Tuesday, 18 November 2025

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (13:08): Pursuant to standing order 23.22, I table the report of the inquiry into wildlife road strike in Victoria, including an appendix, extracts of proceedings and a minority report, by the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, and I present the transcripts of evidence. I move:

That the transcripts of evidence be tabled and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

Georgie PURCELL: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

I am really pleased as chair of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee to be tabling this really important report on wildlife road strike here in Victoria. We know that wildlife road strike is an absolute crisis on our roads across the state. It is not just an animal welfare issue, it is a public safety issue and it requires urgent attention and action from the government in order to address it. The injuring and killing of native animals as a result of collisions with motor vehicles, or wildlife road strike, causes enormous suffering for the animals but also substantially increases the risk of death and injury to motorists across the state.

Anyone who drives on regional roads regularly, like me – I drive on regional roads every single day that are surrounded by native animals – knows the true extent of this problem. It is really easy to get lost in numbers; the reality is that 10 million native animals are killed on Australian roads every single year. But when you narrow it down to those individual animals, we have a whole network of volunteers responding every single day to those individuals, each of which has a different story and has suffered in ways that are really hard for us to often comprehend or understand, often for days or at least hours, sometimes even weeks on end, depending on the part of Victoria these animals are discovered in. We know that this is not just an issue that is a breaking point when it comes to the wildlife rescue community, but the Victorian public wants action on this issue as well. Obviously recently we had the really tragic case in Victoria where two good Samaritans stopped on a road to try and assist a kangaroo and unfortunately both lost their lives in the process. That is why this report makes some really, really important recommendations that will help to ease the burden on the rescue community and the community responding to this but to also implement better public safety measures on our roads across the state. The reality is we are destroying the habitat of animals, we are destroying their homes, and it is leaving them with nowhere to go. We have native animals going to places that we have never seen them go before, and it is putting their lives and existence at risk.

This report recommends a number of things, including updating safety protocols to wildlife rescuers when responding to road strike and establishing a single statewide number for reporting wildlife road strike collisions. Importantly, and something that I am really proud of, it recommends a small optional vehicle registration contribution so that Victorians can directly give back to wildlife rescuers every time that they pay their vehicle registration to support their work. Our wildlife rescuers are volunteers; they are self-funding this work. They are doing it on top of their day jobs, and it is certainly not cheap. The very least that the government could do is financially support them, given that they are doing a job that is keeping our public areas safe and accessible and taking that off the hands of the government and the department. It also calls on statewide education campaigns so that people know the risks, the signs and what to do in the case of a wildlife road strike and many, many other really important things across the report to actually reduce this problem in the first place, such as drawing on international comparisons to reduce wildlife road strike and to implement safety measures and infrastructure and detection systems to notify not just animals when there is a risk on the road but road users when there is a risk on the roads as well.

I would really like to thank those rescuers who gave up their time to speak to us, because I know if wildlife rescuers do not have much of something it certainly is time, because they are responding to this significant issue. I would really love to thank the committee staff, who have produced such a wonderful report alongside the committee. As always, there was a diversity of views among members, but I think that we had a consensus, an agreement, that this is an issue that needs addressing, and we have come up with a range of findings and recommendations that will now go to the government in order for them to respond to. Just in particular I would like to thank Michael Baker, Jessica Summers, Adeel Siddiqui and Julie Barnes for their ongoing work supporting us as a committee; we all really, really appreciate it. And I am looking forward to seeing the government’s response to this report.

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:14): Just to speak further on this report, it was my pleasure to be part of the inquiry, and like the chair, I thank all the parliamentary staff and committee members and staff who helped us run an efficient inquiry. I would also pay tribute to the wildlife rescuers and the whole community who gave their time to give us some great insights into the challenges that they have. We wrote a dissenting report, or a minority report. It was not really dissenting, it was really a case of just providing additional context to some of the recommendations that were made.

I agree that we have a significant problem with wildlife road strike in Victoria. If the wider community understood the scale of it, they would be scandalised by it. But what hampers everything in making all good faith attempts to address it is the lack of data. We have excellent anecdotal information about where and when these road strikes occur, but we do not have properly systemised, standardised data gathered on a like-for-like basis. That makes it incredibly difficult to know, when we are putting resources into solutions, where we put them, which ones are effective and which ones are not one.

One of the really disappointing elements of the inquiry was we all had great hopes for virtual fencing and other technologies that might come to our aid. Sadly, none of the existing sets of technologies are up to the job. We will have to wait for further innovation before that becomes a viable alternative. The other challenge is that the volunteer groups themselves need to organise better so that they can be a vehicle for support. At the moment it is a very disparate group. Again, I would like to thank everyone from the committee. I think it was an excellent and valuable exercise, and I also commend the report to the house.

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (13:16): I am pleased to be able to speak about the wildlife road strike inquiry, and I thank my fellow committee members and the secretariat for their work on this. As Mr Welch mentioned, we did submit a minority report. Road strike is a huge issue in Victoria, particularly in regional Victoria. We know that there have been over 10,000 accidents or collisions, and many, many more are unreported, so we know that the data is missing. A number of recommendations are things like improving our roads, maintenance on our roads, clearance of roadsides, also driver education and training and how important that is, and the need for a centralised number. If you are in that situation where you hit wildlife, what do you do? At the moment there is a number of different numbers you can call.

Population mitigation is important because we know that there is a huge number of kangaroos in our region, also wombats and deer are also spreading. Speed limits were discussed. But we heard that you can hit a kangaroo at any speed, doing even 30 kilometres an hour. As has been highlighted, the lack of data really inhibited the ability to make recommendations, but it was clear that Victoria is very unique. We have thousands of kilometres of roads, so it is a very big challenge that we face.

I do want to thank all those who made a submission, because your contribution to this was very important. One of the recommendations that we put forward was the need for a code of practice, because there are so many volunteers, including the CFA and the SES and our wildlife rescuers, engaged in this issue, to ensure that there is not overlap. We look forward to the government’s response because this is a very important issue, particularly in northern Victoria.

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (13:18): It was also my pleasure to sit as part of this inquiry, and I just want to echo the chair’s comments around the urgency of some of the recommendations that have been made in this report. We heard extensively from witnesses, and this was underlined by events during the course of the hearings when we saw tragically two more lives lost, those of young women who had stopped to assist a kangaroo struck on the road. The urgency of that incident was just echoed throughout all of the submissions and contributions we heard directly from submitters at hearings.

This is an issue that is causing loss of life, injury, death and suffering on our roads for animals and also for people. I really want to thank the rescuers in particular who came and gave evidence before the committee. The work that they do is really, really difficult. It is wearing emotionally and physically, and it is not adequately reimbursed at the moment. I really want to throw my support behind the recommendations that suggest that we take better care of our carers and find a better way to facilitate their very important work in the community. They are a community of volunteers that deserve support. I would hazard a guess that many people in the broader general public do not realise that our wildlife carers are not in some way professionally supported by the government. We have emergency first responders for a range of other incidents, but this is a really big issue that only you confront, I suppose, when you as an individual have a collision,

But it is happening every day, it is causing distress every day, and I really urge the government to take seriously the urgency of addressing this problem, which came through so clearly throughout the hearings.

Motion agreed to.