Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (22:00): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, and concerns Parks Victoria’s plan to indiscriminately shoot brumby populations in the Victorian Alps. The minister will be aware of the extraordinary passion this threat to our state’s brumby population has aroused. It has brought together an otherwise disparate population and coalition: animal lovers; history lovers from my electorate and from all over Victoria, Australia and even the world; and people who believe that brumbies have played a very important role in our literature, our culture and our identity, and indeed the part they played on the battlefield and in the very landscape of the High Country itself.

Tonight I wish to raise Parks Victoria’s role in this sorry saga, and what the minister must do to put things right. People are angry—not just because the threat to the brumbies comes from a deeply flawed decision but because they feel the government has lied to them. The feral horse strategic action plan consultation told them animals would be mustered and relocated or trapped and rehomed, and that if all else failed, shooting would happen only after further discussion. This could not be clearer. The public document on page 22 states that shooting—and this is in bold:

Will not be used to control free-ranging feral horses.

It goes on:

In year three of this plan an evaluation of the success or otherwise of trapping and other capture methods will commence.

It goes on to say that if this should prove insufficient:

… further public consultation and dialogue will be undertaken on techniques such as shooting …

Yet Parks Victoria now want to tear this up—to abandon sensible population management, an approach used around the world, and move straight to shooting. It is utterly unacceptable, it is dishonest, and the fury I heard at the rally outside Parliament today is the fury of those who feel betrayed by the arrogant, dismissive dishonesty of this sham consultation.

The second key point is that of population numbers. It is clear now the estimated numbers of brumbies are wildly inaccurate, either due to the horrific impact of fires or because they were always wrong. The brumby, always elusive, is now practically invisible. The claim of rampaging hordes cannot be sustained by anyone with recent experience on the ground. The error here is not small; it is fundamental, and the minister must look again before basing a potentially disastrous policy on such inaccurate evidence. The action I seek is for the minister to stop the cull to allow population numbers to be independently established and to make this the beginning, not the end, of a genuine debate about heritage protection and proper brumby population management.