Renegade senator implores new agricultural minister to meet sheep farmers in Western Australia

Former Labor senator Fatima Payman has raised concerns over government support for regional communities in her home state of Western Australia impacted by the live export ban, "imploring" new Agriculture Minister Julie Collins to join her in meeting with sheep farmers. Senator Payman, who severed ties with the ALP in July over her push against party lines for recognition of a Palestinian State, has used one of her first speeches as an independent to raise the government's controversial new law that will end the trade in May 2028. The first-term senator said she spent some of parliament's recent winter break visiting a dozen regional WA towns where community members and sheep farmers expressed a worry that the $107 million industry phase-out package approved by former Agriculture Minister Murray Watt "does not go far enough". In a question without notice to the Senate on Thursday, Senator Payman likened the importance of sheep farming to some regions of WA to what coal mining is to ...