Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Five weeks ago tonight the ABC Four Corners program exposed the shocking cruelty routinely meted out to Australian livestock in Indonesia. The images sent shockwaves throughout Australia, not just because of the severity of the cruelty but also because of the compelling evidence that we had been terribly let down by a succession of negligent Australian governments and betra­yed by an industry fundamentally dishonest, uncaring and incompetent. How the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments allowed such terrible cruelty to go on day after day escapes me. And allow it they did, because few if any countries are subject to such intense Australian scrutiny as Indonesia. Nor is it as though Australia did not have cause to keep a close eye on our live animal export trade given all the problems the business has experienced year after year in country after country. In the Middle East alone eight countries have been identified mistreating Australian livestock during the last eight years.

More broadly, Meat and Livestock Australia's role in this sorry mess has been deservedly well remarked upon by now. While MLA's response has been largely to claim that little of it is their fault, that they are being unfairly blamed and should not have to pay compensation from their bulging coffers, the fact is that countless primary producers put their faith in this iconic Australian organisation and they feel desper­ately let down. A case in point is a friend of mine from Longford in northern Tasmania. He pays about $5,000 each year to MLA on the assumption the organisation is competently safeguarding and growing Australia's meat industry. Significantly, he recounts numerous events at which MLA assured him all was well overseas, and the result is that this saga has left him feeling terribly let down.

It is no wonder there has been such an extraordinary public reaction to the Four Corners program. Even those who, like me, have been concerned with live animal exports for a long time felt energised to do whatever we could to finally address the problem, and the Live Animal Export Restriction and Prohibition Bill 2011 will do just that. The bill has two essential parts, the first being the implementation of essential safeguards before the live animal trade with Indonesia can resume and the second being the winding up of the industry in three years time. In the first part of the bill the trade can resume as soon as the government can be confident livestock for slaughter will be treated satisfactorily in their country of destination. In essence this would be the case if Australian livestock are kept overseas in holding premises that comply with the Holding Standards; are transported to slaughter, unloaded, kept in lairage and slaughtered in accordance with the OIE guidelines; and are stunned using appropriate humane restraints immediately before slaughter.

Fast-tracking the implementation of such safeguards in Indonesia is in fact the only way to help the tens of thousands of animals currently in Indonesian feedlots who are being, and will continue to be, treated the same way as the poor animals we saw on Four Corners. For that reason alone we cannot just walk away. Moreover we should also consider the human dimension of this mess, namely the graziers, the station hands, the truck and ship operators, the feed producers and everyone else involved in the trade who need protection from the jolt of this warranted but unexpected decision by government.

The second essential component of this bill is that the export of all livestock to all countries will be prohibited from 1 July 2014. How this will address the animal welfare problems endemic to the industry, for instance the shocking conditions on the long-haul voyage to the Middle East, is self-evident. But also important is the way in which it will accommodate the compelling economic argument for ending live animal exports, on account of the way the trade is cannibalising the processed meat industry at the expense of thousands of Australian jobs. The decision to phase out live animal exports to Indonesia by 2014 has virtually been made for us anyway, because the Indonesian government has long planned to achieve beef self-sufficiency by about then. Yes, Jakarta's goal is ambitious and its 2014 goal seems very unlikely to be achieved, but the writing is on the wall for the Australian live animal export industry and it would be foolish of us not to be preparing now for the closure of that significant market.

The three year phase-out period stipulated in the bill gives the industry enough time to move from live to processed meat. In that time, for instance, stockholdings could be adjusted and seasonal challenges and fattening arrangements addressed. Three years would also give plenty of time for the abattoirs in Katherine and Innisfail, for instance, to be reopened and the mooted abattoir in Darwin to be up and running. This bill obviously has its opponents and I respect their concerns. But it must be said that ending live animal exports will simply not destroy the Australian beef industry because live exports are only a small part of the overall red meat industry. In fact, while the direct and indirect value of the red meat industry in Australia is $17 billion dollars and employs 55,000 workers, the value of the live export trade is at best only $1 billion and 10,000 workers. Ending live animal exports will not cause famine in Indonesia because Australian meat is simply not on the menu for the vast majority of Indonesians. On average our near neighbours each consume just two kilograms of red meat each year so even the complete removal of Australian beef would make virtually no difference whatsoever to their nutrition, except perhaps for more affluent Indonesians who do tend to eat Australian beef and who have the means to purchase and store boxed Australian meat processed by Australian workers in Australian abattoirs. In other words, the ending of live animal exports to Indonesia alone will not destroy the Indonesia-Australia bilateral relationship. And in any case, the Indonesia-Australia relationship is easily strong enough to survive a genuinely serious jolt, let alone an Australian decision to stop selling Indonesia just one form of one particular foodstuff.

Moreover, ending live animal exports, and ritual slaughter in Australia for that matter, has obviously nothing to do with the fringe explanations that have bubbled up in recent weeks—for instance, that it is somehow anti-Islamic or anti-Semitic or part of some vegetarian agenda. No, this bill is simply to do with putting safeguards in place as quickly as we humanly can so live animal exports to Indonesia can resume, and then giving the industry the time it needs to transition to reliance on onshore processing.

I acknowledge that there is another bill currently before the parliament which would see Australia's live animal export industry wound up immediately. But good policy must get the balance right and be progressed in such a way as to give it the best chance of success. Politics really is, after all, the art of the possible. So there is no point pursuing a policy to immediately end the trade, as popular as doing so would surely be for many Australians, only to have it fail to gain political support and thereby fail to help the tens of thousands of Australian animals already in Indonesia. Nor would there be sense in such a bill actually succeeding if it created too great an immediate jolt for the many people involved in the live animal export trade caught unawares by the Four Corners expose and the government's response.

The true measure of the government is what it does next. In this regard, it must urgently put in place the safeguards needed to protect the beasts already in feedlots in Indonesia and those which would follow them once the trade is allowed to resume. Then it must move to wind up an industry which has proven many times to be deeply unsound. This should be a matter of conscience and I appeal to all in this place to follow your heart and support the bill. It already has the support of Animals Australia, the RSPCA and many people involved in the beef industry. The support of the parliament will legislate the safeguards our animals need right now and shut down a trade that is fundamentally broken, systemically cruel and not in Australia's economic interest. Finally, I thank Lyn White from Animals Australia for her courageous work to help the animals and make this world a better place.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

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

I rise to speak against the Live Animal Export Restriction and Prohibition Bill 2011 in the strongest possible terms. I am disappointed that we have city based Independents and the Greens, so far removed from the reality of live exports, coming up with these bills that will have such an absolutely devastating effect on rural Australia, particularly northern Australia. I read with interest the maiden speech of the member for Denison, thinking that maybe he had strong views on agriculture and animal husbandry and that I may have missed some of his longstanding views on this issue, but there was no mention of them in that maiden speech.

I understand that there are many issues in politics and that at times it is impossible to get across the breadth of issues. I can say that although I do not have a department or a dozen government advisors, my door is always open to discuss issues, particularly agricultural and rural issues. I believe Mr Wilkie's intentions may be pure, but if that is so and he is going to take a strong position on an issue that has such huge ramifications for all of rural Australia, particularly in northern Australia—not to mention animal husbandry and Indonesia—then he can talk to both sides of the issue.

If he did he would realise that farmers and cattle producers across the country are just as, if not more, serious about animal welfare than he is. Everyone was as appalled at the images on Four Corners as he was and we must not provide cattle to those abattoirs, but that is absolutely no reason to stop providing cattle to those that are processing cattle to the required international standard. In fact, some of the abattoirs that have been banned from receiving our cattle are operating at well above world standards.

I was over in Indonesia on the weekend with Senator Scullion and it was quickly apparent how—understandably so—totally cheesed off various sections of the Indonesian government and industry were over this government's decision to put a halt on the trade. If I were the minister, I would have been on the first plane, either with or without the foreign minister, to meet with the Indonesian government to say, 'How can we fix this situation together?' No, not in this situation—the government were more worried about the lefties within their party than about the relationship with our closest and most important near neighbour and, in this case, our biggest trading partner. Nor were they worried about the impact on the cattle industry, as they had not considered the ramifications for not only northern Australia but also the whole cattle industry, where we saw the cow market drop $150 in two days. The government needs to let Indonesia know how important a trading partner they are and work with them to deliver a solution, not impose a decision on them. This is diplomacy 101. The member for Griffith, Kevin Rudd, understands that, but I am not sure the Prime Minister has the slightest clue about how to manage international relations—she certainly cannot manage internal relations.

Getting back to the bill, we have spoken at length on why we need live exports, but the Indonesians have quite an issue here as well. Their villages tend not to have electricity and fresh meat is the only thing they know how to use in a lot of situations. Providing cattle only to the abattoirs that are doing the right thing is the best incentive for the other abattoirs to lift their standards to get access to the best available and closest cattle. Indonesia needs beef. We are talking about 25 per cent of Indonesia's consumption of beef being tied up in Australia's live trade to them. You can talk about other nations being involved in whatever happens, but really Australia is the only one providing cattle in any quantity to them. We have foot and mouth issues and Indonesians do not want foot and mouth either—they are not silly. Australia, Indonesia and industry need to get together over there. Talking to them, they want us to fix this together and they have sorted out how to do that.

The impact on the domestic industry will be catastrophic. This industry has been developed by Australians and Indonesians over 20 years—actually, it is longer than that. It has become an incredible relation­ship. Involved are Australian companies, Indonesian companies and companies with an Australian flavour owned by Indonesians. I actually believe that the Indonesian government has behaved far better over this incident than the Australian government has.

Let us look at the effect on the Australian industry. The zebu cattle in Northern Australia were not bred for Indonesia; they were bred there because they do well in the north. Back in the days when it was basically British-bred cattle, nobody made money out of it because the cattle died and they were hard to raise. Luckily for Australia, these zebu cattle were wanted by Indonesia and they took them.

People say that we should have abattoirs up there to do this and box meat. Apart from the fact that the Indonesians only want a limited amount of boxed beef—in other words, processed beef—in the past abattoirs have tried it up there and they went broke, from Broome to Innisfail. The presenter of this bill seems to suggest that we are going to move all these cattle down south where they are actually not wanted because they are the wrong type of cattle for southern Australia. They will have to be trucked long distance by road, which I believe they are opposed to as well. Cattle actually travel happily north to Indonesia into the tropics and they come out it very well. Going south, they go into the cold. The animal welfare issues are far more serious for them going south than going north.

As the member I am sure is well aware, there are 82 Indigenous cattle properties in Northern Australia with very strong links to this trade—and more power to them. There are 54 in the Territory, 22 in the Kimberley and Pilbara and six in Far North Queensland. That means 700 real Indigenous jobs. I do not know if the member for Denison has sorted out how that is going to be worked out. Good luck to him if he can do it because nobody else will be able to. And there are probably about 70,000 people in station communities involved in this as well. We are not talking about something someone just dreamt up one night. You cannot turn this industry on and off like a tap. This is the only serious industry in the Northern Australia outside of mining.

The bill to phase out live exports is no better than the bill to ban live exports because it will see the industry collapse as our customers quickly move to secure other suppliers, leaving our industry in the lurch. And do not think the Indonesians are not looking around at that now—and who could blame them when they are treated like this. This legislation would be an absolute catastrophe for rural Australia.

What should be more important for the interest group pushing this agenda is that it is not in the best interests of animal welfare. This prohibition is driven by an agenda from animal activists who want to shut down livestock production. They actually do not want us to eat meat either. They would have us all eating lentils—a prospect I am sure the majority of Australians would seriously baulk at; I know I would. I hope the member for Denison has learnt from this process and will be a bit more circumspect before listening to these groups in the future. As I said, my door is always open and I think my knowledge on this, without appearing to be superior, is a little better than his.

For good animal outcomes, Australia needs to lift the ban because it still needs permits from Indonesia and from Australia before one animal can set foot on a boat. For good animal outcomes, for good Indonesian outcomes and for good Australian outcomes, lift the ban and allow the minister in Indonesia to issue permits. We can still issue permits. You will not do the northern beef industry any favours by putting on a ban which simply means that these cattle have to go somewhere else. The outcome is not the issue; everyone agrees on the way it should happen. Please think about something other than aesthetics, which make people feel good without doing any good for animals.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Denison for the opportunity to speak on this important issue of live animal exports. Unlike the member for Calare, I do not think it is just a few pressure groups who are pushing this issue. You only need to open your inbox to see that thousands of Australian citizens want something done in respect of this issue. Anyone who watched the footage aired on Four Corners would have been shocked by the treatment of the animals that was shown, but many in the live cattle export industry trade should not have been surprised. They have been dealing in this space for a long time. They should have known what was going on and taken action earlier.

On 8 June, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Senator the Hon. Joe Ludwig, announced the suspension of the export of livestock to Indonesia. This suspension will be in place until the government and industry establish sufficient safeguards which provide a verifiable and transparent supply chain assured up to and including the point of slaughter for every consignment that leaves Australia. The trade to Indonesia will only recommence when the government is certain the industry is able to comply with the supply chain assurance. This announcement follows the minister's decision on 31 May to suspend the shipment of Australian cattle to the abattoirs identified in the footage provided by Animals Australia and Four Corners. The minister and the Australian government have also undertaken the following actions. The government will appoint an independent reviewer to invest­igate the complete supply chain for live exports up to and including the point of slaughter. The independent review will still go ahead, but it will now also inform both the design and the application of new safeguards, and it will be conducted by Bill Farmer. The government will implement a moratorium on the installation of the restraint boxes, seen being used in the footage, with Commonwealth government funds. It has asked the Chief Veterinary Officer to coordinate an independent scientific assessment of the restraint boxes used in Indonesia. An initial desktop review has been done and this is currently being followed up by site inspections in Indonesia. Also, the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry recently met with his Indonesian counterpart and is discussing the trade at that level.

While the government continues to work to recommence live exports with Indonesia, last week it also introduced financial assistance to support those affected by the suspension. This includes a $30 million live export assistance package to support indiv­idual primary producers and related businesses and $3 million for employees and small business owners who earn the majority of their income from the live cattle trade to Indonesia.

The government also welcomed a $5 million industry contingency fund to address animal welfare needs in the short term, though it was a long time coming. The government is continuing its dialogue with Indonesia and with industry groups. The government shares the legitimate concerns of the Australian community about animal welfare abuses and is taking the necessary action to improve conditions in the livestock export industry.

Whilst I welcome the improvements that have been made to the industry, my personal opinion is that I cannot see any legitimate reason for the export of live animals to continue. The cruelty of the trade and the issue of animal welfare are of great concern to me and many in my electorate. Although I acknowledge the growing demand for fresh meat in Indonesia and the Middle East, I can see no reason why Australian abattoirs with Muslim employees cannot provide the best quality halal chilled and frozen meat. According to the Victorian government website BusinessVictoria, under the heading 'Halal Meat':

Australia currently exports beef, sheepmeat and goatmeat to over 40 Islamic countries including the Middle East and North Africa, as well as nearby South-East Asian nations. Australia has a reputation as a clean, safe and reliable source of halal food and beverage products, and is recognised as a leader in Halal export. It is estimated that the growing market for Halal products worldwide is worth around $685 billion per annum.

Australia expanding its chilled meat market would provide winners all round. It would be a win for Australian farmers, who would maintain a market for their products—indeed, the majority of jobs would not disappear; they would translate into this other area, and more jobs would be produced. It would be a win for abattoir workers, as more jobs would be created to process meat. And obviously it would be a much better outcome for the livestock.

Since the 1970s the meatworkers union has opposed live exports on the basis of its destruction of Australian jobs, its inhumane treatment of the animals and the decimation of the meat-processing industry. Last year it again called for live exports to be phased out. Since the 1970s at least 25 export meatworks have closed in Australia and more are still closing at the present time. The lack of refrigeration in the Middle East, which is often one issue cited, is no longer an issue. The following quote is from the WSPA website:

Australia predominantly exports to wealthy countries in the Gulf, who import a huge amount of refrigerated goods, not just meat. Suggestions that these countries lack of such basic appliances are not only misguided, they are culturally insensitive.

While this is not the case across the board in Indonesia, there are other ways to deal with it. Today I received a letter from someone in the Northern Territory and I would like to read it. It said:

Thank you for supporting the ban on live export.

I am a local resident of Darwin and my family have been involved in the pastoral industry for over 130 years, although we now live in town.

The letter goes on to say that we need to move from cattle to meat. (Time expired)

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Live Animal Export Restriction and Prohibition Bill 2011 calls for a ban on the export of livestock for slaughter from 2014. The coalition does not support any measure which proposes to permanently limit or end Australia's live animal trade. We stand behind our agricultural enterprises, our farming families and the contractors and workers who depend upon them. We recognise that live sheep and cattle exports, properly managed, are an important part of the global food task. We urge the government to do everything in its power to restart the live cattle export trade to facilities that can demonstrate humane killing methods.

When the government blundered in and cancelled 100 per cent of the trade last month, it overlooked the fact that up to 45 per cent already goes to abattoirs that meet the same standards that we demand in Australia. Where was the leadership from this Prime Minister? She should sack her agriculture minister. He has presided over this wretched situation and everything he has done has made it worse. Urgent high-level talks with Indonesia are needed now, not when the Minister for Foreign Affairs has finished gallivanting around Equatorial Guinea, Budapest and Burma.

Having been a farmer it broke my heart to see footage of the mistreatment of cattle in some Indonesian abattoirs. There is no excuse for this shameful behaviour. If any person, organisation, industry or government body knew of it and yet did nothing, they would stand condemned, no less by the opposition than by the supporters of this bill. But it breaks my heart, too, to see the effect of the current knee-jerk cancellation of the trade on the communities of Northern Australia, all of which are now being indiscriminately punished and are in turmoil. An industry that supports farmers, roadhouses, stockmen, truckies, mustering pilots—of which I was one—and countless other family businesses has been crippled by the inept, confused and bungled response of this government. You could not have written a black comedy script containing the farrago of stupidity that we are witnessing from the Prime Minister's 'Team Australia'.

Today in question time the PM captured what she said were the various views in this debate, including that people should not eat animals for food at all. I know that is a perf­ectly valid moral standpoint, but it should not inform the development of agriculture policy in this country. The problem is that, under the new partnership between Labor and the Greens, that is exactly what is happening. A $320 million industry is on its knees, livelihoods are being lost, cattle are stranded in holding yards with feed running out, one of our nearest neighbours has been insulted and humiliated, and now there is little prospect of the trade being restarted anytime soon.

The Prime Minister and her frontbench do not understand that the economy, the life, the identity and the character of this nation are neither developed in nor confined to the inner suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. Is there not one government minister who has lived a life in rural and regional Australia, who has risked a dollar of their own money in a small business or who can imagine what it is like to cart cattle down a dusty gravel road worrying about your truck repayments, to build your own mustering business in a remote outback town miles from your family, or to be a young Indigenous person, desperate for a start, learning to ride a horse so that you can work on a cattle station?

The Gillard government seems entirely untroubled by the real world. The price effect on the southern Australian beef market is just starting to be felt. I have heard of cattle from Alice Springs being trucked to Warrnambool. Elsewhere confidence in the industry and its future is sliding. But for most northern cattle there simply is no market. They will have to be shot where they stand—and where is the humanity in that? Indonesia could decide to source cattle from South America or India, where there may be foot-and-mouth disease and where there is much less emphasis on animal welfare. It is not too late to work closely with the Indonesians to achieve a win-win result. Central to the system will be livestock identification, whereby we can track our animals through a closed loop supply chain and prove that they are transported, handled and slaughtered humanely. At least one of our existing businesses was already doing this but was indiscriminately shut down by the Gillard government. There could be no better demonstration of the faith and the confidence that this parliament has in the people of our northern pastoral industry than a vote against this bill. I urge all members to oppose the bill.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.