Canberra to provide $32 million to help Western Australia’s sheep industry transition

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Federal Government will provide additional funding to help Western Australia’s sheep industry transition away from live exports, following a backlash from farmers and the state government.

Transcript

00:00The Federal Government has announced an additional $32.7 million to help those impacted by Federal

00:09Labor's plans to end the live sheep trade in May 2028.

00:14This is in addition to $107 million announced back in May this year, when the Government

00:21announced their plans to end the trade in 2028.

00:25And it's going toward things like promoting WA sheep meat both around Australia and around

00:31the world.

00:32And also wellbeing supports for WA farmers impacted things like financial counselling.

00:39This was the Federal Agriculture Minister, Julie Collins' first visit to WA since taking

00:45on the ag portfolio in July this year.

00:48And she says this extra cash shows the Federal Government is listening to WA farmers' concerns.

00:54We want to work collaboratively and listen to the farmers in Western Australia and people

01:00along the supply chain about how do we take advantage of this.

01:04Here are some great opportunities for what is a growing market around the world.

01:08We want to grow with those growing global trends to have more sheep meat processed here

01:13in Australia and exported around the world.

01:16I believe there are about 4,000 commercial scale sheep farms in Western Australia.

01:22But it's also the communities around those farms, adjacent industries like shearing,

01:28like truck drivers, also the abattoirs concerns about the viability of those if farmers reduce

01:35their sheep flocks.

01:36So it's really a ripple effect.

01:39One sheep farmer on ABC Radio Perth this morning described it as from bugger all to stuff all.

01:47Ultimately a lot of these farmers say we don't want your transition funding, we want you

01:53to ditch this ban.

01:55Federal Labor of course says that's not going to happen, we took this promise to two elections.

02:00The Coalition on the other hand says if they were elected they would overturn this ban.

02:05So despite this extra funding I don't think we've heard the end of this issue.

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