Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, acknowledge and support the member for Canning for introducing this motion into the House. It is a motion, quite frankly, that I am very pleased and excited to be speaking about. Indeed, it was probably 20 or 25 years ago that I first met John Feehan from the CSIRO in the town hall at my home town of Gravesend, where he did a presentation about dung beetles. Since that time I have become acutely aware of the importance of the role that they play.

There has been some discussion from the previous speakers about the role that they have in burying the dung and the control of flies. The other parasite that they are quite effective in the control of is the buffalo fly. In Queensland and northern New South Wales the buffalo fly is a very serious pest and has severe ramifications for the productivity of animals, and the dung beetles certainly play a role in controlling that fly.

But I would like to go a little bit further. I think that a lot of people do not understand the agronomic benefits of what dung beetles provide. It is that cycle, that circle of life, and the overall management of a farming system that they thrive in. For the dung beetles to be working efficiently your cattle have to be healthy. They need to have a level of nutrition such that their digestive system is working correctly so that the dung they produce is at a consistency that is easily buried and has the nutritional value that can be buried into the ground.

Dung beetles are but a part of that system. In my own case, when the dung beetles were introduced, we had some areas of hard, bare, scalded, severely eroded country. Over a period of three to five years that area became completely covered in natural pasture again. The dung beetles broke up that hardpan and buried the nutrient and opened it up to allow the water to penetrate. This increased the water-holding capacity of that soil and let the seedling plants get a hold on. I have seen large areas of quite bare and eroded pasture land rehabilitated largely because of the work of the dung beetle.

There has been quite a bit of discussion in this place, in the last couple of years, about carbon sequestration. The dung beetles would be the greatest sequesters of carbon that we have in Australia. They are the unsung heroes. If we could measure the amount of material that is buried by dung beetles below the soil we would find that the tonnages of carbon that have been sequestered would be significant. They would be significant enough that we would go a long way to meeting our international requirements, under the conventions we have signed.

There is need for more research and understanding of these dung beetles because, inadvertently, they can be damaged quite severely. For instance, if a farmer drenches his cattle with a drench that is inappropriate it can decimate the dung beetle population. It is very important that when farmers are drenching their cattle for internal parasites they choose a drench that is dung beetle friendly because, inadvertently, you can cause a lot of damage.

When the dung beetle population declines, you can see that right across the whole landscape. You will see that if a cow pat is left unburied that area of soil is not useful for several years. The stock will not graze the grass that grows up through that cowpat until it has completely eroded away, through natural causes. The efficiency of that land is indeed reduced significantly.

I support the member for Canning in his motion; I believe the dung beetle is the unsung hero. Unlike the members of the opposition, the dung beetle understands what his job is; he is very good at it; he does not deviate from it. He does not want to do things that are not relevant to his job; he just gets on and does it in a professional and workmanlike manner. He does not seek public applause. He does not seek grandiose statements in this place, and I support the member for Canning.

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