The Tasmanian government is considering providing a shipping service between King Island and Victoria to help the island's farmers transport cattle during the drought. King Island has recorded its driest start to the year in more than a century and farmers are running out of pasture to feed their cattle and sheep.
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00:00 We're concerned that this opportunity has not followed up. The implications for the
00:07 producer here has been pretty disastrous in a way. We're looking at having to destock
00:14 to the extent that it's going to take a while before we can help service those that support
00:21 the King Island brand and also the other producers in Tassie that do need our volume to make
00:29 the process work. But it does leave a bad taste because the government's track record
00:35 on this is fairly dismal. We had a very dry spring and the fodder conservation was probably
00:41 about half of what we normally were able to achieve and that was over hail silage. And
00:47 that led on to a bottom-neck with getting stock off the island because there's no local
00:52 processor here anymore. So getting the stock off the slaughter or just out on the distance
00:58 is one that just seemed to come to a halt. We've got to get a little bit of moisture
01:02 now but we missed a golden opportunity about three weeks ago. Most of the line that Victoria
01:08 and Tassie got seemed to miss us once again. So we've got just enough moisture to get the
01:15 grass to start moving but we need a lot of follow-up and we're hoping it stays warm.
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