Tuesday, 4 March 2025

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:50): (1458) My question for the Minister for Environment concerns the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action’s (DEECA) annual kangaroo harvesting quota. Peter Riddle has been a professional kangaroo harvester for 10 years, working eight properties across my electorate. It is a full-time job, yet for the first quarter of 2025 he was allocated just 50 tags – that is one and a half night’s work, then no income for more than two months. Yet those same farms are this year overrun by thousands of kangaroos. Peter believes the estimate you rely on, Minister, to calculate the quota – 261,000 kangaroos in Barwon South West – is completely inaccurate. The methodology of counting 3 hours before sunrise or after sunset is simply wrong, according to Peter, who in the last decade has probably spent more time studying these animals than anyone else in Victoria. He says they hide in the bush all day and come out after dark. How can dawn or dusk counts catch that? He suggests the night-time use of thermal equipment would give a completely different result. He also points out none of his eight property owners has seen a surveyor. Peter thinks your transects have missed localised booms. Farms he works have up to 1500 kangaroos, which would extrapolate way beyond the area estimate you claim. Nor does your survey’s decline in numbers since 2022 accord with the experience of these farmers, who claim numbers have doubled.

When pressed on the devastating impact of increased kangaroo numbers, DEECA suggest authority to control wildlife permits for farmers are the solution. This is absurd. Instead of professional, humane and sustainable shooting, farmers would likely be forced to shoot kangaroos themselves and leave them to rot or as food for foxes, wild dogs and cats. The damage is real. One farmer explained the impact of Peter’s work, especially in drought conditions. He said:

… we are experiencing the toughest season in 50 years our pasture and water supply, bank account and ourselves are under extreme pressure. Without the harvesting of kangaroos our 140 year old business is under threat … we are investing in exclusion fencing but wearing 100% of the cost at $25,000 a km … it’s going to take some time. Extremely disappointed and angry, this sort of thing makes me feel like giving up.

Minister, the action I seek is for you to improve your survey methodology and to increase quota levels for professional harvesters, ditching the crazy solution of requiring farmers to negotiate bureaucratic wildlife control permits and then having to go out and undertake the seriously skilled, professional, specialist task of shooting kangaroos.