Tuesday, 29 August 2023

Kangaroo control

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:31): (428) My adjournment tonight is to the Minister for Agriculture, and the action I seek is that Nillumbik shire immediately be removed from the kangaroo-harvesting program. The community in Nillumbik care deeply about their kangaroos, and they want to see these native animals protected and not killed. Over 1000 people have signed their names in support of Nillumbik being excluded from the central region of the kangaroo-harvesting program, a disturbing scheme that has commercialised the killing of our kangaroos. The community I grew up in in Nillumbik love living in the natural environment of the green wedge and they love the native wildlife that lives around them. I have heard from many community members that they are extremely distressed about the slaughter of kangaroos in their area.

This profit-focused kangaroo-harvesting program is having an awful impact on the local healthy kangaroo population, and this at a time when there are reports that the kangaroo population numbers are being overstated by the Labor government while they have increased the statewide kill quota by almost 30 per cent this year. There are appalling accounts of animals being shot and not killed, left to die a horrific death. Joeys are being orphaned and abandoned or killed. The cruelty in this for-profit program is abhorrent. I have heard that shooters are literally doorknocking and leafleting areas in Nillumbik looking for kangaroos to slaughter. This business has no place in our community. The killing of kangaroos must stop. Again I call on the minister to take urgent action and have Nillumbik removed from this cruel kangaroo-harvesting scheme.