Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 19 May I had the great privilege of going to the Shangri-La Wildlife Rehabilitation Shelter in my electorate in the suburb of Macclesfield. I must give a plug to the local Mail newspaper. Tania Martin wrote an article stating that the shelter was doing a great job but was in desperate need of funding. The shelter is run by volunteers Rodney and Tina Hudson-Davies, along with their two sons Ashley, 18, and Aiden, 14. Rodney and Tina have been taking in orphaned and injured wildlife for many years now and have an incredibly long history, dating back to 1975, with Rodney’s grandparents Frank and Doris Hulbert. Rodney and Tina now make up three straight generations of wildlife shelters within the same family and now take up the challenge of being handed down all that has been learnt over the past 32 years and moving to a larger and more sustainable 10-acre farm at Macclesfield.

Rod and Tina have great help and assistance from other carers, and the wildlife shelters work very closely together. They specialise in kangaroos and wallabies. The wildlife shelter is a non-commercial shelter, receiving no funding except that of collection cans. The funding has pretty much come from the family itself. Shangri-La, like many wildlife shelters, falls through the gaps of funding, whether it be council, state or federal.

What they require for the animals, the large kangaroos and wallabies, are enclosures—one of five acres and another, smaller one, of two acres. Where the mother has been killed by a car, it allows the wildlife, in particular wallabies, to recover and slowly move back into the environment. They require fencing to the value of $24,000 and also shelters to the value of $9,000. Unlike most other types of native wildlife, such as possums, birds, echidnas et cetera, kangaroos, wallabies and wombats have special needs to be successfully raised and rehabilitated back into the forest.

That brings me to a great announcement by Malcolm Turnbull. On 12 July, he announced funding of the amount required—in the vicinity of $34,000—to greatly assist the Shangri-La Wildlife Shelter. I am very proud of this announcement. They do an amazing job. I again thank Rodney, Tina and the family.