Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to raise my controls with the Victorian government's decision to end wild dog control measures on public land in Victoria's north-west. I've already been contacted by people in my electorate of Gippsland who are concerned that this is yet another example of extreme green madness working its way through the bureaucracy and the Labor Party ranks in Victoria. They feared that this madness will spread to Gippsland as well and lead to an explosion wild dog attacks on our farmlands.

This is madness, because wild dogs cost the Australian economy in the order of $100 million per year in lost production, they cause enormous stress and mental health problems for our farming families and they devastate native wildlife. Even if the Labor Party and the Greens don't care about our farmers, they should understand the impact on biodiversity. Wild dogs are opportunistic predators. They will prey on anything from goannas to birds to koalas.

We have a National Wild Dog Action Plan which promotes national consistency and strategies to conduct safe, efficient and humane-best practice control of wild dogs. I've written to the federal minister and urged him to pressure his Victorian Labor colleagues to support the National Wild Dog Action Plan, because these dogs are highly mobile. They don't respect state borders, and obviously to succeed in controlling wild dogs we need all jurisdictions working together. I note that this decision by the Victorian government was made without consulting the National Wild Dog Action Plan coordination committee. (Time expired)