Jamie Mackay: The Country host on the Government's plan to bring back live animal exports

Legislation being drafted to bring back the controversial trade of live animal exports by sea is getting stuck in the cogs of Cabinet.

The Labour government banned the trade two years ago, but National and ACT campaigned on bringing it back. 

The Country's Jamie Mackay explained further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Rural Report on Heather Do see Alan Drive Hi
host of the Country with me. Now, Hey, Jomie get
I here. Okay, what are you hearing about the GDT
auction tonight.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Well, the guy I go to is Mike McIntyre at Jardin.
I give him a shameless plug every two weeks on
the show. I should be sending him an invoice, but
he's pretty much on the money. The futures market is
suggesting a two percent drop. It's going to be interesting here,
and I say that because we're getting We're starting to
ramp up volumes in our production season as the North

(00:33):
Island especially gets well through carving and starts smoking all
the cows. South Island, especially Lower South Island where I'm based,
just getting started now. So Mike's saying down two percent. Interestingly,
you know this is following I think in the last
six actions four drops followed by two lifts, which is good.

(00:55):
Our futures market is sitting at still over ten dollars
ten dollar ten, so that's where they're picking. It's at
nine dollars sixty two for the next season, which is
a long long way off. So look, it's obviously we
live in uncertain times. Donald might help all that by
broker in peace all around the world. But in the meantime,

(01:15):
as long as it starts with a ten, I think
dairy farmers are going to be pretty happy. We'll keep
an eye on that one tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
Yeah, listen, what's going on with the live animal exports?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Nothing? Nothing. And you might remember that this was a
condition of the coalition agreement. National and Act campaign during
the last election to bring back the trade. And this
is a very contentious and well put it this way.
I think the farming community even here there is split

(01:47):
down the middle on this one. And you might remember
back in twenty twenty, during that typhoon, we had the
Golf Livestock one ship en route to China death. Two
New Zealand crew members died. Along with the crew members,
five thousand, eight hundred cattle were also lost on that
ship and that was the catalyst for saying to the

(02:09):
war for the labor government anyhow to ban this cattle trade.
So National and Act want to give it bring it back.
But the Parliamentary Council Office the PCO is drafting the
Animal Welfare Act, but they seem to be taking their
time on it and we are stuck in no man's land.
Now there's two sides to the story. The likes of
Labour's Rachel Boyak, who's their animal welfare spokesperson, is saying

(02:32):
no good how regardless of how good the welfare is
on that ships or on those ships, it's not going
to be gold standard, she says, ban it. There'd be
no surprise that Steve Abel from the Greens is saying
the same thing. So maybe the government might have a
wee bit of hard work on this one getting it
past the goalie. They've got to get the legislation draft first.

(02:53):
But remember Australia is also under elbow planning to phase
out live exports of cheap by sea because that's a
huge trade for those guys out of Perth up into
the Middle East. They're going to end that by twenty
twenty eight. I do need to emphasize that our live
animal export would only be for cattle.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Interesting, Jamie, thanks very much, appreciate it. That's Jamie MacKaye,
host of the Country.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drave, listen live to
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