Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is very fortuitous that you are in the chair, Deputy Speaker O'Neil. We have been shocked at the too-frequent revelations of needless cruelty in foreign abattoirs to Australian processed livestock. I know this is of key concern to my constituents in Melbourne Ports, as it is to me personally. I have raised this issue a number of times in this House.

Additionally, I am very pleased with the activities of the Deputy Speaker, in her non-Speaker's capacity, in introducing proposed legislation banning the use of live animals in laboratory testing for cosmetic product development and banning the sale in Australia of cosmetics tested on animals. Labor's bill will create offences for importing into Australia any new cosmetics or existing cosmetics featuring new ingredients that have been tested on animals. This legislation also creates offences for testing cosmetics on animals within Australia. This is a good idea. This is occurring after the member for Hotham, the Deputy Speaker at this very moment, organised community consultations, with over 13,000 people making submissions.

The large majority of cosmetics that sit on our shelves contain an ingredient or ingredients that at some point have been tested on rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, rats and other animals to ascertain the safety of cosmetic ingredients. These tests are often conducted without pain relief due to the potential for results being compromised, subjecting the animals to distress and pain. These practices include testing for skin irritation, dripping ingredients into the eyes of animals, testing for skin sensitisation, tests for allergies et cetera. There are no reliable figures on how many animals die each year as a result of this kind of testing. The RSPCA estimates tens of thousands of animals are tested each year via these methods. Of course, with modern manufacturing one can do this without this terrible process of inflicting pain on sentient beings.

I am going to have the shadow agriculture minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, in Melbourne Ports next week. We are going to be addressing the issue of the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme, created by Labor, and Labor's policy to establish an inspector-general for animal welfare and live animal exports. I believe in a clean and green Australia. I support continuing animal exports, but we do not have to do this in an unnecessarily cruel way. The current agriculture minister and Deputy Prime Minister's abandonment of all of the safety nets that we had for this export is ruining Australia's image as a clean and green country, and it is compromising those exports and inflicting unnecessary pain on animals.