom to ensure that some of the animal welfare concerns extended to the Middle East. Of course, they are the sorts of things we should be doing. I accept the argument that this is not only about protecting animals but about protecting our industry, but you would have thought the government would have understood and learnt something from that. So, when we announced the supply chain assurance processes to go to the Middle East, one would have thought you would have ensured you did the only thing we did not do the first time around with the cattle debacle. The worst thing in Indonesia was that they were the last people to know. Nobody picked the phone up and rang Indonesia. So, in Minister Ludwig's office or in the Prime Minister's office, perhaps this is time for a 'note to self' on the fridge: 'Next time you are going to do something ugly with someone's trade, you should probably give them a ring.' It is pretty ABC stuff. But, sadly, that does not seem to have been the case.

When we were introducing the new supply chain assurance scheme, they did not really talk to people in the Middle East about it. So they now have to suddenly do a bit of an emergency trade mission over there to ensure that people have some understanding. The DAFF Middle East importers document actually says that there is no requirement for governments to undertake any action to implement the new arrangement. I mean, talk about offensive! It is a complete fallacy that, in the absence of government-to-government communications, you can implement a comprehensive and complex supply chain assurance scheme. It is difficult enough dealing with it in our own country, let alone over in the Middle East. It is simply lunacy to imagine that a supply chain assurance scheme can be effectively rolled out without the assistance of government. This level of misunderstanding almost beggars belief.

I know that the Greens are very keen, as I am, on ensuring that we successfully roll out mechanisms to ensure that people can eat Australian animal protein in a manner that is consistent with Australian standards and the way we wish those animals to be treated. But we are never going to get there unless we have a decent relationship with the countries we trade with. What we generally call 'the Middle East' is dozens of countries with vastly different cultures and vastly different circumstances in terms of infrastructure. This infrastructure is, most of the time, essential to the principles of animal handling. We need animal yards, but some people do not even have them. There are very different circumstances.

But, in the rolling out of this, there has been an assumption that you can put one rigid system into place, almost overnight, and somehow it is going to be implemented by a whole range of different countries. What this sounds like to me is that we are setting industry up to fail. With all our knowledge of the appalling stuff up we made of the live cattle trade and the absolutely appalling impact it had on the men and women whose lives and futures depend on the live cattle trade in Indonesia, even after that outrageous mistake this government made, how can they possibly stand in front of the Australian people and say that they are in any sense competent when, immediately after that, when they have to do the same thing again, the first thing they do is say: 'We don't really need to talk to the government we trade with; we're just going to make this a dictate and off we go.'

We know that the implementation of a through-chain supply assurance system is a very complex and difficult thing to do. But what this government has done is decide that there will be an arbitrary date at the end of the system. And the system does not end because it is finished; it does not end because the infrastructure is there; it does not end because we have completed the supply chain assurance. It ends simply because this government has been stupid enough to put an arbitrary date on it. They say, 'Here is the arbitrary date and, if you don't meet that date, it's all over.' I am not necessarily saying it should be endless. But given the complex­ity of the systems and the complexity of the cultures, given the disrespect from this government about their approach to the implementation of a series of standards from Australia into another country, given the lessons that should have been learnt through the appalling mistakes of the destruction of the live cattle trade from Northern Australia into Indonesia, one would have thought it would now be a case of 'forewarned is forearmed'.

But it is not so. Again, not only have we damaged our relationship with the government of Indonesia and the business people of Indonesia—that is the legacy—but we have moved to ensuring that the smarts of Senator Ludwig's department will be to say: 'We've done it to that country. We haven't even fixed it yet. We're going to move on and destroy trade in another country by setting arbitrary limits.' They do not recognise the differences in culture and they do not engage with the other government about ensuring it understands and assists with the implementation of what is probably one of the most complex assurance systems you can design. This is setting the industry up for complete failure. (Time expired)

Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the ministerial statement on the live export trade. It is a brief statement and lacks the detail that I think the issue warrants, but it certainly has some informative issues that compound the concerns that so many Australians have with regard to how Australia is managing this issue. The delegation that the minister accompanied to the Middle East was actually made up of Australian industry representa­tives and exporters to these markets. When you consider that, in the second paragraph of the statement, the minister talks about the issue of international standards to ensure animals are being treated in line with animal welfare requirements, it is of concern that he took no people from the animal rights sector to the Middle East but just went with industry representatives. That speaks volumes, I think, about the mismanagement this government brings to this issue. I also note that they did not take any union representatives. The Australian Meat Indust­ry Employees Union have done a great deal of work in this, and I raise that because in the first paragraph of the minister's statement he talked about jobs, hardworking families and the importance of rural and regional communities. But, again, what we are seeing here is a failure to look at the benefits that can come from having more processing of the meat in Australia.

What is also worth looking at is what this delegation actually did on their visit. I understand they visited feedlots and abattoirs, but it does not say that the delega­tion actually saw the animals being slaught­ered. So you have to ask the question: if this is about lifting the standards of how animal welfare issues are managed in Australia's export trade, how do you make a judgment on the level of cruelty if you do not see how the animals are slaughtered? So again we see a major flaw in the minister's statement, as well as in how the delegation's visit was conducted.

Overall, what this ministerial statement does is once again underline that the government has missed the opportunity to end the live export trade. This is how we could have dealt, in a responsible way, with the issue of the cruelty these animals suffer and also with boosting jobs, particularly in regional areas. We know that so many animals die when they are exported. They undergo extreme suffering, both in the transport to these countries and in the actual process of slaughter.

I think all members in this place, while we may have our disagreements, are aware of the huge public distress when the ABC screened the Four Corners program about the overseas live export trade. I continue to get hundreds of emails about this issue, and interestingly just after midnight on New Year's Day I got a number of emails saying, 'Please in 2012 make banning live exports a key issue for the parliament where you work.'

The Greens' response to this ministerial statement is that, in terms of the response from the government, in essence, all we got was the Export Supply Chain Assurance System. This is no way to implement safeguards that can guarantee the humane transport and slaughter of animals in overseas markets. However, as the ESCA is the best that we have got, the Greens will certainly track the system very closely and we will be working to ensure that the meagre set of regulations that the government is putting in place are absolutely thoroughly followed.

I would like to move on to the other issue that I raised, the economics of the live export trade. This is where there has been a great deal of misinformation, and once again we see that the government has not been facing up to how this issue plays out, particularly for regional communities. At the end of the day, in so many communities, particularly in Northern Australia, they have seen their abattoirs shut and hundreds of jobs have been lost in so many local centres.

For a government that makes out that it is a government of jobs, that it is a party about jobs for ordinary people, this is where they have failed enormously. Much of the politics around the live export industry relies on arguments that come from reports that are very loaded and, I would argue, quite misleading. In 2006, Hassall & Associates released The live export industry: value, outlook and contribution to the economy. This was commissioned by the meat and livestock association and LiveCorp and was released in July 2006. When you look at the modelling that the Hassall report has relied on, it is questionable as to where they have extrapolated their figures from.

The modelling in the Hassall report has an average salary of more than $76,000 per employee for people in this industry, whereas the ABS national input-output table for 2006-07 has $60,000 per full-time equivalent employee overall, and consider­ably less for the agricultural sector. Those figures are significant because when they are extrapolated we end up with a very inflated economic benefit from this industry that really does now need to be questioned. Again, I urge members to look at some of the work that the AMIEU has undertaken.

Senator Williams interjecting—

I note that interjection at that point. It is a union that is working hard for its members and for region­al Australia to create more jobs in an area where the government is failing enormously.

Studies conducted on behalf of the live export industry have as their foundation of premise that the live export trade operates in a different market or a different segment of the market to the meat processing industry. This whole narrative has been developed around the industry as a way to try and separate out this whole problem that regional Australia is faced with—that they have been losing out as the export industry has grown over the past decade. That whole premise is what we want to challenge.

Many of the predictions on stock price implications lack transparency and have questionable assumptions that are used to justify them. I believe that they have been created because those in the live export trade, who are obviously promoting this industry, would know that if the comparison were made with processing meat in this country then the so-called economic benefits of the live export trade would not stack up. So we have many fallacies here. Again I acknowledge that on this delegation it probably was not the key priority of the minister and he has presented it very much in terms of the animal welfare concerns. How­ever, on that issue would I argue he failed because nobody from the animal welfare sector accompanied him on that delegation, and when it comes to the issue of jobs the fudge that has become part of how the Labor government handles this continues.

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

All in Australia want to ensure that in our live cattle export industry we put the wellbeing of animals to the forefront. We also want to make sure that Australia continues to provide employment in those areas in Australia that rely on the live cattle export. This attitude of the industry and, I think, all Australians is well exemplified in the passage quoted in the minister's ministerial statement from Mr Andrew Ogilvie, the President of the Cattle Council of Australia, when he said:

The CCA stands committed to working with Government and industry in assuring the welfare of Australian livestock, while maintaining a sustainable live export industry.

He said the export supply chain assurance system would assist in that.

It is an essential industry. It is very important to Northern Australia and to North Queensland, which I represent in this parlia­ment and look after on behalf of the federal opposition. It is perhaps the biggest non-mining industry in the north, and that is why the north was so devastated by the stupidity of Senator Ludwig in succumbing to an issue brought by a very vocal minority group. I do not attribute any mischief to them; they believe what they say, and I accept that. I do not think they follow the whole issue. Unfortunately, a government that relies on a hotchpotch of Independents to keep it in power reacts badly to these day-long crises. Senator Ludwig was completely incapable of dealing with the matter. He made the right decision, I might say, after seeing the Four Corners report: he put a temporary ban on. He was then pressured by the left of his party, the Greens and the animal welfare people, to make it a permanent ban and, in doing so, destroyed the livelihoods of many Australians, particularly those in Northern Australia.

There is not a lot of time, and I want to share the balance of the available time with my colleague from Western Australia Senator Eggleston, who also represents many of those working families in the Kimberley and the north of Western Australia who were devastated by the actions of the Gillard government. But I want to point out a couple of other issues in the limited time available to me. This statement is interesting. If you have a look at it, you see it is a statement by the 'Minister Assisting on Queensland Floods Recovery, Senator the Hon. Joe Ludwig', and nothing else. Perhaps I am the first one to break that Senator Ludwig has lost his portfolio of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. One would have thought that, if he were still that minister—and who knows what happens in the Gillard govern­ment, where ministers and leaders change by the hour—a statement on live cattle export would be issued by the minister for agriculture, fisheries and forestry. I wonder what the Minister Assisting on Queensland Floods Recovery has to do with the live cattle export from, effectively, Northern Australia. That in itself is interesting.

I appreciate that the Queensland Premier, in the throes of an election campaign, always thinks she gets value from being involved in natural calamities like floods and cyclones. I notice our Queensland Premier is out doing what she did a year ago: fronting the TVs and sort of acting as an emergency services director, seeking to again this year, as she did last year, attract votes because she is an on-the-spot Premier. I might say to Premier Bligh: I think that, if Queenslanders admired you last year, they have woken up to how a lot of your actions are more directed to vote winning and getting in the way of the emergency services personnel, who really have better things to do than look after the Queensland Premier involving herself in what are really professional emergency services matters.

I am pleased to see that at least the Minister Assisting on Queensland Floods Recovery has issued a media release on this, but I do question his competence in dealing with anything related to the live cattle export when we compare it with the fiasco that resulted from his last involvement in this area.

Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like Senator Macdonald, I am somewhat intrigued by the title that Senator Ludwig now has as the Minister Assisting on Queensland Floods Recovery. I must say: if he is no longer the minister for agriculture, few tears will be shed in the Kimberley and Pilbara areas of Western Australia, where the consequences of the abrupt termination of the live cattle export trade to Indonesia had catastrophic economic effects and caused enormous hardship. It was not only in the Kimberley and Pilbara; it also did a lot of damage to our relationship with Indonesia because of the lack of consultation.

I gather Senator Ludwig has been on a trip, this time to the Middle East, to discuss live cattle exports there. The trade to the Middle East is worth $200 million per annum. There has been a deadline set for export accreditation by 29 February. If this is not met, the trade will grind to a halt. Surely, I ask the Senate, we could not be facing a repetition of the Indonesia fiasco when the trade was abruptly terminated. But there are four problems that I see in Senator Ludwig's supply chain assurance statement.

Firstly there is the absence of government-to-government discussions, which was a key failure in the government's dealings with Indonesia. Secondly, there is a very short time frame before this agreement is supposed to be in place. It is supposed to be in place by 29 February. It is very difficult to see that, given the complexities of dealing with people in the Middle East, that time frame will be met, so this live cattle export trade to the Middle East must also be in some jeopardy. Thirdly, the market systems are unregulated in the Middle East and the operators there are unlikely, I think, to agree to some of the Australian regulator's dema­nds, such as the tabling of contract details and so on. They are more likely to just pull out of the trade and that will mean a loss of our market share.

As I said, the minister has set an arbitrary implementation date of 29 February—a bit imperious when dealing with people in the Middle East. Arabs, like the Indonesians, like to take time in making their business decisions. So we are left in a situation where we must wait and see what happens. I hope that we are not going to see a repetition of the disastrous consequences which followed the decision to cease the live cattle trade to Indonesia—consequences which in the Pilbara and the Kimberley in particular were very severe indeed. As I said earlier, the minister's decision, without consultation with the Indonesian government, did immense damage to our relationship with Indonesia, and that will take a very long time to repair.

Question agreed to.