Drought prompts Tasmanian government to consider shipping livestock direct from King Island to mainland

It has been the driest start to the year for Tasmania’s King Island in 100 years. (SUPPLIED: Greg Morris)

Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff says his government is considering providing a shipping service between King Island and Victoria to help farmers transport cattle during the drought.

King Island has recorded its driest start to the year in more than a century and its farmers are running out of pasture to feed their cattle and sheep.

Typically the island’s main shipping service, the John Duigan operated by TasPorts, sails once a week between the island and Devonport.

But with large parts of Tasmania experiencing dry conditions, the state’s abattoirs and feedlots are near capacity, providing few options for King Island producers to urgently disperse hungry sheep and cattle.

Last month, the Liberal Party made a pre-election commitment to increase the service to Devonport from the island’s Grassy Harbour to twice a week, for a maximum of eight weeks.

Speaking to media last Friday, Mr Rockliff said his government was already considering an extra shipping service that would sail direct from King Island to the mainland.

Typically, livestock leaving the island, and fodder coming into King Island, are shipped from the mainland via Tasmania, which increases costs for farmers.

“We’re working very closely with the King Island community,” Mr Rockliff said.

“What’s been very important is we’ve been able to do the best we possibly can, and more, not only to support farmers individually, but also those transport logistics of bringing feed and fodder onto the island, but also exporting cattle off the island to reduce what is considerable pressure at this time.

“We look forward to working with TasFarmers, the farmers on the island, but also the very important services that support our farmers, their families during what is enormously challenging and emotionally distressing times.

“We will always, and have been, engaging in those discussions including extra shipping over the course of the last few months.”

The media conference concluded before further questions could be asked about how a service to Victoria might occur, or at what cost, but a spokesperson from the Premier’s office later confirmed it was already considering adding a livestock shipping service to Victoria as part of the drought response.

Calls for an additional service

King Island farmer Greg Morris has been calling for an additional service to help farmers caught out by the dry conditions.

“Our state government’s inability to provide a service to the mainland, to Victoria, has sort of magnified the issues as far as getting feed on the island and cattle off, and that’s where we wouldn’t be in such a poor state if we were able to move more cattle [off the island] earlier,” he said.

“That’s exacerbated the shortage of feed, but it is very dry.”

Some farmers this year have waited up to six weeks to ship livestock from the island, although it is understood wait times have more recently been falling.

Mr Morris said there had been a 40 per cent increase in the amount of cattle leaving King Island in the last quarter, but demand to ship livestock off the island was far greater.

“If we could have gotten another 40 per cent off before we actually completely extinguished all our pastures, we would have had a better chance of getting into winter with less hand-feeding.”

Shipping situation a ‘shemozzle’

Ian Sauer from the state’s lobby group TasFarmers, said shipping livestock from King Island during the drought was a “shemozzle”, a situation that “beggars belief”.

“There’s very little feed in Tasmania … the bulk of the feed that we could get is on the mainland in Victoria because they’re having a good season, but there are no boats, or very few boats that go north,” Mr Sauer said.

“”What really needs to happen in the longer term is that we need to get some competition with shipping into that route and get some shipping going to the mainland as well.”

He said a lot of farmers believed it would be “absolutely terrific” to get livestock to Melbourne.

“If you go directly north [to Victoria], there’s two or three abattoirs within two and a half hours. It would open up a completely new market for King Island,” Mr Sauer said.

Adding to the complexity of the situation, fodder coming onto King Island must meet strict biosecurity standards and shipping is restricted to daylight hours.