Feds told to pay-out hundreds-of-millions owed to NT after live export ban

The federal government is accused of holding onto hundreds-of-millions in payments owed to the NT. Find out why.

Territory cattle producers and exporters have called out the federal government for “dragging its feet” over potentially hundreds-of-millions in compensation owed in the wake of the 2011 live export ban.

About 300 Territory cattle producers and other industry stakeholders are owed hundreds-of-millions of dollars - potentially a billion including interest - after the federal court ruled the controversial live export ban was illegal.

In June 2011 the Julia Gillard-led federal Labor government banned live beef exports to Indonesia after allegations of animal cruelty in abattoirs were broadcast on Australian television.

The ban was slapped on Territory exporters eight days after the broadcast was aired, but it took more than a month for WA exporters to be banned which fuelled suggestions the NT was being singled out.

Victorious live cattle export ban class action litigants Colin Brett and his wife Alison Brett with son Hamish Brett, who now runs the family's Brett Cattle Co. operation at Waterloo Station in the Northern Territory. The group are pictured at live cattle export yards in Darwin.

The ban order was lifted later in 2011 but in 2014 NT-based Brett Cattle Company launched a class action against the Commonwealth.

After a protracted trial the federal court ruled in June 2020 the ban was “capricious and unreasonable” and then-Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig had committed the “tort of misfeasance” in public office by imposing the ban without consideration of legality and possible losses.

Justice Stephen Rares said Ludwig “plunged ahead” with the ban although “he knew that he had no advice about whether it would be valid and that there was a real risk that it would not be”.

NT Cattlemen's Association president David Connolly

So far, only the Brett family has received a pay-out, believed to be about $3m, as a result of the judgment.

But NT cattle industry representatives are putting pressure on the federal government to settle unpaid claimants. It’s estimated up to 300 people are seeking compensation which could be as much as $600m.

At last month’s Cattlemen’s Association conference in Darwin, president David Connolly called out the delay in paying affected cattle producers and other industry players including trucking companies, livestock agents and shippers.

“My inclination is to suggest that this delay is deliberate,” Mr Connolly said.

“There are those within government who do not want to see this compensation paid. There are some who are dragging their feet and slowing the process deliberately.

NT Live exporters association chief executive Tom Dawkins.

“If it has taken us over 3000 days to get here, how much longer will it take? It is the sad and unfortunate reality that many of those who first joined the class action are no longer with us.”

Speaking recently at a Lot Feeders Association meeting in Perth, NT Live Exporters Association chief executive Tom Dawkins said the government’s failure to willingly pay compensation has the potential to undermine the sector’s confidence in bio-security arrangements.

“The biggest thing undermining the trust industry has in the national animal disease and compensation mechanisms is the federal government’s delay and delay and delay in not paying out those claimants for the live export class action,” Mr Dawkins said.

“There are businesses now that don’t exist and there are people that are dead now that won’t see justice because we know that justice delayed is justice denied That’s undermining our efforts as an industry to protect ourselves going forward.”