Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak today in response to a speech in this place on February 11 by Senator Rhiannon, from the Greens. Senator Rhiannon's speech was about kangaroos and, in particular, about kangaroo harvesting. The impression someone who knows little or nothing about this subject would take away from Senator Rhiannon's speech is that kangaroos are heading for extinction because of commercial harvesting. In fact, nothing is further from the truth.

There are many issues on which I would not agree with Senator Rhiannon. She does not want any coal to be mined or for any coal to be exported to China, for starters. She promotes vegetarianism, opposes live cattle exports and supports direct protest action against mining. She also holds views on a wide range of other issues—such as her opposition to Israel, fondness for the old Soviet Union and an interest in radical socialism—that are diametrically opposed to mine. In Senator Rhiannon's ideal world, we would be eating just vegetables, fruit and grains—and, of course, swallowing supplements to obtain the essential micronutrients that meat provides. However, the real world is hungry for red meat. It is an amazing food and we were meant to eat it—and that is as true of kangaroo as it is of beef or lamb or goat.

Kangaroo meat has helped provide Australians with a healthy, nutritious diet for more than 50,000 years. It is still doing so today. In its kangaroos, Australia has a self-replenishing resource of superbly healthy red meat. We must not let it go to waste. By harvesting this resource in sensible, well-managed numbers—the way it happens now—we can sustain both the physical health of the meat eaters here and overseas and the economic health of communities throughout rural Australia that rely on the kangaroo industry, including the graziers, who rely on the culling of kangaroos so that they do not eat the grazing lands out for cattle and sheep.

Surely you would have to be an unreformed old ideologue to oppose a win-win outcome like that. Yet Senator Rhiannon would end kangaroo harvesting tomorrow, given the chance. She opposed kangaroo harvesting during her time in the New South Wales parliament and has continued the same campaign since her election to this place in 2010.

Anyone driving on a country road anywhere in Australia could tell Senator Rhiannon that kangaroo populations are healthy, at least along our roadways. Insurance claims show that in the year 2009, in just the three states of Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia, there were over 15,000 accidents involving kangaroos that required repairs to vehicles. That is 300 a week, or more than 40 every day. Do not try to tell country drivers that kangaroos are rare, Senator Rhiannon. They have the evidence of their own eyes to dispute that.

Despite her dire warnings and predictions, kangaroo numbers across the country remain healthy. In fact, in the time she has been a member of the Senate, kangaroo numbers appear to have increased by well over 40 per cent. However, I will not make too much of that fact, because kangaroo numbers do fluctuate considerably in response to rainfall and other seasonal conditions—as Senator Rhiannon well knows but apparently chooses to ignore in her public statements on this matter.

Very early on in her speech of 11 February Senator Rhiannon said:

From 2001 to 2011, collated national population estimates across commercial hunting zones in the four mainland States recorded a 40 per cent drop ...

A 40 per cent fall in kangaroo numbers in just 10 years sounds alarming, doesn't it? I will come back to this issue shortly. However, Senator Rhiannon continued, in relation to this 40 per cent drop:

We need to ask why this is not an issue of concern. Maybe it is because there were still an estimated 34 million in 2011. But this is down from 57 million in 2001, according to the department's own collated figures.

The federal Department of the Environment—as the then Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities—published a report on kangaroo harvesting in April 2013. It shows population estimates for the areas in which kangaroos are harvested in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia. It covers the four species of large kangaroos involved: the red kangaroo, western grey kangaroo, eastern grey kangaroo and wallaroo.

The report shows there were an estimated 57 million kangaroos in total in those areas in 2001. However, the annual figures presented by the Department of the Environment go back to 1999. So why did Senator Rhiannon select the 2001 figure as her starting point? Obviously because 2001 was an exceptional year for kangaroo numbers thanks to ideal seasonal conditions with respect to water and grass. If she had been wanting to present the worst possible case, making kangaroo population figures look as bad as possible, then 2001 was the place to start.

The population estimate for 1999, for example, was around 41 million; for 2000, 49 million; for 2001, 57 million; for 2002, 44 million; and for 2003, 28 million. Kangaroo numbers do fluctuate considerably from year to year in response to seasonal conditions. Like so many other species of Australian wildlife, kangaroos respond to the cycles of flood and drought, of boom and bust.

Even including the exceptional 2001 population figure of 57 million, the kangaroo population shown in the annual Department of the Environment figures for the years 1999 to 2012 averages around 33 million. The 2012 population total is almost 36 million, higher than average—and, in fact, the highest figure since 2002. Of course, that figure of 36 million is some one-and-a-half times the human population of Australia and higher than the cattle population in Australia of some 28 million head. So it is very sizeable figure—and, remember, that is just the kangaroo population in those regions of four states where kangaroos are harvested; it is not the actual total population of kangaroos and wallabies throughout the entire continent, which of course would be considerably higher.

I also looked at figures published in October 2012 by the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection in a report Queensland Wildlife Trade Management Plan for Export—Commercially Harvested Macropods 2013-17. What the Queensland figures also show is an exceptional spike in kangaroo numbers, largely thanks to a boom in eastern grey kangaroos, in the year 2001. In fact, the numbers began increasing sharply in around 1997-98 and had fallen back to more typical levels by 2003-04.

However, the Queensland figures go back further than the figures in the report from the federal Department of the Environment. Rather than going back to only 1999, the Queensland figures go back as far as 1992, showing the fluctuations in kangaroo numbers in Queensland year-by-year for a 20-year period. In 1992 the total population of the three large kangaroo species in Queensland was a little over 15 million. For 14 of the 20 years from 1992 to 2011 kangaroo numbers fluctuated somewhere around 10 million to 15 million. The lowest figure was just under 10 million in 1995. In 2011, the population was just over 20 million.

So, just as with the national figures, the Queensland population figures show the current numbers are running at better than average. All the figures point to a healthy kangaroo population. That is a far cry from the perception that Senator Rhiannon is trying to present. Let me repeat: the population estimates, both long term and short term, all indicate a very healthy, very sustainable kangaroo population in Australia.

Of course one way to cover the fact that all the population estimates point to a very healthy situation for kangaroos is to criticise the way the estimates are calculated. Sure enough, that is one of Senator Rhiannon's early targets in her speech. This is part of what she said:

Current analysis of the survey methodology and raw data is now suggesting systematic and massive inflation of kangaroo numbers, from which corresponding excessively inflated commercial shooting quotas are extracted—so that larger numbers may be shot from shrinking populations.

As indicated there, population estimates for the main kangaroo species are used to establish harvest quotas for the various regions in each of the four harvesting states each year. That is done so that kangaroos can be harvested in a completely sustainable way. The kangaroo harvest is very well managed and has been for very many decades. For example, in Queensland, the commercial harvest of kangaroos has been monitored since 1952.

Senator Rhiannon has accused the responsible agencies of a 'systematic and massive inflation of kangaroo numbers' so that 'excessively inflated commercial shooting quotas' can be allocated. That is an obvious nonsense and a gross insult to the departmental officers involved. Does Senator Rhiannon really believe that professional staff from agencies like the federal Department of the Environment and the Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage Protection would really allow inflated figures to be used in these calculations? Of course they wouldn't. That statement alone demands an apology from Senator Rhiannon to the highly qualified, hardworking and professional staff involved in management of kangaroo numbers.

How kangaroos are managed and the way the harvest quota is set by the four state governments and the Commonwealth government are clearly set out in a fact sheet available on the website of the Department of the Environment called 'The Commercial Kangaroo Harvesting Fact Sheet'. Detailed management plans are also published by the four state governments involved. This is a very transparent process. Based on quotas determined by wildlife management experts and various government agencies, a number of tags are issued to a licensed kangaroo shooter. No kangaroo can be harvested without one of these tags attached to it. Issuing a limited number of tags ensures no more than that number of kangaroos can be harvested, sent to the abattoirs, or sold for skins.

Senator Rhiannon describes kangaroo harvesting as the world's largest commercial slaughter of land based wildlife—a phrase she borrows from organisations like Animals Australia, Voiceless, and the World League for Protection of Animals. By contrast, the Department of the Environment says that the commercial kangaroo harvest industry in Australia is one of the world's best practise wild harvest operations, with management goals based on firm principles of sustainability.

All of the four species subject to commercial harvesting—that is red kangaroos, eastern grey kangaroos, western grey kangaroos, and wallaroos—are common, and none is listed as a threatened species. Products derived from kangaroos include meat for human consumption and skins for leather products—some skins and meat are used domestically, while the remainder is exported to more than 55 countries.

The scientific community and the state wildlife management agencies consider that annual harvest levels in the order of 15 per cent of the population of grey kangaroos and wallaroos, and 20 per cent of red kangaroos, are sustainable. The sustainable harvest quotas are set at or below these rates, and represent an upper limit on the harvest, independent of industry demand. To ensure there is no detriment to any species in any region, each state is divided into zones for monitoring and quota setting. There are checks and double-checks to ensure that kangaroo populations are sustained at appropriate levels.

Senator Rhiannon, who is opposed to kangaroo harvesting on philosophical grounds, searches for reasons to try to justify opposing these harvests. She should have the honesty to say she is opposed to kangaroo harvesting because she is opposed to animals being killed for human use, or that she does not want people to eat meat. Do not attack the professionalism and integrity of countless wildlife management experts across the continent. It just does not stack up. In her speech, Senator Rhiannon relies on a submission to the New South Wales government by a private individual, Mr Raymond Mjadwesch. He wants kangaroos to be listed as a threatened species under the New South Wales Threatened Species Conservation Act. At least six times in her speech Senator Rhiannon refers to what she calls a 'nomination' of kangaroos as a threatened species. In fact, it is a submission by a single individual and in no way has the force of official nomination as she seems to suggest. She complains in her speech that more than two years after the submission was made the New South Wales government has not acted on it. Of course, that could be in part because it is an individual submission, uninvited, and perhaps does not warrant any action by the relevant New South Wales authorities.

Mr Mjadwesch is something of a serial protester against kangaroo harvesting and control. He protested the culling of kangaroos on Mount Panorama, Bathurst, before the 2009 Bathurst 1000 motor car race. A video explaining his reasons for that protest is available on YouTube. The link is on my website for those who would like to know more about his arguments.

He also lodged a formal protest against a decision by the ACT government last year to cull some 1,200 kangaroos. The cull was needed to protect biodiversity in seven nature reserves in the ACT and stop the kangaroos eating themselves into starvation, because there were simply too many kangaroos in the reserves. Mr Mjadwesch gave evidence in a hearing before the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal, but his evidence was overruled in favour of expert evidence and the kangaroo cull went ahead as planned. It should be noted that the ACT Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, who authorised and oversaw the culling of these 1,200 kangaroos, is MLA Shane Rattenbury, a member of Senator Rhiannon's own Greens Party. It is noteworthy that her irrational opposition to kangaroo control and harvesting is not even shared by everyone in her own party, let alone the broader community.

Let me repeat: kangaroos are harvested sustainably. They provide healthy red-meat protein and represent a valuable resource that must not be allowed to go to waste.