Australia and Indonesia have celebrated a hugely successful 10 year program enhancing bilateral trade in the red meat and live cattle industries.
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A conference in Jakarta on Tuesday heard how the wide ranging Indonesia-Australia Red Meat and Cattle Partnership had helped "build a better industry" in the wake of the former Gillard Government's cruel 2011 decision to ban Australian live cattle exports to Indonesia.
While the trade resumed relatively quickly with the introduction of the ECAS assurance system that requires the humane handling and slaughter of livestock in the importing country, relations between the trade partners was left in tatters.
The partnership proposed by Ken Warriner, Greg Pankhurst and Dicky Adiwoso and introduced under the Abbott Government initially focused on R&D projects, including identifying suitable cattle breeds for small holder Indonesian farmers.
The program grew to include the formation of an advisory board in 2016, and has to improve animal welfare, management systems, and provide training, including six placements for Indonesians on Northern Territory cattle stations.
The program also played a key role in helping to steer the industry through Australian drought during the second part of the last decade, price spikes, the Covid pandemic and more recent outbreaks of both foot and mouth disease and lumpy skin disease in Indonesia.
Indonesian cattle feeder Dicky Adiwoso said the program had been a decade long exercise in "ironing out wrinkles".
Mr Adiwoso said the program was helping to build a better industry, that was based on mutually beneficial bilateral trade rather than an industry of simply buyers and sellers.
"Indonesia was humiliated by the 2011 ban," he said.
"However, we came to understand social licence, what the world expects."
CPC chief executive officer Troy Setter said the live cattle trade was vitally important to both countries, including providing much needed nutrition to Indonesia and creating hundreds of jobs in remote parts of northern Australia.
"There are still huge opportunities, not just with live cattle, but also with sheep, goats and buffalo and other co-products such as what Indonesia has planned with leather and bio-medicine."
Addressing the conference on a pre-recorded video, Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said Australia and Indonesia were natural trading partners and there was a strong future for cattle and beef exports.
Senator Watt said the program had enabled both countries to share expertise and knowledge, which had resulted in closer ties between the trading partners.
Program co-chair Dr Riyanto from Indonesia's Ministry for Investment said food security needed to become "not just a goal, but a reality for all".
- Mark Phelps travelled to Indonesia as a guest of the 4 Season Company.
