Anthony Albanese went to the last election promising to end live sheep exports from Australia. This rubbery promise has since been rolled back to his government’s second term (assuming they get one). The independent panel’s long-awaited report to the federal government on the issue has now also been delayed, from this week to late October.
The last time a Labor government did anything brave on the animal export issue was in 2011, when Julia Gillard’s Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig banned live cattle exports to Indonesia, following evidence of extreme and widespread cruelty recorded by the charity Animals Australia. That ban lasted only a month, but led to very expensive law suits, allegations that the minister had overstepped his authority, and no lasting improvements in the lives (and deaths) of the animals concerned.
Animals Australia have since continued their courageous whistle-blowing, spearheaded by their Director of Strategy Lyn White AM, who spent 20 years in the police force and appears to be quite undaunted by threats from those who believe money is more important than suffering.
How much cruelty is enough?
In New Zealand, the export of all live animals has recently been banned (following the deaths of 41 crew members and 6,000 cattle in a 2020 shipwreck), but in Australia these practices continue unabated, mostly out of sight and out of mind, as the industry prefers.
The animal export trade has a long and inglorious history here, firstly between the colonies, then to neighbouring countries, and later to the far side of the world. During one week in 1864, 120 cattle from a cargo of 180 died on one ship, 140 out of 171 died on another, and 130 sheep were lost from 200 on a third vessel – and that was just crossing the Tasman.
In 1877, after the deaths of numerous sheep on a train, a correspondent to the Brisbane Courier said confining animals without adequate food or water was ‘as gross a case of cruelty as it is possible to conceive.’ In the 21st century, stories of mass deaths of transported animals due to extreme heat, thirst, overcrowding, injuries and equipment failure have become commonplace.
Australians love to point the finger at other countries in regard to animal cruelty, but the fact is that while you can’t stuff a sheep into your car boot before sacrificing it here, like in Oman, you can literally get away with murder if the animal in question isn’t a pet, as long as you do it behind a factory wall.
The hypocrisy around ‘production animals’ means industry interests trump animal welfare in every Australian state.
Mistreating and killing baby animals is essentially business as usual for industrial livestock farming, with examples including meat chickens bred to grow so unnaturally fast that they can’t naturally survive beyond a few weeks old, pigs gassed and then having their throats cut, calves being snatched from their mothers to aid milk and veal production, and ducks not being allowed to live on water, in their natural state.
The live export situation is even worse, with large numbers of animals, particularly sheep, continuing to die en route or after delivery in appalling conditions, and the limited protections of Australian law vanishing once the animals leave our shores.
Shoot the whistleblower
Fines for revealing the truth of commercial animal exploitation have become increasingly onerous, with industry pressure leading Australia to follow the USA, where in some states the penalties for revealing animal cruelty (even using drones) are now more extreme than those for actual terrorism against humans, under ‘ag-gag’ laws.
Ironically, some of the hidden camera techniques used by Animals Australia overseas, on ships and in countries to which we export, with the results then being shown on Australian television, are completely illegal if used here.
These are the films which forced the Gillard and Albanese governments to actually do something about the export trade.
In terms of live sheep exports, the independent expert panel set up by the Albanese Government has now received 4,100 submissions, following 80 meetings with industry and other stakeholders (particularly in Western Australia) who have largely lobbied furiously for the status quo to remain, despite the decline of the live export industry.
It will be revealing to see whether the government acts upon delivery of the final report, creating a precedent, or loses its nerve and hopes Australia forgets about the ongoing cycle of cruelty, allowing sheep and other animals to continue being delivered to an awful fate.
Barring further delays, the panel will provide its report to the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry by 25 October.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
