Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I would appreciate your advice on a question I have. You will be aware that the northern beef industry was a very important part of Australia's agricultural activities. It provided food for Australians but, perhaps more importantly, also for our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, a country of 200 million-plus people who live closer to me than I do to Canberra or Melbourne. Indonesia is a very important neighbour of ours and one which we have assisted over many, many years. Part of that assistance has been to provide Indonesians with the protein that red meat provides and that was through, of course, exporting live cattle from Australia to Indonesia and then having those cattle slaughtered in Indonesia, in many cases by smaller abattoirs because of the lack of refrigeration in Indonesia. I say this by way of preamble to my question.

The minister would be aware that his decision in, first of all, banning from export those abattoirs that had a proven cruel record was appropriate, and the northern beef industry would have coped with that. By way of background, I simply relate that the minister was then spooked by the left wing of his party, by the Greens, by GetUp! and by all those other fringe groups who have little interest in Australia but who have a lot of interest in maintaining the Labor-Greens alliance in the federal parliament. The minister, completely spooked by those people and by the left wing of his own party, changed his decision overnight and invoked a total ban.

The biggest impact on the beef industry, which of course was the main supplier to the Indonesian protein market, was in Northern Australia. Clearly they are people whom I have a lot of association with and I try to help them as much as I can in a wide range of areas. My office and the office of any other politician in Northern Australia, state or federal, has been overwhelmed by the response from family farmers in the north whose livelihoods and indeed, in some cases, lives have been shattered by yet another stupid decision of the Gillard government.

My question in relation to this bill before us is this, Minister: is the Carbon Farming Initiative and this amendment likely in some way to benefit the northern beef industry that is now struggling to maintain its presence? The minister will be aware—