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| Federal votes, export abattoirs and regional newspapers |
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Dear Rural Networkers,
It's finally here: the federal election will be held this Saturday, 3 May. We may know by Saturday night who the next prime minister will be — or, if the hung parliament predictions hold true, we'll find out some time next week. Either way, get your cable-tie snips ready because the corflutes are coming down.
Agriculture has not got much of a look-in this election. The Coalition on Wednesday announced its plan for agriculture, which pulled together previously-announced positions on matters including an import container levy to support biosecurity funding, the resumption of the agriculture visa, and reversing the phase-out of live sheep exports — a policy that I'm obligated to remind you was put forward in a private members' bill in 2018 by the now deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley. Ley publicly changed her position in 2023, after Labor had been elected on a platform that included banning the trade. I mention this as a reminder that in this as in any debate that has been running for so long that most people can't remember the start of it, it pays not to deal in absolutes.
The abolition of the live sheep trade would see an even greater reliance on export abattoirs, to sell boxed meat — frozen meat slaughtered here and sold overseas — into those markets traditionally serviced by live exports. There are very reasonable questions over whether those markets want frozen meat imports, but it has long been reckoned to be a better animal welfare outcome.
But new reporting by Guardian Australia's chief investigations correspondent Christopher Knaus suggests that Australia's export abattoirs have problems of their own. In a four-month long investigation, he found that veterinarians stationed inside export abattoirs have reported shocking instances of cruelty including: 100 sheep dying from hypothermia and exposure after a transport truck drove nine hours in heavy rain; an understaffing crisis that left some abattoirs without veterinary monitoring for long periods of time; and a watering-down of the powers of vets to detect and report on animal welfare breaches. You can read that investigation here and here, and read about Labor's promise to consider strengthening independent oversight here.
In happier news, a group of determined volunteers in the northern NSW town of Glen Innes have started a print newspaper to fill the gap left by the Australian Community Media owned Glen Innes Examiner, which wrapped up its print edition in September (it's still published online). The new publication is called the Glen Innes News, or Gin — a fitting acronym, because editorial meetings are often held at the Glen Gowrie gin distillery, which is co-owned by the vice president of the voluntary committee behind the paper. As Michael Burge writes, the paper is the brain child of "community media tragic" David Lewis, who is also its de facto editor.
Lewis told Mike:
"Whether it was a month or a decade, there was going to come a time when the Examiner was no longer there. In my mind was the thought that, wouldn’t it be great – and certainly ideal – if a community-driven media organisation or media project was in place before that happened.”
You can read that story here.
In Victoria, the Stawell Gift, Australia's oldest foot race, managed to secure a visit from the nation's fastest teenager — Gout Gout. His attendance drew a crowd of 5,827 — twice as many as attended last year, and almost as much as the population of Stawell itself. Among the attendees was Guardian Australia's sports reporter Jack Snape, who wrote that the teenage superstar's attendance set the town abuzz — even as the heavy ground got the best of him. You can read that lovely story here.
Heading west now, and Jenny Valentish has interviewed M Ellen Burns, a photographer who has published a book on Kalgoorlie's skimpy bars. Skimpies, barmaids who work a fly-in, fly-out roster in WA's mining towns, are a peculiar phenomenon for outsiders. Their appearance is advertised on Facebook and on the big chalk boards outside pubs. Tuesday — pub quiz; Wednesday — skimpies. Burns landed in Kalgoorlie during the pandemic and made a living taking social photos for the pubs, getting to know the girls and eventually sharing their stories. It's an unflinching portrait, from the money to be made to the abuse endured to debates about whether skimpies have a place in a post #metoo world (the mining expo no longer holds functions in skimpies bars, which it did until shockingly recently). You can read Jenny's interview here.
And finally, Valerie the dachshund has been found.
Until next time,
Rural and regional editor
Calla Wahlquist |
| Across the (historic) landscape |
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There is a big rock in the park next to the old Beechworth gaol that my friends and I used as a meeting place; the regional Victorian equivalent of the clocks at Flinders Street Station. I explained this to my city-raised partner once, and he laughed and told me of a friend of his who grew up in a regional town in the UK where the hang-out joint was the vent — literally just a very large vent blowing out stale warm air from a railway tunnel — which really only makes sense as a gathering place if you also grew up in a country town where there was not much going on. The Beechworth rock is really quite a big rock, and on busy days you'd have to scout past as many as two groups of other teens to get a prime spot.
It was an excellent vantage point from which to observe the changing use of the old Beechworth gaol. We'd all gone through it in school tours, to see where Ned Kelly had been held in the 1870s. It was formally closed in 2004 then sold for $1.7m — barely the price of a family home in Melbourne now — to a property developer who initially planned to convert the haunted heritage site into a luxury hotel. That did not get off the ground and then, in 2016, the main site was bought by a consortium of locals for $2m while the land behind the gaol was subdivided into housing blocks.
That community ownership model, or something like it, is being pushed by some locals in the NSW town of Berrima. The historic Berrima Gaol closed for good in 2020 and, despite a $3m bid by locals, was purchased by property developers the Blue Sox Group who intend to turn it into a hospitality precinct. The push to reclaim the goal as a heritage and cultural attraction is being led by Eric Savage, who has rented a shop in the main street of Berrima to inform locals and visitors alike about the development plans.
Savage says:
"We see that it’s an emblematic development that really places tourism and jobs and heritage at the centre of the future of the shire."
You can read about his campaign in this story by Clare McCabe, featuring fantastic photos by Matthew Abbott. |
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The Sydney Royal Easter Show has wrapped up for 2025, and we were there for the most important events. Which is to say: we covered the rabbit showjumping on Easter Sunday. Pictured above is Lincoln Berg, 6, competing with his rabbit Luna.
As Ima Caldwell writes, the sport (?) of rabbit showjumping, or kaninhop, emerged in Sweden in the 1970s. According to Natasha McGarry, the president of the Rabbit Hopping Society of Australia and four-time national Rabbit Hopper of the Year, the rules are very similar to equestrian showjumping: the winner is the rabbit with the fewest rails knocked, followed by the fastest time. There are also emergency cooling mats in case rabbits are overheating, strict rules around not overly encouraging the rabbits — they must choose to jump out of their own free will when you lead them up to the obstacle — and firm views among the kaninhop fraternity about not over-training. You can read Ima's piece here.
Eelemarni Close-Brown also attended the show and wrote a deep-dive on competitive pig handling, interviewing the winner of the under 13 division, Asher Blenkiron, who worked with a Hampshire pig named Ann. You can read Eelemarni's piece here and watch a video of the pig handling competition here. |
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A message from Lenore Taylor editor of Guardian Australia
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask whether you could support the Guardian’s journalism as we face the unprecedented challenges of covering the second Trump administration.
As the world struggles to process the speed with which Donald Trump is smashing things, here in Australia we wake every morning to more shocking news. Underneath it is always the undermining of ideas and institutions we have long deemed precious and important – like the norms and rules of democracy, global organisations, post-second world war alliances, the definition of what constitutes a dictator, the concept that countries should cooperate for a common global good or the very notion of human decency.
This is a moment the media must rise to, with factual, clear-eyed news and analysis. It’s our job to help readers understand the scale and worldwide ramifications of what is occurring as best we can. The global news-gathering and editorial reach of the Guardian is seeking to do just that.
Here in Australia – as we also cover a federal election - our mission is to go beyond the cheap, political rhetoric and to be lucid and unflinching in our analysis of what it all means. If Trump can so breezily upend the trans-Atlantic alliance, what does that mean for Aukus? If the US is abandoning the idea of soft power, where does that leave the strategic balance in the Pacific? If the world descends back into protectionism, how should a free trading nation like Australia respond?
These are big questions – and the Guardian is in a unique position to take this challenge on. We have no billionaire owner pulling the strings, nor do we exist to enrich shareholders. We are funded by our readers and owned by the Scott Trust, whose sole financial obligation is to preserve our journalistic mission in perpetuity.
Our allegiance is to the public, not to profit, so whatever happens in the coming months and years, you can rely on us to never bow down to power, nor back down from reporting the truth.
If you can, please consider supporting us with just $1, or better yet, support us every month with a little more. Thank you.
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Lenore Taylor
Editor, Guardian Australia
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