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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-06-22 Daily Xml
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LIVE ANIMAL EXPORTS

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (16:00): I move:

That this council calls on the government to:

1. Condemn the appalling cruelty that was demonstrated in the Indonesian abattoirs and shown on the recent and previous ABC Four Corners programs on live animal exports;

2. Act in a timely and appropriate manner to endorse the Australian government's suspension of the live export cattle trade to Indonesia;

3. Act to ensure South Australia acts independently to cease all live exports from Port Adelaide of sheep and any other animal for slaughter to Indonesia and other markets, particularly the Middle East; and

4. Provide this council with details of:

(a) what steps are being taken to assist local meat processing facilities to deal with an expansion in local slaughter to replace previously live exported animals with chilled and frozen products;

(b) what steps are being undertaken to encourage value-adding of locally processed products; and

(c) what the government is doing to assist farmers to restructure their operations to replace live exports.

A few weeks ago, millions of Australians were quite rightly appalled, disgusted, ashamed and, in many cases of course, moved to tears by the graphic horrors exposed in Indonesian slaughterhouses on the Four Corners program 'A Bloody Business'. That program investigated and uncovered the brutal truth about the live export trade of animals, in this case, of cattle to Indonesia.

Within a matter of days, over 200,000 Australians had signed an online petition, and politicians of all persuasions were being flooded with emails, letters and phone calls, all calling for an end to live exports. This is not the first time that live exports have made the news and the resulting outcry has forced a suspension in this bloody trade. The live sheep trade to Egypt was suspended for four years from 2006, but as far back as 1985 the Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare recommended that the Australian government:

...promote and encourage the expansion of the refrigerated sheep meat trade to the Middle East and other countries, with the aim of eventually substituting it for the live sheep trade.

What are live exports? During the last 30 years Australia has sent more than 150 million sheep and cattle to be slaughtered in other parts of the world, such as the Middle East and South-East Asia. Livestock ships can carry up to 100,000 animals for voyages lasting as much as three weeks. More than two million animals have died on the ships en route, the deaths deemed an acceptable loss by an industry that puts profit above all else. One can only imagine the suffering these animals have endured while slowly dying due to illness, starvation or heat stress. The vast majority die in their crowded pens without any aid or treatment.

Investigations conducted by Animals Australia in Middle Eastern countries have exposed the terrible cruelties inflicted upon Australian animals in these countries. Most importing countries do not have a single law to protect the animals' welfare. Once in the Middle East Australian sheep are routinely purchased, bound and shoved into car boots in a region where temperatures can reach over 50 degrees in the summer—and that is Celsius.

Both sheep and cattle have their throats cut while fully conscious, suffering prolonged, distressing and painful deaths. Live animal export is inherently cruel, immoral and indefensible, with this trade affecting millions of animals every year. Around four million sheep are exported to the Middle East each year. The biggest markets are Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, with around one million imported sheep each. Other primary destinations include Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Tens of thousands of sheep die on the ships before they reach the Middle East.

This is of special significance given the possibility that exporters, unable to fill ships from Fremantle, are now in fact looking to South Australia for their animals. We will have the opportunity in this state to make a moral and ethical choice: to participate in the trade or to say, 'No; enough is enough. Some things are just wrong and no amount of profit can make them right.'

Sheep, of course, are not the only animal to face the horror of the ships of shame. Each year Australia exports over half a million cattle. Most go to South-East Asia and the majority of these to Indonesia, although in 2006, for example,119,000 cattle were exported to Middle East countries such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and Libya in that year alone.

After another Animals Australia exposé of cruel practices in Egypt, the Australian government suspended all exports of cattle and sheep to this country. After resumption of sheep exports, which occurred in late 2006, promises to reform the industry came to nought with another Animals Australia investigation again highlighting ongoing cruelty. I think members might be able to start to see a pattern here.

The export of sheep to Egypt is now prohibited, but shipments of cattle resumed in 2010, now subject to a restriction of being sent to a single feedlot and abattoir in Egypt which complies with specific requirements. It is no credit to Australia and, in fact, it shames us that these investigations have had to be conducted by an under-resourced and cash-strapped non-government organisation because the government seems content to abrogate its responsibilities in this area or, quite simply, ignore the ongoing cruelty that we know occurs in these destinations. I note it has long been the Greens' policy to abolish the live export trade. The animal section of our Greens' environment policy indeed states that the Australian Greens will:

strengthen national animal welfare legislation that prohibits cruelty and ensures that acts of cruelty are treated as criminal offences;

legislate to protect the welfare of agricultural animals, including conditions of transport and captivity;

end the export of live animals for consumption;

ban the exportation of animals to jurisdictions where levels of legislative protection are below those of Australia;

ensure that trade agreements do not undermine Australian animal welfare standards; and

foster community education about the needs of animals and our responsibilities to them.

As some members of this chamber may be aware, at a federal level, Nick Xenophon, the Independent (formerly of this place) and the Independent from Tasmania, Andrew Wilkie, as well as the Greens' Adam Bandt, have been introducing bills in the federal parliament to ban the live export of animals for slaughter. Today, I move a motion that calls for action from the South Australian government as well.

Long-distance sea transportation necessarily means multiple handling, intensive stock densities; different food and competition for food and water; changes in climatic environment from winter to summer; at times, unforeseen problems such as fire, cyclones or rejection by importing countries; and other factors which, cumulatively, cause stress, distress, often injuries and illness and, of course, death. Most Australian grazing animals are rarely handled and are fearful of and stressed by human handling. This is just one reason to oppose live exports. Long-distance sea voyages for slaughter contradict the universally accepted principle that animals should be killed as close as possible to the point of production to reduce stress.

It is clearly not just the Greens and animal welfare groups who oppose live exports. The Australian Meat Industry Employees Union is also firmly opposed to live exports because they know, just as we do, that, as we export animals, we are exporting jobs. Last year alone, over 1,000 Australian meat processing jobs were estimated to have been lost to this country as we exported livestock.

Over the last 20 years, the AMIEU has identified some 150 meat processing plants in regional and rural Australia which have closed, with the loss of up to 40,000 jobs over that time. This is a direct consequence of the live export trade. Closures of local abattoirs then have, of course, a flow-on effect as families leave these regional and rural areas of Australia, and that impacts on other local businesses in country areas. Short-sightedly, we are exporting the value-adding that goes along with domestic processing.

I have previously highlighted that we can have a win-win outcome on this issue. Ending live exports equals better animal welfare outcomes and more Aussie jobs. Every sheep and every steer that is exported live suffers, from the journey itself—sometimes, as I have said, up to three weeks—then facing a horrendous fate in countries with no animal welfare standards, inadequate facilities or, even worse, facilities and training provided by the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation (part funded by Australian taxpayers) that entrench cruelty. The appalling Mark 1 restraining boxes, which we saw graphically demonstrated on Four Corners, are examples of this.

If honourable members have not seen this episode yet, I would encourage them to go to the ABC iView of the Four Corners website while this is still up online, where they can watch this episode, or avail themselves of the facilities in the parliamentary library. It is difficult to watch, and as horrendous and confronting as it was, I know that additional footage could have been shown that was even worse.

For this footage, we must thank the courage of Animals Australia's investigator, former South Australian police officer, Lyn White. Her bravery and resilience in doing a job that I am sure most of us simply could not face is to be congratulated. I am grateful for her efforts here as they have enabled us to confront the government and the industry spin doctors head-on, challenging the complacency that allows this trade to go on. Up until now, it has been done behind closed doors and out of sight and out of mind not only of the Australian people but of course our government.

We no longer have the luxury of this blissful ignorance: it has now been drawn to our attention. We must stand up and accept that we must make a choice: to support this cruel trade and condemn more animals to a grisly and barbaric end or to look for win-win alternatives that will see Australian jobs retained and, in fact, created in processing and value-adding here onshore, not overseas. We know that the industry excuses that they will trot out just do not stack up. The industry has previously suggested—and I would say this is not across the industry: this is some who have a vested interest in keeping the live export trade going—that foreign markets will not accept frozen or chilled meat that is killed here in Australia.

This is, in fact, not the case. For many years, Australia has had halal-certified slaughter people (it says here men, but I will hold out in the hope that there may be a female) killing animals after pre-stunning them under the Australian government supervised Muslim slaughter program (AGSMS). This ensures that the animals are slaughtered in accordance with Islamic requirements, but done so in a humane way. The pre-stunning ensures that when the animal's throat is cut it is unable to feel the pain, and this is mandated at slaughterhouses in Australia.

I will possibly reiterate this later on, but I will raise concerns that, as of last weekend we have discovered, I believe, that nine slaughterhouses in South Australia do not use stunning and have sought exemption from this. As I said, I hope that this government will be pursuing that and taking heed of the RSPCA's call. In 2006 the President of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Dr Ameer Ali, noted that Australian slaughtered halal meat was acceptable to Muslims. Muslims do not support the cruel treatment of animals prior to slaughter, and it is documented in the Qur'ān that animals should be treated with kindness.

What then of the myth that if we do not export them someone else will? Well, we know when we last banned the export of Australian sheep to Egypt they did not switch to someone else: they just increased their imports of chilled Australian meat. During the previous ban on live sheep and cattle from Australia to Saudi Arabia in 1991 to 2000 there was, similarly, a threefold increase in the exports of chilled and frozen mutton and lamb to that market, clear evidence that consumers in the Middle East will accept meat from animals killed in Australia.

We know that, far from not being accepting of alternatives, one of the major importers of live Australian sheep into the Middle East, Kuwait Livestock Transport and Trading, markets on its website frozen microwaveable meals and a wide variety of processed products produced from Australian sheep. Rather than let this company add value to that product, would it not make more sense to process the animals humanely here and value add and keep jobs here? The Middle East already imports sheep meat equivalent to more than 3.6 million live sheep annually.

The value of total exports in 2008-09, for instance, for chilled and frozen lamb was $966 million. Chilled and frozen mutton was worth $499 million—together nearly $1.5 billion—and yet our live sheep trade was worth only $340 million over that same period. Something does not add up here. Similarly, the Meat and Livestock Corporation's own statistical database shows that in 2008 the value of cattle exported live was $638 million, free on board. This compares to beef exports of $4.97 billion.

The combined value of meat exports in 2008 was $6.29 billion versus the combined value of live sheep and cattle exports in 2008, which was only $0.959 billion. In other words, the chilled and frozen trade was worth 6.5 times the export value of the live export trade. It will only increase if we do not provide the alternative option of live animals. Before I come to my motion, I will put on the record how disturbed I was to hear the revelations the RSPCA revealed in last Saturday's Advertiser.

As I mentioned before, there are nine slaughterhouses here in South Australia that claim to have been given exemptions from pre-stunning. Yesterday, I put questions on notice to see what number of halal-certified slaughterhouses and kosher-certified slaughterhouses are currently operating in South Australia and whether the minister could advise how they are regulated, inspected and how we are ensuring appropriate animal welfare standards are maintained in this state.

I also asked the Minister for Environment and Conservation whether is it a requirement that all South Australian slaughterhouse animals must be pre-stunned before slaughter, which facilities are exempt from this and where they are. I believe it is essential that we get some answers to these questions, and I would hope that the minister acts immediately to ensure that we are not exposed as hypocrites in this country demanding Indonesia and other countries meet standards that, in fact, we are not upholding in this state ourselves.

My motion today is aimed at striking a balance between sending the right message to the Australian community and the world, ensuring that we have the highest possible animal welfare standards, but ensuring also Australian jobs and the economic development of rural and regional Australia and Australians. I commend it to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. R.P. Wortley.

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