While it's sometimes great to dream of the perfect world, the reality is this is Australia and, if we were to process these animals here, our freezers would be full to the brim, as our production costs are simply mind blowing, when compared to foreign countries the likes on Indonisian and as such, we simply couldn't sell the meat at a profit.

Like it or not, this is the reason live export exists today, costs.

Furthermore, our processed meat export market has a limited lifespan, as the likes of Brazil and Argintinia' s beef herds make our herds look like a hobby farm.

Look out when they decide to ramp up thier export markets.

sheep farmers, are only interested in the monetry return
Kipp,
Just as city slickers are only interested in creaming off the tax dollars for absolutely nothing in return, paid by the farmers in this civil society.

I have stolen this idea from some old ant-Christian Graffiti in Melbourne. When Mirko can enter the lion enclosure at Melbourne Zoo and convince them that killing herbivores is wrong he can knock on my door!

How it shames and demeans every decent Australian, seeing these apologists for egregious animal abuse appearing, every time attention is drawn to the horrors of the live export industry. Those who comment here, have you seen the conditions on these ships, 3 sheep per square metre?
Since AQIS does not inspect the animals, and the exporter-employed veternarian may only inspect some of them, there is no way Australia can guarantee that there are not diseased animals on these old ships - in fact, veterinarians who have worked in the trade attest to animals who are latent, passive or active carriers of salmonella/enteritis complex, keratoconjunctivitis (pink eye) and scabby mouth are loaded with monotonous regularity into conditions totally conducive to the transmission of these diseases to every animal on the shipment.
That is how the most recent scandals have occurred. One shipment rejected by Kuwait and one by Bahrain, with horrific consequences for the animals. And let's not forget the breeding animals in Qatar, and the rejected cattle in Indoesia and Egypt.
You apologists should look at the video from Pakistan that is publicly available. And that's just the sanitised version.
But you don't care, as long as you've got your money.
I don't think Australian taxpayers should have to compensate you farmers not to abuse your animals so heinously (the ones that put on weight must be the ones that didn't die - and that's a baseless industry claim anyway ... the vets also attest to untruthful record keeping in respect of numbers loaded and mortalities too).
Australia is deeply, deeply ashamed.

As a vegetarian who is repulsed by these practices, I must say this:

Do condemn those who are cruel to animals, do name them, do shame them, do boycott them, do avoid social and business contacts with them, boycott also those shipping companies who carry their trade, do demonstrate in front of their farms, I'm almost even tempted to suggest throwing rotten tomatoes...

But do not criminalize what they are doing.

Let them receive their punishment in hell, or let their guilty conscience make them ill and suffer as their animals do, but once you start legislating against one practice that you don't like, it is a slippery-slope and soon enough there will be legislation against the things that are most important in your own life, that are most dear to you but which others happen to hate.

Everyone has one or more habits which others hate - would yours come up next to become illegal? Perhaps you are pulling your nose or scratching your bottom, or perhaps you have sex outside marriage, perhaps you like howling at the moon, perhaps you like BDSM, perhaps you like traveling overseas in massive carbon-consuming planes, or perhaps you are religious - no matter what your habit is, once you criminalize other people's practices, your own are in line too.

Government is essentially based on violence and immorality, no less than those who treat their animals so badly - never trust and entrust them to become your guardians of morality.

...As a direct consequence of the inability of lower order animals to manipulate their environment, the profound responsibility of higher order homo-sapiens towards animal welfare, (in any animal husbandry enterprise), becomes a morality based imperative.

...Live animal exporting is not immoral in itself, since to manipulate the environment of animals when subjected to transporting conditions, is not an uncommon practice in the grazing industry. Moving animals from point “A” to point “B” is historically acceptable.
As a consequence, the live animal exporting enterprise “as a whole”, should not be subjected to destabilising influences of sectionalised partisan attacks on the whole of industry.

...It is legitimate though to subject criticism of the industry towards areas of animal “husbandry” where animals are caused “undue stress”, by a manipulated environment offered during transportation, (for example, conditions on the ship). For live animal exporting to continue under legitimate Government and community support, the highest standards of animal husbandry must not only be seen to work, but must have a genuine base of empathy shown towards animal welfare, by all sections of the industry and all workers involved in the process.