Wednesday, 21 February 2024

Wild dog control

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:41): (717) My adjournment matter is for the attention of the Minister for Agriculture. The action that I seek is for the minister to provide details of the engagement plan to assess the future of the declaration of the dingo as unprotected, including the livestock protection buffer in north-east Victoria. The buffer gives the state’s wild dog controllers the authority to bait and trap wild dogs on public land within 3 kilometres of a farm fence. It was put in place in 2012 with great success. It pushes these ruthless killers back into the bush. A decade ago trappers would catch 120 feral dogs a year. The number now rarely tops 30. In September the agriculture and environment ministers signed a 12-month extension to the declaration, but instead of the previously accepted five-year term, it was an interim measure to allow a comprehensive assessment of the dingo population across Victoria. A spokesperson talked up working with farmers and private landholders to balance the protection of livestock and dingo conservation. The government needs to explain what has happened since October, what is planned and who it is talking to.

Those who have lived through the torment and terror of pre the buffer zone have told me and my colleague the member for Benambra that the buffer saves livestock and protects humans. They should be the government’s first call. They will tell you about herds decimated and animals left half eaten. They will tell you about the toll on their mental health and the impact on native animals in the years before the buffer. But I fear this government has been misled by what it calls emerging research that says all dogs in the bush are dingoes. The research was generated by a Dingo Foundation acolyte and was far from independent. It had very few dogs from the north-east in the study of around 307 dogs from the width and breath of Australia. Their findings are nonsense. The wild dogs in the north-east are crossbred domestic dogs gone wild – large beasts with laid-back ears.

Animals Australia has also added its voice of dissent, taking the government to the Supreme Court over the unprotection order. They argue the stock losses are now minimal, and locals would agree. But that is because the buffer zone works. Animals Australia say the dingo is threatened and needs protection, but if the assumption is that all these dogs are dingoes, then they are definitely not at risk. Meanwhile the Bush Telegraph says that the department is already talking to dog men about their future, linking the Animals Australia court action to the end of their trapping. Given the government’s tendency to surrender to these bleeding hearts, I fear that like a good dog it may have already rolled over.