Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to add a couple of minutes of comment. Every now and again you are sitting in the Federation Chamber and you really do learn something, so I commend the committee on this report. I have been flicking through it. I have to admit when I heard the first government speaker, the chair of the committee, get up I thought, 'Oh my goodness, we're going to be talking about cats. What's next? Dogs? This is all a bit silly.' But I have learnt a lot. I think the previous speaker in particular made some very good points.

The numbers are striking. I was thinking back to 12 months ago when the country was ravaged by bushfires and one of the things which really tore at the heartstrings of Australians was the extent of loss of native animals. We heard these statistics: a billion native animals lost, two billion native animals lost. This report makes clear that the estimates are that 1.6 billion native animals are lost every year through cats—1.4 billion of those from feral cats. I think it's an incredibly important bit of work, more so than perhaps the initial giggles that some of us might have had would convey.

The other point that I want to echo is the importance of resourcing this work. It is all very well for all government members and opposition members to sign up to noble, worthy recommendations, but when we have seen under this government, in its eighth year, cuts of 40 per cent from the environment department how on earth—what is the point of these reports when they just go to an under-resourced department that can't even do its basic work now, let alone anything new? Perhaps the government thinks that casual hire workers would be the answer. Get some backpackers in to do this kind of work. The importance of this work and this knowledge goes to the very core of why you need a skilled, permanent public service and not a casualised labour hire public service, with 10 to 20 per cent of staff now sitting in government departments sitting on labour hire contracts while the company makes a whole lot of money and they just bugger off. It is really important stuff.

The final thing I will say is I want to make a public declaration as the proud owner of two six-month-old kittens. I declare to the House that my kittens hence force will remain inside animals, that they will never fulfil their innate potential as slaughter machines in the neighbourhood, murderers. They are lovely Burmese pussies. I'm not going to read their names into Hansard. I'm going to protect their privacy. Inside animals rather than outside animals. That's where they will remain.

The recommendations around councils, metropolitan and particularly interface councils, maintaining cat curfews and other things are also very well made. There is something for everyone in the report. Who knew?

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