An open letter to Will Potter

Dear Mr Potter

I have not had the pleasure of reading your book "Green is the new red" but I was rather interested in the sentiments you expressed in this talk you did for voiceless while you were in Australia.

I am no fan of jackboot politics and would never condone someone being prosecuted simply for filming a farm.

I feel however that you may have been misled about the calibre of animals rights activists we have in this country and the deliberate damage some of them visit upon Australian farmers and their animals.

As I write this the media here is buzzing with yet another break in at an Australian piggery where 250 piglets drowned as a result of suspected animal rights activists who damaged the farms water system deliberately. The piglets were caught in open drains and killed by the rising water.

Break-ins are common here despite trespass laws in Australia and damage to the farmers equipment is sadly not uncommon. Neither is the act of taking footage completely out of context to make a false point. Much has been made of pigs showing signs of distress when animal rights activists have broken into their shed in the middle of the night. This "distress" is a result of the pigs being disturbed in the middle of the night and vocalizing in protest because they were expecting to be fed.

I have to ask, do you really condone this sort of behavior in the name of freedom of speech? 

A few of the more extreme members of the animal rights community have openly discussed introducing foot and mouth disease to damage our livestock industry.

The disturbing thing about this is that it took a rural media backlash to spur prominent animal rights organization Animals Australia to condemn these rogues publicly. Intensively farmed animals are kept inside in part to shield them from disease. People creeping around who are not supposed to be there pose a definite threat to these animals and could introduce dangerous diseases both intentionally or unintentionally. 

A further problem with your talk is that you constantly come back to the notion that animal rights activists are only there to "tear down the walls" and "show us what they don't want us to see" in the name of having animals treated better. The problem is that in a lot of ways those walls were not there at all until animal rights activists began actively targeting the industry and that many of these organizations do not wish to make farming more animal friendly, they wish to see it abolished entirely.

Some of their tactics may shock you.

In November of 2011 an animal rights activist visited the Giles abattoir in Victoria. She had asked the owner for permission and was granted full access to the facility to take pictures while they were slaughtering pigs and lambs.

She even gave a false name.

The owners had nothing to hide. While she was there one young employee was incorrectly stunning the pigs, she filmed the act but did not take the time to inform the owner who had so graciously allowed her into the facility. Later, out of either malicious intent or a complete lack of livestock knowledge, she placed herself in positions which caused animals to rush gates and bounce off rails, eventually causing a pig to escape. Under the safety standards of the day, a loose animal on the kill floor had to be secured quickly and a sledgehammer was used for this task. (The Ag department later found this act was justified and the abattoir owners were not found guilty of animal cruelty despite the high profile nature of the case). The activist filmed this incident and again never reported her concerns to the owners. Once safely back in Melbourne the activist made herself famous by publicly vilifying the owners of the abattoir on prime time television, aided by ideologically aligned journalists. The use of the sledgehammer and animals bouncing off rails was of course skewed completely out of context.

The next day hysterical bureaucrats took away the abattoirs license and 30 people lost their jobs just before Christmas.

Things did go wrong here, but the few bad practices I have detailed above could easily have been righted had the owners been made aware of them or failing that, government regulators. 

Instead the activist involved aimed for maximum shock value by taking the footage straight to the media and the regulators showed (perhaps unlike regulators in the US) that they are all too keen to hang abattoir owners out to dry at the first sign of a cruelty complaint.

Your argument that animals are not protected by law, simply doesn't hold water in Australia.

For all of the published lies about Australian farmers, none are more often repeated than those told about live export by Animals Australia and their sister organizations. The best one being the "systemic cruelty" on the ships and within the supply chains overseas. Over the last two and a half years Animals Australia has reported 19 cases of animal cruelty within these supply chains. Over that time we have exported over 6 million animals. If the cruelty is so systemic, where are the reports?

One has to ask what they have done with the estimated $8,000,000  they've received during that time?  Besides campaign for more donations, my guess is not much.

In all of the examples I have detailed above, one common thread emerges. Australian farm animals are suffering, not from the cruelty of their owners but from well meaning and misguided activists invading places they have no business being and attacking people who have done no wrong.

In the last few years we have seen animal rights activists gather in packs to howl down anyone who opposes them online, posting photos of farmers children when they dare speak up for their industry. We've seen them breaking into farms and destroying our property. We've heard them threaten to bomb live export ships, make late night phone calls loaded with abuse to farmers whose cattle have been identified half a world away on a television program, sometimes death threats.

We've heard them threaten to introduce disease in an effort to cripple the industry they hate so much.

When a person is willing to go that far, to destroy the very thing they are trying to protect, to disregard all collateral damage.

Is that not the very definition of a terrorist?

I'll make you a deal Mr Potter, farmers will stop treating animal rights activists like terrorists, as soon as they stop acting like terrorists.      





 

        

Puppetmasters

 I usually steer clear of twitter battles with animal rights activists. Voicing your opinion at the wrong time on twitter can be like putting a drop of blood in a tank full of sharks. Last night however I couldn't help but have a go at the obvious amateur spouting off the usual myths on Animals Australia's twitter account.  

The argument that producers will be better off without live export has been completely debunked  time and again so I won't waste breath on it here.

After hitting them with several examples of how producers were in fact much worse off both during and after the ban I realized how wonderful the entire live export ban had played out for the foreign owned abattoirs in this country. Even Jenny Kelly thinks processors could afford to pay more for the cattle they are receiving.

Abattoirs have always done well in dry periods or in circumstances where there is an oversupply of stock. That is a natural rhythm of the meat industry. They often run at a loss when cattle prices are high and that shortfall has to be made up somewhere or we won't have anywhere to process our cattle.

That being said, the deliberate fleecing of farmers and the manipulation of the political landscape to facilitate that behavior is just plain wrong, which led me to my next question. How much money did the abattoirs and meat-workers union donate to Animals Australia's live export campaign?

See Here 

The question must have hit a raw nerve as Animals Australia have yet to answer. 

In response to the live export ban, Indonesia slashed import quotas to around 50% of previous levels for the next two years, cutting the live trade in half and creating an oversupply of cattle that enabled the abattoirs to get away with paying chickenfeed to farmers desperately trying to de-stock in the rapidly drying conditions.

Farm profitability was smashed. Many properties were repossessed and the rural suicide rate spiked alarmingly. The hopelessly restricted market, coupled with a sudden drought, created widespread devastation while the abattoir owners made massive profits. 

Rumors and conspiracy theories about the meatworks and the meat-workers union colluding with Animals Australia and the WSPA have swirled through the industry since day one of the live export ban.

I do not believe these rumors do farmers or activists any credit.

In order to put these rumors to bed, Animals Australia should come clean about what donations they received from the abattoirs and the meat-workers union.

If a significant amount of money changed hands in order to facilitate the attempted assassination of the live export industry by a "charity" working as a puppet for powerful vested interests, the people of this nation, particularly the farmers who lost so much over the last few years have a right to know.

If they have nothing to hide then why are they still silent? Why does the list of donors to Animals Australia remain a secret?

For years now the people who dared to stand up for the live export industry have been attacked mercilessly for having a "vested interest" in this debate. They have been accused of putting profit before the welfare of the animals that supply their livelihoods and told at every turn their opinions do not count because they have "dollar signs clouding their vision".

So I say to Animals Australia, prove to us the millions of dollars spent attacking our farmers came from cake stalls and $35 annual memberships, prove to us the websites and billboards came from selling fluffy toys, prove to us you pay your wages with t-shirt sales.

In short, prove to us that you are not a puppet of vested interests.

UPDATE:

Animals Australia have responded, see below.

I have asked for clarification (as "receives" would only imply the present/future tense) That they or any organization they have a financial relationship with has ever received funding from the meatworks or the meatworkers union.

This article from the meatworkers union admits there is an alliance between the meatworks and the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA). 
(Thank you to reader: Sheena)

Was this alliance backed up with money? Would the meatworks have anything meaningful to contribute except their considerable financial muscle?

In a radio interview I did with Glenys Oogjes on Howard Sattlers evening program in late 2011 she pointed out that that the RSPCA paid for some of Animals Australia's ads and that "sometimes we pay for theirs".

Could funding from the meatworks have flowed through the WSPA into the coffers of Animals Australia? 

Animals Australia have so far neglected to answer my fresh questions or volunteered to surrender their lists of major donors for scrutiny.

Animals Australia.

Please offer proof you are not a puppet of vested interests.

 

Fair Go, Joe

This week we have seen the dreams of many of our farmers cruelly shattered by the ruling Liberal/National coalition. The drought package offered very little hope for those who are up to their eyeballs in debt with their herds literally dying around them.

Concessional loans at 4% are useless when you have nothing coming in to pay them back.

More debt has never been the solution to a debt epidemic and I fear the problems we are facing with regards to rural suicide and indebtedness are going to get much worse.   

While I agree with the free market thinking behind what the Liberal party is doing, they are implementing the free market backwards and failing to take into account the perfect storm that has led to this situation. 

The farmers that are in trouble now are still reeling from the consequences of the live cattle ban in 2011. Farmers never received any meaningful compensation. Since then we have had the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS) thrust upon the industry. ESCAS has had the effect of choking off many of our export markets and has therefor depressed cattle and sheep prices at home. 

With the promise of a new government with friendlier ties to our neighbors and a more common sense attitude to agriculture, one can understand many farmers making the decision to try and hold onto as many animals as they could rather then give them away at bargain basement prices to meat works who had supported the live trade ban.

(So much for activist claims of farmers being "better off" without live export but I digress) 

The sudden onset of dry weather and heavily stocked country in an already depressed market is a trap that will snare even the best operators. Throw in election promises of higher prices to come (through the opening of live export markets) and you have the best trap anyone could have crafted for livestock producers.

If the Liberal party wants to play free market politics they have to give the farmers the "free" part, not just the market.

ESCAS is in place because the community demands it, then let the community pay for it, for the duration of the drought let the community pay the farmer for the loss in value to their stock that this regulation causes, or abolish it and find a better model that encourages animal welfare while supporting the industry. Free market means less regulation, not more.

The federal government should also stop the RSPCA persecuting farmers and trucking companies for transporting stock in poor condition. This legislation has been a complete failure. If the animals are poor that is a good reason to put them on a truck and get them to a better place where they have a chance of surviving. Nobody likes the idea of losing half a truckload of stock because of poor condition but that is still better than the whole lot starving to death or having to be shot. Give our farmers a little credit and let them make the call, the consequences are their own to bear.     

Kangaroos are another issue. They add pressure to watering points and take up valuable feed yet the farmer is forbidden to cull them when they're numbers are out of control. Once again if the community demands that the farmer maintain such a heavy burden as a kangaroo plague during a drought then the community should pay for that privilege. Drought assistance could be packaged as kangaroo agistment.

No discussion on the free market is complete without a discussion on property rights. If there is a tree on the farmers land then commonsense would dictate that the tree belongs to the farmer, not the government. The government has no business telling the farmer what they can and cannot do with their tree's and if the government wants to interfere with that right then the government should pay that farmer for the lost production.

While farmers are made examples of in this regard, mining companies seem to get away with murder.

Coal seam gas is another case where the farmers rights are often trampled. This is easily solved by dissolving the stupid state of affairs where farmers, by law, only own the top 300 millimeters of their soil and powerful mining and petroleum companies can effectively buy peoples farms right out from underneath them. The easiest solution is to give the farmers ownership of their properties all the way down to the core of the earth.

If the farmer wants to mine coal or drill for gas instead of running cattle that is their business and their choice.   

Australia desperately needs free market reforms in order to keep up with the changing world we face. The previous governments dismal record at picking winners should convince any thinking person that government is too slow and ponderous to keep up with the ever increasing pace of change we will see going into the future. Only the free market can keep up. That being said free market reforms are worthless if they are not backed up with a restoration of property rights and the freedom for farmers to run their business' without government interference. Until government takes the shackles off it is only fair that the government pays for the damage it does to farm profitability and compensates  producers for the damage done during the live cattle ban. Joe Hockey is known for saying "the age of entitlement is over".

It is, the government is no longer entitled to hamstring our rural businesses and trample our property rights for free.

If you want free market, give the people the freedom they need to exploit it first.        

         

    

Why I choose to work on an ABN

My latest blog post on Man On Tap about why I choose to work on an ABN

Have we met the enemy?

There has been a fair bit of talk about monopoly lately with Murray Goulburn's bid to take over Warnambool cheese and butter. The media, both agricultural and mainstream have been quick to point out that farmers all over this country constantly find themselves at the mercy of multinational corporations and that any less diversity and competition in within our food system will be detrimental to farmers and consumers.

These days it's hard to find a farmer or rural reporter  with a nice thing to say about Australian supermarkets and I myself have often called for the government to step in and break up Coles and Woolworths or to rein in Tey's and Swifts and so on. Monopoly has become the boogieman of modern agriculture, the root of all the evils that farmers suffer and the cause of our friends or family's going out of business.

Surely we have met the enemy! Or have we?

Across the kitchen table it is very, very easy to get wrapped up in defining the problems that face modern agriculture but it is whole different ball game to thrash out workable solutions. When we see an animal sold for $1.80 a kilogram at the saleyard only to find meat selling for between $10 and $30 a kilogram in the supermarket it is hard not to feel like someone, somewhere is making a killing at our expense. I would wager a dairy farmer feels the same when they go to buy milk and a wheat farmer feels no different when they purchase bread.

So the first solution often suggested is to create more competition for agricultural produce by breaking up the large corporate monopolies that overtly or covertly seem to collude to drive down the price paid to farmers for their produce. Such policy's were a feature of Katter's Australia Party's election campaign and have been mentioned in the past by politicians from many other parties. Political proponents of such legislation often cite American anti-trust and competition legislation as a blueprint for similar laws to make the business landscape in Australia fairer. They often neglect to mention that American farmers still need to be heavily subsidized despite the increased competition these laws provide.

Fact is the American and the Australian experiences only prove that you can have a monopoly with more than one company. We have a duopoly with our supermarkets and our abattoir sector is rapidly heading the same way while many of our American counterparts suffer under what could be described as a 'quantopoly' as competition laws prevent many companies from holding any more than 25% of any market. Either way, the effect is the same, thousands of farmers are forced to reach millions of consumers through the bottle neck of a few companies that often reduce farmers to a "take it or leave it" negotiating position and squash the ability of the free market to work. 

This is where the ACCC is supposed to step in and ride to the rescue of the agriculture sector but despite a lot of noise from the National Party, the ACCC remains a toothless tiger. The ACCC has no power, even when it caught Coles misleading it's customers about the origin of some fruit they were fined a paltry $61,000.

So the next solution we often come to for farmers to increase their profitability is to market directly to consumers and cut out the middle man or to develop other markets overseas.

This is where the bodies are buried. 

Cost is a big factor in this equation but lets assume for a minute that finance for this type of venture is available, why don't more farmers do it? The short answer is "regulatory disadvantage".

If a farmer wants to sell his sheep to someone overseas, all he has to do is send them on a boat or a plane right? No!

He needs an export license for that and a raft of government approvals and accreditation's that force him into dealing with a corporation that specializes in live export who passes on the costs of meeting that government regulation back onto the farmer. Escas is making this problem worse, not better. 

If a dairy farmer would like to sell his milk directly to consumers they are forbidden by government to sell that milk unpasteurised, despite the fact that many of them drink it that way themselves.  So the farmer has to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe a million into a special pasteurisation and bottling facility. He might even partner with his neighbors to introduce some economies of scale. This sounds feasible until the EPA places waste conditions on the equipment and the local council takes twelve months to approve the extension to the milking shed, the health department want to inspect every inch of his facility, worksafe turns up etc etc.

If your local fruit and veg shop wanted to bring frozen vegetables in from China via New Zealand to get around all those pesky inspections you would expect regulators to run them out of business but it's in the national interest for voters to have cheaper veggies (as long as they don't see the residue tests). The government doesn't bat an eyelid when the big supermarkets bring in vegetables sprayed with chemicals that are highly illegal in this country. 

When the big corporations want to build a milk factory or an abattoir they often receive government assistance with compliance problems such as those listed above, often they even try to hold the government to ransom like AA Company did  over road upgrades around the desperately needed Darwin abattoir. If a government bureaucrat oversteps the bounds of his authority, the legal team is brought in to straighten things out or phone calls are made to friends in high places.

When normal people have the audacity to take on government entities like this, they often find themselves pursued through the courts for years by teams of lawyers with a bottomless supply of taxpayers money. A farmer cannot afford to have a lawyer on hand every time a government official makes an inspection, nor can he afford to fight lengthy court battles.

In short, monopoly can only exist when it is sanctioned by the government.

Don't expect this to change anytime soon.

The fact is, self interest is present in all forms of government. I don't blame corporations for acting in their own self interest and with government being as powerful as it is, they are serving their interests by keeping the government on side. Politicians too will always act in their own self interest and at the moment that interest is better served by keeping their donors happy at the expense of taxpayers who are none the wiser. Does anyone really believe that the head of a corporation pays $30,000 to sit next to a politician at a fundraising dinner because they enjoy their company?

The solution to this problem is remarkably simple. Government power has to be reduced to the point that it is so feeble, so weak, that all the political donations in the world cannot buy a result. A government that can be "drowned in a bathtub" so to speak. Only then will large and small business operate on a level playing field where the business that is best able to bring consumers the product they desire at the most appropriate price will survive. In some cases that may well be large corporations but they will at least be kept honest by the ability of small business to react swiftly as soon as it becomes viable for them to compete and undercut those corporations. Government has to come back to respecting the right of property owners to do with their land what they see fit and to grow their crops or handle their livestock however they wish instead of imposing unnecessary burdens to appease special interest groups. Government has no business shutting down abattoirs or live exports to other countries on a political whim, experience has already shown that this power has been repeatedly abused. It is also up to us as farmers to earn the trust of consumers by delivering products of such a high standard that government regulation becomes unnecessary and to run our businesses in such a way that no government assistance is ever needed or asked for. We cannot expect the taxpayer to bail us out if we are campaigning against corporate welfare.

The future is bright for Australian farmers and food production looks set to become the next boom industry for our country. I can see a future where automation and robotics pave the way for a renascence in our rural and regional areas. Imagine a world where animals are killed on farm, packaged and sent direct to the supermarket with the farmer keeping most of the profit. Imagine a world where cows are milked straight into the carton to be delivered fresh and natural to the consumer and the wonderful effect of our farms employing scores of local young people who choose to stay and thrive where they grew up in an industry they love instead of being forced into the city to find a meaningful future. 

We can make this future come true, but we have to find politicians that are willing to give their power back to the community and sadly, they are in short supply. 

  

            

Heartless or Gutless or Both? An assessment of Andrew Wilkie's live export bill speech.

Listening to Andrew Wilkie introduce his latest bill to ban live exports would be comical if the man himself was not in a position to do so much damage from his ivory tower down in Hobart. He starts simply enough, detailing the various acts of cruelty that have taken place during the last few years (with Adam Bandt trying to squirm into the frame in the background) and goes on referring to the economic reports paid for by the WSPA that many people, including myself, have questioned the validity and accuracy of BUT the real kicker for me was his final line:

"those that do not take this opportunity are either heartless, or gutless or both"

So who is heartless and gutless here Mr Wilkie? As I recall The Northern Territory Cattleman's Association has extended repeated invitations for you to go up north and meet the people whose lives will be forever altered by this bill...

You have refused.

You have refused meet the people whose lives and businesses will be forever changed and see for yourself the reasons why they are so skeptical or to hear first hand their reasons for opposing your bill, the northern weather cycle making it impossible to fatten or truck cattle for long periods, the lack of grain production to fatten cattle in dry seasons and the simple market realities you seem to ignore.

Like the devastatingly low cattle prices we are seeing across the country right now that are at least partially due to the winding back of the live export trade.

That, is the definition of gutless. 

You state that Farmers will be better off without live export and that Western Australia has the abattoir capacity to completely replace the live sheep trade. Yet the sheep price remains stubbornly low and these abattoirs are not being flooded with mass orders for boxed sheep-meat from countries that are no longer sourcing live sheep, even though the farmers are nearly giving them away.

That is because the economists that wrote the WSPA's report seem to have trouble grappling (as you do) with that troublesome theory known as C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-M. People in other countries, particularly poor people look to Australia's live export industry to provide an invaluable source of affordable protein but that protein is only affordable when it's fattened and slaughtered overseas by people on similarly low wages.

When you attempt to create the same product but with the costs imposed by western wages that protein is no longer affordable and your customers go elsewhere. Of course you can go some way to alleviating this by importing workers but then your hardly creating Australian jobs are you? 

Live export has been only partially curtailed and farmers are as worse off as they have ever been yet you wave your report around and lecture them that they will be better off if you ban the whole lot. Even as hundreds go broke and some even resort to final, desperate and lethal measures. Cattle and sheep are not the only things being shot out in the outback because of your folly Mr Wilkie.

You do not care for their plight and that, is the very definition of heartless.

Our former customers in Indonesia now enjoy beef cruelly slaughtered by gangsters in India and smuggled into the country while sheep and goats are live exported into the Middle East from North Africa and other places. I doubt these people care at all about animal welfare and should the cruelty continue on animals from other nations then what do we really accomplish by banning live exports?

Nothing at all Mr Wilkie. 

Andrew Wilkie was a very sad figure in early 2011. A man who had backed an unpopular government into power, whose war on the pokies was going nowhere and the demons of his past were beginning to catch up with him.

He needed a cause to shore up his slim majority. A great legacy or reform he could put his name on that would ensure his backing of the Labor party would be forgotten at the next election, leave the demons of his army days behind and give him clear air to push his pokies agenda.

Andrew was lucky the live cattle issue came up when it did.

Here was an issue that inflamed the sensitivities of his inner city electorate, many of whom have no understanding of the realities of the industry they seek to intervene in but if it all goes wrong Andrews constituents do not lose their homes or their jobs.

Banning live export is the ideal populist policy, the consequences of this bill are reserved only for the people outside his electorate on the other side of the country, the people out of sight, out of mind, that Andrew Wilkie refuses to even face. I guess it's far easier to build a political career on the bones of other people if you don't have to look them in the eye after all.      

I wonder if that makes him heartless or gutless or just both?





    

You Must Be Joking

I got an email this afternoon from Julia Gillard, asking for my support to help Labor win the next election.

I penned this little rhyme in response, if it stirs you at all then please share.  


A whisper sweeps this wide brown land,
flowing as it goes
from angry ear to angry ear
the whisper slowly grows

It tells of farmers strong and proud
that have chose to leave the land
not from drought or flood or bank
but from their own hand.

It speaks of dried out carcasses
littering the land
created not by drought or fire
but by government cattle ban

It speaks of politicians
in inner city seats
stabbing farmers with their pens
for constituents, that hate the taste of meat.

The whisper speaks of scandals
of barefaced carbon lies
of taxes on the air we breath
and slush funds with intimate ties. 

It speaks of debts and deficit
of our countries finances looking sad
while the charlatans point to the rest of the world
and say, "at least we're not that bad."

The whisper spreads across the country
like ripples on a pool
gathering strength from ear to ear
the whispers on the move

By September it will gather strength
the likes we've never seen
the whisper echo's through the people
like the cyclone gathers strength at sea

On and on the anger builds
the whisper becomes a roar
across smoko sheds and kitchen tables
the anger levels soar

When you stand before your ballot
and the vote is yours to cast
hear the whisper in your ear
and put Labor last

I care about our farmers
and I want agriculture to last
I swear I'll do the right thing by them
and put Labor last.