Not everyone with an interest in buffalo was consulted. As I recall, in 1984, 60 buffalo were sent to PNG as part of an aid package but later it was found that they were on-sent to South America for breeding in competition with us.

Territorians were furious because this was a deliberate leapfrog over a previous agreement that the vastly superior gene pool of Territory buffalo not be live-exported. This looks like a similar violation and I will bet none of the experts who understand the market were made aware of this.

The 1984 betrayal was on top of the US-demanded TB & brucellosis eradication campaign that resulted in the destruction of our buffalo industry, that had already been identified as the means of making Top End Aboriginal communities self-sufficient.

I would bet good money that Maley has done no research on the potential buffalo industry.