Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak against this motion on the meat export industry. I want to touch on three points. The first is the trade implications of this motion. I say to the Minister for Trade that he needs to concentrate on his job as trade minister and forget about trying to take over as Treasurer. This motion would never have been allowed to come forward in its current form if he had been doing his job properly. For instance, part (b) of the motion says:

… chilled or frozen meat exports mean that there is not a level playing field between the two forms of export …

What a ridiculous notion. If it said that we should do everything we can to reduce tariffs on frozen meat exports, fine. We would all be happy to support that. As a matter of fact, we would call on the trade minister to do his job and do something in the trade area so that he does reduce tariffs for our frozen meat exports. That is very important. But to just contrast this with what is happening with our live exports is a ridiculous notion.

What is even more ridiculous, however, is calling on Austrade to be involved in negotiations to increase exports in frozen and chilled meat. Austrade does trade promotion. It is the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade which does trade negotiation. The fact that this motion does not even comprehend that basic fact and that the trade minister has not been able to provide some advice to Ms Saffin on that basic fact shows that his eye is off the ball. It shows that he is after the Treasurer’s job instead of doing his own as trade minister. We have seen nothing in terms of a reduction of tariff barriers on any of our exports since the trade minister has been in the portfolio. All he has been trying to do is undermine the Treasurer. He needs to stop and he needs to focus on the trade portfolio.

Moving to other aspects of the motion, I want to touch on what the live export trade means to my electorate of Wannon. There were 620,000 sheep and 62,000 cattle that went out of the port of Portland last financial year. That is a million dollar contribution to jobs and to farmers in my electorate. The industry has improved its record in live sheep exports. It has also improved its record with the live export of cattle. It is continuing to look at improvements. What we need to do in this parliament is work with the industry so that we support it, so that we can continually see improvements in the shipments of our animals but also in what happens once the animals arrive at the designated ports. If we work with the industry to achieve this, we can get good results. No-one in the world does this trade better than us; no-one has put in place better protocols once the animals arrive than us. And there is no reason why we cannot continue to work with the industry to make sure that we continually improve the trade and get those millions of dollars going back into our electorates, and in particular into my electorate of Wannon. The port of Portland does a very good job as a major export port, and this live export trade is very important to it.

In terms of the industry as a whole, this is an export industry that exceeded $1 billion for the second year running. This is not something that should be tampered with. It is not something that on a whim we say, ‘Oh, we should support this type of trade against this type of trade.’ This is a billion dollar industry that we are trying to engineer. This is not what government should be doing. It should let free enterprise and competition take its place. If there is a market for the live export trade, then that market should be able to flourish. We as government should not be dictating and saying: ‘No, we don’t want that type of trade. We will try and stop that and we will try and divert it into this area.’ Competition and free enterprise are what we should be seeking to achieve. The trade minister needs to get his eye on the ball. This motion should never have come to this place as it has. He has to stop trying to become Treasurer and instead focus on being trade minister again.

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