Labor has committed to ending the live sheep export trade, pre-empting the findings of a government review into the practice.
The McCarthy review into the summer sheep trade is due to be returned to the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, in two weeks, having been ordered after 2,400 sheep died on a journey from Fremantle to the Middle East last August.
Bill Shorten’s language around the trade had grown increasingly tough since the latest debate began. Earlier last month, though, he said Labor would wait to see the outcome of the review before making any decisions.
But on Thursday the shadow agriculture minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, said a future Labor government would move to ban the practice and transition the industry into processing meat on Australian shores.
“We don’t want to impose a transition on this sector, we want to work with the farmers and the sector more generally to transition out of live sheep exports in an orderly fashion in a way that creates jobs here, and lifts the stocks of farmers,” he told Sky.
“So let me be clear, Labor sees a bright future for meat processing, a bright future for jobs in that sector right across the supply chain in the red meat processing sector, a better future for farmers. But Labor sees no future for live sheep exports.”
Littleproud immediately accused Labor of making policy on the run.
“With the science just two weeks away, Labor rushes to a knee-jerk ban, punishing farmers who have done no wrong,” he said. “Labor does not have the temperament to lead this country as it refuses to wait for the evidence.”
Fitzgibbon said Labor understood the transition would “not take months, it would probably take years” and was not rushing into anything.
“But it absolutely can’t take a decade, it has to happen more quickly than that,” he said, while reiterating Labor’s call for the immediate suspension of the summer live export sheep trade.
Last month the former minister Sussan Ley announced plans to introduce a private members’ bill to end live sheep exports, something she said she was “deadly serious” about.
“I want to see this live sheep trade permanently cease and I will use as much as I can the forums of the parliament … to help legitimise this,” she told Sky News at the time.
While the live export industry proposed measures to attempt to quell the public and political anger directed towards it, promising to drive cultural change, it has been unable to stop calls for its end.
Animals Australia, which has led the charge to end the trade, having gone to great lengths to obtain footage of the conditions livestock were experiencing on some ships, and the RSPCA had each offered to contribute half a million dollars to help with a transition away from the trade.
The Greens senator Lee Rhiannon congratulated the groups for their offer and said her party had worked with the meatworkers’ union and industry stakeholders for “many years” to move the trade into on-shore meat processing.
