Tony Seabrook PGA president speaks after organisation placed into voluntary administration.

Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA (PGA) president Tony Seabrook says the PGA still has a vital role to play.

Transcript

00:00Look, we represent the ag area in Western Australia and over half our membership is

00:03agricultural now.

00:04But we are the only thing that stands between the parcel industry and bureaucracy and often

00:10very unfriendly government.

00:12And two parcels have said to me a little while ago, without the PGA, we've got nothing.

00:17All of our Commodity Committee chairs, all the people in the hard yards, have never been

00:21paid in the past, so the situation hasn't changed.

00:23We're still alive and kicking.

00:24We've got to keep on kicking.

00:26It goes back to lamb acquisition, way back in the late 70s.

00:29There was the lamb boarders they called it.

00:31They were taking my lambs away from me, cutting them up and selling them all over the world

00:34and then giving me a price that didn't represent the value of the lamb we were producing.

00:38And I was incensed.

00:39They were my lambs, in the same way that's my wheat and I want the right to sell my lambs

00:43and my wheat to the best advantage.

00:44So we've always been in favour of private enterprise, free enterprise, and it's paid

00:49off every time.

00:50We've proved to be right.

00:51I've got more passion now than I ever had before.

00:53I'm wiser.

00:54I'm smarter.

00:55And I'm old enough and I'm harder to ignore than I've ever been before.

00:58And I'm using all of that to the best of my ability.