Cattle exporters’ nine-year wait for justice

It’s nine years since the then Labor government took a decision that gutted the livelihood of Northern Territory live cattle exporters virtually overnight.

‘Everybody in our industry needs closure’: Hamish Brett with son Stirling, 5. Picture: Helen Orr

It’s nine years since the then Labor government took a decision that gutted the livelihood of Northern Territory live cattle exporters virtually overnight, and the wheels of the law have turned slowly.

On Tuesday, about 300 plaintiffs will learn the outcome of a class action filed in 2014 seeking up to $600m in compensation against the federal government for then agriculture minister Joe Ludwig’s 2011 suspension of the live trade to Indonesia.

For Hamish Brett, one of the owners of the Brett Cattle Company which is the lead litigant, the ruling to be brought down by Federal Court judge Steven Rares is in part about the “instant financial hardship” the family-owned company, which runs more than 20,000 head of cattle on Waterloo Station, 530km southwest of Katherine, endured.

“We had cattle in the yards contracted to be shipped,” Mr Brett said.

They were left stranded when the exporter claimed force majeure and did not proceed with the purchase.

“It was the end of the wet, and this was the normal time we sell cattle,” Mr Brett said. “To have no market was catastrophic.”

That was just the start of a long struggle that cost the family millions. “From then on, the value in the market went down and the good business dealings we had with Indonesia before the bans went south,” he said.

“I don’t think Indonesia trusts us since then.”

Mr Brett said the case was also about freedom from what he sees as knee-jerk populist actions by politicians.

“Hopefully the decision goes our way, and government can’t do what they did to us, or any other industry,” he said. “It’s been nine years, and everybody in our industry needs closure.”

In early June 2011, Mr Ludwig suspended the live cattle trade to Indonesia days after an ABC Four Corners program aired gruesome footage of animal cruelty in some Indonesian abattoirs processing Australian cattle, prompting widespread public outrage.

Tracey Hayes, the former chief executive of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association who has continued to champion the class action, said while the ban was lifted within six weeks, “by then the damage had been done”. “Some people went 12 months without selling an animal,” she said.

The case, backed by the Australian Farmers Fighting Fund, alleges misfeasance in office against Mr Ludwig, claiming he acted disproportionately and without adequate consultation and evidence. The case has already cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal costs.

Ms Hayes said if the plaintiffs’ case were successful, it would open the way for not just cattle producers and exporters but livestock transporters, helicopter contract musterers, and live export depots, among others, to seek compensation. Ms Hayes noted Justice Rares had taken 18 months to deliberate.

“If it was an obvious ‘no case to answer’, there would have been a decision earlier,” she said.

Ms Hayes said the heart of the case was the plaintiffs’ claim the decision punished the many for the actions of a few, with most supply chains “operating in an ­efficient and appropriate manner, consistent with animal welfare standards”.

Mr Brett, who is a veterinarian and in recent years set up the Coomalie feedlot and export depot near Darwin, insisted that “our cattle have always been properly treated — no one wants to see any animal hurt or in a bad way.”