Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One year ago I stood in this House and spoke in dismay of yet another scandal involving Australia's live export trade. On that occasion it was in Indonesia. People were not only people shocked by the cruelty they witnessed on Four Corners but were also outraged that much of it was being facilitated by restraint boxes designed and installed by Meat & Livestock Australia and LiveCorp. Never before had the complicity and culpability of Australia's live export trade been so obvious to the government and the community.

As we know, this was not the first time they had been caught falling woefully short of acceptable standards. Many of us will never forget the horrific images, from Egypt's Bassateen abattoir, of cattle having their tendons slashed and eyes stabbed to disable them prior to slaughter. Yet five years later we find that this was not a one-off mistake and since that time the live trade has continued to send millions of Australian cattle to an equally brutal slaughter in Indonesia.

In the face of the abject failure of the industry's own regulatory bodies, the Gillard government had no choice but to suspend the trade to Indonesia. It would have been unconscionable to continue sending animals to such cruelty. I can think of no other issue that has so hotly incensed the community or generated the level of correspondence that live export did in the months following the Four Corners expose. It is clear that a large number of Australians want the government to end this trade and to consider phasing out the live export trade in favour of an expanded onshore meat processing industry, and I welcome AAco's proposal to build an abattoir near Darwin.

I recognise and welcome the fact that this government has taken stronger action than any other Australian government to regulate the industry and to make exporters accountable for the welfare of the animals they sell. But we have to also recognise that we have already seen breaches of the new system, and these reveal the challenge of applying regulation to a system that is largely administered in other countries and that, for this reason, there must be strong penalties for exporters who breach the system.

There is a reason why the best abattoirs in the world are the ones that supply meat to McDonald's. It is because if those abattoirs breach even one audit, they lose their contract to supply. If this new system is to be taken seriously then the repercussions for breaching it must be seen as severe, not just internationally but by exporters. This is exactly why the McDonald's system works. It is worth noting too that McDonald's abattoir standards also require stunning. McDonald's stun in Turkey and they stun in Indonesia. If an independent company can demand preslaughter stunning, then there is no reason why Australia cannot do the same.

In the most recent case of cruelty uncovered in Indonesia, it still took Animals Australia to report breaches to the government. Two of the companies responsible for the breaches—International Livestock Exports, also trading as Emmanual Exports—are routinely referred to as the rogues in the industry. Under the directorship of Michael Stanton and Graham Daws, these companies have been connected to the under-reporting of mortalities; were defendants in the Al Kuwait live export cruelty case in WA; were exposed by an onboard vet for allegedly doctoring his end-of-voyage mortality report; and now they breach the new system in Indonesia. Yet they have not even received a fine.

I note that in addition to Australia's export of animals for slaughter we also send breeding animals all over the world to assist other countries to build up their herds. We know that all these animals inevitably end up in the same abattoirs as animals exported for slaughter. That is why they should be brought under the new live export arrangements.

I want to relate the details of a disturbing incident that has been brought to my attending concerning the slaughter of a dairy cow and her calf in Turkey, as shown on YouTube. Animal welfare advocates tell me it is the worst thing they have ever seen. The cow is brought in on a trolley suffering from a broken pelvis and the action in hoisting her twice into position is appalling. After the cow's throat is cut, her stomach is cut open at a time that she would still be conscious and a calf is pulled out. Tragically, the calf vocalises on a couple of occasions lying next to its dying mother. They allow it to live for over a minute so that it breathes and gets the heart pumping blood through it so that it well bleed out, and then slaughter it. There is no suggestion that this is an Australian dairy cow, only that we have sent dairy cows to Turkey and therefore there is nothing to prevent this or other cruelties from happening to an Australian animal. This matter has been brought to the attention of the minister, with a request for information on what measures may be put in place to prevent this happening to an exported Australian breeding animal, since they are currently not included in the supply-chain assurance system.

There is no doubt that the continuation of live export under our watch is a source of discomfort for many people of conscience in this place as well as in the wider community. For all the reasons I have outlined on this anniversary of that damning Four Corners report, I will continue to argue for much better and stricter regulation of the live export trade and for the proper consideration and planning of a phase-out of the trade in favour of local processing, local jobs and better animal welfare.