Page 435 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 June 1989
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Liberals welcome this legislation, and I will come later on to the question of amendments to that legislation.
I would like to take the opportunity to make some observations before that, however, about wildlife in the ACT. I have been saddened by the increasing number of cases of wildlife cruelty that have been occurring in the ACT in recent times. In May, 13 kangaroos were discovered at Kowen Forest. These kangaroos were brutally butchered, presumably for dog meat. Senior Constable Bob Cameron described the slaughter as the worst he has seen in his five years with the Australian Federal Police rural patrol. The kangaroos had been piled up in a grotesque heap and kangaroo foetuses had been ripped from their mothers' pouches and thrown about the forest floor.
The Kowen Forest overseer said that illegal shooting was common in the forest. The president of the ACT Wildlife Foundation, Mr Chris Cottam, from whom I have received a very useful letter on the subject of this Bill which I propose later on, with leave, to incorporate in Hansard, has said that the killing of the kangaroos was only one incident in a series of acts of cruelty against wildlife in the ACT. Mr Cottam's organisation, since Christmas, has cared for cockatoos with shotgun injuries, a magpie lark and a magpie which had been set on fire, an orphaned possum whose mother had been shot and a goshawk which had been shot.
The Wildlife Foundation has also recently come across some even more sickening cases of cruelty, including a platypus which had been killed with a shotgun and a wombat which had been found dying with stab wounds and severe head injuries. Mr Cottam said the wombat had been repeatedly bashed.
The Wildlife Foundation looks after some 550 native animals each year. Not all of them, of course, are injured or orphaned as a result of human activity, but one wonders how many cases of cruelty go undetected in the ACT's extensive forest and bushland areas.
It is for these reasons that I welcome the toughening of penalties for killing wildlife in the ACT, which this Bill provides. Under the principal Act, the penalty for killing wildlife such as kangaroos was a mere $1,000 or six months gaol. The amendment Bill increases penalties to $5,000 or imprisonment for two years for wildlife and $10,000 or gaol for five years for animals which have special protection status.
I believe this is a significant step in the right direction. But, of course, the question is therefore begged: What good is it to increase penalties if we cannot catch the offenders? If offenders are to be deterred from slaughtering wildlife there must be an increased chance that they will be caught. As far as I am concerned, the people who are slaughtering and performing mindless acts of
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