Territory FM - Live cattle export still in limbo
DARYL MANZIE:
Okay, the cattle trade. Of course, a lot of cattle have, well there hasn’t been any exports at all of live cattle. I think it hasn’t resumed yet. A lot of cattle sitting in yards, and we’ve got a Senate Committee that’s enquiring into proposals to introduce Bills in the Parliament which will ban live exports forever. Senator Nigel Scullion, of course, a member of the Senate, he joins us now to talk a little bit about some of the issues in regards to the live cattle exports. Or the lack of them! Good morning Senator.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Yes, g’day Daryl, how are you?
DARYL MANZIE:
I’m pretty good, but this has just become worse and worse than ever. I mean most people down south think everything is fixed, and you know, the trade’s back on, and no-one has lost their job but the reality is that’s just a big spin joba and of course the media’s left it out of there grab-bag, but geez a lot of pretty economically depressed people in the Territory at the moment.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Look Daryl, I think that’s the most important message to everybody. Just simply announcing that the exports can now, the trade can now continue subject to the issuing of permits was of course a Pyrrhic victory for those supporting the cattlemen, and the cattlemen. The reality is that the Government’s just been so fixated on ensuring that the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed to the degree that we’ve spent so much time waiting for the entire train to be done, when we’ve got completely empty feedlots and we have the rangelands that have twice as many cattle on them as they should. You knew, we’ve breeding stations, we breed cattle up here, and then move them off the stations. Now, they should’ve gone. Substantive amounts should have already left the stations. It doesn’t matter where, but those rangelands, as it happens, now in a couple of months they’re going to have some approximated, a bit under 300,000 – if everything goes well, some 250,000-275,000 – head of extra cattle on the rangelands. Now in October/November, generally things get pretty tight. That’s just the nature of seasonality: whether you get an early Wet or a late Wet, and around that time of year, of course, that time of year comes earlier now because we’ve got so much, so many more head on these pastoralist stations. So that’s going to cause great sadness
DARYL MANZIE:
The reason is, of course, the cattle, the grazing cattle eat the grass, and by the time we get to the end of the year there’ll be no grass left. Maybe a month before
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well that’s right mate, I mean it’s all going to happen a lot earlier and this is going to cause a huge amount of environmental damage. These owners want to get their cattle off. Now there’s been an act of Gillard that’s decided to ensure that these cattle are now on the rangelands for far longer. So there’s an environmental diaster, but the great irony of course is that this was supposed to prevent an animal welfare disaster and what that’s done is going to cause one of the most monumental animal welfare disasters in the history of this nation.
DARYL MANZIE:
Well I mean that’s one of the sad things, is of course there’s laws on stocking levels. So cattle will have to be destroyed, that’s the end of it.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well if you can find them mate. I mean, these are not properties with a big fence around them and you can just whistle up the dog and get them to round them up. These are major properties of –
DARYL MANZIE:
Hundreds of squares
NIGEL SCULLION:
– tens of thousands of square kilometres.
DARYL MANZIE:
Yeah, paddocks a couple of hundred square k’s, that sort of thing.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well that’s right. And of course the environments, they’re not only dams, if you get early, if you get a little bit of a shower early when the cattle are weak they become bogged and that’s always a critical issue. And many of the farmers, of course the pastoralists, at that time drive around the (inaudible) bits and pieces and make sure that they unbog cattle. But this will happen with such large numbers of cattle, you know, and just the notion of whether the choice is whether you drown in 3 inches of mud, which is probably far preferable than getting eaten from the back-side forward by a wild pig, it’s just horrific. And it just beggars belief that this Government isn’t planning something. You know, where’s there plan? What do know they about this? You know, whether it’s the Henderson element of the Northern Territory branch of the Labor Government who did this, or whether it’s in fact Ludwig and his bunch of merry men in Canberra. I mean, they know this is happening, they were warned that this was going to happen. And yet there doesn’t appear to be any real action on genuinely opening the trade and it can quite clearly be the case that you can move cattle from full rangelands into empty feedlots and have their quality assurance to the end of the feedlots. Still, with ensuring that they don’t have to move out of the feedlots until the quality assurance of those abattoirs is met.
DARYL MANZIE:
I guess the other problem, though, Nige, is that the Indonesians have got a very strict weight “limits” of the cattle that are exported live. That if they’re over, I think it’s 350kg, they won’t take them.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well that’s right, but I have to say the Indonesians – both the Indonesian Government an the Indonesian industry – I think have been completely sympathetic and have been extremely helpful in this regard. Now I would like to see the weight-cap renegotiated for a period of time to perhaps 400[kg] to deal with the additional weight that this particular decision has made. It’s outside of industry, it’s outside of natural disasters, it’s a disaster of Government, it’s a disaster of Gillard. They’ve been very helpful, and let’s just hope that we can have some relief by the Government at negotiating with the Indonesian Government in terms of an increase in the cap to 400[kg] for a period of time. Hopefully that’ll be able to get people over. But we still need a lot more action, because every day that ticks past is a day that you can’t get cattle off the rangeland and as soon as the Wet starts it’s over.
DARYL MANZIE:
Look people down south don’t understand. I mean, we’ve got Parliamentary – Xenophon and the Greens – legislation to ban live exports forever, and I think the Federal Government is powerless to do anything unless they get a tick by the Greens, and it’s not going to happen so I just see this disaster continuing. It’s totally man-made. It’s a political disaster and it’s just (inaudible) on. Everyone down south, you know?
NIGEL SCULLION:
I don’t think that legislation will get legs. I think we just need to say that up front. We’ve got a big enough disaster anyway, that is not going to get legs.
DARYL MANZIE:
But that’s where the focus is at the moment.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Indeed, but I would predict that pretty shortly we’ll see some more images of sheep and the whole thing will work out again before we got back to Parliament. But notwithstanding that, I think the Australian public more generally have a much better understanding of the consequences this disaster in North Australia of knee-jerk reactions to these sort of things and I suspect they’re not going to support it in the future.
DARYL MANZIE:
Well Nige, look thanks for joining us. I know guys like Luke Bowen have been absolutely magnificent in, have been patiently trying to resolve this, and I guess there’s a bit of an end to people’s patience but gee there’s been some excellent work done by some people in the industry trying to get common sense going here. But I guess it’s just so frustrating to be under the control of people who’ve got just no compassion at all for their fellow human-beings, or for animals. And they run under the guise of being sympathetic animal lovers. It’ just horrendous, and we’ve got to put up with it.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well, indeed we do, and sadly you know, it’s a tiny minority of people who sadly – those people who are fundamentalists don’t want us to hurt any animals, and I respect that decision. Many people have the sort of impression that some of the images we saw on television happens to every animal over there. And that is just simply, has proved now, and having been over there myself, I know that is just simply not true at all. There are some rogue elements in there, and it’s a very small percentage and everybody agrees they need to be taken out. But the complete destruction of an industry on the way to forensically removing some operations was just the most clumsy political ineptness I think we’ve ever seen.
DARYL MANZIE:
In fact, some of the stories running around, especially in southern Australia is that this is part of the Islamic halal process, and of course the opposite is the case. Killing animals and dealing with them like that is not halal and in fact they’re not halal meat, you know, it’s pretty sad.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Well unless the animal was killed in what they describe as an Ishlah circumstance, where it’s calmness and those sort of things apply, then it isn’t halal meat, and the cattlemen are working very closely and elements of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association are working very closely with the Islamic Council in Indonesia and it’s those sort of relationships, and it’s those sort of processes that are really trying to bring this to a conclusion rather than the inactions and the ineptness of this government.
DARYL MANZIE:
Good on you Nige, thanks for joining us.
NIGEL SCULLION:
Lovely to talk to you, Daryl.
DARYL MANZIE:
Okay mate. Nigel Scullion, Senator for the Northern Territory just, I guess, going over some of the issues regarding dealing with live cattle exports. It is a dreadful situation and some of the thought processes of people in relation to this is just unbelievable. There’s a couple of letters to the editor today, published in the Northern Territory News. One of them is by a guy who signs himself “Dr Wu, Chartered Chemist” and you read this and you just think, you know, where do these guys come from? How ignorant can you be? And this is supposed to be a Chartered Chemist? Obviously he doesn’t do any research whatsoever and unfortunately this is the sort of attitude that so many people have when they’ve got no knowledge of the industry itself, or what happens. And the fact is we’re destroying lives and we’re going to end up destroying cattle. Cattle are going to die in pretty inhumane circumstances, or they’ll have to be put down.
ENDS.
Upgrade your flash player to play the audio
