Page 2312 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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This motion calls on the Assembly to support the kangaroo culling program as proposed by the Chief Minister and his department. I know that the government and the Liberal opposition support it. It remains only for the rest of the Assembly to come forward and offer their support. Then, as I have said before, this Assembly can, as one, send the people of Canberra a definitive and decisive message that we all support the objective of achieving a sustainable coexistence and a delicate balance.
I turn briefly to the disposal of carcasses that result from the culling program. Here I want to acknowledge and thank the office of the Chief Minister for arranging the briefing that I spoke of before. I took that briefing yesterday afternoon and I covered the issues with the officials in relation to the culling program in some detail. I will add that one of the issues that I was most impressed about was the thoroughness of the briefing and the depth of information that the officials were prepared to give me about the safety issues involved in this cull. I thank officials; I want to acknowledge it here.
I briefed my colleagues on the issue in general terms, and I need to say to the Chief Minister and to the officials that I am entirely satisfied that everything that is possible is being done to ensure the safety of people in the ACT. The operating procedures are thorough, but that does not mean that something cannot go wrong. It is important for us here to plead with people who might want to disrupt this cull to not do so, because the implications would be disastrous.
The aspect of the culling program that is most unsatisfactory is that there is no proposal to develop the commercial opportunities that a culling program might create. There is a market for kangaroo meat and pelts. The ACT government’s current policy is to bury the carcasses, and this is a waste. I know that there are difficulties in changing the process. The commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act sees to that. There are quite onerous licensing processes in order to achieve a licence for the commercial exploitation of the meat and pelts. Further, the ACT’s own Nature Conservation Act would require revision. I note that we have been waiting 5½ years for that. This was a 2004 promise of the Stanhope government which was supposed to be delivered by 2008, but we note that we really have not made enough progress.
I want to comment on the amendments that I said we would support—the amendments proposed by Mr Stanhope. In essence, the Greens are saying in their amendments that the government should not promote the development of a new industry in the ACT. I think that that is unsupportable. It is folly for us to be wasting these carcasses. It is also apparent that the Greens have missed the fact that kangaroo carcasses also have pelts, yielding other commercial opportunities.
This is an important matter. It is important for us to reiterate to the community that we support the government’s approach on culling kangaroos, but we need to have a better approach to dealing with the carcasses in the future.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait
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