Thursday, 18 June 2026

 Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (10:17): I rise to address the growing push to declare Victoria’s deer a pest species and to put on record why this is the wrong call. Nobody in this chamber disputes that deer numbers need an active management solution. Landholders across eastern Victoria deal with fence damage and crop loss, and that is very real. But ‘pest species’ is a blunt instrument, and blunt instruments do not fix targeted problems. It also means that less deer can be killed, which is against the stated object of those making the call. Right now, deer sit under the Wildlife Act 1975 as a managed game resource – that means trained, accredited, accountable hunters doing the culling, not an unregulated free-for-all. Strip that framework away and you do not get fewer deer faster; you get unaccountable shooting, no data, no coordination and farmers and Landcare groups losing the very system that currently lets them call in professional harvesters with GPS tracking and proper recording. There is a better path that can lead to programs like Hunters for the Hungry turning culled deer into food relief instead of waste whilst keeping management regulated and effective. That is what real deer control looks like – practical, accountable – and it gets results without throwing out a system that is actually functioning. I urge members to back evidence-based deer management, not a kneejerk reclassification that makes the problem worse, not better.