National leader David Littleproud lashes Labor plans to phase out live sheep exports

David Littleproud has staunchly rebutted the Albanese Government’s plans to phase out live sheep exports, telling Parliament that Labor needs to reverse its decision before it is too late.

The Nationals leader condemned the Commonwealth for its “reckless” and “ideological” decision to forcibly shut down Australia’s live sheep industry, with 97 per cent of exports coming out of WA.

But the Government is charging ahead with a panel selected earlier in March to determine how and when the $92 million trade will be closed, despite big farming organisations and Premier Mark McGowan refusing to support the plan.

Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt continues to say his Government is committed to ending the industry but that it will take place in the next term of Parliament to give farmers and exporters time to prepare for the transition away from live sheep exports by sea.

More than 600,000 sheep were exported from ports across Australia in the last financial year.

The debate became heated on Monday when Mr Littleproud said Labor had walked away from the industry, which he declared had the highest standards of animal welfare in the world.

“We are leading the world in an area that I think we should be damn proud of instead of cutting and running in which this Government is undertaking a process to do,” he said.

“To the 3000 families in WA that will no longer have a job in an industry that (Labor) will shut down predicated on one incident that the industry themselves acknowledge and then move forward.”

Labor pledged in the past two Federal elections to ban live sheep exports after the deaths of about 2400 sheep on a ship from Fremantle to the ­Middle East in 2017.

Fremantle MP Josh Wilson said his Labor Government had recognised that the live sheep export trade was “virtually defunct”.

“The live sheep export trade is nearly dead and we are undertaking the responsible work to manage an inevitable transition,” he told The West Australian.

“This is a trade that has declined from 6.5 million animals at the turn of the century to fewer than 500,000 in recent years.

“That is one-thirteenth of the trade at its peak. It has declined pretty much every year for the last two decades.

“We recognise that Australian agriculture has evolved away from live sheep exports to a significantly higher value-added trade in chilled and frozen meat.

“Indeed, that trade is already 50 times greater in value than the live sheep trade.”

Mr Wilson argued the trade today was worth less than one per cent of WA’s agricultural output and less than 0.1 per cent of Australia’s national output.

“The member for Maranoa knows there will be more Australian jobs when the industry has fully transitioned to a chilled and frozen meat trade because it was part of his department’s own analysis provided to him in 2019 when he was the minister,” Mr Wilson said.

O’Connor MP Rick Wilson, WA Senator Slade Brockman and Agriculture Region MP Steve Martin started a petition against Labor’s ban move on March 3 and have collected more than 6000 signatures since.

“We are so desperate to retain the live export trade ... the farmers of WA are desperately worried about their future,” the O’Connor MP told Parliament on Monday.

“This policy ... is anti-West Australian, it’s anti-farmer and it’s anti-commonsense.”