THERE is one thing Australian governments have become genuinely world-class at: shutting industries down. When it comes to building what comes next, however, the record is far less impressive.
The live sheep export ban is shaping up to be the latest – and perhaps clearest – example of this pattern.
The Commonwealth has proven highly competent at ending a trade. What it has shown near-total incompetence at, is replacing that trade with anything functional, funded or operational for the farmers and regions left behind. The decision to end live sheep exports by sea was legislated in 2024, with the final trade scheduled to cease on May 1, 2028. We have now turned into 2026. That leaves less than two and a half years to pivot to the promised better world – one without live exporters bidding in WA saleyards.
What has been far less clear is how this “transition” was meant to work in practice – who was supposed to lead it, how it would be funded, and why, two years in, most WA sheep farmers still have no idea what is actually happening. This is despite endless talk about roadmaps and future flocks.
Farmers hear that there is a transition advocate working on their behalf, that panels and steering groups exist, and that consultants are busily “aligning stakeholders”. But ask any farmer at a clearing sale where the transition is up to and they will point to the sheep in the yards and say, “That’s it. That was their plan.”
Before pulling apart the confusion and missteps of what’s been happening, it is worth reminding ourselves how we actually got here.
It has been four years since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese campaigned with a policy to end a viable and important trade; two and a half years since the phase-out was formally announced; two years since the draft legislation was released; 18 months since the legislation passed and the $130 million transition package was announced; 12 months since the Federal government released its Live Sheep Exports by Sea-Transition Pathway discussion paper; nine months since farm grants opened; six months since the steering group was appointed; and four months since the AgKnowledge report was completed – yet we are now told it will take another six months before anything meaningful happens.
That is not a transition. It is delay, professionally managed.
The kicker is that after all this time, growers were expecting something to have happened.
Transition field days to attend. Production system reports to read. Best practice farm tours to visit. Or even a cheque to arrive in the mail for the grant they applied for.
So far, there is nothing- except another item in the rural media about a fresh round of stakeholder engagement. The whole exercise is rapidly turning into a farce. Not because of the efforts of the people involved, but because of the Federal government’s incompetence in rolling out the cash needed to get the ball rolling. At this stage, farmers cannot even get clarity on where their grant applications sit in the system.
The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development has repeatedly stated it cannot release further details on payments until the State level roadmap is finalised. It is the classic chicken-and-egg problem, with the practical effect that most onfarm support will not be locked in until after farmers complete their 2026 planning with consultants. This represents a staggering failure to understand how the industry actually works. By the time the rollout of the so-called roadmap begins in July this year – most growers would have lost interest in what the roadmap even is.
But it gets worse. Let’s look at the money.
The Federal government proudly talks up a $139.8m transition package. It sounds impressive. It isn’t.
Before a dollar reaches the paddock, about $30m is swallowed by Canberra – staff, consultants, administration and program management. That money never leaves the system. It simply circulates within it.
What remains is roughly $110m, supposedly to support an industry forced to reinvent itself.
About $45m is earmarked for processors and supply-chain capacity.
$30m is set aside for farmers through matched grants.
About $15m goes to marketing, extension and advisory programs.
A token $5m is spread between shearers and transport operators.
Mental health and community wellbeing receives $1.5m.
An array of additional consultants soak up a few million more.
Which leaves roughly $20m unaccounted for – money that exists in press releases but not in any program growers can point to. Presumably it too will disappear into evaluations, co-ordination frameworks and even more consultants.
The takeaway is brutal.
Farmers, shearers and truckies – the people actually meant to transition – receive less than one dollar in four of the money the Federal government claims to have committed. And even that modest support is being dribbled out over three years, long after key production and capital decisions have already been made.
So what is really on the table for farmers?
Well to start with the $30m is only $20 million this round, and perhaps another $10m will be put up at some undefined point in the never never. That will be the entire pool of direct onfarm transition funding, delivered through matched grants capped at $75,000 to help farmers fund feedlots etc. In reality, most grants will land closer to $50,000, which means the scheme supports about 600 growers. Bad luck for the other 2000-plus sheep producers who cannot produce receipts showing sheep walking onto a boat in recent years. They are expected to adjust anyway- without funding support, without certainty and without time.
Apparently, because the government has decided it never benefitted from live exports, it does deserve meaningful transition assistance.
Industry can, however, apply for mental health support – which is just as well, because at this point they will probably need it.
That is not transition assistance. That is disgrace.
And it does not end there.
Then there is WA’s contribution. DPIRD has effectively been tasked with delivering the bulk of the practical transition work in this State. Yet the amount of actual operational funding allocated to roll out the roadmap is just $5 million – a fraction of what the Federal government will spend administering its own scheme.
So what is the roadmap?
At this stage, it remains a work in progress. We are told its focus is on informed decision-making, optimising market value and attracting talent. All of that sounds sensible – until you drill down into what any of it actually means.
What worries me is not just the confusion over projects and who is doing what, but the language being used to describe it.
At the latest roadmap workshop I attended last week, what struck me most was how unclear even the basic terminology was. There was genuine confusion in the room about what the words in the roadmap were meant to mean in practice. We were told the roadmap would help shift the industry from tradition-based decision-making to dynamic, evidence-based systems; promote a more contemporary, business-oriented approach to supply-chain interactions; and help attract and foster talent.
This is pure management gobbledygook. I only really understood the last one. And even then, the answer is obvious: if the industry made money, it would attract talent on its own.
Which brings us straight back to the chicken-and-egg problem. You do not attract people first and hope profitability follows. Profitability is what attracts people.
But the real problem is not the wording. It is the pace.
At the speed we are moving – endless planning, consultation and talk – the young talent this roadmap hopes to attract will have grown old before anything is ready to roll out, let alone in time to help growers change systems for the coming season. That is the gap between theory and reality that no amount of workshops can paper over.
The core problem is this: the Federal government shut down a trade, then wrote a so-called compensation cheque while keeping a large slice of it for itself and left the state government – via DPIRD – to execute the hard part: the industry transition and the promised resurrection into a boxed-meat superpower.
It is the same model now being attempted in renewables – announce the destination, outsource the delivery, set unrealistic targets, ignore the costs and hope no one asks too many questions.
Which brings us back to DPIRD.
Across the various visions, roadmaps and strategies, DPIRD has been penciled in as the coordinating agency. This role is explicitly written into its Strategic Plan. The problem is that the department is simply incapable of executing a transition of this scale with its current resourcing.
The minister knows it.
The director general knows it.
The director of livestock knows it.
The department knows it.
No one is admitting it.
So, whose fault is this?
Start with the Federal minister for siphoning too much funding into Federal administration and dragging out the rollout.
The rest sits squarely with “Captain JJ” for failing to extract a better deal from both Canberra and her own State Treasurer – and for failing to direct her department to prioritise the sheep industry by pouring real resources into livestock.
Under the DPIRD Strategic Plan, the WA Government assigns itself a supporting, coordinating and enabling role across primary industries. But DPIRD today is not an organisation capable of delivering what it has been assigned. It is under-resourced, risk averse and lacking capacity. And it knows it does not have the people, the skills, the funds or the systems to execute even half of what the transition documents demand.
The real tragedy is that the intellectual work already exists. I have read some of it. It is good. The analysis exists. The data exists. The industry knowledge exists.
What does not exist is urgency.
The fact that the Federal government sat on AgKnowledge’s Recommendations and Opportunities for the WA Sheep Industry (read it, it’s excellent) report for three months over Christmas is just the latest example.
In an industry governed by seasons and decision windows, a three-month delay is not neutral. It is a choice to go slow while sheep prices are high with the hope that the problem will solve itself. It is a choice that tells farmers everything they need to know about how seriously this transition is being taken by both the State and Federal governments. We have replaced a functioning export industry with a labyrinth of governance structures whose primary output is documents about future documents, delivered at a snail’s pace.
We now have a vision, an incomplete roadmap, a strategy to implement the roadmap when it is ready, consultants to evaluate the strategy, panels to review the consultants, and advocates to co-ordinate everyone.
What we do not have are feedlot grants, infrastructure approvals, processing upgrades or meaningful extension support ready to roll for 2026.
The live sheep export ban will go down as a masterclass in symbolic policy and a case study in operational failure – a transition that existed mostly on paper, was funded mostly in theory, and delivered mostly in strategic planning workshops at a snail’s pace.
As for what to expect next – probably not much.
Unless the State Budget produces a big, unmistakable line item for the sheep industry, and the minister makes it clear she is directing the department to prioritise the transition.
Her media team would be wise to be ready for questions from the sheep industry.
