Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Production of documents

Kangaroo control

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (10:00): I move:

That this house:

(1) notes that the government commenced the commercial killing of kangaroos on 1 October 2019, under the Victorian Kangaroo Harvest Management Plan, and has consistently increased the shooting quota each year since;

(2) requires the Leader of the Government, in accordance with standing order 10.01, to table in the Council, within 10 weeks of the house agreeing to this resolution, all documents relating to the kangaroo harvest management plan, including but not limited to:

(a) population modelling and counts for the development of the commercial quotas each year, including all information and data that informed the counts;

(b) assessment of the impact of floods, fires, road strike, development and urban sprawl and any other matters or events that may affect kangaroo populations;

(c) the number of joeys killed as a result of the kangaroo harvest management plan each year and the effect on short- and long-term population projections;

(d) the development and expansion of approved shooting zones across Victoria, including the consideration and reasons to expand zones onto public land;

(e) the reasoning for the decision to increase the quota by 30 per cent, as announced on 31 December 2022;

(f) any consultation, including the current federal consultation, on the 2024–28 kangaroo harvest management plan;

(g) professional shooter compliance and regulation processes, including the number of reports and investigations of alleged illegal kangaroo shooting; and

(h) the cost to the government to operate the program.

These documents are not something that I feel I should have to request. When it comes to the commercial slaughter of our native wildlife in what is the largest land-based massacre on the planet, transparency should not be retrospective. The outcomes of the public consultation on this program were due to be published in August this year. It is now December, and we are days away from the 2024 quota being set without any transparency on what Victorians truly think of this carnage. I have raised the issues wildlife face in Victoria every single week in this place, for the animals, the environment and the volunteer rescuers that risk their own safety doing free work to clean up the bloody mess left behind by this government’s sickening commercial killing of kangaroos.

Since the implementation of the commercial program in Victoria, Wildlife Victoria has reported a 50 ‍per cent increase in rescuers responding to shotgun injuries. The quota was put up to 166,750 ‍kangaroos this year, a staggering 30 per cent increase. The government proudly promotes that landholders can have a professional shooter attend their property to shoot kangaroos for free, but at what cost to the unknowing taxpayer? Victorians deserve to know just how much is spent on the massacre of our wildlife just so that their skin can be exported to Europe and America for sports shoes. Of most concern is that the quota increase outweighs the reported 21.7 per cent population increase that is occurring. In some shooting zones, such as the Mallee, north-east and upper Wimmera, the reported rate of increase claimed by this government is 2.5 times the biologically possible rate.

In 2022 all kangaroos and wildlife suffered through devastating floods, which are not mentioned in the population report despite occurring before, during and after the survey and killing potentially tens of thousands of kangaroos. This should also be taken into consideration in the decision on annual quotas, but it is not. I would expect also that the countless kangaroos killed on Victorian roads each day are considered when choosing to increase the quota by a shocking 30 per cent. Based on the percentage of female kangaroos killed under this program, researchers estimate that up to 5000 ‍dependent young are killed each quarter. It is also predicted that, with no minimum wait for the kangaroos that are being killed, male adults that are getting killed are getting younger and smaller, altering the evolution of entire mobs, and it is something that we cannot take back.

Meanwhile seven species of macropod are already extinct in Australia and six more are critically endangered. The 2024–28 management plan has proposed expansion of shooting onto public land. National parks and state forests are areas where kangaroos should be protected. If kangaroos are everywhere and in such abundance, then why is the government seeking them out to meet their quotas? Kangaroos that are not killed instantly under this program suffer horrific injury and are left to suffer for days or even weeks. My office receives constant reports from distressed locals and rescuers of kangaroos with half of their faces blown off, their tongues hanging out the sides of their mouths, orphaned joeys and dismembered body parts. To this government, joeys are invisible. The legal way to kill them is through bludgeoning. Shooters will smash joeys against their car or with the end of their gun to kill them, but the number killed is not recorded. I want to know and Victorians want to know just how many joeys this government thinks are professionally bashed to death and if these are recorded in population projections.

The whole world is paying attention to our disgraceful kangaroo harvest management plan. Major brands like Nike, Puma and New Balance have all banned the use of kangaroo skins. Internationally this government spreads the narrative that kangaroos are pests in abundance, but these documents will help prove kangaroos are iconic animals worthy of our protection. They tread lightly on the environment, and they contribute to biodiversity. These documents are integral in providing transparency and oversight of the commercial killing of kangaroos in Victoria, highlighting the true state for our native icons, which I believe the government needs to be made aware of urgently so that we can work to give them a chance at survival and end their misery. I commend the production of documents motion to the house.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (10:06): I thank Ms Purcell for bringing this motion to the house. As is often the case, I am proud to stand here and talk to issues of environment and sustainability, something I am quite passionate about, whether that be looking at our climate or looking at our local environments. I would like to start with comments around the floods. I am not sure that some of the commentary around impacts on kangaroo numbers due to floods have been confirmed, and indeed it is my understanding that there has not been a major impact. I think it is very important that we are looking at this issue holistically, and absolutely, as Ms Purcell points out, we must be ensuring animal welfare in any activity we take on when dealing with animals in the wild and how we go about managing numbers. But it is important, as we talk about sustainability and talk about balance, to keep balance in mind.

A government spends the time and puts the science in to understand population numbers and the impacts those populations are having on our natural environment, plant species and other animals that will suffer through a degradation of the environment that they depend on. I think it is important to keep in mind that the government is putting the work in to holistically look at this environment in total. Something else I would really like to raise when we talk about that is climate change. The number of animals, the number of species, that we are going to lose if the climate from midway or further up north in Australia moves down across Victoria, whether that be through habitat loss, is going to be incredible over the next century.

Georgie Purcell interjected.

Tom McINTOSH: Ms Purcell I think just raised agriculture. Agriculture is something that is incredibly important to feed the people of the world. As the population of the world increases, we have to ensure this, and climate change is impacting on those populations, which I am sure is something the Greens would agree with me on. We have got to make sure that we are feeding those populations, and yes, we have got to do it in a way that ensures animal welfare, but we have got to do it in a way that ensures that we are feeding our populations. I do not know why you are finding that humorous, Ms Purcell, but it is incredibly important that everyone is fed.

To our farmers, our farmers do need to manage populations of animals that are going onto their properties. It is really important that those who are hunting do so in an ethical way that ensures that animals are not unnecessarily suffering, but it is something as a government that we need to do. As I said, in that holistic review of the animals that are out in our environment, there are the impacts they are having on that local environment, on other species and on their capacity to live but also on our farmers, our public lands and our road users’ ability to use roads safely. We have to consider all of that in one.

I am very proudly a member of the Labor Party for the work this Labor Party has done over multiple decades ensuring the protection of environment and ensuring the protection and welfare of animals. And I welcome Ms Purcell’s advocacy in the space of animal welfare, because we should always be looking at whether more can be done, but we should also always keep views balanced. We should work to science, we should work to data and we should make sure that opinions are kept to that science, and therefore the actions that we take with the evidence that informs the actions that we take will have a real and meaningful outcome for our natural environments and for the animals – all the animals that live within it.

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:11): I rise to speak on Ms Purcell’s motion, which she is obviously not terribly interested in at the moment. Anyway, the coalition have a convention of supporting documents motions, so we will not be opposing Ms Purcell’s motion. And like so often with this government, there is obviously a failure to properly report on most activities, expenditure and programs subject to taxpayer expenditure. So in that we would agree: proper reporting should be available. And of course the reduction of numbers of kangaroos needs to be done humanely.

However, it is extremely disappointing that a rural MP should use this place to further attack the farming community. Let us not forget the Animal Justice Party are hell-bent on putting an end to all meat and livestock production in this state and across this nation. That is your agenda. Do not hide from it. The kangaroo harvest plan is an important tool in the armoury of farming in this state and should be supported, not questioned. Kangaroos do untold damage in the agriculture sector to fencing and in grazing, and they need to be controlled. Commercial harvesting is an integral part of the plan, and it is far better to use this high-protein product than to leave it to the ravages of wild dogs, foxes et cetera. And if the AJP were really concerned about kangaroo deaths, they would argue for roadsides to no longer be wildlife corridors. Roadkill is obvious for all to see. After all, kangaroos, as far as I know, do not look right and look left and look right again, so they end up slaughtered and caught up in our wire rope barriers as well. So let us get the priorities right. Let us put an end to roadsides being wildlife corridors; they should be safe places. No place for animals to breed on the roadsides.

It would be useful to know just how many kangaroos were burnt in the fires, dreadful fires that we have had in Victoria in the past. And I bet most people on that corner of the place do not agree with reducing fuel loads in state forests and parks and even on roadsides. If you have an intensive fire because you have got a fuel load, then you are going to actually burn to death every wild animal that exists, and you are going to burn the dirt to such an extent that it is difficult for it to be regenerated. So get on board and support the reduction of fuel loads in the forests and the parks and the roadsides so that we do not have intensive bushfires like the sort we have had in the past. The government has failed to manage fuel load reduction, and that is a major cause of fires.

We need to keep this whole thing in perspective. Yes, you are quite right, and you are quite entitled to ask for information, as you have done in this documents motion, but let us get to the crux of what you are really on about, and that is yet another attack on the farming and agriculture sector of this state. I stand here in support of farmers and the agriculture sector. They feed this nation. They might not want to produce your fake meat and fake milk to the extent that you might like, but the vast majority of Victorians and Australians want to eat meat and want to wear wool, and that is important, so kangaroos do need to be controlled. And, guess what, when we have a really good season, they breed well. They are very clever. They can work out what the temperature and the rainfall are going to be, and they breed according to the seasons – and they breed prolifically. That is great from their point of view; there is no point in breeding if you cannot feed your joeys. Kangaroos understand our weather conditions; they have survived for many thousands of years. We support, of course, the iconic nature of the kangaroo, which is an Australian icon, but they do need to be controlled and we need to look after the agricultural sector in this state.

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (10:16): The Greens thank Ms Purcell for moving this motion today, which we are supporting for two clear and compelling reasons. First, it is longstanding Greens policy to support a ban on the nonsensical commercial killing of kangaroos and our other native wildlife. There are two separate programs in Victoria that allow for the legal killing of kangaroos. The authority to control wildlife is the older system and allows Victorian landholders, mostly farmers, to apply for permits to legally control wildlife on their land. The second, newer program that the motion addresses today is the kangaroo harvest management program. There has been commercial killing of kangaroos since 2010, but under this program introduced in 2019 licensed shooters can kill kangaroos on private land and then sell the carcasses for commercial purposes.

As we know, the cruel reality of this process has been exposed many times. Bullet wounds result in slow, painful deaths, and as has been stated in this debate, joeys can be legally bludgeoned to death. The videos of that are sickening. Members should be aware of it and watch those so we are crystal clear about the realities that have already been exposed and about what we are voting on today. Those joeys that do escape after their mothers are killed die slowly from exposure, starvation and predation, calling out for their mothers.

This kangaroo harvest program has set quotas for how many kangaroos can be killed in each region per year, but there are real questions about the accuracy of the state’s counting upon which those quotas are based. Many scientists and other stakeholders have presented strong evidence that the kangaroo population numbers in Victoria are miscalculated or overinflated, which means that the harvesting quotas are only going to further harm dwindling populations.

With regard to the conflicting information we have about kangaroo population size, it does not seem to me common sense that our kangaroo population reportedly increased 40 per cent between 2018 to 2021. This was during the period that we had the catastrophic bushfires that the University of Sydney estimated killed or displaced 3 billion animals, of which 90 per cent died, but somehow, miraculously, Victoria’s kangaroo population defied those fires and the years of drought and floods, which Ms Purcell mentioned, that preceded them and increased by 40 per cent. We need further scrutiny of the figures behind this program.

Community attitudes are also changing, and the social licence for this unscientific and very distressing slaughter is very quickly eroding. In response to strong community advocacy and campaigns, in shires across Victoria – from Mornington to Nillumbik and to Whittlesea – we will likely see a cessation of commercial kangaroo shooting in metro areas from 2025. The Greens want to see an end to the commercial killing of kangaroos across our state, and we also want to see a full review of the other wildlife shooting permits. The commercial exploitation of our kangaroos is entirely unnecessary.

The second reason we are supporting this motion – which is, as noted, something that we can probably find more agreement on across the chamber – is first principles around good public policy. Our government programs should be evidence based, they should be supported by reliable data and there should be transparent and regular publication of both of these. The fact that Ms Purcell needed to move this motion to get the data on kangaroo populations, modelling, costs, policy and decision-making and that it is not already on the public record is a matter of shame.

My Greens colleagues have been calling out this lack of transparency on the kangaroo program for decades, including my predecessor in Southern Metro Ms Pennicuik. In this place six years ago Mr Barber said:

We will continue to fight to reverse the nonsensical decision to introduce commercial kangaroo culling to Victoria. We know kangaroo shooting permits are handed out easily. There is close to zero supervision and no-one can even tell us how many kangaroos were killed last year.

As Ms Purcell has observed, we have got glaring holes, including in relation to the deaths of joeys under this program. More recently Dr Ratnam and Mr Puglielli have elevated community concerns. We hear those concerns and are proud to support the motion today.

Motion agreed to.