Stoush over Bass Strait cattle shipments heads back to Supreme Court

Bass Strait Freight (BSF), Bridport, Tasmania, proposed shipping 3000 head of cattle from King Island, through the Great Ocean Road tourist port to South Australia.

BSF runs a freight service between Tasmania, the mainland and strait islands.

But in late January, Colac Otway shire harbor master Fiona Waddington denied BSF's two vessels, Matthew Flinders III (MFIII) and Matthew Flinders IV (MFIV), entry to Apollo Bay.

BSF director David Harris sought a Supreme Court injunction against the decision.

That was rejected and the matter will return to court in May.

It comes as TasFarmers seeks to find answers to a temporary shortage of stock crates, potentially restricting livestock movements from the island state to the mainland.

The court was told BSF had developed a plan to operate a marine freight service from King Island to Apollo Bay.

"As part of that plan, BSF contracted with TRT Pastoral Group (TRT), a beef cattle operation on King Island, to freight 3000 head of cattle to western Victoria and 600 tonnes of bagged fertiliser back from western Victoria to King Island," Justice John Keogh wrote in his judgement.

"The cattle were sold by TRT to Princess Royal Station (Burra) in South Australia for a total sum of around $5.2 million and are now due for delivery.

"BSF intended to move the livestock by shipments commencing in the week of 22 January 2024 using the MF III, with each shipment to carry around 450 head of cattle."

Cattle would be shipped to Apollo Bay, before being offloaded into stock trucks parked on the existing wharf.

Mr Harris argued Ms Waddington had taken into account irrelevant considerations, breached the rules of natural justice, was unreasonable and had no delegated power to take the action.

""It's a restriction of trade," he said.

Mr Harris argued if the injunction was not granted, his business of freighting cattle from King Island to western Victoria would "in essence, be destroyed".

"Further, it would severely limit the ability of King Island cattle owners to market their livestock west and north of Melbourne.

"The movement of livestock from King Island to Western Victoria by the Port of Welshpool is not commercially viable and the plaintiffs will suffer significant business and reputational damage if they are unable to complete their contract with TRT Pastoral."

The court was told berthing at Apollo Bay was commercially viable as it involved an approximate distance of 77 nautical miles and journey of around 10.5 hours.

"The transhipping cost is around $80 per head of cattle," he told the court.

The trip from Port Welshpool was 156 nautical miles and a journey of around 23 hours, costing $160 a head.

In refusing the injunction, Justice Keogh rejected Mr Harris' claims.

"I am satisfied that the risks to the port infrastructure, operations and users, and to the environment identified by (Ms) Waddington associated with the plaintiffs' proposal to transport cattle to the port are considerable and have not yet been fully assessed and resolved," he said.

This week, Mr Harris said the banning of the vessels was "illegal",

"We didn't get an injunction because they (the council) pulled the trick that the wharf wasn't any good for cattle trucks."

He said he was happy to work with the council, as the port was the "best in Bass Strait", and he'd put a proposal to them to develop facilities to ship cattle through Apollo Bay.

"That port has soaked up nearly $20 million in the last five years and yet council don't want to use it," he said.

He said the shipment of the TRT cattle would be a test, to see if a more permanent shipping route could be established from the Bass Strait islands to Apollo Bay.

"The ideal way of testing was to do a few trial runs," he said.

"At the moment, we cart 28,000 head of cattle a year."

He said BSF had submitted plans to council to build a new wharf system, on the other side of the bay "where there are no tourists" and where the company could berth a ship more permanently.

"We would base our operation in Apollo Bay, they (council) would get more from us than all the other people there (using the port)."

He said even if half of the 43,000 cattle, turned off King Island each year, came to Victoria "that's $30 million of meat processing into the western districts".

Mr Harris said he hoped the court would rule in favour of cattle shipments through the port.