Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this matter of the use of 1080, particularly in a Western Australia context. Without being flippant, this is the Australian parliament and what happens in New Zealand is something that we cannot control. What we can control is what happens within our borders. And as a senator from Western Australia, I have a particular interest in what happens within the border of Western Australia. 1080 is both an essential and vital part of our wild dog control program in Western Australia.

The reality is that 1080 is a poison. It kills animals, and it can kill humans, if it is ingested. That's what poisons are. It's a naturally occurring poison. That doesn't matter; a poison, whether it's synthetic or naturally occurring, is still a poison. This is interesting and very important in the Australian context, and, more importantly, in the Western Australia context, because this is a naturally occurring compound in some 40 plant species particularly in Australia, but also in Brazil and Africa. There are several native Australian plant genera that contain the toxin, including, most importantly, gastrolobium. I probably didn't know the technical name earlier today, and I think many more of us in the farming community would know it as poison P. It is fairly common, particularly in the south-west of WA, but parts of this genus are found right across Australia. As a result, particularly in the south-west of Western Australia but more broadly throughout Australia, there is a high level of tolerance to this toxic compound in native Australian animals. I'll go through that in more detail later.

As I said when I began, this is a poison, and we do have to view all things with a wider perspective. I think I'm probably one of the few people in this place—and I suspect, Mr Acting Deputy President O'Sullivan, you are another—who has seen both the outcome of 1080 bait ingestion and the outcome of a wild-dog attack on sheep populations. I'm happy to accept that the outcome of 1080 bait ingestion on a wild dog is dramatic, but even more dramatic is the impact of even one wild dog on a sheep herd or on millions of native Australian animals every year.

1080 bait has been used in Western Australia, particularly through what was called the Western Shield program. It has been a broad-scale program that has been targeting foxes in particular and also wild dogs since about 1994. What has it led to? There's an ongoing problem with wild dogs—I do acknowledge that—but it has had some very positive impacts, in certain areas, on enabling the ongoing presence of sheep. It has also had a positive impact on populations of a number of native animal species. The findings—and I believe this comes from the Department of Agriculture in Western Australia—are that there has been a significant improvement in the population of several native species. In fact, for the first time, it led to three species of mammals being taken off the Endangered Species List. That is a direct result of the baiting program using 1080 for the control of feral animals in Australia. Feral animals have a devastating effect on agricultural production. There are whole areas in Western Australia—in particular, the eastern rangelands around Kalgoorlie and parts of the southern Pilbara—where traditional sheep areas now cannot produce sheep. They have moved into goats and/or cattle. Some have gone out of production altogether because of the presence of wild dogs.

Senator Hinch said there are a number of alternative approaches; and there may will be in the future—in particular, genetic approaches that can take away the need for trapping, shooting and the use of poisons—but they are not effective and certainly they are not able to be rolled out at the moment. When you consider the vast open spaces of Western Australia, particularly the areas where agriculture meets the non-agricultural parts of Western Australia, the idea of using a poison with an antidote is both meaningless and completely redundant, even if such a poison were available and cost-effective.

So we need to use a suite of measures. Nobody believes that 1080 alone is going to be successful in controlling the wild dog populations and protecting both agriculture and native species, but it is an important component in what we are trying to do. A review of 1080 conducted in 2008 found that there was poisoning of non-targeted animals. However, it was significantly limited and did not adversely affect the overall population of non-targeted animals. On the other side of that, there are obviously a large number of animals protected when predatory animals are killed.

Whilst the poisoning of non-targeted species is, of course, something that nobody wants, 1080 is a highly restricted product. It is restricted under legislation which requires significant control of its supply and its use. It has to be used by trained persons who are authorised by state and territory governments. Western Australia also has a significantly enhanced set of control regimes: 1080 is not available to the general public, authorisation is required before anyone can obtain 1080 baits, a risk assessment is undertaken before authorisation is given, training requirements are stipulated and must be met and reporting of any incidents is mandatory. So it is a highly regulated poison. It is regulated under the federal acts and under the state Poisons Act. In terms of its lethality—I think this is worth mentioning—the lethal dose is the generally used measure of the lethality of poisons, and it is measured in milligrams per kilogram. In Western Australia, for a dog, it is 0.11; for a fox, it is 0.14; for a bobtail skink, a native species, it is over 800; for a particular species of goanna, it is 235; for the brushtail possum, it is 118; for the western grey kangaroo, it is 47; for the quoll, it is seven; and for emus, it is 96. Again, for dogs and foxes it is under one—0.11 and 0.14 for dogs and foxes respectively. So, obviously, you have very significant differences in lethality for the targeted species, particularly introduced species, and native species.

Just for some context: wild dog control is obviously very important in Western Australia, particularly for the protection of the sheep meat and wool industry but also increasingly for rangeland goats, and I have been hearing over the last year—and I'm sure Senator Smith would have heard the same thing in his travels in the north of Western Australia—that cattle are increasingly coming under threat due to the size and scale of the problem in some areas. So, in our livestock industries, you're talking about a very significant asset that we are protecting across Western Australia, and this is a very important part of that control.

Just briefly, before I finish up, I would also like to mention that farming and farming industries would prefer not to have to use any chemicals or any poisons; it's as simple as that. Nobody uses these things on a farm with any joy. Farmers are very keen to minimise the use of chemicals and poisons at every opportunity. But they are a part of the reality of farming and farming systems, and, at the moment, in the suite of tools we have available to us, the use of 1080 is a vital part of our armoury, particularly against wild dogs.