Yesterday in Canberra, the WAFarmers and the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) joined a walk out of the federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt during the budget breakfast, with industry leaders wearing a ‘Keep the Sheep’ tee shirt.

The Minister was not impressed. At a follow up meeting between the NFF the Minister and the Prime Minister, the Minister unloaded, ranting and carrying on about petty behaviour.  Pity he did not reflect on the impact of the decision on growers and the industry at large before losing his cool.

He clearly knows the industry has lost all confidence in him and no doubt he is hanging out to change portfolios should Labor stagger over the line at the next election.

As one journalist fed back to us following the walkout, when asked about the walk out the Minister said he did not care, in fact his position was the 36 farmer organisations that make up the NFF are irrelevant to the Labor Party. Which is probably right when you look at the seats that Labor currently holds in the bush that are predominantly agricultural.

There are none. Why? Because the bush does not rate with the ALP. Any respect they have has disappeared with the decisions to walk away from the Ag Visa, cut Murray Darling water allocations, impose a tax on exports and now ban the live export of sheep.

It is clear that this minister and government have decided to sell out Australia’s 80,000 farmers to buy the votes of activists and the inner city.

Live export of sheep is just the beginning, no doubt cattle and ag chemicals are next.

The farmers might be irrelevant to the ALP, but the voting public are suspicious of governments that are seen to sell out the farmers that grow the grain used to breed the geese that feed the workers that mine the gold that the government uses to buy votes.