Animal advocates have described the live export enquiry into live exports by the Senate Standing Committee for Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport as a farcical waste of taxpayers’ money.
Suzanne Cass, from Stop Tasmanian Animal Cruelty has looked into the Committee and discovered that the majority of the Senators forming the Committee only took up their places in the Senate on July 1st this year.
Ms Cass has discovered that Senator Urquhart is a former union official and process worker who has only just taken up her position in the Senate as at 01.07.2011, Senator Sterle is a former truck driver, furniture removalist and union official who also only took up his position in the Senate on 01.07.2011, and Senator Edwards is a former real estate agent and also only took up his Senate position on 01.07.2011.
Senator Nash is a former Librarian, also new to the Senate in this term, and a farmer who can be assumed to have vested interests.
‘The Committee comprises an absolute majority from the two major parties, both of whom have demonstrated a commitment to pursuing the live export trade at any cost, so the only member who could be described as having an ‘open mind’ is the Greens’ Senator Milne’ Ms Cass said.
‘Animal advocates particularly object to the inclusion of Senator Heffernan’, Ms Cass continued. ‘Senator Heffernan has a clear, demonstrated and unassailable conflict of interest in any such enquiry. He is a farmer who openly and vociferously supports the live export trade, and cannot in any circumstances be described as impartial or objective. Multiple Hansard records reveal his bullying of anyone who disagrees with his position on this trade’.
‘Based on such a composition, this Committee would appear to have absolutely NO expertise in assessing anything to do with animal welfare, or even the economics and moral issues that are the focus of this enquiry, therefore any outcome arising from its deliberations would have no credibility with the Australian community’, Ms Cass concluded.
Stop Tasmanian Animal Cruelty
BRIDGEWATER TAS 7030
www.stoptac.org
www.liveexportshame.com
www.aact.org.au
