CEO compares PM to an old cow

Richard Willingham

Attorney General Nicola Roxon has hit back at comments by the head of one of Australia's largest agriculture companies comparing the Prime Minister to a ''non-productive old cow'', saying they are silly and stupid.

Australian Agricultural Company chief executive, David Farley, triggered the controversy after he made the remarks against Julia Gillard during a 30-minute lecture at an agriculture conference in Adelaide on Thursday.

Mr Farley yesterday told The Saturday Age the comments were ''tongue in cheek'' and taken out of context.

The company has plans to build an abattoir near Darwin.

The slaughterhouse would specialise in killing older cows for cheap meat.

''This plant is designed to process old cows,'' Mr Farley told the conference.

''So the old cows that become non-productive, instead of making a decision to either let her die in the paddock or put her in the truck … this gives us a chance to take non-productive animals off and put them through the processing system.

''So it's designed for non-productive old cows - Julia Gillard's got to watch out.''

News site InDaily reported the remark was met with sustained laughter by the crowd.

Ms Roxon, who was speaking outside a NSW Bar Association conference in Sydney today, said it was time people got over this sort of personal abuse.

"I think these comments are silly and they are stupid. Ultimately it is an outrageous thing to say about the Prime Minister," she said. "It would actually be an outrageous thing to say about your wife, or your daughter, or your neighbour.

"There is no need to make these sort of sexist and silly remarks ... I am concerned that people think there is permission to make these sorts of comments about the Prime Minister; ... in the footy parlance, play the ball, not the man."

It is not the first the time PM has been publicly abused. Shock jock Alan Jones infamously said Ms Gillard should be put in a ''chaff bag'' and thrown out to sea.

Minister for the Status of Women Julie Collins said Mr Farley's comments were ''appalling and totally unacceptable''. They amounted to ''destructive prejudices long past their use-by date''.

''Mr Farley and those who laughed along with him should take a good, long, hard look at themselves.''

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