Steve Martin: Labor MLC’s attack on Keep the Sheep campaign adds insult to injury

As Mark Twain so eloquently put it: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”. Well, WA Labor gave us all three versions during debate in the Parliament recently. Darren West, a Labor member of the Legislative Council, and the self-proclaimed only farmer in Parliament, got stuck into the thousands of supporters of the grassroots Keep The Sheep campaign with an ill-timed member’s statement during the most recent sitting day of Parliament. Adding Labor insult to Labor injury, West described the campaign as an embarrassment and a farcical failure. For Labor members who haven’t been paying attention, this is the same campaign that was behind the convey of trucks, utes and cars that attracted thousands of supporters to Perth from across the State at the end of May to peacefully protest the Federal Government’s decision to close the live sheep export industry. This is the campaign that attracted another huge crowd of supporters to Muresk in June to meet for the only live hearing of the Standing Committee on Agriculture investigating the government legislation. And this is the campaign that pulled together yet another strong crowd of farmers and supporters from across the nation to Canberra earlier this month to continue the fight to have the Labor decision overturned. That effort isn’t embarrassing. It’s a display of the depth of feeling and community concern around Labor’s decision to ban an industry that is well regulated, profitable and important to the WA livestock sector. And West’s logic behind his insult that the campaign has been a farcical failure? He states that Australian sheep meat exports are up. How dare West Australians complain when the livestock industry is obviously going so well. “In 2023, we processed in Australia 709,932 tonnes of sheep meat. We are the largest sheep meat exporter in the world by far. We export to China, the United States and many other markets around the world, including the Middle East,” he said. And then West made the brilliant observation that much more sheep meat is exported out of Australia as processed meat than as live product. Despite repeated interjections from Opposition members, West went on to inform the public that “Our processed sheep meat export industry is the strongest it has ever been. We are the biggest processed sheep meat exporter in the world.” We being Australia of course. Which is where the lies and statistics come in. West conveniently neglected to give an update of what’s happening in WA, where the live trade exists, and in particular the area of the State that he is elected to represent — the Agricultural Region. The Meat and Livestock Australia Sheep Producers Intentions Survey for May 2024 tells a different story about the health of the WA sheep industry. The survey states that ewe flock numbers in WA for 2024 were 9,073,181 compared to an expected flock size in 2025 of 6,636,731. A drop of 27 per cent. South Australia had the next-highest drop of 10 per cent. The survey data for the WA wether flock is even more dramatic with 2024 numbers at 1,544,202 compared to an expected flock size in 2025 of 787,388 – a drop of 49 per cent. Australian Wool Innovation data tells a similar story with numbers of shorn sheep expected to drop from 13 million in 22-23 to 10.2 million in 24-25. West is also upset with the media for spreading the inconvenient truth that WA is being disproportionately impacted by Labor’s proposed ban. “I am disappointed with the rural media,” he said in his speech. And then there is Labor’s obsession with killing regional industries which happen to be small, which West reiterated. “If we take the 2024 projections from the Meat and Livestock Australia website, the national export is $5600 million of export value sheep processed meat, processed in Australia by Australian workers. If we take the value of the live export trade from Western Australia, instead of $5500 million, it is $75 million,” he said. Former Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt is a big fan of this logic. The message is clear from Labor: If you are a small regional industry, you don’t matter. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese doubled down on these insults when he visited WA for a few hours last week, mocking the Keep the Sheep brand at the Perth Royal Show. West and Labor have badly underestimated the Keep the Sheep campaign. The campaign has galvanised regional people and deserves the support of every West Australian member of Parliament. Steve Martin MLC is deputy leader of the WA Liberal Party