Unprecented FMD Disaster Close & Your Local MPs

So for sometime the threat of Foot and Mouth Disease (and also Lumpy Skin Disease) has been close. The preparations for the unlikely incusion have always been close but of late it's closer & bigger than ever before.
How big? Well the biggest threat ever is nearby. 350,000 head of cattle in Indonesia are thought to be infected. That's 350,000 head of cattle destined for a fire and a pit.

If we get an outbreak it will be devastating. Even wool production will be affected as it cannot be moved. 
It affects all cloven hoof animals. Cows, sheep, goats, alpacas, camels & its highly contagious & will devastate the nation. It will result in quarantine restrictions like most would never believe. 

This is big. It will affect the red meat industry & locally where outbreak is, it is shut & livestock have to be destroyed & properties will have to be completely closed until the property is tested to be free.

Yesterday at Mt Barker there was a FMD Workshop. I gather the original aim was to get 70-90 people attend. The actual esitmates that attended vary, but the lowest was 150 with even more watching online.
The event explained how the official framework works, what when & how it launches into action once an outbreak is detected & what is in play to ensure a prevention of incusion.

No, perhaps enough is not being done to prevent an incusion especially when planes come in from Bali (where FMD has been detected). One of the WAFarmers execs cited how a recent plane came into Perth, the outbreaks in Indonesia/Bali were known and only 4 Border Force were there to process nearly 500 people. The report said the first few bags inspected revealed meat products, a seriously high risk for carrying FMD. That then created a complete halt to the process but eventually between 300 and 400 people were waved through without being checked/processed.

Thats a Federal Govn let down. On the State Govn side, the Dept of Primary Industries & Regional Development, that is what was the Ag Dept has been routinely let down with funding. It hasn't even grown in the most leniant measure. Staff numbers are low. If we have an outbreak there are not enough staff to re-deploy for the control & check measures that would come in under the Response Plan. 

We are in a very exposed position. It is akin to a foreign enemy launching their landing craft & heading for our beaches whilst we only have a dozen Korean War veterans armed with broom handles from Bunnings to repel the threat. With a set of State Coffers with a a supposedly bursting seams holding between $5 & 8 Billion dollars you'd think we could fund the Ag Dept for Biosecurity alone to keep up with inflation at least...

Where were the Members of Parliament?
Well at the Mt Barker meeting one state MP was there. Steve Martin MLC, member for the Agricultural Region. Also there, federal MP Rick Wilson MP, the member for O'Connor. 

And all the others. Not there. No comment, no social media mentions, just complete radio silence.

The WA Minister for the Dept of Primary Industry & Regional Development, Alannah McTiernan MLC, who has an office in Albany. Absent.

She shares an office with the Member for Albany Rebecca Stephens MLA. Absent. In fact she was door knocking in the morning & in the afternoon when the meeting was actually happening, where was she? Well her social media showed she was tucked up in her office signing letters. No time to go to a meeting regarding the biggest threat to Australian Agriculture in our living history.
Priorities.

Well great news she go 47 likes for not looking after one of her electorate's biggest industries. How big?
Agriculture was worth nearly $600 Million in 2020/21. The entire Fletcher's abattoir operation & all its jobs, the nearby cattle saleyards...all at risk. She's signing letters, & joshing about one being to her mum.
She's well out of her depth & without the theatrical photo stunts she would never be known or seen. Never ever comments on legislation, what she votes for & against nor why. We have no representation. We have an empty vessel that delivers nothing but smiles, cuts ribbons & delivers cheques for Govt Departments that she had no part in organising. She is a theatre prop.

What about the Member for Warren-Blackwood Jane Kelsbie MLA? Well she went the furtherest. She promoted the event on her FaceBook page. Albeit the same day the event was on & well after it was sold out. She did take the opportunity to promote the government by saying...
"The McGowan Government's $15 million investment in the 2021-22 State Budget has delivered 22 new full-time equivalent biosecurity positions to enhance early warning and detection, boost emergency preparedness, and build response capacity. "

However Jane deftly avoided saying how many staff have been lost since 2017. I'm told this number may be included in an Opinion Piece later this week in the Farm Weekly. It many times more than 22.
She did not attend the meeting & replies on her Social Media are telling...again by her absence. But hey, she got 20 likes...even if some are fellow Parliamentarians & staffers.

Now Minister, Alannah McTiernan, where was she? No one knows. Its been 25 days since she posted anything on her FaceBook page and there are no mentions of Foot & Mouth Disease anywhere. 

We did get a very informative first contact email from Dr Michelle Rodan the Chief Veterinary Officer from DPIRD.

The take home message is make sure you have a PIC, make sure all your NLIS data is correct & up to date, have a biosecurity plan for your own farm. Most importantly, be prepared, be aware, be ready but stay calm not alarmed. Underfunded as DPIRD is, they & federal staff are prepared but they will need more staff & resources.

If you do that you won't have to rely on the local Members of Parliament who are completely absent or focusing solely on cutesy social selfy stunts.

Away from absent MPs focused on Social Media distraction stunts & back on FMD which they're avoiding...
If this gets into the SW, all livestock & livestock products like meat, offal, wool will be frozen statewide. Wool may be frozen from instate movements for 6-8 months. All livestock markets will freeze. We'll see how much stockpiled meat there is in freezers. We'll see if foreign owned supermarkets quickly push the prices up of stored & already costed & paid for meat goes for. I expect they will see the opportunity to ramp the prices. And if people think shop prices for meat & milk will plumment, if it does it will only fall for a while once the restrictions are all lift. We then have to rebuild all the closed markets & customers that flee. 
Producers that can will do as they did when Wool's Reserve Price Scheme was scrapped...MANY GOT OUT OF LIVESTOCK & WENT 100% CROPPING. Flooding that market & we saw farmgate prices

suffer. We've gone through 4 or 5 decades of Dairy Farms closing from buyer price pressure. This will be the death knell for all but the very big or those prepared to take the smallest of profit margins. The milk market will be price controlled by the supermarkets even more than it is now & we're probably going to be net importers of milk products in WA anyway, just sooner if FMD comes.
Now worse still...if it gets into the SW all walking tracks & forest access will have to halted. If it gets into the SW Feral Pig population it will spread like a grass fire. There are an estimated 3000 head of feral pigs in the Walpole forest alone & families in Albany have been regularly "getting a pig" to live on for years within 50kms of Albany. Feral pigs have been largely ignored & get this, if a primarly producer so much as shoots a feral pig coming thru his fence from a State Forest they will be prosecuted if so much as foot is still on Crown Land. Yes, the producers will be prosecuted & lose their firearms whilst pigs are not controlled.
80% of WA's meat goes into the Export Market. It cannot be replaced by kill/proccessed here & shipped chilled/frozen. If it could easily compete 50% of the meat exported would be chilled or frozen. Financially it cannot compete. If FMD comes in there is no supply to the small amount of processed in WA Abattoirs.
This is lost. When livestock transport stops, supplies to WA Abattoirs stops. The State Govt wants to shut Live Export & replace it with an unviable, unsustainable WA Processed model. Producers will flee the industry & Livestock production in the North will disappear. But the minister is all no big deal.

What Do You Have In WA? Politicians or Legislators? WAKE THE HELL UP.

Just over 2 weeks since the Supreme Court of The United States (SCOTUS) Roe V Wade hit the news.
Some hapless WA Politicians on both sides showed their extreme left convictions by going to town on the decision. As said in a previous blog post over 2 weeks ago, there clearly are idiots in Parliament.
As said before, these are some of the issues these hopeless Theatre Props show up with & display their committment to virtue signal whilst avoiding facts or show they don't understand understand/support facts.

Empty Virtue Signalling All The Way.

They clearly showed themselves to be either complete idiots or wilfully chose to mislead Western Australian electors hoping they all are. The Interllectual Bankruptcy on Roe V Wade included but not restricted to...

1. It has nothing to do with WA or Australia. It is a Foreign Sovereign Nation's Domestic Legal Matter. (Thats enough for a half smart Australian elected representative to not focus on it)
   
   
2. Legally it has nothing to do with Abortion. The SCOTUS ruling was neither pro nor anti Abortion.
   
   
3. It was entirely based on whether it was Legally Constitution & one merely has to not be sloppy & lazy and read & understand the 10th Amendment of the Constitution. IT WAS CLEARLY A STATE MATTER NOT CONSTITUTIONAL. Note how many of the Chardonnay Socialist Virtue Signallers failed to mention the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution.
   
   
4. Politicians on both sides were sadly seen as politicians and not responsible legislators. They read the wind, followed some small part of what they thought was trending and showed they knew nothing about which they were waving false virtue on. Be scared, these are your law makers.
   
   
5. The false argument on the grounds of Abortion (ignoring the Consititutional Ruling) was also flawed & when asked when does life begin, no politician replied...in fact several of them locked the thread so no one could reply. 
   Those that members of the public who ran to the sad MPs defence answered for the MPs with versions of "life begins when the woman decides" without saying where that God level decree began, who delivered it to the human race & who made it a human right that is binding upon all & exceeds all laws of the land. No wonder the MPs locked the comments...they did not want to answer any of long list of intellectual, ethical, moral & philospical dilemmas they have left unanswered.
   
   
6. Effectively its a seriously dangerous position & could mean a woman could go full term, gets her contractions & decides for whatever reason...abort it now. US states are setting their own rules & to date none ban abortion completely, some just have greater restrictions & criteria than others.
   
   
7. Some politicians conflated it further to WA saying we need WA laws on abortion to be widely reformed. All politicians who've said this have been long time members of parliament, none have put forward a private members bill let alone pushed for a Parliamentary Review of the laws nor even spoken of it since joining parliament. Now, suddenly they do. They may well be 100% correct, its hard to say as none have pointed out what was lacking, wrong or in need to amendment to WA laws. We just got an unspecified sentiment. Just "the vibe" which coincidently came after one of the biggest news blasting matters in recent US history. Just as the WA Premier/Treasurer and other WALabor Ministers flew off to travel around the European Summer with some major political problems unfolding. Forgive me for being cynical, it just seemed like a huge opportunity to lodge a massive distraction in the WA News Cycle & some very silly MPs from the opposition fell for it & indeed helped steer the agenda away from WA's problems & the WA Labor Governments woes. 
   
   

So yes we have wind sniffing politicians keen to follow all that is trending & sadly very sloppy & lazy in their thinking, perhaps thinking their clever in their manipulation & just thinking its the WA Public are as sloppy & lazy simpletons.

Sadly they are not proper Legislators with a deep keeness to find the fullest story to get the fuller facts & get the best outcome for WA Society. Some appear almost adverse & allegic to being extremely process & protocol oreinted. Not even WA oriented.
These people are not wise legislators, they're crafty political animals aka politicians. They are not at all helpful for WA or our collective future. Their only real contribution will be to retire from law making ASAP & forever more remain a cautionary tale to others considering time in the Legislature. They follow what is trending and sadly many that cause the trends are not the majority. Therein is the double flaw & the high danger to all in society.

Those politicians still have their Roe v Wade social media posts up, most with comments locked. Still complete with all the intellectual corruption. They're falling away on their feeds and will soon be buried. But they all have still haven't corrected their seriously absurd mispresentation of the matter. They still haven't a full explanation of what they support, why they support & what values they hold and used to get to where they are. 
More importantly they have not said whether they oppose or support federalism here or the USA when their comments clearly appear to support the idea of a Federal Government being able to breach State Sovereignty & over rule any state laws. That alone causes the most serious concerns about their ability to be a legislator in WA.

Think they need to leave politics. They're dangerous politicians not forensically thorough legislators.