Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm really pleased today to have the opportunity to talk about the most recent report of the House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy which we titled Tackling the feral cat pandemic: a plan to save Australian wildlife. I commend the report to the House and, indeed, to the broader community.

This report is arguably one of the most important reports that has been prepared by the environment and energy committee because it addresses what is one of the most significant environmental threats to Australia's environment and to our wildlife—that is, the impact of feral cats, and cats more broadly as well. It cannot be underestimated how grave this threat to our wildlife actually is. Just think about these statistics. Cats have been the major cause for the extinction of 25 of the 34 Australian mammals that have been lost completely since the European settlement of our continent. A single feral cat in the bush kills 370 invertebrates, 44 frogs, 225 reptiles, 130 birds and 390 mammals per year. Each and every year that is the kill tally for a single feral cat. In fact, when you total it up, it means that predation by cats is responsible for the loss of 1.6 billion native animals every year.

I just want to put that in context. Last year, at the end of the Black Summer bushfires, there was a lot of work done to analyse the impact of those bushfires on native wildlife. It's hard to predict, but the loss ranged from one billion to three billion native animals. So somewhere in the middle of that, each and every year, is the impact of cats on Australian wildlife. It's worth reflecting on the fact that whilst it's hard to predict precisely, and the numbers vary according to things like weather conditions and the abundance of food and so on, there is something like 2.8 million feral cats in the wild across Australia.

This is a substantial problem. We know that feral species in the broader sense have a huge impact on our environment. Cats are not alone in the damage that they do. We can talk about the impact of hunting by foxes. We can talk about the damage to landscape by goats and deer and feral horses. We know the damage that has been done by cane toads across northern Australia. But if you want to identify the one feral species that poses the greatest threat to our environment, unfortunately feral cats win that dubious prize.

In addition to the toll that they take on native wildlife through their hunting, we also know that feral cats are a conduit for the spread of pathogens. Many farmers around Australia know about the damage caused by toxoplasmosis in particular, a disease that cats are the vector for. This disease is entering our livestock, particularly sheep, and also impacting on native animals through the consumption of faeces and other interactions with those feral cats. This is a major problem facing our environment—sadly, one that arrived on the very first ship that came to our shores in 1788 and has exploded year by year as feral cat numbers have grown.

It is a major challenge, because feral cats are now found across 99 per cent or more of the Australian landscape. So 99 per cent of our continent and all of our landmass provides a home for feral cats. In fact, they are now not found on only a few islands, either by accident or by the deliberate actions of those trying to eradicate feral cats on some of those islands. These islands have become sanctuaries in themselves. The problem is of a vast scale, but, equally importantly, it's a problem to which there is no silver bullet. There is no magic answer that allows us to address the problem of feral cats.

Of course there are a number of mechanisms that those trying to address the feral animal problem use. Cage trapping is occasionally used, particularly in the urban environment, but unfortunately cage trapping is no answer for the landscape-wide problem of feral cats because of the expense and the limited nature of the capacity of cages to catch cats. Baiting is used, and we have seen some important developments occurring in relation to baiting. It's fair to say that baiting is probably the most effective and the only effective landscape-wide mechanism we have to try to reduce feral cat numbers, but it's not without issues. There are concerns, obviously, about the humaneness of baiting programs. There is concern about whether it can impact on native species. But it is a very effective way of reducing feral cat numbers in some circumstances. We are seeing new developments in relation to baiting. For example, the committee heard about a new product, Felixer, which actually uses lasers to inject poison on the fur of feral cats. Uniquely, it can identify that the subject that has come into its range is actually a cat and not another species. So, it provides some further potential.

But we know, in relation to the continent-wide reduction of feral cats, that in the future we are going to have to look at other ways to reduce cat numbers. For example, there is work being done on gene drive technology, which can potentially alter the genetics of feral cat populations so that they can't breed and reproduce. But, again, that technology itself is not without risk, and there is a lot more work that needs to be done on its potential applicability to cats in the Australian landscape, firstly and obviously, to ensure that it's not also affecting domestic cat populations and, secondly, to ensure it doesn't cross over to other feline species either in Australia or globally.

Perhaps most importantly of all we have seen efforts being undertaken by a range of governments and private organisations to try and protect our native wildlife through predator-free zones. These effectively take the form of sanctuaries that allow feral animals to be removed. Where that happens native wildlife flourishes. The committee had the benefit of visiting one not far from Parliament House, Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary, where we saw the impact of predator-free fencing. It was just extraordinary, seeing the bettongs and the eastern quoll that, once absent, now live there. My view is that expanding those sanctuaries, which in the report we call a 'Project Noah' national effort, is probably the most important thing that governments can do. I encourage the government to look at a massive expansion of those sanctuaries to protect more of our wildlife.

I also want to touch on the impact of domestic cats. I know this can be a sensitive issue, because cat owners understandably love their little moggies, but often it's underestimated how much damage the domestic cats themselves are doing. Sadly, we know that pet cats kill over one million animals per day. That means that basically one in four domestic cats is undertaking a kill of some form or other each day. That translates into over 390 million animals that are killed by our pet cats, unfortunately, over the course of a year. One of the problems we have is that most people don't believe that their pet cat could perpetrate such heinous crimes. Every other person's cat is so frequently the problem and not our own. But the reality is that cats do have a hunting instinct, which means that even domestic cats are a major cause of concern. This report looks at that, and it recommends a range of things that we can do, the most important of which, perhaps, is increasing our education about how to responsibly own and manage pet cats.

But it also came as a surprise to me that we don't have mandatory desexing of cats in every jurisdiction across Australia. I strongly believe that state governments and local governments, with the support of the federal government, need to be considering whether night-time curfews should be more broadly instituted for domestic cats to protect native wildlife. This is particularly critical at the interface of urban areas and bushland. Even in an electorate like mine, where we have pockets of remnant bushland, it is so important. I would urge all cat owners themselves to think about whether they should be placing night-time curfews on their own cats, keeping them indoors so that they're not roaming and killing native animals at night.

The committee also heard about the impact of imported new species of cats. This is a grave threat, and the committee strongly supported ensuring that we're not adding to the species of cats present in the Australian environment by allowing the importation of things like Bengal cats, which are bigger, larger and more ferocious hunters.

This is an important report from the committee. I want to thank all of those who gave evidence. I want to thank my fellow committee members for producing what was a bipartisan, unanimous report. I want to thank the committee staff for the excellent job that they did in supporting this inquiry, as they always do. We do have the opportunity to make a difference to what seems to be an unsurmountable problem. The stakes are so high that I would urge all governments, including the federal government, to regard reducing feral cat numbers and better managing domestic cats as a key priority for protecting our unique and beautiful wildlife on this continent of ours.

Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an important report. As a member of the Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy, I commend this report on our inquiry into the problem of feral and domestic cats in Australia. I thank my fellow committee members and the committee secretariat for their work on this important inquiry. The inquiry sought to examine the prevalence and impact of feral, stray and domestic cats and the effectiveness of various legislative, regulatory and collaborative responses across Australian jurisdictions. The committee received 218 submissions, held six public hearings in Canberra and conducted a very memorable site inspection under just a bit of rain at Mulligans Flat Woodland Sanctuary in Canberra's north, where we were able to inspect the sanctuary's feral-predator-free fence and had the pleasure of seeing great diversity, including the eastern quoll. It really was exciting to see good policy and a really fantastic program.

The report makes six specific recommendations which I fully support. We know feral cats are a significant problem. It's astounding. Feral cats are found on 99 per cent of the Australian continent. It's clear there is no magic solution and there needs to be a cohesive response, and these six specific recommendations seek to do that. In particular, regarding recommendation 1, the prioritisation of the problem of feral cats is a matter of national environmental significance. We need to do better. We have seen a really dramatic loss of native species as a result of the problem of feral cats. We need to better educate ourselves and understand the problem. We need to promote responsible cat ownership. Pet cats are part of the problem. The statistics are astounding: one million animals per day in Australia are, in fact, killed by pet cats. I think that is quite telling. In the recommendations, there is a call for a clear strategy to inform resourcing and a response to the problem. It is a significant problem. It is of a vast scale. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but we must be focused on it and make sure we're making gains across so many areas.

Discussions in relation to loss of biodiversity and the extinction of native species brings on debate about what we're doing in terms of environmental protections at large. Of course, we've seen the EPBC Act amendment come through the parliament. The important issue of feral cat abatement is an example of why the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is so essential in protecting our native flora and fauna. I have grave concerns around the government's move to divest the powers to the states in relation to the recent legislation that was put to the House of Representatives. I believe it is a very dangerous move. The EPBC Act provides for the identification and listing of key threatening processes. A key threatening process is when it threatens or may threaten the survival, abundance or evolutionary development of a native species or ecological community. It's no surprise that the predation by feral cats is listed as a key threatening process.

Feral cats, as I said, roam over 90 per cent of our continent and are decimating populations of birds, amphibians and small mammals. Some witnesses suggested that over 1.5 billion animals are killed by cats each year. The statistics were really scary. Our biodiversity, already under threat by so many factors, including climate change, deforestation and pollution, is being squeezed unsustainably. Once listed as a key threatening process, threat abatement plans and strategies can be developed. Regrettably, existing plans and strategies are insufficient to halt the extinction crisis driven in part by feral cats. There are concerns that, with the current legislation, there is a push for the divestment of powers of environmental approvals and assessments to the states, without critical safeguards in place. We've seen the final report of the Samuel review of the EPBC Act, and I would suggest that the government's response is inadequate. We need a firm commitment that the government will implement the national standards envisioned by the Samuel review in full. There must be an adequately resourced and independent assurance and compliance regulator. Only then can we be assured that we can reverse the extinction and biodiversity crisis that we have in Australia.

The attitude towards the EPBC Act and what it seeks to protect was on display, I would say, when we had a really inadequate debate—it was rushed through the House of Representatives late last year without proper debate. I call on colleagues in this place and in the Senate to really consider the impact on our environment and what legislation is in fact needed to make sure we do protect our biodiversity, our flora and fauna that is so unique around the world.

This report is a very important report when it comes to one of the worst predators on our native species. I thank all the witnesses and all those who participated, and also the secretariat and my fellow committee members. I commend the recommendations to the House.

Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I agree with the member for Warringah and also with the member for North Sydney, who spoke earlier. This is an important report. The committee has taken on a piece of critical work here because cats represent an enormous threat to Australia's environment. They are the cause of some of the most acute and widespread damage that has already occurred. They are, in the words of one of the experts who appeared before the committee, often the final nail in the coffin as Australian species continue to go extinct.

I'll start by just pointing out that we have to see this report in that larger context; the starting point of the picture is the extraordinary environmental damage which has occurred in Australia, particularly over the last couple of hundred years. Cats have been a big part of that and they continue to be a massive part of it. Then the next part of the picture, sadly, is that our environmental protection framework and the measures which we have been taking to try, on the one hand, to arrest harm, and on the other hand, perhaps in some cases, to restore the environments or see populations come back to their former health, aren't working. Above all, we must stop kidding ourselves about that fact; it is undeniable.

On that point: we can't get a better statement than what the government appointed EPBC reviewer himself, Graeme Samuel, said in his review of the EPBC Act:

The evidence received by the Review is compelling. Australia's natural environment and iconic places are in an overall state of decline and are under increasing threat. The pressures on the environment are significant—including land-use change, habitat loss and degradation, and feral animal and invasive plant species. The impact of climate change on the environment is building, and will exacerbate pressures, contributing to further decline. Given its current state, the environment is not sufficiently resilient to withstand these threats. The current environmental trajectory is unsustainable.

That's the reality as it is now. We've done enormous harm to our environment. We've seen some 30-plus species go extinct already. Sadly, we are a world leader when it comes to mammal extinctions. If we compare Australia with North America as a comparator, we've had 30-plus mammal species go extinct and North America has seen one.

Cats, unfortunately, are a big part of that. They are unparalleled slaughter machines when it comes to Australian mammals, birds, lizards and amphibians. Each year, of 1.6 billion animals, a single feral cat kills 1,200 Australian animals on average. Even pet cats across Australia, collectively, are responsible for killing a million Australian native animals a day. So the largest impact is that of feral cats but, unfortunately, pet cats make a contribution as well. They are, in many cases, the greatest immediate threat to Australia's most endangered species. We have a number of species which are on the brink—they're down to the last few hundred of their number—and it will be the combination of climate change and bushfires, coupled with cat predation, which will see the end of some of those species if we don't do something. And we must do something different, because what we're doing right now isn't working.

I give the government credit: a few years ago they created the Office of the Threatened Species Commissioner. That was a new initiative which was intended to have some beneficial effect on behalf of the most threatened species in Australia, of which, sadly, there are many. But we have to acknowledge now, three years on, that it's not working. It's not working on its own terms. It set some very clear targets. Those targets are not being met. It chose, for example, 20 particularly threatened mammal species, with a target to see an improvement in population numbers for 10 of those 20 species by the end of the first three-year period. That has not occurred. So far, over three years, we've seen a population increase for only four of those 20 mammal species, while for another four an improvement is claimed to the extent that the rate of decline has slowed. That cannot be good enough. If we set these targets, if we create these bodies, we must expect that they deliver the outcomes they have been set up to deliver. Along the way, when that doesn't occur we need to ask why and we need to be prepared to add programs and resources to get what we need. If we don't, then, of those 20 mammal species and the threatened bird species and the amphibian species, we will simply see more extinctions.

You cannot take what is happening in terms of the impact of cats outside of the broader environmental picture. As the member for Warringah just pointed out, the government's actions in this space, in protecting the environment, are nothing to be proud of. You cannot cut 40 per cent of funding from the department of the environment when the environment has been smashed and the trajectory is one of decline. If you take away 40 per cent of funding from the department responsible for that, and you expect things to get better, you are operating according to a different logic than the one I understand should be applied in this space.

You can't have a situation where 79 per cent of decisions made under the EPBC Act involve failures of compliance and failures to meet basic conditions, as the Auditor-General's report found. You can't have, as Graeme Samuel has found, an environmental protection framework at the Commonwealth level that doesn't have effective national standards, that is allowing the net loss of habitat for critically endangered species, that is allowing—as we have seen reported today by The Guardiandouble-dipping when it comes to the use of offsets. The destruction of habitat is supposed to be balanced out by the acquisition of some offset territory that includes equivalent habitat; that is being used multiple times to allow destruction of habitat for multiple projects. That simply cannot be the case.

This report, on a collegiate bipartisan basis, looks very clearly at what the reality will be if we don't act. The reality will be further environmental degradation and the loss of more species, and, therefore, the irreversible loss of biodiversity in Australia. We just cannot accept that. I hope that the government pays close attention to the report and the recommendations, which are the basis of a lot of expert testimony and wide engagement with stakeholders around Australia.

We have urged the government to prioritise the problem of feral cat control, in proper balance with other programs. There are issues like wild dogs, for instance, in rural and regional Australia; we know that that is a problem particularly for primary producers. But it's hard to understand why the funding that goes to wild dog control is so far in excess of the funding that goes to feral cat control. That kind of question has to answered.

The Threatened Species Strategy needs to be seriously revised. The government has so far responded to the failure of the strategy by doing what governments often do and what makes people in the community extremely cynical; it has said: 'Rather than operating over five years, why don't you operate over 10 years? We will kick the can down the road and expand out the scope of your work, and we won't give you any additional resources.' Clearly, there needs to be better collaboration with the states and territories. There needs to be greater investment in scientific research and technology.

We don't have a broadscale method for handling cats, as other speakers have mentioned. At the moment we don't have a way of eliminating cats in the way that we have been able to do to some degree with other invasive species. Until we do, we have to ensure that feral cats in particular don't push the most threatened animals, birds, lizards and amphibians over the edge. The best way we can do that, as the member for North Sydney pointed out, is by significantly expanding the network of exclosures and offshore islands. It is very, very sad that Australia is in a position where the best that we can do is put fences around species, eradicate cats within those species, as a sort of life raft to get them through the next decade or so while we search for something like gene drive technology. But if we don't do that to a greater degree than we are doing now more mammals will go extinct and other animal species as well.

I was part of the committee's trip to Mulligans Flat and that was a real eye-opener. Scientists in this space talk about not just actual extinction but the extinction of experience. Unfortunately, many Australians will go for a walk in the bush and see virtually no animals and think, 'This is Australia. It is a harsh landscape. There are just not that many animals around or perhaps they are hiding.' That isn't true. Our country used to be full of animals. They used to be everywhere until we destroyed it. We have an opportunity to stop that destruction, but the government needs to get the report, pay attention to it and respond with the kinds of measures that it calls for.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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?

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always entertaining to hear from the member for Bruce. With that, I move:

That the debate be adjourned and the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Debate adjourned.