![Agriculture Minister Murray Watt at Beef Australia in Rockhampton this month. Photo Shan Goodwin. Agriculture Minister Murray Watt at Beef Australia in Rockhampton this month. Photo Shan Goodwin.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/38U3JBx5nNussShT8aZyYjc/005e694a-bdfe-4214-888a-0348cc70ce87.JPG/r0_0_4973_3333_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Agriculture Minister Murray Watt has told a senates hearing in Canberra his government can not look taxpayers in the eye and ask them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a claim a Federal Court judge described as absurd.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
He was responding to questioning on the live export class action where four years after a monumental Federal Court ruling that the 2011 Labor Government's ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia was illegal, the hundreds of producers and other beef supply chain businesses involved are still waiting for compensation.
Mr Watt was being grilled Queensland LNP senator Susan McDonald in the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee senate estimates hearing.
He lashed out at the claimant's lawyers, suggesting they may not have shared with their clients everything the judge said about their claim.
"This is not in any way a reflection of the claimants but I think there are questions to be asked of their lawyers' handling of this case," he said.
"The argument that it is worth $1.2 billion is about how many more cattle could have been exported to Indonesia. What the judge had to say on that was that it is just cloud cuckoo land, absolutely absurd."
Following the June 2020 ruling, the claimants sought a settlement payment of $1.2b in 2022; the Commonwealth responded later that year with an offer of $215 million and the claimants made a counter offer late last year of $510m plus interest and costs.
Mr Watt said an estimate of that interest and costs was $800m-plus.
"I have every sympathy for claimants in this case and I've expressed that to them in person," he said.
"I have raised with the Attorney General that this should be settled as soon as possible.
"But $215m is not a small amount of tax payers' money and everyone would expect us to use tax payers' money wisely."
Ms McDonald said the Commonwealth's offer amounted to just 10 per cent of what the claimants were asking and that Mr Watt, as a lawyer himself, would know "that is not an offer at all."
"This government was able to make an overnight decision to compensate Brittany Higgins for her claim but is unable to direct the AG to settle this in an appropriate manner," she said.
Mr Watt said it was not appropriate to compare the live-ex class action to "what has now been found to be a rape in a government building".
He said it was also not fair or accurate to say all of the delays have been the Commonwealth's doing, pointing out it took until November 2023 for the claimants to make a counter offer.
The matter is now listed for hearing in April next year.