A lot of people have an opinion about the live trade industry. What many don’t have is information about the effect the
sudden death of this industry had on rural people, their animals – and ultimately – urban folk.
Billy Kerr sold his acres at Ajana, near Kalbarri, and moved the best of his dorper breeding stock onto a friend’s station in
the Murchison about 18 months ago. It proved to be a bad move as he immediately faced problems with dogs and a lack
of fences, and lost a lot of his ewes. Bill was driven to this action because the live trade industry suddenly ceased to be a
living, and he was facing another drought year. Without rain, he had no hope of growing his own stock feed, and without
an income he couldn’t afford to buy the feed, which left him with little choice.
As he puts it bluntly: ‘If I had stayed at Ajana to face another year of drought after they killed the live trade industry, I
would have put a bullet in my head.’
The sheep industry suffered collateral damage from the ban on live cattle export to Indonesia in June 2011 and the
subsequent introduction of regulations that had a ripple effect in markets across the globe; a lot of people in the
Midwest got out of sheep at this time.
In station country up north, producers were left high and dry with cattle they had to continue to feed and water without
the cheque that allowed them to carry the cost of caring for them.
The emotional cost of being branded as people who care nothing for the lives of their animals bled into a time where
producers, ironically, became powerless to give their animals what they needed to live healthy lives. Both humans and
animals ended up being punished by what looked like a panicked government decision that created pain and bitterness
which still reverberates today.
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