The Great Bait and Switch: What’s Really Disappearing with the End of Live Sheep Exports by Jo Hanna.

Let’s be clear: the live sheep export industry isn’t just dying — it’s already dead. Two export ships were cancelled in 2023 due to lack of stock — not because of policy, but because the industry is already collapsing. The numbers have been in freefall for years. And yet, we’re being told this industry still needs “support” as it’s phased out.

The Albanese government’s $139.7 million transition package is being sold as a compassionate and strategic move: support for farmers, better animal welfare, a stronger rural future. But that’s just the bait. The switch? A quiet but deliberate restructuring of WA’s agricultural landscape — a clearing of the decks.

Not for the sheep. For the water. For the lithium. For the land. And the people benefitting aren’t wearing boots or wrangling stock — they’re holding board seats and water licenses. The Real Game: Exit the Farmers, Enter the Corporates While hundreds of smaller producers have either diversified or walked away, Emanuel Exports, WA’s biggest live exporter, hasn’t just weathered the storm — it’s repositioned itself.

In 2021, it secured a nearly 20% stake in Alterra Limited, a land and water asset management company with interests in high-value horticulture and climate-aligned development. Alterra operates in Manjimup — a region known not just for avocados and tree crops, but for its proximity to Talison Lithium’s Greenbushes mine. That mine is undergoing a major expansion and lithium, as we know, doesn’t come out of the ground without water — lots of it.

So while the headlines talk about sheep, a different kind of transition is underway. From livestock to lithium. From paddocks to portfolios. From “Welfare” to Water Rights (and Pine Trees) Alterra presents itself as future-focused — carbon credits, climate farming, clean ag. But underneath the branding, it’s playing an increasingly critical role in WA’s most valuable and contested resource economy: water.

Horticulture needs water. Lithium mining needs even more. And carbon farming — particularly industrial-scale pine plantations — needs both land and government endorsement. As land and water consolidate into the hands of vertically integrated entities — companies like Alterra, and investors like John Poynton and Gina Rinehart — small farmers are caught in a bind: They’ve lost live export income.

They’re offered “transition” cash, but no real infrastructure support. And they’re outcompeted in the race for water access, storage, and trade. But here’s the kicker: the ultimate goal isn’t just orchards or lithium. It’s carbon offset farming — pine trees planted for credits, not timber, to greenwash emissions from the mining sector. These aren’t trees to harvest — they’re trees planted to generate carbon credits, so mining companies can keep polluting while claiming to be ‘net zero’.

Talison is already doing it beyond Boyup Brook. And the state government is all in. Under Mark McGowan, they pledged $350 million to buy up farmland for pine plantations — a massive scale-up following the smoke-and-mirrors ~$100 million “Native Forest Transition” package rolled out in 2024. This isn’t land regeneration. It’s a buyout disguised as climate action, with farmers as the sacrificial middlemen.

Dear Farmers: You’re Being Used Let’s not mince words. The “Keep the Sheep” campaign might have your faces on the placards, but it’s not about you. It’s about optics — a convenient rural symbol being leveraged just weeks out from a federal election. Your frustration, your uncertainty, your generational knowledge — it’s being staged as a backdrop for political performance.

A wedge issue. Something to stir up a cultural fight while the real battle — over land, water, and future ownership — happens behind the scenes. Because while you're being urged to fight for a collapsing trade, there's no fight being made on your behalf for what really matters: Where’s the $50 million cooperative abattoir? Where’s the cold-chain infrastructure to let you export finished product instead of live animals?

Where’s the commitment to water access and ownership for regional producers? Nowhere. Because the plan isn't to help you stay. It's to manage your exit, quietly. So before you roll the next banner, ask: Who benefits if you leave? And who’s lining up to buy your land when you do? Where’s the Local Infrastructure?

If the aim was truly to help meat producers shift away from live export, we’d be investing in domestic processing. Building abattoirs. Funding cooperative meatworks. Creating export pipelines for high-quality boxed lamb and mutton, not live animals. But there’s no serious investment in that kind of infrastructure. Because the last thing corporate agribusiness wants is a self-sufficient regional food system.

Farmers who own their own processing and distribution networks can’t be quietly bought out later. So instead of building resilience, the government’s transition package functions like a payout — a soft exit for farmers, and a hard pivot to large-scale agribusiness and mining.

Follow the Water, Not the Sheep Let’s call this what it is: a bait and switch. The live export ban is branded as progress — a win for animals, a climate-forward policy, a sign of moral leadership. But its real impact is structural — not just removing sheep, but removing the people who raised them.

And into that vacuum steps a new set of power players: Talison Lithium, ramping up extraction and building water infrastructure. Alterra, leveraging water rights and land development opportunities. Emanuel Exports, shedding liability and going upstream into capital assets. Gina Rinehart, buying up thousands of hectares of prime South West farmland under the radar.

Meanwhile, the small and mid-tier producers who once filled the export boats? They’re priced out, bought out, or pushed out. Their exit is framed as “transition,” but the real story is displacement by design. Who Inherits the Land When the Sheep Are Gone? This isn’t just about animals on boats.

It’s about who holds the title deeds and the water rights once those animals are gone. It’s not the farmers on the protest signs. It’s the ones writing the water contracts. So the next time a politician says the transition is about animal welfare or climate resilience, ask them where the $50 million meatworks is. Ask them why the only thing being exported now is control — of land, of water, and of the agricultural future.

In fact, ask your newly minted local State MP Bevan Eatts — or our good ol’ boy Ricky Wilson — who stands to gain the most from your silence.

Jo Hanna, author of Muckemup: How to Create a Water Market by Stealth, explores power, policy, and political strategy with sharp analysis and a touch of satire. Follow Jo Hanna's stories here: https://medium.com/@hellojo.hanna72/the-great-bait-and-switch-whats-really-disappearing-with-the-end-of-live-sheep-exports-26f1048bfd4c

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We're publishing this story as it is a matter of high public interest!