The prime minister, Tony Abbott, has moved to reassure Australia’s live cattle industry that a sharp reduction in intake by Indonesia is just a blip and that exports will pick up again soon.
On Tuesday it was revealed that Indonesia has moved to reduce the quota of Australian cattle by 80%, dropping from 250,000 last quarter to just 50,000 in the July quarter.
Abbott told Macquarie Radio that the reduction was a “disappointment” and “a worry”, but said the situation was not permanent.
“This is a one-off reduction, it’s not an ongoing reduction, because as you mentioned, Indonesia does have a rapidly growing appetite for beef,” he said.
“They’ll need more beef. It’s going to be very difficult for them to supply everything that they need domestically, so I think in the medium term it’s all up for Australian beef exports, live cattle exports to Indonesia.”
Abbott went on to indicate there could be a political reason for the reduction, but that it was Labor’s doing, not the Coalition’s.
“I think in some ways this is just one of the aftershocks of Labor’s catastrophic decision to ban the cattle trade back in 2011. It’s been a bit of a rocky road since then,” he said.
The prime minister acknowledged that Australia was looking further afield for export markets and that cattle producers would benefit from reduced tariffs flagged in a number of free trade agreements signed recently.
The parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs, Steve Ciobo, told ABC Radio that Jakarta had not finalised its quotas, and that the directive to reduce imports was just an “informal notification”.
“This is only one quarter, and we will maintain dialogue with Indonesia,” he said.
Ciobo insisted that the decision to reduce imports was not a reflection of political tensions between the neighbouring countries, a sentiment echoed by the prime minister.
The president of the Australia-Indonesia Business Council, Debnath Guharoy, told Channel Nine the relationship between the two countries was at a low ebb.
“Things aren’t as good as they should be, nowhere near that,” he said. “We have a relationship with this country and if it was in great shape I think we’d be better off than we are. We wouldn’t be caught as surprised [by the import reduction] as we seem to be.”
The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, on Wednesday announced he was seeking the input of exporters for a review of export regulation.
The review will look at ways of cutting red tape and enabling innovation in the industry.
“We want to make sure our agricultural export regulation will continue to help our agricultural export sectors access overseas markets while satisfying importing countries that we have met their requirements,” Joyce said.
