Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I add my congratulations on your election. All of the points made by Senator Crossin in the last couple of minutes are admirable. What a shame they were not actually undertaken prior to 8 June when the decision was taken by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to suspend trade completely.

The simple fact of the matter is that the minister is correct in the points he makes about animal welfare and all of its issues. Anybody who saw the footage on the ABC was shocked at the cruelty et cetera—there is not a person in Australia who was not—and action had to be taken. He was correct in the action he took initially, which was to suspend trade with those abattoirs that did not meet standards. Unfortunately, there were already a number of abattoirs that did—and still do—meet international standards, including those to which 1,900 cattle were sent from Port Hedland on 6 June, two days before the ban was imposed, by Elders and which were to go to Elders' own feedlot and then their own internationally acclaimed abattoir. We now have a total abrogation of any capacity on the part of Australia to control or have any say in this industry.

The minister is well aware, as are others, that Minister Suswono, the Indonesian Minister for Agriculture, was deeply insulted as a result of the suspension without any consultation. The minister made a point in answer to my question about supply chain assurance. All he need have done was to consult with people in the industry—exporters, me and others who offered that opportunity—and the whole question of the integrity of the meat chain from station to port, from port to feedlot and from feedlot to abattoirs could have been well and truly and easily handled by consultation in advance. He is correct about traceability, transparency and independent auditing. I was the one who suggested that veterinarians well versed in abattoir management after many years in Australia would have been the appropriate people to have undertaken that independent auditing.

The coalition offered the minister all the support it could prior to the time in which he made the decision, but once the door is closed it is only the Indonesians who can open it. Today they made a decision that they are not going to issue any more import licences until the end of September. For those who are not familiar with the cattle industry in the north of Australia, that could effectively be the end of the trade. If we get an early break to the season and we get the summer rains in September-October, there will be no mustering of cattle, there will be no trucking of cattle, there will be no trade beyond September.

Animal welfare issues, of course, are critically important. So are the hundreds of thousands of cattle on the rangelands. Those cattle that are now too heavy to go to Indonesia will not go to Indonesia. The mothers from last year's calving will be calving again this year, so we will have three generations—cows, this year's calves and last year's calves—that should be in feedlots or in abattoirs in Indonesia right now. We are facing an animal welfare disaster. Should we have a light summer rain this coming summer, this time next year we will have hundreds of thousands of animals facing starvation and we will have a natural environment that will be decimated. This could have been avoided.

We already have an animal welfare issue in Indonesia where cattle are on trucks for up to four days to try and meet the supply in advance of Ramadan, which is now 26 days away, the period of the biggest consumption of red meat in the year. Others have asked why cattle cannot come to the south for a southern winter. They are too light to be slaughtered in the south. It would be an animal welfare disaster to bring Bos indicus cattle down to the southern winter and try to fatten them at this time of the year.

I asked a question about the welfare and wellbeing of not only the pastoralists in the north but also all those who rely on the industry. We have a circumstance in which $30 million has been offered. The $30 million would have been far better spent in Indonesia with the Indonesians upgrading Indonesian abattoirs so that they would meet the correct standards that the minister has identified, OIE standards. We do not want handouts. What we want is support to get this trade going again. The effect across the north is catastrophic. The risk to this country if the Indonesians decide to buy live cattle and buffalo from India which is rife with foot-and-mouth disease is incredible. The risk to animal welfare in this country should ever we get foot-and-mouth disease would be on a scale never contemplated. (Time expired)