Tuesday, 30 July 2024

Wildlife crime

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (17:52): (998) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Environment, and the action I seek is for the reporting mechanisms and responsibilities of Crime Stoppers, Agriculture Victoria, RSPCA and the Victorian Conservation Regulator in dealing with reports of wildlife crime to be reviewed.

Crime Stoppers has a new campaign which says, ‘Wildlife Crime: It’s Your Call,’ except those calls have been coming in in the thousands for years and nothing has been done. The community is not to blame for the lack of prosecution on wildlife crime. For decades wildlife rescuers have been begging authorities to take their complaints seriously, pursuing all the reporting avenues to have crimes heard. Crime Stoppers itself has released that it received an 88 per cent increase in reports in the past year to wildlife authorities, yet it seems they continue to do nothing about it.

I have had countless constituents reach out to me filled with hopelessness after their reports of cruelty are handballed between Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Crime Stoppers, RSPCA and Agriculture Victoria – all refusing to accept responsibility. For example, my constituent was seeking to report the use of illegal fruit netting and was first told by DEECA to report it to Crime Stoppers only to then be told by Crime Stoppers it is the RSPCA’s responsibility and that Agriculture Victoria would refer it on to them. The RSPCA then told her that they had no record of any complaint at all. With persistence the constituent, after re-reporting it to the RSPCA, found that the matter had been finalised, yet no action had been taken, and the illegal netting was still there in its place. This then sparked the constituent to lodge a freedom-of-information request into the number of complaints received by the RSPCA of illegal residential fruit netting since the introduction of the offence in 2019. She was told that they do not collect data on this at all. Again with resilience, my constituent lodged a new FOI request and was eventually provided with 13 recorded reports of illegal residential fruit netting, including dead and trapped-alive birds in the nets. No action was taken on any of these reports and no infringement notices have been handed out, despite the evidence of illegal activity.

The problem is not that the public are not reporting wildlife crime and need to be encouraged to do so. The problem is that the various agencies cannot work together and have no idea who is responsible for what when it comes to wildlife welfare. I hope that instead of blaming the community the Minister for Environment can ensure Crime Stoppers Victoria and the conservation regulator recognise their roles in wildlife crime and review this reporting process and the level of prosecution.