Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As we wrap up this week's parliamentary sittings and head home, us Western Australians are heading home to a state where a cyclone is tracking down the west coast. It is currently a level 3 cyclone a couple of hundred kilometres off the Pilbara coast and is forecast to track down through the Murchison Crossing around Denham then through the northern and the southern wheat belt of Western Australia. That will encompass a lot of communities that both the member for Durack and I represent. We are hoping and praying that everybody stays safe. The winds on Saturday are forecast to get up to around 70 kilometres an hour, which is hopefully not too damaging down in my part of the world, but I'm sure they'll be stronger further north, so let's hope that the damage is limited and that it does bring some serious rains for the wheat belt. I know that farmers are getting ready for seeding. Let's hope that they have enough fuel and fertiliser to get those crops in when the rain comes.

I'm looking forward to being back in the electorate tomorrow with my people if I can get a flight home, but, if not, I'll be driving to be there and be amongst the community when that cyclone arrives.

Onto other events that happened in this place this week, we welcomed the President of the European Commission here. She gave an address about a whole range of things, including security and other issues. Briefly during that address, she touched on what was referred to as a free trade agreement. But, having looked at the agreement, I would think it's anything but free trade.

The European Union was formed as a trading bloc post World War II and it has been designed to protect their farmers essentially—their farming communities. I understand the rationale for that. Post World War II, when hunger had been a very real issue across those European countries, they wanted to protect their farming communities, and they've done that now for 70-odd years. Going on the agreement that was reached between the Australian government and the European Union, they are still protecting their farmers, believe me. Let's get one example of dairy farmers and cheesemakers. European farmers receive a 30 per cent subsidy to produce cheese, and Australian farmers, of course, get no subsidy, but we have now given those 30 per cent subsidised farmers absolutely unfettered access to our market and got virtually nothing in return.

But the area that I am most disturbed and indeed angry about is lamb and mutton access to the European Union. The current government singled out the sheep farmers across my electorate of O'Connor for serious punishment when they closed down the live export trade. That took away the market for between 500,000 and a million animals per year in the live trade, and those animals will now have to be processed locally, despite the fact that we have abattoirs closing because of lack of throughput and lack of supply. Those abattoirs are closing, but the product they process will need to be marketed around the rest of the world.

It was very important for the sheep farmers of O'Connor and, indeed, more broadly, Western Australia reeling from that decision around the live export trade that the government got a really good deal on chilled lamb. From what I can gather—and the details are a little bit scant at this stage—three years ago, this current government put negotiations on hold because they couldn't get a good deal for beef and lamb, but it would appear they've just rolled over, perhaps because the president was coming to Australia and they were desperate for some economic good news. They made an announcement that we'd agreed to a deal. It is a terrible deal; there is nothing in it for the farming community more broadly and particularly nothing in it for Western Australian sheep producers.

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