CHAOS, pain and panic that gripped the lives of thousands in Australia’s billion dollar live export industry for more than a month was brought to an abrupt end by just one man – Nico Botha of Halls Creek, Western Australia.
“It was not that I was going to shoot one cow or three cows, it was 3000,” Mr Botha said. “People just couldn’t get their brains around it. It was unbelievable to them.”
This was the combined effect of the export ban and a destocking order applied by the WA pastoral board when Mr Botha took over Moola Bulla in March.
Mr Botha’s direct words and unflinching grasp on the desperate reality imposed by the Gillard Government was a stunning counterpoint to weeks of hysteria in politics, naïve hypocrisy in the RSPCA, sly exploitation by doomed Labor MPs and struggling industry groups.
Mr Botha, 51, came to WA from South Africa with his wife Irma in 2000. They have three children – Christine, Nico and Vicky.
In one afternoon, this lone cattleman from the most remote part of the country achieved more for his suffering industry and the northern economy than the Federal Parliament, lobbyists, bureaucrats, corporations and back-scratching state Labor ministers could achieve in months.
Today, the nation that came to its senses when Mr Botha gave it a good shake remains in grave danger of sliding back into an undisciplined, leaderless mess over the same shallow nonsense that brought the live export industry and thousands of Australian and Indonesian jobs to a standstill six weeks ago.
This country’s agriculture and capacity for food production is being strangled by cant, bickering and juvenile pointscoring when what it needs is more of Nico Botha’s direct honesty.
Five weeks after the misleading Four Corners television program that badly overstated cruelty at Indonesian abattoirs and four weeks after self-serving Labor backbenchers exploited concern to force a ban on live exports, Mr Botha stopped the madness stone dead.
Last week he spoke out about the ban and destocking order that left him no choice but to shoot 3000 cattle.
“Nico Botha from Moola Bulla Station near Halls Creek, says his team will start shooting animals tomorrow,” ABC radio reported.
The words created a deadline, an endpoint to weeks of bitter and destructive debate. The Gillard Government lifted its ban less than two days later.
In the right conditions, Moola Bulla can carry up to 34,000 head, but there had been drought and overstocking.
Mr Botha explained that when he bought Moola Bulla the pastoral board required that he cut numbers 25,000 to 17,000 this year and to 11,000 next year.
“I had arranged to sell 4000 heifers in two shipments for export. The trucks were organised and the first 2000 were in the yards. The cattle had already been there two to three days when the ban hit.
“People just can’t comprehend the numbers. But that is normal for us.”
He did not hesitate to warn the board what the ban would mean. “I told them that because of the ban, I could not get to the numbers they required. But I heard nothing back. There was no answer.”
It wasn’t until media reported Mr Botha’s decision to cull 3000 older cows and cut herd numbers that there was an answer, by email.
“I’d made a business decision to shoot 3000 old cows,” he said. “They were going to die anyway because they had no hope of competing for pasture with thousands of heifers that were held back from export.
“Overstocking has been common right through the northern pastoral industries,” Mr Botha said. “And that is why the pastoral board is there.
“If I didn’t shoot them, the old cows would weaken. They would fall down in a creek bed. The dingoes would be eating them while they were still alive.
The crows would be pecking their eyes out. Why would I let them go through all that? “Without the ban, in a normal year, there would be space for the older cows because the young ones would be sold.”
Media organisations from across the nation were ringing Moola Bulla when Mr Botha got an email from the board saying that perhaps he did not have to reduce his stocking numbers after all.
“I haven’t talked to them yet,” he said. “But that looks like what they are saying.”
Mr Botha said politics and the views of the pastoral board unfortunately would not rate a mention when the old cows were competing for space on Moola Bulla in coming weeks.
Strict limitations that allow only a trickle of exports for the remainder of the year mean stocking rates on Moola Bulla and many other northern stations will remain sky high, even as the next calving season approaches.
“The problem hasn’t changed,” Mr Botha said. “The ban may have been lifted, but I’ve talked with my agent and we can’t expect to load a boat before the end of August. That means three quarters of our normal season has already gone.”
So Mr Botha, just like hundreds of other top end pastoralists, is left with the same problem – a surplus of export stock and slowly weakening older cows competing for disappearing pasture.
“My team won’t be shooting cattle in front of the cameras,” Mr Botha said.
“But we’ll make decisions paddock by paddock as we muster.”
What happens next depends on the condition of the stock they find.
Meanwhile, at every turn, politicians and lobbyists continue to misrepresent Australia’s northern cattle industry. Live exports provide a diplomatic, cultural and humanitarian bridge to neighbouring countries with foundations carefully built and maintained at both ends.
The mutual benefit is the outcome for Australia and Indonesia when these close neighbours work together as equal partners toward a shared goal.
Cruelty, as documented by Four Corners, was wrongly promoted as a common factor, when it is universally despised and targeted for elimination.
The continued efforts of Australians determined to stamp out the live cattle trade are damaging this relationship and promoting hatred when the objective should be to enhance understanding and build trust. Lecturing neighbours about culture, when their political and societal structure is so different and much more complex than our own, smacks of bigotry, recklessness and stupidity.
If Australians really do want to advance best practice in the management and slaughter of livestock worldwide, the last thing they should do is cut away the close ties and understanding built with Indonesia over many years in often trying circumstances.
From Nico Botha, Australians received a lesson in the harsh realities of animal husbandry in the tough country at the top end of Australia.
But there are other harsh realities – in international relationships for example – and it is about time that the Gillard Government and the fractured elements of Australian sub-culture that it represents woke up to the damage they are causing. The problem has not changed.
