FORMER Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says Labor’s “bizarre overreaction” to suspend live cattle exports to Indonesia five years ago, was a panic response to a television program that can be partly blamed on the then government’s dearth of rural representation.
Mr Abbott was opposition leader in mid-2011 when the ABC Four Corners program broadcast shocking images of animal cruelty from Indonesian abattoirs towards cattle exported from Australia, in the midst of the hung parliament.
It sparked a trade suspension a week later, initially ordered for up to six months while a new supply chain assurance regime was implemented - the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System – to rapidly improve welfare outcomes while adding transparency and accountability measures.
Speaking to Fairfax Media about that intense period in federal parliament’s history, Mr Abbott said he was “horrified” by the then government’s response to the ABC broadcast by imposing a blanket suspension order several days later.
“My immediate reaction was to say, you shouldn’t do something with enormous ramifications for the cattle industry and enormous ramifications for our relationship with Indonesia in panic at a television program,” he said.
“You don’t punish Australia for something that went wrong in Indonesia – I mean that’s just a bad principle.
“Why would you punish yourself because of something unfortunate that happened in Indonesia?”
Mr Abbott said the snap suspension was “right up there” with the many “terrible decisions” made by the former Labor government.
He referred to the pink batts scandal that resulted in a Royal Commission to investigate the death of four workers during implementation of the Home Insulation Program and the multi-billion dollar school halls program that suffered accusations of serious rorting.
But he said, “Almost nothing could be calculated to do more damage to Australia’s relationship with Indonesia so it was a very, very bad decision”.
“Poor judgment and poor internal processes were characteristic of that particular government,” he said.
Mr Abbott said the Gillard government’s lack of rural representation “certainly didn’t help” when responding to the Four Corners broadcast where backbench Labor MP’s demanded a total trade ban to address animal welfare without considering longer-term impacts on local industry.
“One of the things I tried to do as Prime Minister was to ensure that there was country and rural expertise embedded in our system in a way that wasn’t the case with Labor,” he said.
Mr Abbott said with animal activists “out there”, an orchestrated campaign was “plainly” enshrined in the television program that led to the suspension that rocked Australian agriculture.
“But governments should not overreact to anything and they particularly shouldn’t jeopardise relations with a very important nation and should not jeopardise the future of a very important industry as a panicky over reaction to a television program,” he said.
“I would not want to speculate as to what was happening inside the then government but it was a bizarre and damaging over-reaction and it should never have happened.
“The then government was guilty of internal dysfunction and the then Prime Minister (Julia Gillard) her judgement was often awry but I just could not make any specific comments on the processes or lack thereof inside that government.”
Mr Abbott admitted he was shocked and surprised when the full suspension was announced because “it was never an appropriate reaction”.
“All sorts of claims were made at the time and subsequently about the footage but even taking the footage at face value, to ban the trade was a bizarre overreaction,” he said.
Mr Abbott said if his party was in government at that time they would have “thought first and reacted later”.
He said a repeat scenario could not be ruled out in future because the current Labor party had not learnt the lessons of the previous Labor government.
“That’s one of the many reasons why I think we should elect a Turnbull government and re-elect the Coalition because - barring Rudd and Gillard - all the senior people from the former government are still there and they haven’t learnt their lessons,” he said.
“I support the live export trade – I always have and I always will.
“I’m not saying that the live export trade should substitute for any other trade but for obvious reasons, some export markets would like to have live cattle as opposed to already slaughtered cattle or animals.
“If a particular market wants live animals, why shouldn’t we supply it?”
Mr Abbott made a strong stand from opposition in an effort to restore lost confidence by promising he would apologise to Indonesia for the snap trade suspension, if the Coalition was elected.
Subsequently, his first overseas trip - made within a fortnight of defeating Labor at the September 2013 poll with Kevin Rudd having replaced Ms Gillard as leader - was to visit Indonesia with Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and former Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb.
“Amongst other things, I apologised for the way, and for the impact of Australia’s decision making in this area, on Indonesia,” Mr Abbott said.
“I don’t want, as it were, to put words in other peoples’ mouths, but I think the Indonesians knew from day one they were dealing with a very different government.
“I would be surprised if they were not reassured by my statements on live cattle.”
Mr Abbott said he was now pleased the Indonesian cattle trade - which was valued at $330 million in June 2011 when the controversial suspension hit - had recovered strongly to hit record levels but was “not without the occasional hiccup”.
He said that resurgence could be partly attributed to the work of Agriculture and Water Resources Minister Barnaby Joyce and industry groups and others who assisted with implementing the new supply chain operating standards during the suspension period.
Mr Abbott said shortly after the “shemozzle” suspension decision, he also visited Indonesia as Opposition leader which included touring some small abattoirs to assess conditions first hand.
“They certainly had standards which struck me as being more or less identical to Australian abattoirs that I’ve visited over the years,” he said of what he witnessed first-hand.
“An abattoir is no place for someone with a weak stomach - it’s a bloody business the slaughter of animals - but the Indonesian abattoirs that I visited did it as humanely, if that’s the right word, as you can.”
Mr Abbott said he believed the animal welfare standards in Indonesian abattoirs, shown in the ABC telecast, were “not consistent with any reasonable abattoir practice”.
“It’s almost impossible to imagine any place where animals are regularly slaughtered for food operating in accordance with the kind of cowboy antics we saw on TV that night,” he said.
Looking back five years on, he said the big lesson for the Australian Commonwealth government was to ensure it treated core trading partners with respect in future, especially when supplying an important food product to feed that trading nation’s people.
“If you are a large supplier of an important food-stuff, and if you like, a guarantor of the food security of another country, you’ve got to act with the utmost good faith towards them and we failed to do that in this particular instance,” he said.
“I guess the lesson is to never act in a way which another country might construe as cutting off their food supply.”
After the delegation to Jakarta in 2013 following the Abbott government’s election win, the Indonesian government announced an extra 75,000 head of cattle import permits for the final quarter of that year.
In 2009, Australia exported 750,000 head of cattle to Indonesia and 520,000 in 2010 but that plunged to 410,000 in the year of the trade suspension and then 283,000 in 2012.
In 2013, the beef import quota was set at 80,000 tonnes for the year originally comprising 32,000 tonnes of boxed beef and 238,000 head of cattle which increased by 50,000 head in the third quarter.
Mr Abbott was also Prime Minister in October 2014 when a class action compensation claim was lodged against the Commonwealth over the trade suspension, to recover revenue losses suffered by cattle producers and related businesses.
At the time in a joint party room meeting, Mr Abbott described Labor’s decision to suspend the live cattle trade as perhaps the worst one any Australian government had ever made.
He said the interests of justice had to be served along with those of taxpayers and therefore the Commonwealth would run the case as a best practice litigant.
At the time, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten told the National Farmers' Federation (NFF) Congress he believed what happened with live cattle export ban was a problem and “I think all of us have learnt lessons from that”.
He said the “pause in live exports, followed by drought was the cause of real hardship in the North”.
“Perhaps we should have done things differently then – but today we can be proud that Australia’s world-leading animal welfare system has put the trade on a sustainable footing, giving us opportunities to grow and reach new markets,” he said.
In an opinion article at the time of the controversy in 2011, Mr Abbot said banning Australian live exports would not stop cruel practices towards animals and “just shifts the problem to someone else”.
“Only by remaining engaged in the trade can Australia help ensure humane practices at all abattoirs we deal with,” he wrote.
“The Indonesians won’t stop importing beef if Australia refuses to supply.
“They’ll just get their animals from India (where foot and mouth disease is rife) and Northern Australia will lose its biggest industry along with mining.
“This is a largely avoidable mess that the government could have stopped and must now fix.
“The government should have known about problems at some Indonesian abattoirs.
“If it didn’t know, it should have been alerted well before Four Corners went to air and should have been ready with a considered response.”
Speaking to media on July 3, 2011, Mr Abbott said the cattle industry was in crisis and he hoped it would not be “terminal”.
“The only way it won’t be a terminal crisis is if the Prime Minister gets herself to Jakarta and sorts this matter out,” he said.
“Now, she wouldn’t let the Foreign Minister go to Jakarta, instead she sent the Agriculture Minister.
“The Agriculture Minister seemed to make a bad situation worse.
“There is no reason why this trade should not be resumed tomorrow.
“There are abattoirs in Indonesia that operate in accordance with the best international standards.
“Licences to export cattle to those abattoirs should be issued tomorrow and the best way to ensure that the Indonesians are prepared to accept them is for the Prime Minister to get on a plane to Jakarta and sort this matter out straight away.”
At another media conference on June 30, 2011, with Mr Abbott attacking the former government ferociously over the carbon tax and renewing calls for an election due to dissatisfaction with the hung parliament, he was quizzed about the $30 million industry assistance package, provided by Labor to try and help those dealing with the Indonesian cattle crisis.
“I think that the cattle industry doesn’t want welfare, they want their trade back,” he said.
“The trade can restart tomorrow, it just needs the Prime Minister to sit down with the Indonesians and reassure the Indonesians that this is not all about them.”