Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Ageing and the Voluntary Sector) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to endorse the comments of the member for Forde about Richard and Cherie Adams. Indeed, they were long-term residents of my home town for many, many years, and the Adams family are still there. Cherie’s death was indeed a tragedy, very sudden and very hard for the family to accept.

I rise today to speak about my concerns with the Australian pork industry. As this House would know, the Australian Productivity Commission is undertaking a review of the pork industry at the moment, and its findings will be made known at the end of this month. Preliminary reports indicate that it believes that the imports of pig meat into this country are not affecting the pork industry; however, the pork industry does not believe this is the case and, quite frankly, neither do I. The Australian pork industry has undergone tremendous suffering and shrinkage in the last few years. Indeed, at the moment that is at an accelerated rate. Already this year, 14,000 sows have already been culled, and it is expected that by June another 73,000 sows will be culled from the Australian breeding herd.

I believe that the pork industry is in dire straits and is in need of some form of assistance from the government. Australia will need to decide whether we are going to have a pork industry at all or whether we are going to rely entirely on imports into this country for pig meat. At present, pig producers are losing $30 per pig, and they cannot sustain this rate. One of the problems with exiting the industry is that the infrastructure in pig production is very specific, so these producers are asset poor and are not able to exit the industry. The current high prices of grain throughout the world are also impacting on the pig industry. I call on this parliament to look at the issues with the pig industry, because I believe that, unless firm action is taken immediately, by the end of the year the pig industry and pork production in Australia will cease to exist.