Post by NFA on Dec 16, 2023 6:28:52 GMT 8
Farmers’ action must be sitting in wrong class
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If you’ve reached the “top of the mountain” as a ministerial staffer, like Channel 10’s Lisa Wilkinson claims in defamation proceedings brought by Bruce Lehrmann against the broadcaster, what part of Wilkinson’s mountain are you on as a cabinet minister or department secretary?
Wilkinson’s analysis is like walking up to the kid in a blue vest at the Aldi self-serve check-outs and saying: “Darling, you’re at the top of the tree.”
If you believe you have reached the “top of the mountain” as a staffer, please strive for greater things.
What Wilkinson has exposed is that some naive junior staffers do think they are at the top of the mountain – and evidently that’s the way they’re paid out by the Albanese government.
The Higgins precedent means Treasurer Jim Chalmers will have to justify every dollar in his upcoming budget spend, at a time his colleagues are handed out a multimillion-dollar compensation claim for unproven, untested events in private, where key witnesses are not allowed to participate.
One of the first groups in line for a justified payout is the live cattle industry, who are aghast by the Higgins precedent of three-hour settlement negotiations. After waiting more than a decade, they will be wanting the expeditious settlement of their claim as proven in an actual court trial.
A class action of northern Australian live cattle producers commenced back in 2014, and the Federal Court found that the Minister for Agriculture “had acted with malfeasance”, and the actions of the government were illegal. They still wait to have damages paid.
The Albanese government has offered the 215 applicants, which includes hundreds of families and thousands of people, a lowball of $215m inclusive of all interest, legal costs and disbursements, and the costs of administering any distribution mechanism.
The cattle class action has made a just final offer of $510m plus costs and interests that should be accepted now. Apart from the natural justice involved, it will also avoid sending the matter back to the Federal Court which will eventuate in more costs to the taxpayer for the court to issue a compensation order to the government.
Why is a process with no oversight paid immediately, but the finalisation of the illegal closure of the live cattle trade and malfeasance of the then Minister for Agriculture is still being kicked around 12 years after the event?
In the Higgins case we see one individual getting $2.4m, with seemingly no questions asked. The other, an injury of devastating economic consequence, since Joe Ludwig made a call on behalf of Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2011 on the back of one Four Corners episode, to shut down an industry thousands of kilometres from where he sat.
That created a devastating impact on farming families and associated industries, and a cut to Indonesia’s protein needs and the attached diplomatic issues with our major trading partner. The devastation to the live cattle industry has carried on for 12 years and the entire affected class of families and the industry have not seen a dollar.
In both the Lehrmann Higgins saga and the closure of the live cattle trade in 2011, the Labor ministry was not guided by sober logic, taking time to assess all the details.
Instead, it relied on primetime tabloid-style exposes, which appear to have selectively chosen just one side of the story, made a unilateral decision about where truth and righteousness lay, and refused to cast a net wider for a diligent assessment of an alternate view. It was designed to get to ratings rather than the truth.
Far from gaining votes for the government, this ad hoc, knee-jerk decision and disastrous economic fallout of live cattle lost them.
The morning after Four Corners aired, the government believed they had all the facts – similar to certain opposition members during the last election campaign.
Overnight, hardworking people who lived in remote areas, such as vets, truckies, graziers, farm workers, and Indigenous communities, were kicked towards bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, the same folk who were found to have acted illegally in closing down live cattle, are now seeking to shut down live sheep – based on what?
Rinse and repeat: A sensationalised TV show.
Even so, since then, things have changed. Stock mortality rates are the lowest ever recorded; changes have been made in stocking density, ventilation requirements, and airflow, with vets and even stockmen able to travel with their flock and document their passage to the Middle East.
Australian producers paid to change their industry, and they lead the world on animal handling. Some areas went from barbarism and sheep shoved in the boot of a car to now boasting spic and span halal abattoirs.
Farmers don’t get paid for dead or stressed sheep, and no farmer wants to be involved in animal cruelty.
While Agriculture Minister Murray Watt’s modelling on the ban is cabinet in confidence, WA’s Labor Premier has backed the trade, and councils are fighting to keep it open, meaning this decision has nothing to do with animal husbandry. Another class action looms.
Apparently, if we fly all our politicians to COP28 we can stop the world’s temperature changing, but the only way to stop cruelty is to ban the world’s best practices and educators in improving animal husbandry: Aussie graziers.
The sugar hit politicians get – after the knee-jerk reaction to sensationalism – pales into insignificance compared with the bitter taste of incompetence the public gets when more details come to light in time.
We still do not know enough to say how Higgins’ deed of settlement came about, who was there, and how the people in that room agreed on that number.
Cattle farmers deserve a just payout now, after waiting more than a decade.
Perhaps they should ask to meet the minister in the particular room where Ms Higgins got her payout. It seems that’s where the quickest deals are done.
----
If you’ve reached the “top of the mountain” as a ministerial staffer, like Channel 10’s Lisa Wilkinson claims in defamation proceedings brought by Bruce Lehrmann against the broadcaster, what part of Wilkinson’s mountain are you on as a cabinet minister or department secretary?
Wilkinson’s analysis is like walking up to the kid in a blue vest at the Aldi self-serve check-outs and saying: “Darling, you’re at the top of the tree.”
If you believe you have reached the “top of the mountain” as a staffer, please strive for greater things.
What Wilkinson has exposed is that some naive junior staffers do think they are at the top of the mountain – and evidently that’s the way they’re paid out by the Albanese government.
The Higgins precedent means Treasurer Jim Chalmers will have to justify every dollar in his upcoming budget spend, at a time his colleagues are handed out a multimillion-dollar compensation claim for unproven, untested events in private, where key witnesses are not allowed to participate.
One of the first groups in line for a justified payout is the live cattle industry, who are aghast by the Higgins precedent of three-hour settlement negotiations. After waiting more than a decade, they will be wanting the expeditious settlement of their claim as proven in an actual court trial.
A class action of northern Australian live cattle producers commenced back in 2014, and the Federal Court found that the Minister for Agriculture “had acted with malfeasance”, and the actions of the government were illegal. They still wait to have damages paid.
The Albanese government has offered the 215 applicants, which includes hundreds of families and thousands of people, a lowball of $215m inclusive of all interest, legal costs and disbursements, and the costs of administering any distribution mechanism.
The cattle class action has made a just final offer of $510m plus costs and interests that should be accepted now. Apart from the natural justice involved, it will also avoid sending the matter back to the Federal Court which will eventuate in more costs to the taxpayer for the court to issue a compensation order to the government.
Why is a process with no oversight paid immediately, but the finalisation of the illegal closure of the live cattle trade and malfeasance of the then Minister for Agriculture is still being kicked around 12 years after the event?
In the Higgins case we see one individual getting $2.4m, with seemingly no questions asked. The other, an injury of devastating economic consequence, since Joe Ludwig made a call on behalf of Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2011 on the back of one Four Corners episode, to shut down an industry thousands of kilometres from where he sat.
That created a devastating impact on farming families and associated industries, and a cut to Indonesia’s protein needs and the attached diplomatic issues with our major trading partner. The devastation to the live cattle industry has carried on for 12 years and the entire affected class of families and the industry have not seen a dollar.
In both the Lehrmann Higgins saga and the closure of the live cattle trade in 2011, the Labor ministry was not guided by sober logic, taking time to assess all the details.
Instead, it relied on primetime tabloid-style exposes, which appear to have selectively chosen just one side of the story, made a unilateral decision about where truth and righteousness lay, and refused to cast a net wider for a diligent assessment of an alternate view. It was designed to get to ratings rather than the truth.
Far from gaining votes for the government, this ad hoc, knee-jerk decision and disastrous economic fallout of live cattle lost them.
The morning after Four Corners aired, the government believed they had all the facts – similar to certain opposition members during the last election campaign.
Overnight, hardworking people who lived in remote areas, such as vets, truckies, graziers, farm workers, and Indigenous communities, were kicked towards bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, the same folk who were found to have acted illegally in closing down live cattle, are now seeking to shut down live sheep – based on what?
Rinse and repeat: A sensationalised TV show.
Even so, since then, things have changed. Stock mortality rates are the lowest ever recorded; changes have been made in stocking density, ventilation requirements, and airflow, with vets and even stockmen able to travel with their flock and document their passage to the Middle East.
Australian producers paid to change their industry, and they lead the world on animal handling. Some areas went from barbarism and sheep shoved in the boot of a car to now boasting spic and span halal abattoirs.
Farmers don’t get paid for dead or stressed sheep, and no farmer wants to be involved in animal cruelty.
While Agriculture Minister Murray Watt’s modelling on the ban is cabinet in confidence, WA’s Labor Premier has backed the trade, and councils are fighting to keep it open, meaning this decision has nothing to do with animal husbandry. Another class action looms.
Apparently, if we fly all our politicians to COP28 we can stop the world’s temperature changing, but the only way to stop cruelty is to ban the world’s best practices and educators in improving animal husbandry: Aussie graziers.
The sugar hit politicians get – after the knee-jerk reaction to sensationalism – pales into insignificance compared with the bitter taste of incompetence the public gets when more details come to light in time.
We still do not know enough to say how Higgins’ deed of settlement came about, who was there, and how the people in that room agreed on that number.
Cattle farmers deserve a just payout now, after waiting more than a decade.
Perhaps they should ask to meet the minister in the particular room where Ms Higgins got her payout. It seems that’s where the quickest deals are done.