Member for Farrer Sussan Ley faces a showdown with her Liberal-National colleagues after telling the government she will introduce a Private Members Bill to end live sheep exports.
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Ms Ley’s bill would set a date to phase out all live sheep exports to the Middle East and was expected to find cross-party support.
“Today I advised the Minister for Agriculture of my intention to introduce a Private Members Bill, with the aim of setting a date to phase out all live sheep export to the Middle East,” Ms Ley said on Thursday.
“I absolutely recognise any cessation of this trade will need to be done in consultation with producers and the wider industry.”
Ms Ley expected the wind down would take between two to five years while other avenues, such as increasing meat processing facilities at port sites, were developed.
Agriculture Minister David Littleproud has ordered a “short, sharp review” into shipping standards, saying decisions would be made on science, not emotion.
“I’ve also seen research from ABARES that suggests in fact if you took away live trade, it would actually cost $300 million to the industry and the benefits we’d gain by solely having processing in Australia would only give us $100 million – but we’d lose 10,000 jobs,” Mr Littleproud told Fairfax Media
“We’ve got to make sure we do this sensibly but above all that, the reality is there’s a demand right around the world for live trade and if we’re not in it, then someone else will be and that someone else may not have the same (animal welfare) standards we do.
“We have a responsibility to do the right thing and to make sure we get this right and value animals in the way that we have and we do that by having the supply chain and processes that we are expected to have.”
Riverina sheep and wool producer Colin Bull believed the focus should be on the motives of self-serving activists not Australian farmers.
He said there was a need for live exports because of poor infrastructure in destination countries.
“They do have a place because what the people against live exports don’t realise or don’t consider is what happens when they get there?,” he said.
“In a lot of cases the people don’t have refrigeration and can’t handle and distribute frozen or chilled mutton.”
He said a review and crackdown on export ship operators was the best approach, rather than a blanket ban.
“Obviously there’s issues within the industry, but these people just take the footage and hang on to it and wait for an opportune time,” he said.
“This boat situation happened in June last year, that’s nine or 10 months ago. If they were generally concerned about the sheep they would of had it out there within days.”
It appeared Ms Ley had Labor leader Bill Shorten’s support while the Greens have said they would back the bill.
“We are absolutely open to working with the government on bipartisan reforms, but it’s not acceptable to allow deaths and shocking mistreatment to occur just because we are waiting for a report to be handed down,” Mr Shorten was quoted as saying.