The Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024 aims to end live sheep exports from Australia by May 2028. This bill, despite offering $107 million in compensation for rural and regional communities, fails to adequately address the economic impact on the sheep export industry and local communities.
The bill is seen as a pretext for further restrictions, potentially extending to live cattle exports, under the guise of animal welfare. This will harm Aboriginal communities reliant on cattle farming and exacerbate economic hardships in rural areas.
The bill’s flawed consultation process and ideologically driven policies overlook the real impacts on people and communities. It will cause significant losses for farmers, disrupt food supply chains, and benefit city-based animal welfare activists while ignoring the human cost.
Transcript
Keep the sheep! Keep humans! We need to stop this live export ban. There are no grounds for it. We’ve seen a truncated, sham inquiry. The Labor Party has not gone out and listened. They’re just pushing the Greens ideology to get the Greens voters’ preferences in inner-city electorates. What about the effect on the human environment: the devastation to local communities and to people overseas who need food and good animal protein?
The Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024 amends the Export Control Act 2020 to prohibit the export of live sheep by sea from Australia on 1 May 2028. The bill also includes money to paper over the cracks—the devastation that this measure will cause to rural and regional communities—for a limited period. That money is going to be made available only under severe limits. One would have thought that providing that money anyway, to assist in an orderly transition in a suitable timeframe, would have made more sense. Then, again, sense has no place in the feelings driven policy development from the Albanese Labor government—political, not economic—regardless of the impact on humans.
As it stands, the $107 million fund is little compensation for an industry that generates $120 million a year directly and hundreds of millions more in flow-on effects to rural communities. Of the money, $60 million will be used to lay the groundwork for the next round of the government’s plan, which is to eliminate live cattle exports. Specifically, the mechanism is the specious animal welfare argument, including welfare of animals in transport. Sheep and cattle welfare during transport will be used as an excuse to limit the movement of animals.
Who benefits substantially from that trade? It’s not the Aboriginal communities in remote areas of Australia who currently support themselves raising cattle and then need to transport their cattle a long distance to get them to market. This transport welfare measure will remove the opportunity for Aboriginal communities to support themselves, in turn making those communities reliant—dependent—on government handouts. Aboriginal communities are heavily represented in red meat production. In areas of Western Australia, they will be devastated by the loss of this trade. The industry is attracting homeless from the cities, coming bush in search of work and accommodation.
What a high price everyday Australians in rural areas are paying for the dirty deal from the Labor government for preferences from animal welfare groups and the Greens. Labor can’t, and doesn’t, deny this dirty deal. The announcement of Labor’s policy on live animal exports came not from Labor but from one of the animal welfare groups. This bill lets city activists pat themselves on the back while ignoring the animal and human suffering caused by this ill-informed and poorly consulted bill resulting from a sham, partial inquiry that didn’t consult everyone.
While the government talks about the bill being a product of consultation, the process was one of working backward from the desired outcome: how can we be seen to get this outcome? The correct process, according to the Office of Impact Analysis, is to conduct ‘meaningful consultation that considers the views of affected stakeholders’. That’s not what happened. As I said, it was a sham inquiry in the lower house. The National Farmers Federation submitted to the committee that they had to fight each step of the way for producers to have a fair hearing with the independent panel. The National Farmers Federation saw the industry’s advice to the panel go unheeded in the final report. What was the point?
Then we saw the minister go even further, rejecting key elements of the panel’s advice and adopting even more radical ideas than the panel itself had recommended. Welcome to government under the Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese MP! Ideology and dodgy preference deals with ill-informed fanatics is how the Labor Party rolls. To hell with the human devastation! Look good; don’t do good. The entire consultation and parliamentary process is a mockery of due process. It’s an indictment of those in this chamber who go along with this sham for reasons that escape me. The Greens of course want to cause more hardship among the red meat industry with their amendment from Senator Faruqi—if successful, bringing this bill forward to 2026. I’ll bet that’s the deal done between the Greens and the Labor Party: to bring it forward to 2026 and set immediate limits to export.
Sheep have a five-month gestation and need to grow for seven months before export. This means that sheep that are under gestation now will not be able to be exported under the Greens amendment unless markets can be found at the last minute. The parent animals were bred specifically for the export trade, and these will be bound for the abattoir. Meat contracts are let out years ahead because of the breeding cycle. So, selling these animals is not likely. In fact, the cull has already started, with prices as low as 50c a kilogram, through the saleyards in Western Australia, and many lots are unsold, causing farmers to leave unsold animals at the saleyards for euthanasia. Perhaps city senators like Senator Faruqi and Senator Tyrrell, who is in support, can come over to Western Australia and help with the cull, look these farmers in the eye, look these sheep in the eye.
The idea that this bill and the Greens amendment is predicated on humane treatment of animals is Orwellian doublespeak. It will have the reverse effect. Rural communities are being hollowed out as a result of the policies of the Labor-Greens government. The endgame is to move protein consumption to lab-grown meat owned by Prime Minister Albanese’s friends Bill Gates and BlackRock’s Larry Fink, whom the Prime Minister has met with during this parliamentary term. Farmers have no place in the Labor-Greens vision of a dystopian world of fake meats and fake food. This bill denies the truth that live sheep exports suffer a loss of life at exactly the same levels as animals in the field, if not better. The object of this bill is not the welfare of animals; it’s an ideological objection to a diet that includes red meat—ideology over humanity. And what of the land currently under grazing? Well, I’m sure the climate carpetbaggers are already out in the bush measuring up for solar panels. Beautiful countryside will be covered in silicon cancer, and somehow this is environmentally friendly? The Labor-Greens government is not fit to govern.
I want to pass on some personal thoughts from Senator Pauline Hanson, who was in Western Australia recently to listen, and the farmers spontaneously invited her to speak off the back of a truck. As Pauline does and as I do, she did so. The farmers mentioned the independent study that was done—no deaths on ships. Of course, other senators have mentioned the MV Awassi Express, on which was perpetrated the cash-for-cruelty scam: hundreds of thousands of dollars apparently paid to a foreign stockman from a developing nation to treat animals cruelly, to kill an industry—and that’s what Labor did, fell for it, killing an industry, the damage to farmers, communities and nation already done: 100,000 sheep especially bred for the live export overseas market, not suitable for the local market, as I’ve said. The market for live sheep is already down because overseas buyers are looking elsewhere. They know what’s coming from this government. They’ve seen the socialists operating, and they’re seeking other suppliers. It hurts farmers across the whole of Australia, because, for example, Tasmanian sheep farmers are sending sheep to WA to make up shipments.
Remember the Gillard Labor government’s cattle export ban? It belted the whole of Australia’s beef grazing industry—the whole country. It had effects everywhere, because of the flow-on. Farmers told Senator Hanson in Western Australia recently, ‘We’ll have to shoot the animals we especially bred.’ She told me about the look in their eyes—shattered for the waste of the animals they cared for. Communities over there are worried about farmers’ mental health. If the government has any humanity, it won’t force the farmers to shoot their own animals; the government can kill the sheep.
Here’s a question for government. The European Union is the world’s biggest exporter of sheep, not Australia. What free trade agreements has Australia signed with the European Union? Has this Albanese Labor government done an agreement with the European Union? We’ve all seen so-called free trade. It’s not fair trade at all. It hurts our country. We’ve seen that from both sides of the uniparty, Labor and the Liberal-Nationals. As I’ve said, the real reason for shutting down this export industry is to get Greens’ votes and preferences in inner-city eastern electorates.
I want to talk briefly about why I’m very pro human, and I’ve spoken about it many times. I need to counter 80 years of anti-human propaganda, especially that of the last 60 years since the Club of Rome got into bed together with the United Nations and then the World Economic Forum, all to control people, to control property and to transfer wealth. There are three or four main assumptions that this anti-human campaign propagates. Firstly, they say humans don’t care. We’ll talk about that in a minute. They say we’re greedy, rapacious, uncaring and irresponsible—we just don’t care.
Secondly, they say humans are destroying our planet when, in fact, the reverse is true. They say civilisation is the environment’s enemy. They say civilisation and the environment are mutually exclusive. I’ll address that in a minute. They say civilisation and the environment are incompatible, so we need to cease development—because that’s what they want: they want to stop human development. Senior leaders of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, including the late Maurice Strong, have said that. They want to deindustrialise Western civilisation. They say our duty is to protect our planet. They say nothing about humans. They imply that humans need to be sacrificed for that.
Here’s the reality to counter 80 years of bull. These are observations. Everyone in this chamber right now and everyone watching on TV is here because someone cared. When a foal is born to a mare, it pops out of the mare, struggles for about 20 minutes and then starts cantering and put its head down and starts grazing with the herd. When every one of us, as humans, was born, we were completely helpless. The fact that anyone is in this room or watching means they are alive and that they were cared for. We are completely helpless for a number of years. Whether our parents were good or bad or whatever, the fact that you exist means that humans care. Humans care, and they’re based on care. The most caring humans got to propagate.
Here’s the second thing. Visit any country in the world and you’ll see that developed continents have a lower impact on the environment than the undeveloped continents. For example, a person in a remote, undeveloped area of Africa will defecate in the creek because he or she is too busy scrounging for their child’s next meal. Yet what we do is mine black rock called coal and red rock called iron ire, and we make steel, build dams, build water pipelines and get sanitation and water to our communities. Developed nations have less impact on the natural environment. That means human civilisation and the natural environment are mutually dependent. We all know that our civilisation won’t have a future if we don’t protect the environment. It’s also clear that the environment has no future if we don’t develop and civilise. That is clear, yet we’re told the opposite.
Our duty is to enable humans to flourish. Right throughout history, every generation has taken care of the younger generation and tried to make a better world for its younger generation. When we develop our country and civilise, we actually protect the environment. Our goal is not to protect the environment. Our goal is to protect humans and to civilise—for humans to flourish and civilise. That’s why I’m very proud about speaking about our species.
I also want to say that we need to have an aim to restore our country and our planet for humans to abound, thrive and flourish. The goal is for humans to thrive. Farming is essential for civilisation. Farming needs to be protected. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘For cities to exist, we need farms; for farms to exist, we don’t need cities.’ As I mentioned briefly, the objective here is cultured lab meat. That’s one of the globalist aims of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. Humans need real meat, animal fat. Who knew that the Greens were helping to sell cancerous cultured meat grown in slop in a bioreactor? People just want to be left alone to get on with their lives and to get the government the hell out of our lives. Humans deserve food here and overseas— (Time expired)
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