‘No choice’: Farmers vow war over sheep ban

A coalition of furious sheep industry groups say they will ‘hit the pavement’ to campaign against the Albanese government an over plans to ban live sheep exports by May 2028.

The legislation, which included a $107m transition package, passed the Senate late on Monday night, despite calls from Nationals Leader David Littleproud for senators to vote against it.

Keep the Sheep campaigners announced on Tuesday a vocal and highly-visible national campaign to try to overturn the pending laws. The group had met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday afternoon.

“We’ve got 63,000 signatures on our petition, thousands of volunteers that want to hit the pavement this week,” Hedland Export Depot owner Paul Brow told reporters at Parliament House.

“We’ve activated them, as we keep saying to our campaign: ‘Our farming community can no longer afford to be optimists, we need to be activists.’”

Australian Livestock Exporters Council chief executive Mark Harbey-Sutton feared the industry would be devastated by the bill.

“At the end of the day, we didn’t want it to come to this. We sought reason. We wanted evidence to be put forward but now we simply have no choice,” he said.

“This is a government that is attacking our sector and our livelihoods.

“We have no choice but to take it to their constituencies and explain this is a government that does not support Australian agriculture.”

Albo a no-show for NATO meeting

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will not be attending the NATO meeting in Washington next, with Deputy PM and Defence Minister Richard Marles attending instead.

The opposition has criticised the decision.

“Unless Anthony Albanese has a very, very good reason not to be attending the NATO summit, then this is, frankly, a dereliction of duty by the Prime Minister,” opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham told Sky News.

“The number one responsibility of a government is the national security of the nation.”

Australia is not a member of the security alliance, but has been invited several times.

Mr Albanese was invited again this year alongside counterparts from Japan, South Korea and New Zealand to marking 75 years of the alliance.

More to come