Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today in this place to bring the attention of the House to the issue of cane toads across Australia. For some four years now I have backed a group called the Kimberley Toad Busters in Kununurra, led by Lee Scott-Virtue, who now have a band of some 5,000 volunteers who are picking up thousands of cane toads each weekend at the frontline. In her company over one weekend I picked up 240. We collectively picked up two and a half thousand that one night.

It is time something was done about putting real money behind genuine research that will find the solution to eradicate cane toads from the Australian landscape. We have tolerated them since 1935. The situation was quite obviously out of hand by 1940. They were brought across from Hawaii to solve the problem of the cane beetle—they did not do anything in that regard—and they got out of hand. It was a biological control that went mad, but nothing has been substantially done in this nation, and I mean substantially. Tens of millions of dollars are required to find a viral or biological solution to this pest.

We have spent millions of dollars on myxomatosis and on the calicivirus to control rabbits—a very damaging species that eat our pastures. We have every movement from primary schools to retirement villages concerned about the environment today, and rightly so. But no groundswell has been created to put funds at the pointy end of research to do something about the most insidious pest we have in Australia. This pest is destroying our native fauna at all levels. It is either competing with other desert rodents for beetles at night or it is killing crocodiles at the Top End, because one bite from a cane toad will discharge enough venom to kill that crocodile. We have found four-foot saltwater crocodiles dead with a cane toad in their mouth.

This insidious pest is attacking all aspects of our environment. It ought not be tolerated. With our present concern for the environment it is time we did something quite genuine, quite dinkum, and put the money into research. CSIRO have the science and they have the discipline to do the job; they need the funds to carry out the job. I propose that this be adopted as a policy of government in the future.