Australian Livestock and Property Agents president Peter Cabot, Wagga Wagga, has been involved in the agriculture industry for more than 30 years and in that time, he has never seen a decision like the Federal Governments live sheep export ban.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
The Australian Government has committed to phasing out live sheep exports from Australia by sea but has said it will not take place during the current term of parliament.
Mr Cabot said the proposed ban is already have a devastating effect on the sheep industry, and producers lives, and it needs to be overturned immediately.
"This is the craziest decision I have seen in all my years of agriculture," he said.
"The government keeps saying the decision is about animal welfare, but you could not have orchestrated a worse outcome for animal welfare if you tried.
"The decision by the Labor government has made sheep worthless and people treat things differently when they have a commodity with no value, whether they end up euthanising them or whatever they do, but they're worthless now."
Mr Cabot said the government plan to off-set the live export ban is not viable.
"The government has kept asking what it can do to help," Mr Cabot said.
"They want sheep to be processed locally, suggesting they build more abattoirs. That's just absolute rubbish.
"You can't build abattoirs quickly and this is an immediate problem. I've never seen little-to-no confidence in the sheep job like there is at the moment and it's having catastrophic effects.
"The Labor party will need to overturn it. It's as simple as that because it is wrong."
Countries who usually buy live sheep are not going to pay for processed sheep, according to Mr Cabot.
"It costs between $50 and $75 to box up a sheep here in Australia," he said. "To process sheep in these Middle Eastern countries costs $5 as they don't have the same labour costs we do.
"They are not going to pay so much more."
Leader of the federal Nationals, David Littleproud said WA producers were making production decisions now. "The investment confidence has been shattered and they have got to make decisions now as their production cycles need to be put in line with what they need to do into the future.
"Our commitment hasn't changed. There will be no coalition that the Nationals will be part of that doesn't support the live sheep export industry out of any state."
