Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is nice to listen to someone who absolutely does not know what they are talking about! Can I table a document?

Leave granted.

Thank you very much. I am tabling a document, which is a press release from R-CALF USA. It reads:

R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America) is a national, non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry … Members are located across 47 states and are primarily cow/calf operators, cattle backgrounders, and/or feedlot owners.

It is a great pleasure to speak on theFood Importation (Bovine Meat Standards) Bill 2010, a bill for an act to ensure the equivalence of Australian production standards in the importation of bovine meat and meat products. ‘Equivalence’ is a great word, because there is great variation between what people in the office of Simon Crean; the Cattle Council; MLA; RMAC; the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Minister Burke; and the growers think that means. We are insisting in this bill on full traceability from birth to death and that, when the tag goes in, it is property of birth. Some people mark their calves at six weeks, some mark them at six months and some mark them when they wean them. When the tag goes in depends on the management of the property. It is property of birth. That is to clear it up for Senator Sterle, as he probably does not realise that because after all he is a truck driver. I am a truck driver, too, and a wool classer and a welder and I have not read a book since I left school. But anyhow.

What this is really about is getting a clear understanding in parliament of what we demand of people that want to import product into Australia and of what ‘equivalence’ actually means. The difficulty we have had is that there are a few things surrounding this debate that have been confusing to people. There is no question, as Senator Nash has said, that the government would not have changed its mind if we had not got the inquiry up and if we had not got talkback. I commend the talkback people—Leon Byner in Adelaide and Alan Jones—and the various print media people who had a crack at this, because it was the power of the people that combined with the Senate inquiry to change the government’s mind on this. It was nothing else. I commend the minister for the strong stance he took against his own trade minister.

This is about ensuring that we do in fact have full traceability and that we do have a full import risk analysis—unlike the analysis that went on with the beef importation from Brazil. I will go to the tabled document. It is headed ‘On 25 February confirmation of a BSE positive cow kept secret’. It points out that in Canada they have had their 18th case of BSE—in a 72-month old Angus cow, which means the cow was born in 2003-04. Canada has an arrangement with the United States that any cattle born after 1999 can be exported into the United States. In fact, this press release points out that 40,000 older Canadian cows were imported into the United States for domestic slaughter.