Notice how there is a deathly silence by the big foreign pension and sovereign investment funds on the merits of the Government’s planned end to the live export trade.
These are the foreign entities that have been quietly buying up millions of acres of Australian farmland.
Also notice how the government finds every excuse under the sun as to why the live sheep trade is different to the live cattle trade and they have no intention of following a ban on sheep with cattle.
What’s going on?
Word on the corporate street is the big foreign investors see the sheep industry in Western Australia as a hinderance to their plans to continue to expand their investment into the rolled gold of freehold farmland, something that few governments give away as easily as Australia does.
Remove the live trade and this will trigger another million acres of farm sales in WA as family farm businesses throw in the towel rather than gear up with another million or two or three in debt to become an all-cropping exercise.
The corporates have run the numbers and know that the State’s processing sector lacks the labour, houses, power, water, freezers, planes and markets to replace live exports with chilled or frozen product.
They know it and the Federal government knows it as they have read the report they commissioned on the cost of moving the trade to local processing, a report they refuse to release.
At the current low prices of sheep and the high cost of gearing up to crop the lot, the day the legislation is passed to end the trade the rural real estate agents’ buyers will come driving through the farm gate with offers backed by foreign coin.
For a Federal government far more comfortable working with men in suits rather than dirty farm boots, the end of the family farm in the West will be music to their ears.
Swapping out mum dad and the kids for PAYE workers on big corporate collective farms fits the socialist DNA of Labor, even better if these workers are not rusted on Liberal or Labor voters.
As to selling the farm to the Chinese, it’s a win-win as it gives Foreign Minister Wong a win when it comes to offering up gifts to our biggest trading partner which will help keep the diplomatic door open to our barley, wine and rock lobster.
As to the foreign pension funds, they speak the same climate change mumbo jumbo as Climate Change Minister Bowen, promising to play along with the government’s carbon farming ambitions, the self-delusion that the soil is the planet’s free ticket to net zero.
As for the Minister for Agriculture, Murray Watt, he will no doubt be asking Cabinet when the live export decision comes up, ‘what have the farmers ever done for us?’
So the conspiracy of silence rolls on with the big end of town backing the big wigs in government to do their dirty work of pushing more Western Australian family farms onto the market.
Farms that have survived drought, high interest rates and low commodity prices through the backstop of the live export trade.
Prime Minister Albanese and Minister Watt need to turn back before they sell out our farmers.
Related story: The family farm is doomed.
