Pastroalists and Graziers Association WA President Tony Seabrook has slammed Agriculture Minister Murray Watt’s legislation to formalise the end date for the export of live sheep by sea.
Earlier in May it was announced the government would pledge $107 million to support the “phase out” of live sheep exports, with the legislation to formalise the end date for May 1, 2028.
With this legislation, the Albanese government is fulfilling an election promise it made in 2019 and then again in 2022.
Mr Watt said the policy allowed the Australian sheep industry to “plan effectively” for the future.
“We have put $107 million on the table to ensure those affected by the phase out are well-positioned and ready when the trade ends in May 2028,” Mr Watt said.
“While live sheep export numbers have plummeted in the last 20 years, now contributing just 0.1 per cent of all national agricultural exports, sheep meat exports are going through the roof.
“Australia is now the largest exporter of sheep meat to the world, with nearly $4.5 billion in chilled and frozen sheep meat exported in 2022-23 alone.”
Once the legislation passes, additional information on the “transition support programs” will become available in the second half of the year to assist people to “start preparing”.
In response to the recent development to ban live sheep exports, a major convoy of up to 1,700 vehicles descended on Perth on Friday in a protest to “Keep the Sheep”.
Speaking to Sky News, Mr Seabrook said thousands of small business owners woke up in the early hours of the morning to get to the rally points to initiate the convoy into Perth’s CBD to protest the live export ban.
“There were four convoys, three of them major ones, the one I was in, it was five kilometres long and Minister Watt got up and said that’s their democratic right. It was absolutely huge. It was spontaneous, it was hardly even organised the week before it happened,” he said.
“The farmers are just absolutely dead angry at this minister that we call ‘for agriculture’. He’s not ‘for agriculture’, he’s against us.”
Mr Seabrook said “all sorts of people” were present at the protest convoy, not just livestock farmers.
“Everybody in the whole state is incensed at what this minister is doing because shutting down this trade is going to kill a lot of country towns, a huge number of people are going to lose their business, country towns will shrink, and what for?
“We’re the best in the world, the absolute best in the world in this growing live export trade, we set the standard everywhere, and this guy’s got his marching orders from the left, from the Greens.
“Just to get some votes out of the inner-city Melbourne and Sydney he’s prepared to throw farmers under the bus.”
Mr Seabrook said the ban on sheep had “nothing to do” with live exports but was entirely political.
“We are so good at what we do and so this has nothing to do with live exports or the science, this is just about grubby politics,” he said.
“He just wants the votes of the Greens and the animal welfare people in the inner city of Melbourne and Sydney.
“The destruction he will cause here – the trade will continue, it will not stop, it will continue from all sorts of s***ty little places in the world which have no standards whatsoever… He ought to be proud of what we do, not try to shut us down.”