Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in support of this motion by the member for Page. I thank her for putting this motion forward for debate. I know it is a contentious issue and one that has obviously aroused strong views on both sides. There are those members who will staunchly defend the live export industry and those who will instead speak in support of the motion out of a concern for the future of the meat industry in our electorates. I am one of those members. Rockhampton is known as the beef capital of Australia for good reason. We have plenty of cattle and we have a lot of meatworkers, generations of meatworkers in fact. Through good times and bad, Rockhampton has always been and remains to this day a meatworkers town and I want to make sure it stays that way.

In Rockhampton, there are two major meatworks: Teys Brothers at Lakes Creek and the one operated by Swift and Nerimbera. But it is not just Rockhampton that I speak for today, because there are meatworks just outside the electorate of Capricornia in Biloela and also Bakers Creek, smaller towns that would face an even more uncertain future without the employment opportunities provided by those meatworks. The concerns about the threats from increased live exports to the meat-processing industry in Queensland are real. They have come to me from meatworkers and their union, the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union, and they have come to me from processors. Those people inside the industry tell me that the live export trade is changing, growing and impacting in a real way on the processing sector down the coast of Queensland in a way that has not happened in the past. They also see the distortions in the international marketplace that give live exporters an unfair advantage over Australian processors and the way that this is helping to drive the shift to live exports over our value-added products.

The figures confirm that there has been a significant increase in recent years in the number of live cattle exported from Australia. In 2009-10 the number was over 954,000—most of them to Indonesia. This was up 34 per cent on the 2006-07 trade. Cattle coming out of Queensland accounted for 170,000 or 19 per cent of that total and that represents a jump of seven per cent from 2006-07. A 34 per cent increase in live cattle exports represents a significant adjustment within the industry especially when 80 per cent of the live cattle went to Indonesia, which is an equally important market for processors exporting chilled beef. We are competing with ourselves within the same export market.

We have to listen to the processing sector when they say this is having an effect and that is what today’s motion is all about—acknowledging those concerns and seeking a considered and reasonable response through our trade and other industry policies.

I said that Rockhampton is proud to be a meatworker’s town but it is not just us with a stake in this debate and the future of the meat processing industry. According to ABS statistics the meat processing sector in Australia accounts directly for around 32,000 jobs, most of them in regional and rural areas. The last two to three years—corresponding with the period of 34 per cent growth in the live export trade—have seen pressures on processors to keep their plants running full-time. There have been job losses in the industry, which have been attributed to the increase in live exports out of Queensland—something that has not traditionally been a big feature of the industry in our state but one that has processors very wary about the future.

The Heilbron report, which is a well-known study into this question prepared for the Australian Meat Processor Corporation in 2000, certainly sounded the warning estimating that the live export trade was costing Australia GDP and around 12,000 jobs. Heilbron have updated their 2000 report. Their update for the Queensland industry last year found that in 2008-09 live exports cost Queensland 1,200 jobs and $140 million in lost income to the state.

Today’s motion is really calling for us to stop and have a good look at what is occurring in this industry and to assess what is in the best interests of the workers in the processing sector, the livestock industry as a whole and, ultimately, for us as a nation. We cannot afford to allow continued growth of live exports of the magnitude we have seen in recent years without properly understanding the consequences. We have to do that before it is too late and we reach a point of no return for the processing sector and all the jobs that go with it. I wholeheartedly support this motion from the member for Page.

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