Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024

Mehreen Faruqi

Too many animals have died and too many have suffered on the ships of misery for decades. Sheep that have been treated as cargo, not as the living, breathing sentient beings that they are, have suffered for far too long. Governments have facilitated this trade for decades, condemning thousands upon thousands of animals to horrific deaths and unimaginable suffering. In 1966, 67,000 sheep died aboard the Uniceb; in 1980, 40,000 sheep died on the Farid Fares; in 2003, 5½ thousand sheep perished on the MV Cormo Express; in 2014, 4,000 sheep died on the Bader III; in 2017, 3,000 died aboard the Al Messilah; in 2017, 2,400 sheep died on the Awassi Express; and, between 2018 and 2023, more than 6½ thousand sheep deaths have been recorded. These are just some of the horrors of this barbaric trade that we know about. There are many thousands more animals that suffer in extreme heat in cramped, overcrowded and filthy containers and that go hungry and thirsty.

The industry has long tried to hide and downplay the true extent of suffering involved in live sheep export, and the government has aided and abetted the industry for years. To this day, there is little transparency about the suffering on board these ships of misery. It is only thanks to the tireless and courageous efforts of animal welfare advocates, whistleblowers and activists who, time after time, have exposed the cruelty of the industry and the failures of the government that we know the extent of suffering that live exports inflicts on animals. These exposes have brought the need for urgent reform to the fore.

In August 2017 Faisal Ullah, a young 25-year-old Pakistani trainee navigation officer, bravely exposed the calamity that occurred on the _Awa s si Express_. By April 2018, Animals Australia and 60 Minutes helped reveal the sickening image of thousands of live sheep and lambs being cooked alive from heat stress, being crushed to death from overcrowding and having their throats slit by crew members and thrown overboard. Shortly after, in 2018, my Greens led bill to end the long-haul export of live sheep and lambs during the Northern Hemisphere summer passed the Senate. But the then coalition government gagged debate in the House of Representatives.

Over 70 per cent of voyages since 2018 have reported heat stress in sheep while in the equatorial Persian Gulf and Red Sea regions. Yet it took another four years for the government to impose a ban on sheep exports through the Middle East during the Northern Hemisphere summer, only for them to then weaken this ban. Even small improvements to the live exports trade have taken far too long, and sheep have continued to suffer horrendously. There have been dozens of reforms, reviews and inquiries since the industry started, but the cruelty goes on. It is crystal clear that we cannot stop animal cruelty in live exports by getting rid of a few bad apples or tinkering around the edges. Animal torture is absolutely baked into the industry's business model. Time and time again, we have seen that nothing can be done to make live export ships safe for animals. This cruel trade is irredeemable. The only option is to shut it down, and I am so glad that we are here today.

In 2018 I stood in this place and introduced a bill to end the export of live animals for slaughter. I held up a truly gruesome photo of sheep suffering on the Awassi Express, telling the government that the system was broken and the cruel trade must end. Late last year, we were reminded just how broken the system is when the WA government inexplicably dropped its charges of animal cruelty against the Awassi Express operator, Emanuel Exports, a decision that absolutely stinks of political interference and holds no-one accountable for the horrific deaths of 2,400 sheep.

The disasters have continued this year. After more than 9,200 sheep and 3,700 cattle were subjected to torturous heat on the MV Bahijah for eight straight days back in 2018, in January this year a further 16,000 animals were left sweltering through a heatwave off the Western Australian coast on the very same ship. This was after they had already been on the ship for weeks because of the terrible decision to send the ship through a conflict zone. In the end the sheep were stuck on this journey for 72 long days, and hundreds died. The government should never have approved the Bahijah to leave the shores of WA. It is clear that the government is completely held to ransom by exporters that will pursue profit above all else, and that will continue to happen if this trade is allowed to go on.

It is high time to end live export. It was high time back in 2018, when my bill passed the Senate. Now it is beyond time to shut down this industry once and for all. This cruel trade has completely lost its social licence—if it ever actually had one. Independent polling commissioned by my office in June 2023 showed that 85 per cent of Australians supported a phase-out of live sheep exports. In Western Australia, where the majority of the live export industry operates, 71 per cent of people supported the phase-out according to independent polling commissioned by RSPCA Australia in May 2023. This is on top of the petition to end live exports that I tabled in the Senate back in 2018, signed by almost 238,000 people.

The Greens and I have worked alongside incredible animal welfare advocates, activists and the community on this issue for years. I say thank you to them and thank you for the tireless work and support of Australian Alliance for Animals, RSPCA Australia, Stop Live Exports, Animals Australia and Vets Against Live Export, among many others. I particularly want to name some people who are such huge animal advocates and who I have worked with for years: Jed Goodfellow, Bidda Jones, Jo Webb and Lynn Simpson. The pressure from these people, these organisations, the community and the Greens has finally pushed Labor to this day, where we have a bill legislating the end date and a ban to live sheep exports.

Today we will make sure that cruelty to sheep can no longer be fodder for industry profits. Today we will make sure that these ships of misery never sail again. Enough is enough. Across the country, people are also demanding a fast phase-out, and, while I'm so pleased that live sheep exports will end, 1 May 2028 is still too far away. I will be moving a Greens amendment to bring forward the proposed date to 1 May 2026. Otherwise, the risk of too many animals suffering and dying over four years still remains. We also want to make sure that exports start to ramp down and reduce every year till the live export industry ends, so that fewer and fewer sheep are subjected to stress and death.

The government bill also has no measures to ensure that the focus on animal welfare becomes stronger over the next four years and that animal welfare standards don't drop, so I will be moving amendments so that independent observers and a vet are present on all ships and a full Northern Hemisphere summer ban is implemented. The sweltering conditions and extreme heat that animals are subjected to are only going to get much worse as the climate crisis exacerbates and temperatures soar. I hope the government and crossbench will support these amendments. The Greens wholeheartedly support this bill.

Louise Pratt

I support the legislation before us, the Export Control Amendment (Ending Live Sheep Exports by Sea) Bill 2024. This debate has been with me for two decades now. I was in the state parliament of Western Australia with the agriculture minister the Hon. Kim Chance, who was involved in these debates some two decades ago. I have the Hansard from August 2003. Frankly, it's interesting how little the key issues in this debate have changed. He called out the fact that someone in the reporting was not telling the truth. He raised the allegations that had been made about the evidence and the way it was put together for the 60 Minutes report at the time. He said he wouldn't build on those rumours, but he said, 'I hope someone is seeking the facts of the matter.' What was revealed were the extraordinarily high levels of sheep deaths at sea at that time.

I sat on the petitions committee of the WA Legislative Council that looked at the issues way back in 2002. We looked at the Commonwealth and state jurisdictions. We looked at the enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act 2002. We looked at actions that the state government could take. We also looked at concerns that the live sheep trade was undermining the more lucrative job-creating processed meat trade. The simple fact is that, in the two decades since that time, the live sheep trade from Western Australia has declined, and processed meat exports from Western Australia and the rest of the country have climbed dramatically.

I'll concede that there will be, frankly, new policy issues that come to the fore that will revisit some other policy debates that we might have had in this place from some time ago, like the fact that our processed meat gets overseas on flights from right around the country, which, for example, would bring to the fore what role Qatar Airways might have in the future in the export of processed meat from Western Australia. These are the kinds of policy issues that I contend will be part of these considerations in the future.

Today I received a text message from a friend of mine who is a wheat and sheep farmer. He said, 'Not every farmer thinks banning live sheep is the wrong way to go.' He's not the only farmer in Western Australia I have spoken to personally from different farming regions around the state who is of that opinion. When you look at the trajectory of the industry, it's little wonder that they think that. They want to see a modernised sheep industry, wool industry and meat-processing industry in Western Australia. These debates have, in their view, gone on for far too long. And in that time too many people have found themselves more and more on the margins of the debate, when actually, as the report from the taskforce reveals, we just want to get on with working with these communities, growing their employment opportunities and improving the viability of the sheep industries in Western Australia.

The simple truth is that, unlike other states, which don't export live sheep, Western Australia has to some extent had its head in the sand on where we're at on this issue, because no other state has this level of dependence on live sheep. But actually it's wrong of me to say 'this level of dependence', because, frankly, Western Australia's sheep and farming industry is not dependent on the live sheep trade—far from it. We know that in 2021-22 the WA flock was 12.4 million head, which was 50 per cent lower than in the early 2000s and dramatically lower than at its peak of 38 million head in 1990.

These are the very time periods I have been talking about. This reduction in sheep numbers occurred long before many of the current live export animal welfare requirements were introduced. Merino sheep make up some 80 per cent of the state's flock, with the remainder being meat-specific breeds, such as the dorper. Our sheep flock has evolved over the past two decades, with more lambs and few wethers, largely in response to the growing demand for lamb to process as sheepmeat. If you look at the industry figures—it's got very little to do with the kind of debate and the legislation that's before us tonight—these numbers really reflect the rise of sheepmeat exports and the drop in live exports across Western Australia.

I support the new jobs that will be in these industries, including meat processing. The Australian meatworkers union has said that, regardless of whether sheep are exported live or processed locally onshore, all the jobs in the supply chain up until that point remain the same. The only difference is that if the truck turns right to the port the live export sheep are loaded with a handful of stockmen, and an Australian vet accompanies them on their journey, but if the truck turns left and takes those animals to a processing facility it will employ some 500 to 800 people directly and many more in the industry.

Other evidence the taskforce heard was that major processors across Western Australia feel confident that they can expand operations and pick up any available animals because of the end of live exports. Roger Fletcher from Fletcher International Exports, which has a processing facility in Albany, has said that the number of live sheep sent overseas every year could be processed in Australia in four days. Fletcher International Exports and local processor WAMMCO have said that their processing facilities over the next couple of years could be used to deal with increased demand.

So let's take a look at the facts in the context of this debate tonight. The live sheep export industry has been in decline for many years. It's shrunk from $415 million in 2002-03, the time that I was just speaking of at the beginning of my remarks, to just $77 million this financial year. Those figures are but a tiny fraction of our overall sheep industry, let alone animal industries in Australia. Over that same period, demand for processed sheepmeat both here and overseas has been rapidly expanding, and we have an enormous opportunity, with the package before us in the parliament tonight, to take our government's commitment, a commitment of $107 million that can now be used to realise growing export market opportunities and growing job opportunities for regional communities around Western Australia. Four point five billion dollars worth of sheepmeat was exported from Australia last year, with our domestic sheepmeat market being worth $3.5 billion. Overall, that's $8 billion, with only $77 million of that in live sheep exports.

Now, with $107 million on the table in our package for Western Australia to build new processing facilities and to work with local industries, we can grow the viability of our farming and sheep industries even more. There's a strong future for the WA sheep industry with more sheepmeat processing creating hundreds of local jobs, a greater benefit to our local economy. We've done the work, and now it's time to get this funding moving and start growing Western Australian jobs.

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