Live export: Consultation panel commissions independent report on ban impacts

Federal Labor’s live sheep export phase-out panel is commissioning an independent report to determine the impacts of shutting down the trade, but concerns have been raised the time frame to create the document is “ridiculously short”.

The panel is conducting industry consultation on how and when to implement the phase-out, and must submit its own, separate report to Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt by late September.

The independent report would help inform the panel’s report to Senator Watt and include a detailed assessment of the economic, agronomic and community impacts of a phase-out.

The call for submissions to engage external consultants went out on April 14 and closed on April 20, with a June 30 deadline for completing the independent report.

But chair Phillip Glyde told Countryman no consultants had been hired yet and the deadline was not set in stone.

“We may well have asked for the reports to be written by then, but my experience of this is you usually end up going back and asking questions,” he said.

“We may well ask for more work… as things come to light … so we’ll be choosing to get assistance as we need it over the course of the next few months.”

Despite the somewhat flexible deadline, an agricultural industry consultant who did not want to be named said it was “too tight”.

“The timeline for delivery is ridiculously short considering the scale of the report and the importance of what they are trying to assess,” the consultant said.

“I find it highly unlikely it will do the process justice.”

The independent report is set to assess the impact of a short, medium and long-term phase-out on different types of farms.

It would also include a whole of supply chain analysis, taking into account impacts on sheep commodity pricing; and an agronomic assessment looking at the impacts of likely flock and cropping composition changes on farm sustainability.

A report of this scale would ordinarily take anywhere from six to 18 months, according to another consultant quoted by industry publication Sheep Central.

Mr Glyde acknowledged the criticism, saying concerns were also raised during public consultation meetings in regional WA last week that the panel’s own report was “a really rushed job”.

“At the same time, other people were raising the fact that there’s a lot of uncertainty that’s been caused by the creation of the panel… and what’s going to happen and when,” he said.

“I think we probably could do more if we had more time, but we’re also conscious of the fact that the government has its own process.

“The sooner people can get some sort of certainty about what’s in our report, and what the government decides to do about that… then the sooner people can begin to plan.

“I think there’s a balance that we’re trying to manage where we don’t want it to drag on forever, but by the same token, we do want to do a good job.

“So there’s a happy ground in the middle, and we’d like to think that would be a report by the end of September — but that might not be the case for some people, and there’s a long way to go still.”

In an interview with Countryman last month, Mr Glyde admitted the phase-out would “adversely affect” farmers and that the panel’s deadline to submit a report was tight.

“That doesn’t leave us much time to get across the detail of how the industry works, who the players are, and what are going to be the consequences of this transition,” he said.

“There’s a lot of detail in that and a lot to understand, which is why we’re really keen to hear from the people that are going to be directly affected one way or another by the policy.

“Clearly this sort of policy change will adversely affect the industry, so how do we make the best of it?”

Mr Glyde this week repeated previous claims that his personal view on the policy was “irrelevant”.

“We have all signed up to this on the basis we are not asked to express our view,” he told reporters in Narrogin.

“I am not elected by the people of Australia to be a decision maker… they (Labor) have made that decision, and it has happened.

“Our personal views are wide and varied but they are irrelevant to this task.”

He said the panel’s job was to figure out the “least damaging way” to implement the phase-out and “what can be put in place to ameliorate the impacts”.

“The past few meetings, the overwhelming feeling is ‘we don’t want that to happen’, and we will be conveying that back to the minister,” Mr Glyde said.

“By the same token, we have met with people who want this to happen as quickly as possible.”