ACCESS to Western Australia’s Keep the Sheep website through the state’s secondary colleges has been blocked by the Department of Education WA, according to two WA schools and supporters of the pro-live sheep export campaign.

The Keep the Sheep campaign is aimed at reversing the proposed phaseout of live sheep exports by seas and has maintained political pressure on the WA state government and especially in federal WA seats to achieve this.

Last week, WAFarmers president John Hassel, and Keep the Sheep campaigner and shearer Shane told Sheep Central that students at two ag colleges and a Perth college had told him their access to the campaign’s website had been blocked beore the recent WA state election.

Mr Hassell provided a screenshot from a student of the public co-educational senior high school, Shenton College, located in Shenton Park, an inner western suburb of Perth.

The screen shot showed that Shenton College student access to the Keep the Sheep website had been blocked by school policy in the category of ‘advocacy organisations.’ The college has so far not responded to requests for comments about the block.

Shane, who has chosen to remain anonymous, told Sheep Central he had also been told by students at WA College of Agriculture Harvey and Denmark campuses that they also had their access blocked to the Keep the Sheep website.

The Denmark Ag College principal Stephen Watt said he did not believe the school has blocked access to the Keep the Sheep website or those of ag advocacy bodies such as the Livestock Collective, WAFarmers or the National Farmers Federation.

“You may wish to contact the Education Department to see if any sites are blocked at a system level,” he said.

Colleges confirm website block’s state government origin

Harvey campus principal Wayne Austin said he had checked with his school’s information and communications technology support “and there is no block at the school site.”

“We created a rule that actually ALLOWED the site and we still get an error message,” Mr Austin said in an email response.

Mr Austin said the college’s web filtering software can be configured to block particular sites based on a range of categories.

“We can override that with rules that allow access to certain sites, even though the category is blocked in general.

“We tried this to see if it was a block at our end,” he said.

“I have my ICT specialist investigating why we can’t access the keepthesheep website.

“Currently it is being blocked at the Education Department level not at the school level,” Mr Austin told Sheep Central via email.

Shenton College ICT manager Simon Hawks said his college’s principal suggested that it’s perhaps best that he respond to Sheep Central’s questions.

“The Shenton College firewall is supplied and configured by the Department of Education WA and subject to a set of firewall rules and filtering that they install, but with the possibility of us adding some additional site-specific rules,” Mr Hawks said.

“In this instance, the category rule that has put the Keep the Sheep website into the advocacy organisation block comes from upstream of this site and is something that we can’t change.

“My suggestion is that you either contact DoEWA Central Office IT to discuss re-categorisation, or alternatively submit the website to FortiGuard Labs for re-categorisation,” he said.

The WA Education Department is yet to respond to questions about the website block, but Mr Hassell said he the fact that any schools would implement this prior to a state or federal election is “political bastardry”.

“(WA Agriculture Minister) Jackie Jarvis and Co have claimed that they support live sheep trade and were opposed to the banning of the live sheep trade.

“But I think it shows that they are genuinely running scared from the campaign and I think that it had a pretty dramatic effect.

“I mean a 20 percent swing in some seats and an 11.8pc swing overall (two party preferred statewide margin), and up to 25pc in some places, I think it shows that the Keep the Sheep campaign had a very dramatic effect on the state election,” Mr Hassell said.

“If you extrapolate that over to the federal election, an 11.8pc swing against the feds means that the Keep the Sheep campaign in my opinion has had a pretty dramatic effect in WA and that Albanese should be scared.”

Mr Hassell said he was also some Keep the Sheep supporters were told to not wear their KTS t-shirts in state election polling booths or turn them inside out.

“We’re not a political party; we haven’t got anything going statewide, it’s federal.”

He said Keep the Sheep did not support specific candidates during the state election – “just put Labor last.”

Shane said at Wagin Woolarama recently he was told by two Year 12 Denmark ag college students that they had tried to look up the Keep the Sheep website using government wifi while at school but were blocked.

He said Harvey ag college students had also told him that they had been blocked from accessing the site.

The website blocking action amounted to censorship and it is “globally unacceptable” and “unAustralian” to prevent people from having an opinion, he said.

“They are being told what to think, not how to think.

“They just looked up Keep the Sheep, ‘access denied’,” he said.

“They are not looking up anything illicit or derogatory, they were simply looking up Keep the Sheep, something that is important to all of Australia.

“They did it during COVID times, didn’t they – get the needle or lose your job.

“Now they are going you can’t look that up because we don’t agree with it, it goes against government policy — I’m going to flat out call it Communism,” he said.

“When I first heard this six months ago I was absolutely appalled.

“What is the point in a child doing Certificate III in agriculture, which is wool handling, before suddenly our industry is absolutely f….. and is getting crucified by the government?” he asked.

“They are allowing these students to study something that has no future.”

Shane said he was advised not to challenge the website block for fear it would impact government funding of the college.

He considered blocking Keep the Sheep website access for Shenton College students was worse than an ag college block.

“That is blanketing the eyes of our urban friends to coerce their thoughts and voting intellect.”

Shane said he had seen the government’s agenda during COVID, the Voice vote and now it was affecting his industry.

“You’ve got five agricultural colleges in WA and they are all too afraid to talk up about Keep the Sheep for fear of losing their funding – fear is control and control is really really bad.”

Australian Livestock Exporters’ Council president Mark Harvey-Sutton said the website blocking action was disgraceful.

“Anecdotally while it has been reported to me that the Keep the Sheep website has been blocked, other website such as Animals Australia, the Animals Alliance, Keep the Sheep Here, Ban Live Exports, are still readily accessible.

“So I don’t mind if bodies have policies around political content, but clearly this is being driven by more than just policy and I would go as so far as to say it is censorship and a suppression of people’s right to access information,” he said.

“It does raises questions about whether state government bodies are nervous or concerned about the issue and we know that it will be a very big issue come the federal election, and I think it’s very important given its grass roots nature that everyone has the ability to access the information about devastating this ban is.”

Sheep Central has sought comment from the WA Education Department and Mr Hassell said WAFarmers would put some questions to the new WA Government.