WHEN Kevin Rudd walked into the middle of a crisis meeting between Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig and live cattle exporters on Wednesday, there was little warmth between the two men.
As Rudd sat next to his colleague, his body language alone was enough to reveal his his anger.
A few days earlier, in a room in Parliament House near Julia Gillard's suite, the Foreign Minster had privately got stuck into Ludwig over his handling of the decision to ban live cattle exports to Indonesia.
In a short time, the ban had rapidly turned from an animal welfare issue into a diplomatic disaster. At stake were Australia's trade relations with its northern neighbour and the future of an agricultural industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Rudd's anger towards Ludwig was due not only to the minister's inept handling of the issue, but also his long-term animus towards Ludwig's father, Bill, who runs the AWU faction of Labor and was behind Rudd's removal as prime minister.
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His fury was being fuelled by the manner of the cabinet decision to ban exports in an attempt to assuage the public and caucus outcry after ABC's Four Corners exposed brutal slaughter methods in Indonesia.
Cabinet made the decision while Rudd was absent, attending a meeting in Budapest, without written submissions and without options other than a total ban.
Ministers saw it as a quick political decision.
Rudd was informed by telephone of the suspension and told to inform his Indonesian counterpart only a short time before they were due to meet.
The tense interaction between Rudd and Ludwig last Wednesday signalled the moment when Rudd and the well-oiled machine that is the Department of Foreign Affairs began taking a frontline role in the cattle crisis.
Rudd met affected farmers way outside his portfolio and in Indonesia, where DFAT was "gathering the troops" and trying to fix the mess Ludwig had left.
The Prime Minister acknowledged the shift in strategy on Thursday when she stated she was part of "Team Australia", which was trying to get the $320 million
a year industry restarted with Indonesia.
Team Australia now included Rudd, the Prime Minister, Trade Minister Craig Emerson and Ludwig.
David Inall, the chief executive of the Cattle Council of Australia, said yesterday: "It takes one person to ban a trade and takes two countries to reopen it again. Once you close it, you lose control over it."
The diplomatic and domestic crisis began with the way the government handled the decision to ban live cattle exports nine days after the horrific Four Corners footage was aired.
Indonesia had little advance notice of the June 8 decision.
Insiders believe Indonesia's Agricultural Minister Suswono and his department were fuming when they found out -- via letter delivered by Australian consulate staff in Indonesia -- after the country's Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, was told by Rudd in Hungary.
Many officials in the live cattle export industry and affected state governments were also not consulted on the ban or its potential impact.
On Monday, June 6, the only inkling that something was afoot was when a scheduled teleconference between the West Australian, Northern Territory and Queensland agricultural ministers about animal welfare was cancelled with 30 minutes' notice. No explanation was given.
Concerns rose late on June 7 when word started to spread from Canberra across the country that there might be a suspension of trade. It was confirmed when cattle were prevented from boarding an Indonesian ship in Port Hedland.
Gillard briefed Territory cattlemen that night in Darwin and the next day Ludwig announced the ban at a press conference in Brisbane. As a result, tens of thousands of cattle were stranded at ports around the country.
Within 24 hours, the Indonesians were threatening to get cattle from New Zealand and countries in South America and take Australia to the World Trade Organisation for potential breaches.
"That was their first mistake," one industry insider said. "The Indonesians should have been part of any decision being made."
Within days, the government had sent a team of Australian vets to inspect abattoirs and set up an inquiry into the issue. But they hit problems on the ground as soon as they got there. Offended Indonesian officials refused to allow any foreigners in the abattoirs. The "team of four" vets, as they were dubbed, had no choice but to go back to their hotel rooms. Three returned to Australia this week.
The situation in Indonesia worsened upon Ludwig's arrival there on June 20. He delivered the 21-page document outlining the animal welfare standards he wanted met by Indonesian abattoirs -- in English.
Officials were shocked. Translated copies were provided a few days later but the damage was done. Those who saw the original English document said they could not "believe" it was such a lengthy document. They described it as unreadable and bogged down by bureaucratic language.
As departmental staff quickly redrafted the document to focus more on a concrete "checklist" of what abattoirs actually had to do to get trade reopened, Ludwig was facing outcry from affected farmers. "They had absolutely no idea the implications of the ban would be so severe across the industry," Western Australia agriculture minister Terry Redman said.
An internal briefing dated June 21 demonstrated how ill-prepared Ludwig's office was for the impact of the decision. It shows the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences began surveying farmers so they could "determine the effects on farm businesses of the suspension of trade to Indonesia" -- two weeks after the ban was enacted.
And a teleconference with NT, QLD and WA governments to "discuss domestic supply chain issues associated" with the trade suspension took place two days after it was announced, not before the decision.
On the public front, Ludwig decided to pick a fight with Meat and Livestock Australia over the issue. He repeatedly stated he wrote to the producer-owned body in January warning it of his concerns about animal welfare. Gillard repeated a similar line in interviews.
But the January 17 letter reveals he did not. Ludwig wrote to the Australian Livestock Exporters Council about an episode of the ABC's 7.30 Report, aired last November, concerning animal welfare issues with live sheep exports in the Middle East. Neither Indonesia nor live cattle exports to the country were mentioned.
Ludwig also had to make a public backdown from his tough calls to get MLA to hand over $5m to help pay for the starving cattle stranded by the ban.
But MLA got legal advice that stated they could not do so because it would breach the company's guidelines. They formally rejected his offer and instead presented him with a $9 million plan to help get trade moving.
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