24 December 2024. Shane McCarthy, AgForce General President.
I hope everyone is managing to find a little downtime with family and friends as we head into the festive season.
Thought I’d reflect a little on what could be in front of us in 2025 – something to contemplate as you are hopefully enjoying that much deserved break. Fingers crossed you are blessed with some early storms for your enterprise whatever that may be.
It’s becoming very clear that Australians have a real choice to make at the upcoming federal election in the direction we take as a country.
There’s critical issues to agriculture to consider, such as the future of live export of sheep, deforestation definitions, the so called ‘Nature Positive’ reforms, water policy, our energy mix and many more to add to the confusion.
In the case of the live export of sheep by sea - the next election will determine whether there is an industry going forward. It is simply just that black and white.
It must be terrifying to the communities and families who rely on the trade – their collective futures will be determined by the vote of Australians in the first half of 2025.
The industry sets the highest standards of trade in animal welfare in the world, which the current government continues to ignore on the whim of activists who we know will come after the live cattle industry next.
My reflection though, is that 2025 may be a year where we start to get some good momentum in the right direction – based on some really good wins and the positive momentum AgForce achieved in 2024 as well as our previous years of strong advocacy work.
Its not overdramatising things to say that we are not too far from putting the nations’ food security at real risk if we continue piling poorly targeted regulations on producers.
This comes alongside what I see as a change in the consciousness of some of our politicians around these issues, due in no small part to our constant advocacy work, I think we have a genuine chance of a reset in 2025. That could lead to a very different conversation with industry leading up to our federal election.
How we work together to unify our voices, and redouble our efforts before this election will be crucial to the outcome. Early signs at a State level, after the change in Government has been encouraging. Maybe this will filter through federally too.
AgForce will run a number of events and activities in the lead-up to the election itself.
We’ll have details of these out in the new year and I encourage as many of you as possible to get involved.
In the meantime, may your rain gauges be full, but not too full, and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all of us at AgForce.