Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024. This is terrible policy you're introducing. It is absolutely terrible policy that the Labor government is introducing with the support of the Greens. It really is hard to fathom that you're introducing policy which will have such an onerous negative impact on thousands of people in Western Australia, will cost this country hundreds of millions of dollars in exports and will actually have a negative impact on the welfare of animals. It really is hard to fathom.

The live sheep export industry will continue. The only change will be that it won't continue with Australia's participation. So the country which has been a world leader in introducing humanitarian welfare checks and balances in relation to the welfare of the sheep, the animals that are the subject of this trade, is going to be stopped from participating in the trade, so the world standards are going to fall because we no longer participate in the trade. It's madness—absolute madness!

The first issue I'd like to talk about is process and transparency. As my friend and colleague Senator David Smith said, the process in relation to the introduction of this bill has been an absolute travesty. The minister obtained an independent panel report in March 2023 and then sat on it until 25 October 2023. For six months, he sat on it. It took six months to release the report. And then there's been a bastardisation of a committee process. The reference to the committee in the other place occurred on 3 June, and they had to report by 21 June. For six months, the minister sat on the report. The committee could have been meeting during that six-month period. A committee of this place could have had three months to consider the impacts on affected communities. But this Senate was deprived of that opportunity because the minister sat on the report for six months and then had the gall to refer it to a committee in the other place on 3 June and give them until 21 June to report.

The committee started its work on Tuesday 4 June and therefore had 13 business days to complete its inquiry— in the context where it had received 668 submissions. I went on the committee's website this afternoon and had a look at it. There are pages and pages of submissions. It was physically impossible for the people participating in that bastardisation of a committee process to read the submissions from affected Australians. It's an absolute travesty. Then there were only two public hearings, for a total of 12 hours. I looked at the agenda for the public hearings. Some of them had five sets of witnesses who had all of one hour to contribute to the public hearing. Again, that's a bastardisation of the process. I don't even know why you bothered really. It's an absolute insult. 'Tick a box,' as my friend Senator Canavan says. Then you voted against the Senate inquiry on 27 June. We're meant to be the House of review, but you deprived the Senate of that opportunity.

I also note that, in relation to the committee process that took place in the House of Representatives, the committee accepted 15 late submissions, one of which was by a veterinary group called Livestock Veterinarians Australia, which strongly refuted a significant volume of veterinary evidence to which the chair's report heavily referred in the decision-making process. But their professional opinions—from the veterinarians intimately involved in this trade—could not be taken into account because of the timeframes. It's disgraceful.

Questions on notice for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry were not responded to within the allocated timeframe. I can't blame the public servants. They were given an impossible timeframe in which to respond. That's at the feet of the minister. To the extent that there are officers here or listening to the debate: I don't attribute any blame to you. I'm sure you did your best given an impossible burden by the minister. Fifty-two separate questions from committee deputy chair, Mr Rick Wilson, were answered with a one-size-fits-all statement. There was no attempt whatsoever to answer the specific questions that were asked. It was an absolute travesty of a process.

Dissenting members of the committee were given less than 24 hours to respond to the chair's report. Again, that's at the minister's feet. There were 13 business days to complete a report in relation to such a contested area of policy. That's absolutely disgraceful. In my view the process has been undertaken in bad faith with absolute contempt for the processes of this Australian parliament. It's absolutely disgraceful.

The second issue I want to refer to is the impact on trade. This is about food security for the destination markets. It's also about respect for culture. I want to quote Mr Neil Smith, who's chair of the Merredin and Districts Farm Improvement Group, who shared his experience on an educational visit to the Middle East, when people of the Middle East actually went to participate in the process of acquiring their meat for the purposes of celebrating Eid. This is what he said:

It was interesting to see families come to a feedlot, choose a sheep, follow it through the abattoir and receive the meat at the other end. They were connected to the sheep, and then they would celebrate with their friends and family for the festival. Little children were educated to understand this connection …

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Australian sheep were given special treatment compared to all other nations' sheep and livestock for processing, and we should be proud as a nation of what we have achieved. But I can assure you that these welfare outcomes will be lost if sheep are not allowed to be exported live from Australia.

So these markets aren't going to accept boxed meat or chilled meat from Australia. This is a fantasy. It's part of their culture to go and follow the process as the live sheep are imported into the markets—the destinations. It's an absolute fantasy that they're going to import chilled sheep or boxed sheep—chilled or frozen meat. How do we know this? They've told us! In a March 2023 letter to agriculture minister, Senator Watt, the then Kuwaiti Minister of Commerce and Industry said:

The requirement for live sheep cannot be substituted with chilled or frozen meat for our population. It's not our preference to switch our live sheep source.

They're not going to change from acquiring live sheep. All we're doing is punishing an Australian industry which is doing the right thing. Absolutely mad! Where are they going to get the live sheep from? I had a look at the figures for exporters in 2023. Live sheep exports from the EU were 2.9 million; Romania, 2.3 million; Spain, 1.45 million; Jordan, 1.3 million; Namibia, 542,000; Portugal, 501,000; and Georgia, 456,000. There are countries that will fill the export gap. All we are doing is punishing our own people and doing nothing for animal welfare. It will go backwards, because we've been world leaders.

This will have a huge negative impact on our fellow Australians, those in regional Western Australia in particular. There are more than 3,000 people directly employed by this industry: shearers, truck drivers, suppliers, farmers and producers, and there's also the impact on the towns. It's a $1 billion industry. Senator Watt had the gall to come in here earlier today and say the industry was unsuccessful, yet I'm looking at figures that say 380,000 animals were exported in 2022 and it increased to 654,000 in 2023. And we actually had the prospect of Saudi Arabia, once again, taking live sheep from Australia. This is an industry that potentially could boom. Absolutely disgraceful! Let me use the rest of my time to read quotes from those who will be most impacted.

In my first speech in this place, I spoke about parliaments and governments making decisions at the behest of activists and punishing regional communities. The activists come in here and they advocate for certain outcomes. They're not going to be negatively impacted by this policy. They're the not ones negatively impacted; it's the regional communities in Western Australia who will suffer. This is an awful example of that phenomenon. So I want to use the rest of my time to quote from the people who are going to be impacted. Shire of Wagin president, Phil Bright, said:

Many regional towns are at a tipping point. Banning one of the industries that provides employment for the area will have significant human cost. Even a small loss in economic vitality has an outsized impact on small, rural communities.

The North Eastern Wheatbelt Regional Organisation of Councils CEO, Caroline Robertson, said:

Not all of them are involved in live export, but live export absolutely benefits all of them. … They each require a shearer, truckie, a wool buyer, an agent and a rural trader at the minimum. Some of those supporting businesses are in the NEWROC shires, but the majority of them are in the rest of regional WA. When you pull the lever on a policy like this in one area, there is a cause and effect, and it happens in another area. … Over 20 years, it'll be $180 million in seven shires.

Kristy D'Aprile, of another shire, said:

The Upper Great Southern has 2.6 million sheep—and 1,927 small businesses, including growers …All of their livelihoods are intrinsically tied to the agricultural industry and sheep.

The WoolProducers Australia CEO, Jo Hall, said:

The mental health impacts of the decision to ban live exports cannot be overstated. As a cohort, primary producers are already overrepresented in suicide rates as compared to the general public, a responsible government should be developing policies to reduce this incidence, not making decisions that add further stress.

Darren Spencer, President of the WA Shearing Industry Association, said:

The hardworking people of our shearing industry, including shearers, rousies, pressers, cooks, classers and shearing contractors feel very let down and abandoned by a government who is preferencing the ideological agenda of animal activists over the real-world impacts on hardworking Australians.

Let me read that again:

… abandoned by a government—

This Labor government, with the support of the Greens, or, in fact, which is being driven by the Greens on this ideological madness—

who is preferencing the ideological agenda of animal activists over the real-world impacts on hardworking Australians. I fear for our industry. You can't expect to remove one building block out of a finely balanced agri model and not have serious cascading consequences.

…   …   …

I fear for our members and our contractors.

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I fear for our workers.

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I fear for shearers like the 14-year-old—who was possibly on the autism spectrum but undiagnosed—who didn't fit into the school system but was able to fit into my shearing crew as a rouseabout. He went on to become a wool presser and then a shearer.

…   …   …

He saved enough to purchase his own house and, 36 years later, he's still working for me in Lake Grace, now in his 50s. What are his prospects? What does he transition to?'

Chris Wheatcroft from Rural West, financial counsellors, said they have seen 'no suicide of any client in 15 years, although we deal with people going through significant change and stress'. He also said: ' In terms of how you spend the money on mental health, it's about enabling people to sit with someone who can actually work through the actual impact for them.' There are pages of this in the dissenting report of the abbreviated committee processes—pages and pages of this, people from the community who are going to be impacted by this awful policy decision.

Another shire CEO said:

In the three years that I was at Wyalkatchem, we lost the bank, we lost the butcher, we lost our sole cafe and we lost the football club … many of our communities are on a knife's edge. They're at a tipping point. The loss of any activity has community significance in rural WA, and the loss of an industry like the live sheep industry is another matter altogether.

Even the WA Minister for Agriculture and Food—one of your own, the Labor minister in the state—said: 'The position of the WA government has been consistent from the start. The phase-out of live export will negatively impact WA regional communities and the livelihoods of many. We do not support it.'

If this bill is passed, it will be a millstone around the neck of the Australian Labor Party in Western Australia and other regional communities until the next election.