Northern Territory cattle farmers want compensation for losses resulting from the previous Labor government’s suspension of live exports to Indonesia more than three years ago.
Law firm Minter Ellison filed the class action in the Federal Court on Monday.
Labor’s agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon would not comment specifically on the class action.
He praised the Gillard government’s changes to animal welfare procedures but described the period as difficult and “regrettable” .
“I think one thing the government could have done better is work with the industry and bring them into the tent earlier,” he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.
“Maybe it could have been implemented in a more seamless way.”
In 2011, following community outrage over ABC footage of animal cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs, the Gillard government imposed a temporary ban on live cattle exports.
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The ban was lifted a month later but Indonesia subsequently introduced import quotas, reducing Australian beef imports by some 75 per cent, in a bid to lift national self-sufficiency.
Australian cattle exports to Indonesia have never fully recovered from the ban, with farmers later dealt a second blow by a drought across northern Australia.
The National Farmers Federation said the trade ban had left paddocks across northern Australia overstocked and forced farmers to sell below cost to make ends meet.
“The decision to suspend live exports was without precedent, and devastating for cattle producers in Northern Australia,” president Brent Finlay said.
