Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will, Sir. Through you, Senator Rhiannon has a zero plan for dealing with the economic impacts that will wipe out northern Australia. There will be tens of thousands of families losing their properties, as they almost did in 2011. Let's have a look at how that happened. This very chamber that we stand in gave due consideration to the circumstances of that and made a very measured decision. I don't know whether you were here, Senator Williams. They made a measured decision to withdraw four licences out of Indonesia for the processing of these cattle. And then, somewhere that night, some hairy armpit sitting in Melbourne or somewhere hit a send button and put 48,000 emails into the Australian Labor Party, and they buckled. They made a decision that wasn't taken through this chamber to cease the live cattle trade.

That decision brought devastation to large tracts of northern Australia. It drove cattle onto the domestic market. These are the cattle that Senator Rhiannon doesn't want exported—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President. She wants them slaughtered, chilled and then put on a shelf where no-one's going to buy them. If all of the cattle that were exported live were slaughtered and chilled for the local markets here in Australia, there would be no buyers. I can't imagine that she wants to take a live beast that's going to Indonesia, put it into a box and chill it and deliver it to the Indonesians where it will rot at the port. These poor people have no refrigeration. Large parts of China where our live export goes have no refrigeration.