2016-09-13
MR BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — The Greens will support this bill, which amends the Livestock Disease Control Act 1994 to stipulate further declaration requirements when livestock are moved and to provide further requirements for feeding of certain materials to pigs. I originally thought we would be debating this bill around about April, but it has been hanging around for quite some time. I am not sure in fact whether the measures that are contained in the bill have been added to, anticipated or superseded by other policies that the government may have been implementing over that time.
Six months is a long time in any industry that is moving fast, and agriculture is certainly a very dynamic industry. There is nothing routine or run of the mill. There is constant change in the needs of profitability and in terms of standards. Climate change itself is shifting entire zones that might have once been unsuitable for cropping and are now cropping zones. We have seen a big movement towards lambs for meat, with less emphasis on wool. I am talking about over the longer stretch now. We have seen changes where cattle and sheep are actually raised. Somewhere in the middle of this the minister found time to set up a kangaroo culling industry as well.
Compare and contrast the standards that are going to be operating in that industry — a cowboy operation which is happening out there at night, barely regulated, on many, many different properties with huge already existing huge animal cruelty concerns — to the way that we are working to improve standards, safety, biosecurity and animal welfare in our livestock industries. The kangaroo culling industry, which is currently for pet meat but is no doubt soon going to be for human consumption, is an extremely poor competitor to honest farmers who have worked very hard to improve their properties and improve their livestock herds.
As noted, we have now seen a move in Victoria to universal eartagging for sheep and goats, practically from birth I imagine. That will give us the ability to trace those animals as they move about the landscape eventually downstream. That is an investment. It is 40 cents, 50 cents or 60 cents per eartag. I do not know if that includes putting them on or just the tags themselves, but that is an additional measure that has been put in place in order to gain, one would hope, at the end of the day a better industry, a more profitable and productive industry and a safer industry.
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Mr BARBER — The minister is helpfully briefing me across the chamber as we go. Recently I have been receiving quite a few — —
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Mr BARBER — I read the Weekly Times, Minister. What else do you need, basically?
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Mr BARBER — Thank you very much, Minister.
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Mr BARBER — The eartag thing was really just an aside. Recently I have also been receiving a renewed set of representations about live export. This is an ongoing problem for Australia. We have worked very hard to set standards here in Australia. Australians want to buy products knowing that there are good standards of animal welfare in that industry. Unfortunately once animals leave our shores, we just cannot guarantee it.
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Mr BARBER — Eartagged or otherwise — correct, Mr Davis. No matter how many times the industry might try and tell us that the problem has been solved or that there is no problem, the problem resurfaces and then it reverberates all the way back down the production chain and affects a whole range of people here in Australia. I say to those farmers: blame your representative body, blame Meat and Livestock Australia for not having raised the standards in advance. But as usual they put the wagons in circle and try to deny the problem or say that there is no problem.
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Mr BARBER — Well, here in Victoria, I gather from the latest figures that only about 1.3 per cent of our lamb production actually goes overseas as live export. More than half our lamb production now is for export, but the jobs associated with killing it, packing it, freezing it and getting it ready to ship stay here in Australia. The 1.3 per cent of the lamb population that is going overseas alive in a given year — it is in the hundreds of thousands of animals, but it is a very small proportion of our whole industry — is a blight on the industry.
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Mr BARBER — I will say it here in Victoria. I will say it in western Victoria. I do not mind, Mr Ramsay. That is my party's position. It continues to cause concerns here in Australia. We have got the highest standards we can possibly have, and customer demand continues to require high standards, but we cannot guarantee what happens offshore, and that continues to be a problem for local producers and everybody involved in the value chain, including saleyards, some of which are owned by local government, and including anybody who is involved in that industry.
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Mr BARBER — Mr Ramsay and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on this question of live exports.
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Mr BARBER — Well, let's keep shrinking it. We have just agreed on something, Mr Ramsay. Let us shrink it.
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Mr BARBER — And we can create some more jobs — thank you very much, Minister.
In relation to the feeding of prohibited animal products to pigs, the bill creates some new exceptions to the restrictions that were introduced some time ago where appropriate safeguards are in place and ministerial approval is provided. That would mean that milk products or by-products are a potential feed source if the dairy is appropriately licensed under regulations or if the products are imported for the specific purpose of use as animal feed and have cleared quarantine and biosecurity requirements. This appears to be being proposed in order to allow larger piggeries to use by-products from nearby agriculture facilities if the safety of the feed has been adequately treated. That is a policy the Greens support, because we want to reduce waste within the agricultural production chain and make sure we get maximum use or, if you like, re-use or recycling of what would otherwise be waste within the agricultural chain, because that will improve productivity. So it is for that reason that we will be supporting the bill.
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