Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Climate Change and Water (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by the Leader of the Australian Greens (Senator Bob Brown) today relating to the proposed culling of kangaroos in the Australian Capital Territory.

The Greens are quite distressed that it appears from Minister Garrett’s comments that he is just going to wait and see what happens throughout the culling process. Over 400 kangaroos are going to be culled, as we understand it. Of course, if you wait and see, there is nothing you can do about it once the kangaroos have been culled. We believe that this issue has developed through a lack of proper response and inattention and inaction by both the ACT government and the Commonwealth government through the Department of Defence. It is Department of Defence land, and we therefore believe that the Commonwealth should have had a much greater role and involvement in this issue from the beginning. The fact is that their level of inaction and procrastination has resulted in the situation we face now and, if action had been taken earlier, we would not see the need for culling and addressing the issue of the impact of so many kangaroos. The numbers would not have built up and the grasslands and threatened ecological communities that are in this area would not be under threat as they are now because of the numbers of kangaroos.

We understand that the expert panel that made a report on this issue considered the alternative option of moving the kangaroos or, as we call it, translocation. The expert panel apparently rejected this option because it did not consider that dart capture followed by release into the wild would be a better option. I am quite surprised about this, because translocation would surely be a better option than being dead, for a start. As I understand it, the translocation practices have improved—

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Listen to the experts, Rachel!

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The point is that other experts have very clearly said—and further research has been undertaken since the earlier work on translocation which has shown this—that the mortality rate in translocation has significantly decreased. As I understand it, it is down to a level of only five per cent mortality, which we believe is a much better option than actually culling the kangaroos. Culling kangaroos has to be the absolute last resort. We do not believe enough effort has been put into looking at the translocation option and we would certainly like to see at least a pilot program undertaken on it.

Other forms of control are apparently now being considered after preliminary work has been done around fertility control. We very strongly support non-lethal methods of control into the future. We very strongly suggest that consideration be given to at least a trial of translocation. That is much preferable to culling the kangaroos and it needs to be looked at as a matter of urgency. We urge very strongly that translocation be reconsidered because we are deeply concerned that decisions have been made on old science whereas there is now a lot of new science around translocation of kangaroos.

Question agreed to.