PM defends the indefensible
Ms Gillard said the government had to place a temporary ban on live exports after video surfaced of Australian animals being mistreated in Indonesia.
“We faced a situation where if we did nothing and images of this kind of cruelty just came back to Australia time after time after time, then community anxiety would have got to the stage where people would have said ban this industry and ban it for all time,” she told ABC radio on Wednesday.
No, you didn’t have to place a ban on live exports. There are a lot of degrees between doing nothing and wiping out an industry to garner the votes of animal activists. The government could have spoken to Indonesian abattoirs and helped them lift their game. They could have spoken to the Indonesian government and offered assistance to the industry. They also could have spoken to the 4Corners producers and the animal activists behind the doco and told them to rack off and stop running campaigns to close down the cattle industry overall. But no, just these few steps could be construed as helping the industry and all the jobs entailed within and that would be too much for the Gillard government. Picking up votes to stay in power is what it is all about. It certainly isn’t about managing the country for everyone. From my talking to cattlemen no one is going to invest any more money in the cattle industry until this mob of children are out of power and who could blame them.