Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to urge the government and my parliamentary colleagues to take a look at tonight's episode of Four Corners and move to suspend the trade in live cattle to Indonesia. The Four Corners program leaves no doubt that action to suspend the live cattle trade to Indonesia is now needed. Animals are being whipped, animals are hitting their heads repeatedly on concrete blocks, animals are watching other animals being killed and cut up in front of them, and animals are having their throats only half-slit and are dying a lingering, horrible death. We can do better.

I want to add my voice to that of community organisations such as the RSPCA, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, Animals Australia, the Australian Meat Industry Union and a number of my parliamentary colleagues—the member for Fremantle, the member for Page and the member for Lyons—who have all said that we need to rethink our support for live cattle and live sheep exports. This is not a battle cry for vegetarianism; it is about moving to process sheep and cattle here in Australia.

I think there are three ethical reasons and three economic reasons we should look at moving away from live exports. The first ethical reason is the fate of animals during transportation. Animals become heat stressed and overcrowded during transportation. Around 40,000 Australian sheep die en route to the Middle East each year. The main cause of death is starvation.

The second ethical issue is the handling, transportation and slaughter methods used once animals reach their destinations. Many importing countries have no animal welfare laws. Australian sheep are bound and shoved into car boots in a region where temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius in summer. Both sheep and cattle have their throats cut whilst fully conscious and suffer from prolonged, distressed and painful deaths.

The third ethical issue is that Australia is a member of the World Organisation for Animal Health and has obligations in its bilateral trade agreements to protect animal health and wellbeing. With many Middle Eastern countries not complying with the guidelines, Australia needs to do more to support the World Organisation for Animal Health in its endeavours to improve animal welfare.

Then there are three economic reasons to reconsider live exports. The first is that processing animals in Australia provides more economic value than exporting them live. This stands to reason—it is no different to the argument for value adding to our natural resources rather than just exporting the raw product. A report by ACIL says a sheep processed in Australia is worth 20 per cent more to the economy than one processed overseas. The ACIL report also says that the value adding for a live exported sheep is $36 but for processed sheep it is between $42 and $47.

The second economic reason for moving away from live exports is that the Australian meat processing industry is being crippled from competition with the live export industry. In the past 30 years 40,000 meat processing jobs have been lost and about 150 processing plants have shut down. It is an ongoing problem. Last year 1,000 Australian meat workers lost their jobs, with some plants operating at 50 per cent of their capacity. Roger Fletcher, the founder of Australia's largest independent meat processing facility and chilled meat export company, said:

We’re the main employer in country regions, after mining, and we want to be here for the long haul. It’s devastating when vulnerable rural communities suffer industry closure and job losses … caused in part by the live export industry.

The third economic reason is the clear evidence that Middle Eastern consumers do accept chilled meat products from Australia. In 2009 sheepmeat exports exceeded live sheep exports in both dollar value and live sheep equivalent. This is not surprising because the religion of Islam does not endorse cruelty to animals. There are two major religious festivals in the Middle East each year, Eid Ul Fitr and Eid Al Adha. The meat for such holidays can and should be sourced locally.

Given these facts, claims by Liberal and National Party senators about the importance of the live export industry simply fall flat on their face. A value-adding Australian meat processing industry would provide more jobs for farmers, stock hands, shearers, truck drivers et cetera . The trade will not go elsewhere. There is plenty of refrigeration in key export markets such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. When we first stopped exporting animals to Egypt due to cruelty concerns in 2006, it was reported that the Egyptian government move straight to chilled meat imports to fill the demand. Tonight's Four Corners program leaves no doubt that action to suspend the live cattle trade to Indonesia is now needed.