John Cobb (Calare, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Food Security) Share this | Hansard source

Australian agriculture has a lot to be proud of in the way it does things and the way it represents Australia internationally. Its greatest selling point around the world is the quality of its product and the way in which it is delivered. That is no less true of the live export industry, be it sheep or cattle. That was not always true. It was not always the best run industry, but the industry has done enormous things over the last 20 years to make it better. Currently the fatalities on board ship are less than one per cent over all the red meat industry. That figure is under one per cent for sheep and about one-tenth of one per cent for cattle. In fact, it is probably true to say that the animal has more chance of dying on land than it does when it is sent overseas.

When Australian farmers made this industry happen, unions and others tried to stop them, not because of the animals but because they simply did not want it to happen and—they said—partly because of jobs. I accept that that might have been their reasoning. But this was the first time we had had actual competition where we as animal husbandry people were not at the mercy of one market, and that competition has great benefits for the Australian industry overall. The live export trade is worth over a billion dollars a year to the Australian economy. The issue of competition cannot be underrated. Currently, state governments—apart from others—take incredible taxes from everybody who kills an animal, slaughters it and goes through that process in Australia. Live exporters escape a lot of those state—and also some Commonwealth—charges on anything that happens within our country, so there are very good reasons why the live export industry goes well.

As the member for Dunkley so eloquently pointed out, this is an important industry not just to Australia but to various countries overseas which have an even stronger cultural background in eating meat than we do but which do not have refrigeration. Not everybody has a supermarket. But they do have a real need for red meat both culturally and in what they eat, and we supply that market. A great amount of what we sell does not get sold and slaughtered for a supermarket or similar; it gets sold for individual families in one or two lots. It supplies a real need around the world in countries which are not as well off as we are.

The mover of this motion, who has every right to do it, has done it very cunningly. The motion does not actually say we must stop this, but that is what it wants to do. It wants to stop the live export industry, to the detriment of farmers and to the detriment of customers overseas. The member for Page refused to speak to the industry and refused to speak to her own constituents who have tried to talk to her about her motion. This is not about representing your constituents; this is about representing your unions.

I am somewhat horrified that I have to get up here and defend an industry which is so important to so much of Australia and to the people who receive, in the best condition of any live export anywhere around the world, Australian produce in those other countries. I cannot believe I have to get up here and defend a trade which has had its problems in the past but has dealt with those problems very strongly and very successfully. There is no-one in the world who can export live animals in the same condition and in the same way that we do.

I am very proud of Australian agriculture. I am very proud of the fact that everybody wants our product because it is delivered better than any other product in the world and because it is a better product than any product in the world. This particular product provides a heck of a lot of competition for the Australian farmer so that they are not at the mercy of a union and they are not at the mercy of whatever the domestic market wants to pay. Some 25 years ago Australian farmers marched en masse to ensure that this industry could and did have the freedom to sell the product where they were able to do so. (Time expired)

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