Farmers are feeling “disgusted” after comments made by the Prime Minister at an agriculture awards dinner about banning the livestock trade. Anthony Albanese made the quip while addressing 600 people at the black-tie AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award gala at Parliament House on Tuesday. Mr Albanese recalled a meal he shared with the Indonesian President-elect Prabowo Subianto hours before getting on stage at the prestigious event.
“‘We had dinner, beautiful Australian beef – not the live export, we made sure it was dead,” he said towards the end of his scripted speech. The joke has not been well received by the farming community, as it grapples with the reality of a total ban on live exports by May 2028. Earlier this year, Labor announced live sheep exports would be phased out over a four-year period.
WA Livestock and Rural Transporters president and Keep the Sheep spokesman Ben Sutherland said he felt betrayed and hurt by the off-the-cuff joke. “I am disgusted to the core,” Mr Sutherland said. “Labor throws rural communities into the wind and continually keeps laughing about it.
“It’s no joke, in my eyes it’s quite scary to have a government that doesn’t care about regional Australia. “We feel betrayed. The Prime Minister is not listening to rural Australia, he is taking us for granted.
“He has got no concept of what he is doing to rural Australia. “He is destroying industries and lives and livelihoods, with no real consequence or guilt of his.