My old friend Vaughan Johnson along with Mark O'Brien from Charleville were approached by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to oversee the building of western Queensland wild dog fences as a safeguard to the sheep and cattle industries.
Vaughan tells me the program is a resounding success to date and with the announcement of a further $5m from Qld Gov the central west is looking to see a further 11 clusters plus similar progress in the South West section.
Sheep are already coming back to the west, lambing rates are on a positive climb and road trains of wool are rolling to the coast, Vaughan said. It won't be long before there will be over a million sheep back in the Central West and Vaughan tells me that Longreach Pastoral College are looking to establish a facility to train people in all facets of the wool industry.
He said a real plus was China taking 72pc of our current wool clip and with the Eastern Indicator climbing above 1400c/kg clean this is a real shot in the arm for this industry to become great for country Queensland again.
It was many years ago when as an agent with New Zealand Loan (then Dalgety) in Charleville I first met Vaughan with his late father Jim from Quilpie. I've caught up with Vaughan on many occasions, and they are always memorable moments! Vaughan is a no nonsense bloke to say the least He was the LNP Member for Gregory and he represented the west for 25 years
Difficult outlook for processors
I was speaking with my old mate Terry Nolan of Nolan Meats this week and he was bemoaning the difficult outlook for processors in the first half of 2017. He said that this was on the back of a very ordinary 2016 and goes to highlight the cyclical nature of our industry. It is difficult to pinpoint times in our recent history where all sectors are doing well simultaneously. It almost goes without saying that one sector of the beef industry seems to prosper at the expense of another and we all get our turn he added.
What he highlighted to me that was more concerning, was the Import Risk Assessment (IRA) released by our government before Christmas that appears to open our borders to beef imports from US, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand and Vanuatu. While we have seen NZ and Vanuatu beef in Australia recently, this new IRA opens the door to US beef, which could come in at appreciably lower cost than our locally produced beef.
While that may be a good thing for the processing sector as it will cause an inevitable easing in livestock markets and will allow Australia to again compete in markets where we don’t now meet the price point, Nolan said he doesn’t support it. He is worried about the long term damage it could do to Australia’s enviable reputation in world markets. Here we are virtually free from exotic disease, but we want to risk our reputation importing unneeded beef from countries that have had a whole raft of diseases from which we are free.
The recent White Spot on prawns and a raft of other biosecurity breaches over the years only highlight how our producers pay the cost over many years when these situations go wrong.
Vale Jim Salisbury
Jim Salisbury (J.F. Salisbury Transport, Laravale) passed away on Friday January 20 after a stroke.
Only a fortnight ago at the age of 84 years, Jim personally delivered a load of his own cattle to JBS Dinmore. He was a man of activity until the end.
My connection with Jim goes back to my Cannon Hill Saleyard days when Jim such a well known figure in the industry.