Lee Rhiannon (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Today I will revisit the Greens Voice for Animals (Independent Office of Animal Welfare) Bill 2015. We first introduced this in 2015. We've taken the call for an independent office of animal welfare to a number of elections. The Greens are very passionate about the issues of animal welfare and animal rights.

In Australia the need for this office has really become more pressing. You really need to go back to 2013 to look at some of the developments then. There was a real wind-back on animal welfare issues. This was a huge setback because at the time there were a number of bodies in place at a federal level that allowed for consideration to be given to the protection of animals. There were advisory bodies that did actually exist, but under the Abbott government all that was removed. It was a messy structure, but there were means for stakeholders to come forward at the federal level to have some input. But these structures went, and since 2013 there's been no way for stakeholders to engage with industry for there to be some cross-fertilisation of ideas for people to raise their concerns. That's very serious.

From 2013, because of that shocking step backwards, many animal organisations such as Animals Australia, Voiceless and others have raised a voice very strongly calling on political parties to come forward with an independent office of animal welfare. I emphasise the word 'independent' because that's really what's critical here. We understand that, in terms of how governments work, they can set up such bodies.

So what we were left with was that the Labor Party did move on an office of animal welfare but not an independent one. I'll come to this in more detail, but I just wanted to give some framework to how this has played out in cent years. Sadly, what they did was say: 'The office of animal welfare? Yes, it's needed, but it will go in under the Department of Agriculture.' That is totally inappropriate. This is where there's a huge conflict of interest, with the department of agriculture having failed in so many areas for so long to adequately ensure that animals aren't exploited, don't suffer and are not abused in how they're used in various production processes.

That's been a very big issue in how we've approached the urgent need for this office to be established. We need to ask ourselves: how many animals must suffer cruel and torturous conditions in how they live and die? How can it be that those charged with protecting animals from abuse are too often the ones who benefit most from it? I urge that senators, in considering this bill before them, give some thought to those important questions, because this independent office of animal welfare is, in the scheme of things, very mild. It's not about to change agriculture. It's not about to change how everything works when it comes to the use of animals in this country. But it allows the different people who are concerned about this to engage with government and industry.

I'm fortunate to have this portfolio, and one thing that comes forward so often when I engage with this work is the range of people from such diverse parts of our society—politically, socially, where they work—who are deeply concerned about animal welfare, but they're frustrated by how animals are handled in this society. They feel they have nowhere to turn. A federal independent office of animal welfare is urgently needed to help people engage successfully, get this national conversation going and get some strategies in place so we can ensure that the suffering of animals does not continue.

The essence of this bill is the establishment of a Commonwealth statutory authority that would have responsibility for advising about the protection of animal welfare in Commonwealth-regulated activities. How would it go about that? It would establish an office of animal welfare that would be an independent statutory authority. It would have a CEO, and that person's functions would include the reviewing and monitoring of live export standards and the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System, known as ESCAS.

ESCAS alone shows why this office is needed. It was set up apparently to ensure that the suffering that we have seen so graphically many times on our TV screens when animals are exported overseas would not continue. But ESCAS has been a failure. We're told it works, but so often we see the proof in a very graphic way that that's not the case. This office would also report on animal welfare issues that impact the Commonwealth, report on the work of animal welfare committees and review animal welfare laws and policy that impact on the Commonwealth. That's what I wanted to emphasise. We'll probably hear some speeches in this debate that get all outraged about what Greens and animal groups have said about live exports and trying to end cruel cosmetics.