Territory FM - Cattle ban issues continue
DARYL MANZIE:
Hoping to catch up with Senator Nigel Scullion regarding the situation with Indigenous people working in the cattle industry. Of course, unfortunately the Federal Government’s ban on the export of cattle is causing massive disruption to so many areas not only in Australia but in Indonesia. And I see our minister, Kon Vatskalis, with a couple of industry guys over in Indonesia at the moment. Doing the job that really should have been carried out by the Federal Government. But they’re over there trying to smooth the way. It’s a disaster and we just recently saw Senator Trish Crossin talking about the work that the Labor Government’s doing to create some fifty thousand jobs for the future of Indigenous Territorians but think about the plight of those people, those fifty-three cattle stations owned by Indigenous people who have been breeding cattle and become involved in this very successful export beef cattle trade to Indonesia. They’re just going to have the carpet – the rug – pulled out from under them. Senator Nigel Scullion, we’ve caught up with him, he’s on the line. Nigel, how are you going?
NIGEL SCULLION:
G’day Daryl, how are you mate?
DARYL MANZIE:
I’m pretty good. Now, this is something that’s pretty hard to take for people that have I guess got off the dole and rolled up their sleeves and making a future for themselves and suddenly, you know it must be very difficult for those people to understand what’s going on?
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well mate, the reality of Aboriginal Australians and their relationship to the cattle industry in the north – it wasn’t built on the Kidman’s of the world, it was built on the Aboriginal stockmen. You know, they were quite happy to live off a horse for months on end, they knew where the water was, they make great animal handlers, they’re great stockmen. For many, many years, you know, their aspiration was to own their own country. There’s fifty-five stations in the –
DARYL MANZIE:
All right, fifty-five is there? I thought there was fifty-three? Fifty-five is there? Righto.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Fifty-five, and there’s I think twenty-two in the Kimberly’s and six in North Queensland. Which is eighty-three properties across the top. Now they’ve got their land, they’ve got the skills, they’re moving ahead, we’re starting to get a pretty good reasonable herd together. And, you know, the industry has been gutted. And it’s just one of the downsides, I suppose, of this complete mess. From a diplomatic level, from an economic, and from a social level, this has just been the worst possible managed disaster. And apparently Labor are about to save us from our own disaster. Now we hear there’s some diplomatic efforts, apparently Kevin Rudd is going to fix everything very shortly. But I speak to people every day and sadly sometimes very early in the morning, who are really feeling the pinch. People, businesses up and down the track, businesses right across the Kimberly’s, there are people really worried about what’s going to happen next, and the biggest issue of course is there is absolutely no confidence in the future. You know, when is it going to happen? Do I get another job? Do I move to town? You know, when do I pull the pin here and drive to Darwin to see if I can get work there? Will it start tomorrow and then I’ve got a job back here? These are the sort of questions that are driving people, you know, very close to the edge. And I think some we’re seeing now, I’m certainly receiving calls from people who clearly are having some serious mental health issues and some clearly are extremely stressed about these matters. And I guess that’s the very sad edge of the consequences of this very awful Government mate.
DARYL MANZIE:
I mean, it’s interesting. There doesn’t seem to be any real understanding still, even though the Prime Minister was here and spoke to the cattle people, there’s no real understanding of what’s happening here. And you know, I just, I think there’s a lot of people in South-East Australia who have no comprehension of what’s happening on the ground. You know, some of the letters we’re getting from some of the people down south, that appear in the editorial pages of the NT News. Saying oh, you know, “we can export frozen beef” and “get another job” and all this sort of stuff. And you think “what planet do these people live on?”
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well, look, that’ll be a vocal few. Most of the people down here probably didn’t understand how the industry operated. Fair enough. I mean, they didn’t understand that these cattle have to be finished by 150 days on wheat to make them sellable in the market. But there’s all those sort of processes. They didn’t have enough understanding that if we’re carting truckloads of cattle from twenty-six, twenty-seven, thirty-degree days to eleven-degree days we’re going to lose a lot of cattle. We’re going to create another animal welfare problem. They probably didn’t realise that if we keep this years progeny for an extra year on the rangelands we’re going to see enormous environmental degradation like we’ve never seen before. But I suspect now, Daryl, they are understanding those things. But one would think a minister, and a Prime Minister, wouldn’t be brought up to speed, you know, by a slow rollout in the news. You’d think that they would understand those things.
DARYL MANZIE:
Or they’d be briefed by experts.
NIGEL SCULLION:
You’d think they would be responsible [inaudible] would have been across the impact of closing this industry down. There’s absolutely no need, in my view – I was in Indonesia on the weekend, I’ve had a look at the full process. I actually went through a feedlot, had a look at the basically whole process before the slaughter, and you know they have a complete sealed tracking system right up to the end of the gate of the feedlot. And simply the application of a tracking system which is basically two panels that go out of the feedlot, two panels into the processing works and then a detection at the knocking box where the animals are slaughtered. So that is all that remains to be accredited but as I was over there it just seems that people say “oh well, every time we do something it changes the goal posts.” This is about animal welfare, we’ve done that end of it. Now they say “oh we need full through-chain.” Every day that goes along is a day that the ships that are no longer in Australia that get further away. People in industry are saying look well I just can’t – the only thing that’s a constant in my life is my mortgage. So it is very, very difficult.
DARYL MANZIE:
Yeah mate, it is. And I guess what makes it more difficult is being the lack of urgency shown by those who have the ability to get this going. I mean it was a bad move, what they did in the first place. And I think that the industry showed that, led the direction by banning exports to those dozen or so abattoirs that were doing the wrong thing. That was what we should’ve done. And rightfully so that was then rewarding those that were doing the right thing. Now everyone gets punished and it doesn’t do anything about the welfare of animals. So yeah, okay mate, thanks for joining us. It’s sad stuff
NIGEL SCULLION:
It is, look mate, if I can just correct some of this stuff and put a bit of context around some of the stuff that Trish was telling you about the jobs. In terms of the live cattle trade, there’s 7,000 direct jobs employed in the trade of Aboriginal people across the Top End. Now when they talked about those 50,000 jobs, out of those 38,000 were promised to be taken up. But the reality is what they haven’t been speaking about, is in fact there’s only 4,200 jobs out of those 50,000 have been taken up. And I just think it would be very useful for Labor to tell us the complete story rather than try to be I suppose paint a picture that is relatively inaccurate.
DARYL MANZIE:
Yeah, well I think I’ve just got to get out and go and travel around. Just get out of Darwin and you can see the impact this is having. I mean it’s pretty bad. I’m pretty glad you’ve been over and had a look at it too and seen it for yourself, mate because it’s a –
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well I’ve been, it seems most people in my office at the moment all wear a cowboy hat, mate, I should tell you we’re working, and we’ve just got to get the ban lifted as soon as possible. Everybody else is ready to go apart from the Government. But we’ll keep the pressure on mate.
DARYL MANZIE:
Good on you, thanks Nige.
NIGEL SCULLION:
See you Daryl,
DARYL MANZIE:
Okay, that’s Nigel Scullion and Senator for the Northern Territory. It’s a pretty terrible thing. It’s everywhere you look at the moment. Unfortunately the Government seems to have lost the plot – the Federal Government. Anyway, we’ll just keep an eye on it all. Certainly it’s not good for our future, and we’ve got another two years of this, because there’s not going to be any election if the Greens are going to hang in there and destroy as much as they can of our way of life. Because goodness they know they won’t get elected again next time around.
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