Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Production of documents

Dingo protection

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

That this house:

(1) notes:

(a) that dingoes are protected threatened wildlife under the Wildlife Act 1975 and are listed as ‘vulnerable’ on the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 threatened list;

(b) since 2018, the unprotection order in council has allowed for the lethal control of dingoes to livestock on private land and within a 3-kilometre buffer zone along the boundaries of public land in eastern Victoria;

(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 dingo order in council, including but not limited to:

(a) consultation or consultation reports in relation to decision-making, including with traditional owners;

(b) reports from each review of the dingo listings under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 in consultation with the Scientific Advisory Committee;

(c) genetic health, population-modelling trends and counts for each year, including all information and data that informed relevant numbers;

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

(e) the reasoning for the decision to:

(i) protect dingoes in Victoria’s north-west;

(ii) renew the order in council announced on 24 September 2024;

(iii) end the wild dog bounty program;

(f) compliance with conditions, restrictions and limitations in the order in council, including the number of reports and investigations of alleged illegal killing;

(g) the number of dingoes killed using large leg-hold traps, confinement traps, net traps, poison baits, and firearms; and

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

Dingoes are being killed en masse in Victoria through horrifically cruel methods such as poison baiting, shooting, trapping and up until June this year bounty programs. Despite overwhelming evidence not to do so, a few months ago the government decided to extend the order in council that unprotects them across most parts of the state. Conservationists and ecologists now believe that the status of dingoes is in between ‘threatened’ and ‘critically endangered’, with extinction on the horizon. And yet the government has provided no real reasoning and no documentation to justify their cruelty. Once again there is no transparency in the massacre of wildlife in our state.

We know that the government is not acting on expert advice or information, because up until a few months ago dingoes were also included in the wild dog bounty program. The National First Nations’ Dingo Declaration last year was signed by more than 20 traditional owner groups calling for an end to the culling, declaring how dingoes are a cultural icon representing a vital connection to country through companionship, hunting partnerships, totems, Dreaming and customs. It reads:

When you remove Dingoes, Country gets sick, we get sick.

And finally:

Killing Dingoes is killing family.

Killing dingoes is symbolic of our shameful history of colonisation. It is wiping out native species and eradicating even more customs and totems from our First Nations people. But there has been small progress. Following the incredible work of the Wotjobaluk people and Defend the Wild, the government did not renew the dingo unprotection order in north-west Victoria this year. The government stated that:

… this decision follows new research, strong advice and the effectiveness of non-lethal dingo control methods to protect livestock.

I find it fascinating myself – and I am sure others do – how the government only applied this knowledge to a section of Victoria. Somehow when you head further north, even a kilometre out of the zone, apparently this government thinks the cultural significance of dingoes must fade and non-lethal dingo control methods must suddenly stop working. Farmers are losing out on this decision as well, because those in the north west will benefit from the $550,000 investment to adopt effective non-lethal control methods, yet every other farmer in Victoria will be excluded from this initiative.

Ecologists and experts have been advising us for years of the vital role dingoes play as our only natural apex predator. These documents will reveal if there was any consideration of the essential role that dingoes play in Australia’s biodiversity and keeping our ecosystem in balance or if they have considered the impact of floods, bushfires, urban development and road strikes on the population counts. These documents will reveal – or rather not reveal – how the government sought to justify the continuation of the non-protection order for the rest of the state. If they insist on maiming and killing yet another of our native species, the public deserve to know why. I commend the motion to the house.

Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (10:03): I rise to speak on Ms Purcell’s documents motion in relation to dingoes and the unprotection order and the request from the house that the Leader of the Government produce a series of documents relating to the decision-making with respect to the dingo order, including reports from the scientific advisory committee; traditional owner consultation; modelling and trends; assessment of floods, fires, road strikes, development, urban sprawl and matters that may affect population; various elements of the reasoning for the decisions set out in part (2)(e); and then compliance and a range of other matters relating to dingo deaths. As is our practice, the government will not oppose today’s documents motion. The motion, should it pass, will be considered by the government in accordance with its standard practice and subject to consideration of various issues of privilege.

On the broader questions, I think it is clear that this is an issue which obviously many in the community have clear views about.

The government has invested an additional $2 million into nonlethal dingo controls and population research. We have held various and numerous community consultations as part of a broader review into wild dog management across Victoria, and farmers have spoken about the impact that wild dog attacks have on stock and the impact that has on mauled but not dead livestock.

Recently the Minister for Environment and the Minister for Agriculture, ministers Dimopoulos and Spence, have announced a continuation of the dingo unprotection order in the north-east and east of Victoria, which permits control of dingoes on private land and along the boundaries of public land until 1 January 2028. Dingoes will continue to be protected in the north-west of the state, where the dingo population is critically low. Lethal controls will not be permitted on private or public land in the north-west. There is little evidence that dingoes are present in large numbers in these parts of Victoria.

The $2 million investment in dingo monitoring and support in the north-west to adopt nonlethal dingo management strategies will help fund things like trials, research and on-the-ground advice on nonlethal management strategies that minimise the risk of livestock predation, building on the work that is already underway as part of the $550,000 north-west vertebrate pest management program announced in March this year. The wild dog management program will be expanded to include extra support for farmers through targeted controls of a wider range of vertebrates, including deer, foxes, pigs and wild cats and, to reflect this expansion, will be renamed the vertebrate species management program. The wild dog component of the Victorian fox and wild dog bounty program will cease – the final opportunity to submit wild dog parts at Maffra was on 16 October – and the bounty for foxes will increase from $10 to $14 a scalp until 30 June 2025.

The remaking of the dingo unprotection order follows a review of dingo conservation and management with feedback from traditional owners, farmers and landholders, alongside scientific research. During the consultation for the review of the order, departmental staff met with and listened to traditional owners, farmers, environmental specialist groups and local communities. The feedback collected from the consultation process helped the government understand the impacts of the proposed new order, and that order obviously has now been made. Those consultation activities have also informed the design of a $2 million support package that was announced at the same time as the new order.

Obviously we understand that there are a range of very clear views held across the community about these matters. The government will work with all interested parties and stakeholders to build a greater shared understanding of and perspectives on the issues. We know and we understand that there are clearly a lot of views – a range have been canvassed, taken into consideration – and we await further discussions.

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (10:08): Whilst the Liberals and Nationals will not oppose the motion or the release of these documents, what I do question is the reason the Animal Justice Party want these documents and how they will use them. I also question the Animal Justice Party’s understanding of the wild dog issue in Victoria.

Wild dogs in the north-east of Victoria are not dingoes. They are domestic dogs gone wild. They probably have interbred with dingoes and have some dingo genealogy, but make no mistake, they are domestic dogs gone wild. These are ruthless killers that kill and maim livestock and destroy farmers’ livelihoods. If the Animal Justice Party took the time to go and sit with farmers in the north-east and talk to them, the farmers could tell them story after story of how the wild dogs have decimated their herds and left animals half-eaten – half-eaten and alive, some of them.

These farmers will tell you stories of the impact on their own mental health of having to deal with the carnage that the wild dogs create amongst their livestock. They will tell you about animals ripped apart, animals ripped limb from limb and dying a dreadful death. They will you tell you of animals who are maimed and mauled, who are walking around with their innards hanging out. This is not humane. These are ruthless killers. At least when a wild dog is shot by a farmer, it is killed humanely, but the dogs do not kill the livestock humanely.

The Animal Justice Party will probably use the Dr Kylie Cairns report to try and say that these dogs are dingoes, but in reality the Dr Kylie Cairns report is an Australia-wide sample of dogs that were tested for dingo DNA. This took dogs from the top end of Western Australia, from the Northern Territory – from the deserts. We make no argument; they probably are purebred dingoes. But the sample that it took from the north-east of Victoria was very small, and even the Kylie Cairns report itself acknowledges that the dogs in north-east Victoria are not likely to be dingoes. They may be interbred with dingoes, but these dogs are mostly domestic dogs that have gone wild and become ruthless killers.

I commend the government for having extended the wild dog unprotection order in the north-east of Victoria. My colleague Bill Tilley in the lower house and I lobbied very heavily for the unprotection order to be extended so that farmers in the north-east would not have to deal with the carnage that they were dealing with morning after morning in previous years. The wild dog unprotection order has been very successful, but the fight with wild dogs is not over. If you go back to 2012 when it was actually implemented, trappers would catch 120 feral dogs a year. Now that number rarely tops 30. That does not mean that the problem has been solved, but it does mean that the unprotection order is working, that it should stay and that it should be extended.

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (10:13): The Greens will be supporting this motion today and thank Ms Purcell for bringing this debate to the chamber. It is sad and shocking that we are in a situation of having to debate this. Despite some of the contributions highlighting the small geographic protection that has been provided, Victoria recently decided to renew the unprotection order for dingoes for a further four years to 2028. This is not justified on the evidence, and it may threaten the survival of this iconic dingo species. Despite being Australia’s only native canid, dingoes are the only Australian mammal not protected, and despite being found across Australia, they are now considered to be between threatened and critically endangered.

I have asked the minister what consultation took place with traditional owners when deciding to continue this unprotection order. Last year the National First Nations’ Dingo Declaration was signed by more than 20 traditional owners groups, and those groups called for an end to the culling and an end to the term ‘wild dog’ being applied to dingoes. Dingoes form an integral part of First Nations totems, Dreaming, lore and customs. Dingoes were seen as the protectors of women and children, hunting partners and companions. They were given burials similar to those of family members and were buried alongside their ancestors. Dingoes are a vital apex predator, and they add to the crucial balance of our ecosystem. Culling threatens native species that would face an increased risk of extinction, and in fact dingoes do contribute to the control of populations of foxes and wild cats. Dingo culling is a continued part of the legacy of colonisation.

The Victorian government included dingoes in their wild dog bounty program, placing a price of $120 on the head of each dingo. This was despite the resounding evidence available that dingoes are in fact not wild dogs. Upon this belated but embarrassing realisation by the government, as of June this year dingoes are no longer included in the bounty scheme, which is a really great step forward.

Dingoes have been demonised by the government and by farming industries despite 80 per cent of lamb deaths each year being a result of poor farm management practices. Notably the other 20 per cent is not made up of dingo kills. It is estimated that they make up 0.009 per cent of losses. Control methods for livestock that have proven to be effective are as simple as guardian dogs, donkeys or adequate fencing and do not require the killing of threatened species.

What are we doing in this country and in this state when too many of our Australian wildlife, unique in the world and a touchstone for how this nation defines its identity, are at profound risk? Have we become immune and therefore numb to the growing list of Australian animals at threat? Echidnas, platypus, koalas, some species of kangaroo, to name just a few, and now dingoes – there are no alternatives to these species, and we do not get a second chance to save them.

The Greens commend this motion. We believe, as well as there being great value in the substance of it, that government decision-making should be transparent and that all the documents listed should be in the public domain.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:16): I rise to join what is already a lively debate on a short form documents motion this morning. I acknowledge Ms Purcell for bringing this motion into the chamber today for us to debate. Reaffirming my colleague Mr Batchelor, the government, as per customary practice, will not be opposing this short documents motion. As Mr Batchelor said, subject to it passing the chamber today, it will then go through the relevant and appropriate processes.

I will just briefly make note that, as has been discussed by other speakers in the debate already, the new dingo unprotection order permits the control of dingoes on private land and on public land that is within 3 kilometres of a boundary with private land in eastern Victoria until 1 January 2028. The wild dog management program is being maintained and has been renamed the vertebrate species management program. This is in order to expand the focus of that program, which will continue over the next four years, to include species such as deer, which we will be discussing in another slot later this day, as well as industry pests such as feral cats, pigs and foxes. The bounty has now ceased, with those wild dog collections in north-west Victoria ceasing in March of this year and in eastern Victoria just last month.

As Mr Batchelor noted, extensive consultation has gone into this, with Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action officials having met with traditional owners, farmers, environmental scientists and other groups as well as local communities as part of the review into both dingo conservation and dingo management. There is, as Mr Batchelor also referred to, the $2 million support package, which was announced at the same time that the decision was made.

There are other things I could say to this motion, but I am well aware that Mrs McArthur is anxious to add her voice to the debate as well, and I am very much looking forward to the spirited contribution which I am sure she will make, so I will conclude my remarks there.

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:19): I rise to speak on this motion. As my colleague Ms Lovell has said, we support documents motions. Also like Ms Lovell, I will point out exactly why the government did the right thing by continuing the unprotection order. Well done, government.

A member interjected.

Bev McARTHUR: Yes, and may it long continue, the unprotection order. Keep it going, because if you go out to a farm and you see what wild dogs do to lambs, you will be devastated. There is no such thing as humane deaths when wild dogs get involved.

Ms Purcell referred to some support by traditional owners. Let me point out that the Duduroa Dhargal traditional owners agree with the government retaining the unprotection order.

They praise the wild dog control program, saying it offers a balance between limiting the impacts of wild dogs on livestock production while allowing dingoes to remain undisturbed across much of our country.

We also need to know that if you abolish this dingo unprotection order, watch out in the peri-urban areas where these wild dogs will be around. The pretty pussycats and the fluffy puppies will all be under threat, Ms Purcell.

Motion agreed to.