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

I thought we'd hit peak smugness and peak contempt for the agriculture industry from the Minister for Agriculture at 10 pm on Monday night. I thought we saw the peak level of contempt for the Australian agriculture sector, particularly the sheep industry of my home state of Western Australia, at 10 pm when Minister Watt and the government guillotined, through this place without inquiry, a bill banning a key segment of the sheep industry in Western Australia.

I thought that was peak contempt. But, sadly, for the many thousands of hardworking farmers, shearers, truckies, vets, stock agents and so many more along the supply chain, that level of contempt for the Western Australian agriculture sector specifically and the agriculture sector in general just keeps growing.

Minister Watt put out a tweet following that 'victory' on Monday night. The caption read: 'The Albanese government's commitment to end live sheep exports by sea is now law.' There's a picture, and there's only one way of describing this picture. and that is: the Minister for Agriculture indulging in the same cruelty porn as the animal activist groups. The animal activist groups' business model involves procuring pictures of animals suffering and using them to raise money. It didn't take much work for a farmer out there to use google to find out where else this particular picture had been used. Guess where it had been used? It was exactly the same picture that had been used on the website of the Animal Justice Party.

Sadly for Minister Watt, in a post about the ending of live sheep exports by sea, the picture he has chosen—the cruelty porn he has chosen—is a picture taken 11 years ago of sheep onboard a truck in Ballarat. What an extraordinary level of contempt shown by this minister for agriculture for the Western Australian sheep industry in particular but for agriculture as a whole. I will remind everyone that it was the Animal Justice Party that claimed credit both for the timing and the content of the decision to phase out live export in return for preferences at the Dunkley by-election. Minister Watt denied it. He said: 'No, no, no. I know nothing about any sort of preference deal.' But here we have Minister Watt using exactly the same picture as the Animal Justice Party to trumpet the destruction of a key part of the sheep industry in Western Australia.

But Minister Watt doesn't stop there. As a way of trying to mitigate the damage that he has done to the Western Australian sheep industry, he talks about the re-entry of Brazil into the boxed meat market. Sadly for Minister Watt, he just doesn't understand either the sheep industry or the scale that we are talking about. The Brazilian market at its peak was around 28 tonnes of sheepmeat. I can understand someone not being too au fait with the agriculture industry and not having a clue as to how many animals that represented, but anyone who has been involved in the industry for more than 10 minutes knows that that quantity could be put aboard three trucks. So Minister Watt is out there lauding the return of the Brazilian market, and it's the equivalent of three truckloads of lamb. The contempt and arrogance of this Labor government are extraordinary in terms of their thinking that they know better than our farmers what their agricultural systems should look like.

The sheep industry in Western Australia has done everything the government has asked of it. Mortalities are at record lows—in fact, lower than mortality rates in the paddock. Morbidity measures are being constantly checked: How are the animals performing? Are they putting on weight? Are they overpanting, demonstrating heat stress? There are independent observers on board the vessels. There are vets and stockies trained to understand what it means if animals are suffering. Not only do we do that on board the ship but we actually do that in our export destination markets. We improve animal welfare right round the world. That is why, not just in my home state of Western Australia but right across the agricultural sector of Australia, a red line in the sand was drawn. The government decided to cross it, aided and abetted by the Greens, but the agriculture sector in Western Australia will not give up the fight. The agriculture sector in WA will take this to the next election and beyond, and the contempt and the arrogance shown by this minister will come at a cost.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to visit a waste facility at a place called Sandy Ridge, owned and operated by a company called Tellus. This is an absolutely remarkable facility. Being in my home state of Western Australia—and Senator Smith travelled with me—I think it's fair to say that this site is in the middle of nowhere. I say that with all due respect. It's an extraordinary place, a couple of hours north-west of Kalgoorlie, in a geologically very stable part of the world. The company, Tellus, erects a giant dome over the waste repository site, digs out a large pit and then, very scientifically, stores toxic waste, including low-level radioactive waste, for long-term storage. This facility has all the approvals. Not only that but it has the support of the local community, including the local Indigenous community. This is a good news story. It also cuts through the nonsense we hear from those opposite and particularly from the Greens about the problem of particularly low-level radioactive waste in this country. There is already a facility in place. It is long-term, stable, safe and can do much of the work of the government's proposed site in Kimba in South Australia, which sadly, thanks to the Labor government, fell over. Tellus has a remarkable facility. Something that I think we need to look much more closely at as we embrace AUKUS and the future of nuclear in Australia is the role of facilities such as this in ensuring we embrace the best of modern technology and look to the future, not the past.