Letter to 4 Corners.

 A letter to the ABC "4 Corners" comments page in response to the Australian reaction to revelations about the serious mistreatment of Australian livestock being exported live to Indonesia.


We make many inferences about the nature of foreign cultures based on their approach to ethical challenges. We point our judgmental fingers at cultures who eat endangered wildlife. We cry foul at administrations who execute political dissidents. We have no time for traditions in which the abuse of women is endemic.
 Recently, incontrovertible evidence came to light of  pointless, gut-wrenching and routine torture of Australian cattle at the hands of our business partners in Indonesia.
 The researchers who brought these facts to the attention of the Australian public randomly picked a handful of abattoirs from amongst hundreds of similar Australian built operations. What they found was the systemic torture of the animals being processed in facilities paid for by Australian tax dollars at the hands of Australian trained personnel.
 To their credit, Australians everywhere were shocked into action and as a result, the live export industry was taken to task and the trade to Indonesia was put on hold.
 In the age old battle between ethics and profit, it looked, for a day or two, like we took the moral high ground. Very rare in today's Australia.
 How quickly the tide turns. Since the suspension of this despicable practice, the airwaves have been saturated with the plaintive wails of "poor bugger me" from representatives of the cattle industry. What are we to think of these people who present the argument that their livelihoods should take precedence over the welfare of the very creatures upon which their wealth is built?
 Is profit a sufficient argument for the turning of a blind eye to what we know is occurring at the cattle's final destination?
 The industry would have us believe that these randomly chosen facilities are anomalies that don't represent the otherwise excellent animal husbandry employed by the Indonesian side of their partnership.
 Exactly how stupid do these spokespeople think we are?
 It is not going to stop and it is not limited to the outfits into which the cameras were taken. It is in the workplace culture that this horrifying cruelty resides. It's built into the machinery that these animals are driven through; machinery that we helped to build and which we continue to feed.
 If we, as a society, continue to permit these crimes of abject cruelty and worse yet, to supply the victims to these monstrous facilities, then we as a society belong in the ranks of the cultures who's civility we ourselves question.
 For the first time since the dark years of Howard the Black Heart, I am feeling shame as an Australian.
 I've also stopped eating beef. Not because I fear for the treatment of livestock in Australian abattoirs, but rather because I refuse to give a cent to an industry who would knowingly feed their animals into this ongoing atrocity and then seek to justify their choice of business partners without reference to the much greater moral question.  If more of us make the same choice, how will that sit with your precious  profits.