Vikki Campion: Labor cosies up to pastoralists before dumping on them

The Labor government is more interested in tofu and development of ‘alternative proteins’ than helping our farmers who they have betrayed once again by banning live sheep exports, writes Vikki Campion.

The Labor Party, which was founded on the sheep’s back, is now destroying the industry that started it – thanks to an unholy union with a new plaything whose central policy is forced veganism and “vat meat”.

While Labor’s Agriculture Minister Murray Watt has been shy about expressing why they broke their promise to Premier Mark McGowan about maintaining the live sheep trade, Labor’s new special friend, the Australian Justice Party, refuses to be so discreet.

While Senator Watt played coy, the AJP issued a self-congratulatory statement heralding their “knockout blow” by demanding the banning of live sheep exports in exchange for their preferences at the Dunkley by-election.

“Ongoing conversations behind-the-scenes between AJP and Labor leadership has helped to fine tune government policy,” they boast.

At least the AJP is honest about what it wants, leading Labor by the nose towards its objective of banning all animal farms “with a shift towards plant-based and cellular agriculture”.

Qld premier Steven Miles and prime minister Anthony Albanese at Beef Week in Rockhampton. Picture: Annette Dew

So why was Labor so secretive about its latest fancy, whose primary policy is banning farming for meat, dairy, fish, fibre, prawns, eggs, and wool, while posing by bewildered brahman at Beefweek?

If you genuinely believed closing down an entire agricultural export trade was the best thing you could do for Aussie farmers, why wouldn’t you announce that policy to those farmers at the biggest farming event in the nation?

Instead, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who treated the international trade event like a Women’s Weekly photoshoot, kept the ban snugly under his crisp new Akubra at Beefweek.

Minister Murray Watt was happy to cuddle up for photos with cattlemen but not brave enough to whisper in their ear about the annihilation of their generational sacrifice coming in the budget.

Even with their muscular security detail for protection and tricky cattleman’s camouflage, the pair kept the surprise sealed until Senator Watt was safely in more familiar territory – behind a desk and a Zoom link.

To double the betrayal, two days before Minister Watt’s sheep ban, WA Labor MPs called for government funding for “alternative proteins” – such as tofu, insects and algae.

For all the posing at Beefweek, it was “independent research into consumers’ current understanding of plant-based labelling” to get federal funding in the budget, as lamb is coaxed off the menu to make way for tofu and vat “meat”.

That’s why farmers stormed out of Senator Watt’s budget breakfast.

Murray Watt has betrayed the agricultural sector, writes Vikki Campion. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It’s too cute for the Labor leadership to cosy up with the broad-brimmed pastoralists for the cameras, knowing they were about to end the industry that founded Australia and their own party under the Tree of Knowledge in 1891.

Their sector’s biggest budget line item was to see its destruction: $107m, not to compensate farmers but for “supply chain adaptations”.

The Australian sheep trade had the world’s highest export standards. Sheep could not travel if it was too hot or humid, with onboard vets to ensure wellbeing.

Many who think the boats are cruel base their views on a video taken by a guy paid-off by activists to turn off the ship’s aircon to distress them for sensational video.

Another argument against the trade comes down to how Muslims want to slaughter sheep, stunned first so unconscious, throat cut, facing Mecca.

News flash: This is how so much of your meat is killed for Coles and Woolworths.

The live exporting of sheep will be cancelled by 2028. Picture: Philip Gostelow/The Australian

Glass abattoirs now exist in Kuwait’s wet markets, where families and activists alike can observe the slaughter for cultural reasons.

We must not sanitise the reality of life. There is no perfect consumption.

If something wants a meal, something else is going to die – even if you are a strict vegan and solely exist on predominantly imported soy and coconut products. Billions of lives are destroyed so you can eat, otherwise that life – be it rat, rabbit, bird or insect – would eat your meal.

Sheep are solar-powered and create a sustainable, biodegradable fibre. Sheep produce protein where no crop can possibly grow and, through time, have withstood the harshest Australian conditions – apparently the most dangerous climate change for them is political.

NOTHING WARM AND FUZZY ABOUT BUDGET HANDOUT

Many had a warm feeling after the budget, believing they would get a $300 boost in their bank account.

Not so.

Big energy companies get a $300 boost for each household.

And haven’t they been looking after you lately?

Surely, they will do the right thing and pass it on.

Our energy policy is now such a disaster that taxpayers are burdened with subsidising the following: the manufacture of renewable components, the construction of 28,000km of transmission lines, secret agreements with multinational companies to generate intermittent power, a new process to ram through renewable generation projects, a mechanism of selling the power where they only need to supply in five-minute block, and now to hand cash to power companies to pay a small portion of their exorbitant household bills.

What a roaring success.

If this does not portray what an absolute farce this power policy has become, that the taxpayer has to fund every step of the way, then the next chapter should make it beyond discussion.

Our power supply is now precarious, and it will not be surprising if it fails in part or in whole during peak demand.

The budget shows explicitly how intermittent power is a giant green money laundering scam: rinse, wash and repeat.

It is now made up of three parts: the blindly naive, the ripped off, and the scam artists who sold out to sit in a different class from both – or in an entirely different country.

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Originally published as Vikki Campion: Labor cosies up to pastoralists before dumping on them