VICTORIAN Senator Derryn Hinch has indicated he’s willing to tour live animal export facilities, including Northern Australia supply chains and in foreign markets like Indonesia and Vietnam, to improve his basic industry knowledge.
But he’s stopped short of saying he’d alter his political stance on wanting live exports banned, even if presented with evidence that contradicted his current understanding of animal welfare standards and improvements in the trade.
Senator Hinch was elected for his Justice Party at the federal election and is an example of a new member that Cattle Council of Australia President Howard Smith says must be closely monitored by the farm sector to ensure their often emotive policy views are countered by facts and science.
One of Senator Hinch’s three election policy priorities was to fulfil a long-held desire to launch a campaign to try and ban Australia’s $1.9 billion live exports industry.
The Nick Xenophon Team has three members on an expanded crossbench of 11 in the new Senate and supports a phase-out of the trade over time while increasing local processing, which the Greens, with nine members, have also backed.
One Nation WA Senator Rod Culleton said his party - with four crossbench members - supports live exports given the “excellent” animal welfare conditions on transport vessels, including on-board veterinarians, and the facilities in export markets.
Ms Smith said it would be a challenge to monitor the policy views of new members like Senator Hinch, to ensure core business areas like live exports or halal certification, which is critical to export market access, weren’t disrupted in the new parliament.
“On some of these issues, from the outside looking in, it’s not always black and white,” he said.
“This is where we come in as a peak industry council, to go and meet with those people and put our views across, based on the facts and science, and tell the story of how in our view we’re constantly improving animal welfare.
“We’re never going to get to 100 per cent and nothing’s ever perfect in this world but we can always improve.
“One of my arguments is that we go into these export markets and by being there the animal welfare standards improve and are far better than how we found it.”
Mr Smith said the live export trade was a “fundamental” market option for Australian cattle producers; particularly in the north, where meat processing options are limited.
“I’m quite happy to go and talk to Derryn Hinch or any of the new Senators and sit down and say they are welcome to come out and look at our operations for themselves because our job is to get them better informed,” he said.
“We don’t defend the indefensible on animal cruelty but the way I look at it good welfare normally means good profitability and good production and if you’ve got poor welfare practices then normally you’ve got bad profitability.
“It’s a win-win if you get it right and it’s no different for animal welfare in live exports.
“We go over there and we talk to those countries and we say ‘if you treat your animals like that you won’t get the best production outcomes’ and we need to focus more on that cooperative approach rather than trying to dictate to these people.
“We’ll be trying to win the hearts and minds of all the other Senators too.”
Senator Hinch told Fairfax Agricultural Media he was prepared to visit live export supply chains and inspect facilities in markets like Vietnam or Indonesia but not in the short term, given the immediate demands of his new Upper House role.
However, he said if shown any evidence of animal welfare advances due to Australia’s ongoing participation in live exports, it would “a step too far for now” to change his position in supporting a ban.
“I know what the arguments are from the opposite side and they are sincere but we’re at odds,” he said.
Senator Hinch said he wasn’t a vegan or anti-farming and nor was he anti-cattle, anti-sheep or anti-meat.
But he said, “I’ve never approved of live exports”.
“Ironically the people feeding me the most information about cruelty to animals are the union guys who are loading animals at Portland in Victoria and saying to me’ Derryn, you should see the conditions here’ this is just not right’,” he said.
“My critics can say I’ve never been to an abattoir in Indonesia and no, I’ve haven’t been to one but I am ideologically opposed to live exports.”
Senator Hinch said he wasn’t an animal rights activist but was very much “anti-animal cruelty” and had written articles about the subject for the past 30-years.
“I campaigned with Lynda Stoner and Peter Singer back in the early 1980’s against cruelty to circus animals,” he said.
“We talk about the Vietnamese (sledgehammering) cattle which didn’t surprise me because of what they do to their dogs.
“Why I don’t say I’m an animal rights activist is because it makes it sound like I think humans and animals are the same which they’re not.”
Senator Hinch said his first involvement with anti-live exports involved exporting live horses to Japan in 1981 and an “awful” fire off the WA coast that lasted for several days and 10,000 to 12,000 sheep died.
“That got the ire of people and then I took a petition of 30,000 names to the then Primary Industries Minister Peter Nixon.
“I know people talk about how it’s improved but look what happened recently with the Vietnamese sledgehammering cattle.
“They might say it’s just bad PR but it’s not just bad PR it still happens and like the greyhounds they can talk all they like about improved conditions but it still happens.”
Senator Hinch said he understood people felt very passionately about the live export trade but he wanted it phased-out slowly “so we don’t get financially burned as much”.
He said he’d prefer government funds were used to dramatically increase the frozen meat industry in Australia, rather than live exports, and to create more jobs locally.
He’s also owned his own farm near Melbourne which produced and sold cattle, he said..
But Mr Smith said market diversity for cattle producers was “fantastic” with 8 to 10pc of annual production sold into the live export market and the rest was processed domestically.
He said with limited capacity to slaughter cattle, the live export “came into its own” by providing a viable selling option for excess cattle.
Mr Smith said it was “a bit of a nonsense” and “simplistic” for critics to say live exports cost meat processing jobs because some of the cattle sold into that market segment were not even slaughter-ready.