What activists want Watt delivers
Watt farmers fear
What’s next on Watt’s hit list
What to do with Watt
John Hassell, President WAFarmers
All questions Western Australian farmers are now asking after last week’s decision to move ahead with the live export ban.
On the hookup when the Minister announced his plan, Murray Watt is quick to call me out when I questioned his motives claiming I was being personal.
If he believes my pointed criticism is personal and not political then I apologise, but when the government’s policies hurt people I will go after the Minister and call out the motives that I believe are behind the decision.
Now I quite like the Minister for Agriculture. He is smart, articulate, personable and I would have to venture very good at what he sees is his job.
Unfortunately, he sees job as not to support farmers and grow agriculture, but to shamelessly roll out the government’s anti agriculture agenda which puts the views of fringe activist groups in front of real people who have real livelihoods at stake.
After over two years in the job, he has little to show in the form of constructive reform; he is certainly no John Kerin who put in place the Rural Research Development structure.
In fact quite the opposite. This Minister has a tax and axe approach to the industry.
To date, his claim to fame is walking away from the Ag Visa that industry has long called for, imposing a new biosecurity tax on all farm gate production, cutting water security for the food bowl of the Murray Darling and, his crowning achievement, ending the live export trade.
For his efforts no doubt he will be personally rewarded with a cabinet promotion, leaving a smoking train wreck of an industry on his CV.
His mindless focus on rolling out the government’s agenda rather than fighting in cabinet to reverse a series of stupid policy ideas marks him as a weak journeyman, willing to do what he is told rather than make the case for what is in the nation’s interest.
No doubt he will have made the personal political calculation that a failure to stare down farmers and hold the party’s progressive line against a bunch of conservative voting food producers would see him looking over his shoulder fearing demotion to the back bench.
Hence his bizarre request to me and others on the phone hook up in which he made the announcement of the plan to end the live sheep trade in four years time that peak bodies work with him to kill off an essential trade and help further his career.
Unfortunately, WAFarmers, the National Farmers and all the other industry peak bodies have no intention of helping him destroy a long standing export market for short term personal and political gain, so it’s game on for Murray Watt and the Labor Party.
Let’s as a industry put our cards on the table; we are facing the worst Minister for Agriculture in living memory, a Minister  who is enthusiastically rolling out the worst policy platform for Agriculture we have seen in living memory.
Let’s face it, Murray Watt is not the Minister for Agriculture, he’s the Minister for Anti Agriculture Activists and the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is running a Anti Agriculture Government.
