Boyanup Saleyards op ed
The Boyanup saleyards have served the community of the South West for decades, but it is coming to the end of its viable lifespan. Everybody agrees with that.
That is why the replacement of it was put into the Regional Saleyards Strategy some twenty years ago, a document that was endorsed by all sides of politics. It was championed by then Labor Agriculture Minister Kim Chance as much as it was by me.
That strategy called for the sale of the Midland saleyards site, with the proceeds to build a replacement in Muchea, a new Katanning saleyard, a new Boyanup saleyard, and complete an upgrade of the Great Southern saleyard in Mount Barker.
Three of those projects were completed by the last Liberal-National Government, but the Boyanup saleyard replacement fell over as the funds left over from Midland ran out.
Despite this, the enthusiasm of South West cattle producers for the replacement of their yards remained high. After all this was the long held bipartisan position, and in my view the Royalty for Regions fund should have finished the job of delivering on the last part of the strategy years ago.
However, the current Labor Minister for Agriculture seems to have lost any enthusiasm for the project, and that means that once again the South West looks like it will miss out.
Minister MacTiernan told the Parliament last week that she has ended the expression of interest process for the replacement of the Boyanup yards, relying on the Shire of Capel extending the lease of the current site in the Boyanup townsite for ten years.
She justified that position by telling us that the shift to online selling would obviate the need for new saleyards in the South West, saying that “we can see the direction in which sales of livestock are heading and they are certainly moving away from the saleyard model”.
I have been hearing about electronic sales taking over from saleyards for decades, but the saleyards are still there. The great optimism for their imminent demise appears misplaced.
The current Government plan is to support the ten year lease extension and allow the current operator WALSA to continue their management of the facility. To be able to do so WALSA will be required to invest millions of its own money to bring the facility up to scratch in terms of animal welfare.
So the primary agenda of the Labor Government is to make sure that they don’t have to put in any funding for saleyards in the South West, but they will magnanimously allow the private sector to do so for the next decade, after which they expect the entire facility to disappear in a puff of e-smoke.
This is an outrageous position to take.
Indeed, the review by Deloitte Access Economics released by the Government in October 2017 was firm in their finding that “there is a need for a replacement saleyard in the South West, in the sense that there will be ongoing demand for a saleyard in the region”.
That same report looked into the shift into online sales of cattle. It said that –
“While farmers are aware of alternative selling methods, our analysis (outlined in Chapter 3) found that smaller farms tend to opt to use saleyards over direct selling, over-the-hooks or online auctions platforms. In the immediate future, if Boyanup were to close, the most likely outcome is that farmers opt to use other saleyards located elsewhere in the state.”
The Government is flying directly in the face of its own expert advice.
Given that the report was commissioned to work out whether there was a need for a South West saleyard facility, and it said resoundingly “yes”, it beggars belief that the Labor Government would now walk away from this commitment.
It has been widely known that Treasury doesn’t want to invest in saleyards anymore. They don’t think that this sort of community infrastructure should be funded from the public service. The community across the South West disagrees strongly, but we can see who Labor is listening to.
The farming community should feel rightly cheated by this lack of commitment the region.