House debates

Wednesday, 30 May 2018

Bills

Attorney-General's Portfolio; Consideration in Detail

6:55 pm

Photo of Joel FitzgibbonJoel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome Minister Littleproud to appropriations in detail. This is his debut. I can inform him tonight that I'm in a pretty good mood. I'm feeling pretty mellow. I just issued a challenge to him in the House of Representatives. Tomorrow I will be amending export bill, which imposes additional fines on the live-ex sector. I will put in an amendment which mirrors the private member's bill of the member for Farrer. I will be inviting him to support the amendment. I've done the right thing and I've foreshadowed the amendment for those opposite who share my concerns. I put it seriously to the government that it should give very serious and genuine consideration of those amendments if they are serious about doing something about community expectations in the live export trade but also helping us work together to ensure that there is a long-term future for other aspects of the live trade.

I'm going to help the minister—before I go there, I should say I welcomed the minister's attempt to show his vision for the agriculture sector with us. I was a bit surprised that he mentioned the now widely discredited white paper, which now seems to have been replaced with the NFF's paper, which he also seems to be endorsing. I don't know if you need an NFF white paper if you've already got a white paper yourself. On the $100 billion value of the industry: great. I think it's underdone. I think you get to $100 billion if you stick on the same trajectory we've been on for the last 10 years. I think we want better than that.

I'm going to start with a Dorothy Dixer for the minister. I know he will find it very easy to answer. I would like to know, very seriously: what is the problem with sharing information about the awassi incident with the Western Australia government? If there's a legislative barrier, how can we work together to overcome it? I would have thought that the minister in WA has responsibility under their own animal welfare act. The minister said he was serious about getting to the bottom of the awassi incident. On that basis, I would have thought he would be happy to share the information with the Western Australian government. If there is barrier, how can we work together to overcome it?

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