Warren Mundine: It’s up to Anthony Albanese to make it right for WA’s farming community on live exports

The Albanese Government has a huge opportunity to show it is listening to West Australians by making amends for the former Labor government’s injustices against the WA agriculture industry. Twelve years ago, then-infrastructure minister Anthony Albanese, Tony Burke and several others in the current Government sat in cabinet and approved the Gillard government’s unlawful shut down of the live export cattle industry, virtually overnight. The pain was swift and brutal. It resulted in businesses lost, multi-generational assets sold off in fire sales, families divorced and even suicides. The human devastation of the decision is hard to underestimate. About 15 per cent of WA’s northern pastoral workforce are Indigenous, and Indigenous cattle businesses and workers were among the hardest hit. One example was Bunuba Cattle Company, owned and operated by the Bunuba people, who were forced to divest their operations, including a 17,000 herd near Fitzroy Crossing. An indiscriminate decision 4000 kilometres away in Canberra transformed them from an active business operator to a passive lessor of land. In June 2020, the live export ban was smacked down by the Federal Court who found the decision was “capricious, irrational and unreasonable” and that decision makers committed misfeasance in public office by abusing their power. It’s a high hurdle to prove misfeasance, requiring proof of intentional misuse of office, but the hurdle was readily cleared. The Federal Court found the government was “quintessentially reckless” both to its power to make the decision and the harm it would cause. The minister “deliberately took the risk” the decision could be invalid and “did not care whether it turned out to be so or not”, did not seek legal advice and “shut his eyes” to the harmful consequences. It was a disgraceful abuse of power, one Federal Labor should be keen to put behind it given its troubles in recent months, its loss of support among regional and working class voters, and the challenges it faces at the next election in WA, Queensland and the NT in particular. Prime Minister Albanese can, and should, make amends. This should not be hard. With the matter of culpability settled, it is only a matter of paying up. The 215 impacted cattle businesses have asked for a reasonable $510 million, plus costs and interest. Given the Federal Court’s damning findings, taxpayers potentially face a much higher pay-out if the court has to rule on damages. The interest bill alone due to the Albanese Government’s stalling tactics is roughly $1 million per week. Does the Albanese Government really want to go back to court, hit taxpayers with an even bigger bill, and further deprive these West Australians of justice after 12 long years? Contrast the Government’s settlement of Brittany Higgins’ claim the Commonwealth breached its duty of care in handling her allegations of sexual assault. It agreed $2.4 million compensation within a single day. Yet no court had established the Commonwealth was liable and there’s no indication that a meaningful prospect of Commonwealth liability had been established, or that the veracity of the allegations against the Commonwealth had even been tested. Contrast also its reaction to the High Court’s decision requiring the release of the immigration detainee known as NZYQ. The Albanese Government moved immediately to release not just detainee NZYQ, but 147 others following the court order on November 8, 20 days before the reasons for the decision were published. Chris Merritt, vice president of the Rule of Law Institute of Australia, says it was under “no obligation” on November 8 to release other detainees and it would have been “perfectly reasonable” to wait for the published decision (during which it could have worked on alternative measures) without breaching the law “because those principles, at law, did not exist until November 28”. There’s no risk of a hasty decision for victims of the cattle live export ban. The dispute is over a decade old and the Federal Court has already ruled the government did the wrong thing. The only question is the quantum of damages. So why hang out to dry so many honest businesses from WA and across the north? The common thread in all these decisions is Federal Labor appeasing its woke constituents who support open borders, dislike the former government, and oppose live export, if not a complete ban on meat. Albanese’s agricultural policy adviser is Skye Laris, a former chief of staff to previous agriculture minister, Tony Burke, who within days of leaving his office became GetUp’s head of animal welfare campaigns. As a senior policy adviser for promoting Australia’s agricultural sector, Laris has repeatedly made claims that Australia’s mainstream animal farming is inherently cruel. This also explains why the laudable defence of the live sheep industry by Premier Roger Cook was met with silence from his colleagues in Canberra. It’s time for the Albanese Government to finally listen to the pleas of the agriculture sector and make amends for the Gillard Government’s reckless and unlawful decision to injure the live export sector. Whether it does right by West Australians and taxpayers or yet again appeases the far left, inner-city crowd is now up to Albanese. Lifeline: 13 11 14 Nyunggai Warren Mundine the director of the Centre for Independent Studies’ Indigenous Forum