Live export: Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt says sheep farmers must accept industry’s ‘decline’

Murray Watt has acknowledged the Albanese Government’s looming live export ban has caused a drop in sheep prices but told farmers they must “recognise where the industry is heading”, while trumpeting the “enormous opportunities” ahead. The Federal Agriculture Minister made the comments at an industry function at Crown Perth on Wednesday ahead of one of WA’s biggest agricultural events — the Dowerin Machinery Field Days — which is set to start on Wednesday, August 30. He also praised the “mature way” in which his Government had “dealt with all parts of society” while navigating contentious policies including its plan to shut down WA’s $92 million live sheep trade. “I recognise that this policy has caused concern and that sheep farmers are now dealing with lower prices caused by oversupply, as they are over east,” Mr Watt said. “That is why we have made clear that the phase out will be done in a calm, orderly, consultative way; but I think we also need to understand that this industry was in decline long before the May 2022 election. “In fact, under the former Coalition government, live sheep export numbers fell from 1.8 million in 2015 to 650,000 in 2022.” Mr Watt — one of a raft of guest speakers at the Bringing Dowerin Downtown Luncheon on August 29 — said live sheep now contributed less than one per cent of agricultural exports from WA, and just one-tenth of one per cent of agricultural exports nationwide. “I don’t say those words glibly: I think we do need to recognise where the industry is at, and where it has been heading for quite some time.” While live export numbers had “plummeted in recent years”, Mr Watt said sheepmeat exports from WA had increased by 200 per cent since 2003. “Importantly, these past changes — these large drops in turnoff numbers and export numbers — they haven’t spelled the end for the local sheep industry, and I don’t think that our changes need to do that either,” he added. In its recent submission to Federal Labor’s phase-out panel, the WA Government estimated shutting down live sheep exports would cost the State’s agriculture industry $123m a year and put nearly 400 people out of work. Also highlighted was the “devastating impact” the ban would have on the State’s broader Merino wool industry, and the need to compensate farmers. But Mr Watt said the sector’s future prosperity could be ensured by creating more processing jobs onshore, tapping into new sheepmeat markets, and growing existing markets including those in the Middle East. “I recognise that that work is not going to happen overnight. . . we do need to put the building blocks in place to assist with this transition, and that’s what we want to do,” he said. “But I think we owe it to the whole WA ag sector — the sheep farmers, the meat processors, the grain growers, the cattle, seafood, wine, horticulture and other producers, and the whole agricultural supply chain — to see the enormous opportunities the sector has ahead right here in Western Australia.”