![The Minister's Diary: how the live sheep export shutdown unfolded The Minister's Diary: how the live sheep export shutdown unfolded](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/230597393/8ad446f1-425f-4821-974d-f98c1d776aeb.png/r1_0_1097_617_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The moment Agriculture Minister Murray Watt opened a snap press conference on May 11, 2024, the day became woven into Australian agriculture folklore.
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The shutting down of an industry by government is a rare and brutal business and Mr Watt had just declared that the nation's live sheep by sea export trade will cease to exist in just under four years' time.
Since the axing as much conspiracy, rumour and innuendo have swirled among industry stakeholders and dilettantes about the hours and days leading up to that Perth presser than commentary about the government's $107 million industry transition package aiming to stem the bleeding along the supply chain.
ACM-Agri can now reveal the inside story.
The six-month lag
Since October 25 last year when an Independent Panel report recommending how and when to best transition the industry was handed to Mr Watt, farm lobby groups had demanded its immediate released along with the government's response.
However, while Labor has remained tight-lipped about the minutiae of how its response was settled through Budget and Cabinet deliberations, Mr Watt has shone some light on why it took six months to settle and was announced just three days before the May 14 federal budget.
"One of the reasons we weren't able to announce it earlier was that it is part of the budget, and negotiations around what's in and out of the budget continue on for quite a while," he said.
It was only "once we had that money figure approved" that his office and Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry could start figuring out how and when to announce the decision.
The approval of the amount of money was not really the issue though, Mr Watt does not make too many pitches to Cabinet for funding and when he does insiders say they are usually approved as he comes equipped with a lawyer's well-honed and considered argument.
"People were calling on me to release the report and announce the package for months, (but) we obviously had to go through budget negotiations to do that," Mr Watt said.
The simplistic explanation as to why the announcement was made on a quiet weekend afternoon is that it was the open spot in Mr Watt's diary before the budget.
"My decision was that I did not want to drop it out on the night of the budget and bury it, but actually announce it separately before the budget," he said.
"That is about as sophisticated as it was."
But the comments also confirm the exit date had been settled for some time and federal cabinet usually meets early in the week, so it can only be assumed that the ink had dried on the final transition package sign-off before Mr Watt attended Beef Week in Rockhampton from May 6 to 9.
A question repeatedly being asked is why he and and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who was also in attendance, did not reveal the phase out plan directly to the who's who of Australian livestock and thousands of supply chain participants at the event.
The Minister's Diary
Mr Watt arrived in Perth quietly the day before the scheduled but yet-to-be-announced Saturday presser.
But, to clarify a misnomer crackling around the ridges, he did not fly directly from Rockhampton to Perth on the government jet.
Mr Watt took a commercial flight back home from central Queensland to Brisbane on Thursday and slept in his own bed that night.
He then took a nearly six-hour commercial flight to Perth on Friday, arriving roughly on time at 1pm WA time.
A handful of DAFF and ministerial staffers travelled separately to Perth but it is unknown when the flights had been booked.
Once on the ground the Senator for Queensland appears to have almost single-handedly executed the government's plan.
He began by calling Philip Glyde, chair of the Independent Panel, in the car during the 12 kilometre drive from the airport to the CBD.
Next on the agenda was a face-to-face with new West Australian newspaper editor Christopher Dore at the publisher's Osborne Park headquarters, about six kilometres out of town.
It was not so much that it was Mr Watt's only physical meeting in Perth that day that later drew fire.
It was the "briefing out" to the newspaper of the monetary value of the transition package and that it appeared on the masthead's front page on Saturday morning, and before those with the most skin in the game - the live sheep industry - were delivered the grim news.
The motivation to leak the yarn remains unknown but is a tactic in the crisis communications playbook.
"We provided a journalist at The West Australian with the dollar figure and an explanation of what it was going to be used for on the Friday," Mr Watt said.
His office also organised a briefing for four journalists, including the author of this article, on the morning of the announcement "so they were better informed going into the press conference".
After leaving The West Australian, Mr Watt travelled back to the CBD for a video conference to brief Labor's WA federal members of parliament and senators on what would go down the next day.
This was followed by a briefing of Labor caucus members with "an interest" in the matter.
A then called Kuwait's Ambassador to Australia on the phone to advise him that the government would be announcing its decision in a few hours and that the constitutional, hereditary emirate would soon need to find a new bulk provider of live sheep. But he did not furnish the diplomat with the 2028 date.
Kuwait is obviously not the only market where Australia's live sheep are shipped, but was likely singled out because it is the biggest, takes several other commodities and, with the exchange of critical minerals high on the government's to-do list, not a relationship it wants to destabalise.
Mr Watt's last official business was hitting the speed dial to WA's Agriculture Minister Jackie Jarvis who has resolutely stood against the proposed ban taken to two elections by federal Labor.
Mr Watt provided his Labor counterpart a full briefing that Friday evening, saying "I thought she had a right to know".
Mr Watt last week described their relationship as generally "constructive" while, on the live sheep export ban, "she has a position and job to do, and I have a position and a job to do".
He also said that while the WA government was not consulted in the formulation of the transition package, the federal government had hoped it would co-fund the $107m package but "the answer was clearly no."
Mr Watt did not speak with WA Premier Roger Cook.
Saturday Sentence
According to Mr Watt's diary, on the Saturday morning he held an online video conference with all four Independent Panel members, being Mr Glyde, a former Murray Darling Basin Authority chief executive, former Labor federal minister Warren Snowden, agribusiness leader Sue Middleton and former RSPCA chief executive Heather Neil to detail the government's response.
He then faced a screen of up to 70 faces for what has become a controversial video conference.
The full list of 53 invitees for that meeting were 26 agriindustry groups, three exporter and three meat processing representatives, 11 worker union representatives, five research and development organisation representatives and five from animal welfare groups. The numbers swelled after the Teams link was shared but it unknown who the extra 17 or so were.
The meeting was scheduled for 45 minutes but lasted about an hour, with about a dozen questions at the end from attendees along with "some positive and some negative" comments.
The hook-up was the handiwork of several but Mr Watt has taken full responsibility for having just one all-in briefing with farm groups and animal welfare groups, including the Australian Alliance for Animals, on the same call.
However, peak livestock groups later revealed being angry that the briefing was delivered to them with animal activists cheering on the move.
Mr Watt admitted that he proceeded with the meeting despite knowing that the two sides "don't like each other". He also said "a couple of industry figures expressed unhappiness" to him about being on the same call as the animal welfare groups.
"I am absolutely conscious of the pressure farmers are under and I have recognised that many times. My view was that this is an issue that a very wide spectrum of people had an stake in and everyone deserved to know at the same time from me," he said.
Mr Watt then conducted the press conference.
Another persistent poser, that holds little merit, is why Mr Watt made the announcement in the Commonwealth Parliament Offices in Perth's Exchange Tower and not in a paddock before an audience of farmers.
The answer is obvious, with Mr Watt confirming that pressers are nearly always held indoors, particularly of that magnitude, to provide optimal broadcast media acoustics and a private setting for journalists to ask questions.
As the microphone was turned off the DAFF published the transitional package, the Panel report and some supporting information on its website.
The hardest part of the phaseout done, Mr Watt went to Perth airport and flew home to Brisbane that afternoon.
Meanwhile, WA Senator Slade Brockman, who operates a family farm at Pemberton in the state's south-west focusing on the production of prime lamb and wool, subsequently opined whether Mr Watt's exercise of flying to Perth for a "media drop and a Teams call" where he did not "eyeball" producers was a good use of taxpayer's dollars.
Mr Watt believes "it was important to be there in person, to address the media in Perth".
"It was a very long press conference and they could ask as many questions as they wanted," he said.