Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to draw the Senate’s attention to the issue of the cane toad and the devastation that it can cause. I recently had the opportunity of joining the Kimberley Toad Busters in the field for a night of toad busting on the Western Australian-Northern Territory border. The Kimberley Toad Busters are the only volunteer group on the ground 12 months of the year, fighting to stop the cane toad from crossing into Western Australia. I would like to thank Ben Scott-Virtue and Sandy Boulter, both from the Kimberley Toad Busters, for arranging the toad bust for me. I would also like to thank my team leader, Tim Leary, and the Kimberley Toad Busters Indigenous coordinator, Juju Wilson, for their guidance and support on the night.

A toad bust with the Kimberley Toad Busters assists in understanding the extent of the field work that the group have undertaken weekly since September 2005. It also provides an opportunity to be briefed about the Kimberley Toad Busters education and cane toad management plans for the Kimberley and the potential risk that the cane toad poses to the Ord River flood plains. The toad-bust exercise consists of a briefing in the late afternoon at the Kimberley Toad Busters headquarters. After this, the volunteers are bussed to the area which is to be busted that night. On arrival at the designated area, you are given a torch and a pair of gloves. You literally then walk into the dead of night, hunting for cane toads. The captured cane toads are placed in large plastic rubbish bags for processing the next morning. At this time they are measured and classified by sex and as either adult or juvenile. This information is recorded prior to the cane toad being placed in another plastic bag and humanely killed by CO2 gas. We caught 748 cane toads on my bust.

On a very serious note, there are many benefits associated with toad busting, including health, social, educational, environmental, natural resource management and Aboriginal welfare. Perhaps the most significant of the social dividends that I witnessed when I went out with the Kimberley Toad Busters was amongst the junior Aboriginal toad busters. I was joined on my toad bust by a number of enthusiastic junior Aboriginal toad busters, including Sasha, LaToya and Montana. Toad busting enforces in these children the value of cooperation and learning to work as part of a team. It teaches them the positive value of contributing to society.

The previous federal government donated $69,000 for the purchase of a second-hand bus and trailer through a grant signed off by former Minister for the Environment and Heritage Senator Ian Campbell. It is this bus that is actually used to transport the junior toad busters and others to what they refer to as the colonising front. This type of financial support for the Kimberley Toad Busters assists in reaping the social dividends amongst the Aboriginal children of Kununurra, who are keen, willing and able to toad-bust and who time and time again have proven themselves to be remarkable toad busters in the remote country of the colonising fronts.

In terms of the cane toad’s presence in Western Australia, contrary to popular belief, cane toads are at the Northern Territory-Western Australian border in the Kimberley region, just east of Lake Argyle, reportedly less than five kilometres from the lake and 3.4 kilometres from the Western Australian border at the Victoria Highway. In March 2009 it was reported by the ABC that a cane toad had been found on the banks of Lake Argyle. Due to the devastating impact the cane toad can have, it is imperative that we keep the Kimberley area of Western Australia free of cane toads.

The Kimberley has many natural values, including areas of wilderness, internationally and nationally recognised wetlands, World Heritage values, wild rivers and native animals. The Kimberley has few natural defences to stop the cane toads establishing. It has been predicted that, if the cane toad were to establish in the Kimberley, the entire mainland population of the northern quoll would disappear from the Kimberley in 10 years from ingesting the cane toads.

I would like to commend the Hon. Donna Faragher, Minister for Environment in the Western Australian government, for recognising the threat that the cane toads pose to Western Australia and for taking pre-emptive action to help combat this threat. The Hon. Donna Faragher recently released for public comment the state government’s Draft cane toad strategy for Western Australia for 2009 to 2019. The publication sets out the WA government’s strategy and aims to provide an integrated response to reduce the impact of cane toads on biodiversity and social and economic values. At the same time, the WA government has given financial support through a $1.2 million four-year grant to the Kimberley Toad Busters for the fight against the impact of the cane toad. My toad-busting experience confirmed for me that the WA government’s financial commitment to the Kimberley Toad Busters was a well-founded decision which is producing widespread and indeed remarkable outcomes from what is a relatively small investment.

I noticed that some laughed when I mentioned that I was talking about the cane toad tonight, but let me tell you that there are two reasons why cane toads are considered to be pests: they are poisonous and they eat both native species and other fauna. There has been considerable research carried out on the cane toad’s destructive impact on native and other species. Regrettably, research shows that the survival and increased numbers of cane toads is at the expense of competing fauna. What a lot of people do not understand is that the cane toad is poisonous at all stages of its life, from egg through to adult, and is actually listed by the Invasive Species Specialist Group as one of the world’s 100 worst invasive alien species.

I mentioned earlier that the WA Minister for Environment is taking positive action to fight the cane toad from coming into Western Australia. However, on a national level, the federal government needs to take more action. For example, to date, no national threat abatement plan has been prepared to combat the cane toad. This means that the eradication of the cane toad is not being adequately coordinated at a national level and the consequences of this lack of action are devastating for the national environment.

I have discussed this issue with representatives from the Kimberley Toad Busters, who strongly endorse a national threat abatement plan. Sandy Boulter, on behalf of the Kimberley Toad Busters in a letter to the director of the environmental biosecurity section of the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts of 12 March 2009, said that many cane toad research scientists and community groups, including the Kimberley Toad Busters, are concerned about the lack of national leadership in the campaign against the cane toad.

The Kimberley Toad Busters say that not only is a national abatement plan a feasible, effective and efficient way to abate the invasion of Australia by the cane toad but it is also critically important to better managing the limited resources available for controlling and/or finding a way of eradicating the cane toad. The Toad Busters also say that there needs to be a central repository of all cane toad information, resource outcomes, educational materials and cane toad management strategies that is easily accessible by all cane toad activists; that a nationally-guided, effective dialogue on the management of the cane toad is crucially needed; and that there is presently nothing efficient or effective about ad hoc decisions relating to the application of cane toad management and research funds in Australia.

I would like to quote Lee Scott-Virtue, the founder and president of the Kimberley Toad Busters:

It is important to recognise that the pristine terrestrial and aquatic habitat systems of the Kimberley are already under threat. Current land care and resource management policies undertaken by land and resource managers have had a detrimental impact on Kimberley biodiversity. Most of our plant and animal biodiversity is in a fragile state. The impact of the cane toad, if allowed to happen, will literally destroy one of the last unique biodiversity wilderness frontiers in Australia.

For the information of the Senate, adult cane toads produce a poison gland over their upper surface. When they are provoked, they will secrete a poison. An animal then ingests the cane toad—or, alternatively, its eggs—and it then absorbs the poison into its body. It actually causes heart failure and, ultimately, the death of many, many of the flora and fauna within the Kimberley.