Tuesday, 8 February 2022

Wild horse control

Mr T BULL (Gippsland East) (19:09): (6190) My adjournment is to the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and the action that I am seeking tonight is for the minister to provide the full details of the brumby culling program that is going on in Victoria. As the minister knows, this is a contentious program, but Victorians and particularly country communities where this activity is taking place deserve some basic details—details around how many brumbies have been culled to date, whether the program has finished or whether it is continuing and, if it has not concluded, how many more are intended to be culled.

The reason I raise this tonight is that communities deserve to know the detail. In my electorate I have got businesses that operate brumby sightseeing tours, and I have got a number of people in my constituency that are very, very interested in knowing the details of this program. Now, the minister has said that she does not want to reveal the locations of where the culling is taking place, to protect those that are doing the culling. Okay, I accept that. I am not asking for that. But we certainly deserve to know what stage this program is at, how many brumbies have been culled and what the future holds. I am not asking her to reveal the locations of future culls. We know where they have taken place, because so many locals have found the carcasses in the bush. But our communities deserve to know the details over and above what the minister has already released, which are extremely vague. Let us know how many you have culled, let us know how many you intend to cull and let us know if the program has finished or not. You can keep the rest of it secret, but our communities and those businesses that rely on brumby sightseeing tours deserve to know the basic details. I call on the minister to provide this information.