Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion about the use of 1080. I thank Senator Hinch for bringing this motion on for debate this afternoon. I want to begin by reflecting on what happens when an animal is poisoned by sodium fluoroacetate, or 1080 poison. It's truly awful. This is the description on the RSPCA Australia website:

The initial obvious symptoms of 1080 poisoning are retching, vomiting, anxiety, disorientation, shaking, frenzied behaviour, manic running, vocalisation and drooling. Once the poison enters the central nervous system affected animals will experience convulsions, uncontrolled paddling and muscle spasms, followed by total collapse and death. During periods of prolonged convulsions animals may be conscious between fits and experience pain or anxiety. There is also potential for animals to injure themselves over this period. Symptoms usually appear within 3 hours of bait ingestion with death occurring 2-10 hours later.

The Greens have made a number of previous efforts to ban or phase out 1080, including a temporarily successful move in Tasmania to ban its use under the Greens coalition government. But that ban has since been reversed by the current Liberal government. However, in saying that, I also want to acknowledge that 1080 does indeed currently play a critical role in invasive species and pest control. It's used widely and in most cases very carefully by park rangers and other natural resource managers to tackle foxes and other invasive mammals.

We Greens understand the importance of protecting native and local systems and so acknowledge that, without some form of intervention to reduce pest animal populations, pests and invasive species on habitats and food chains actually can lead to distressing and considerable animal suffering in addition to endangerment and extinction. And, indeed, there is no doubt that the use of 1080 has saved untold numbers of small marsupials from being killed and eaten by foxes, wild dogs and cats, particularly in Western Australia where many native fauna have pre-existing genetic resistance to the active ingredient in 1080, which makes it more straightforward to use 1080, because you're not going to be killing the native wildlife that you are trying to protect. This has resulted in species that were likely to have become extinct because of predation by foxes and cats being brought back from the brink. But that doesn't mean that we've got to stick with the status quo.

Needless animal suffering is never justified and alternatives to 1080 are beginning to be available. The reason the Greens are supporting this motion today is the fact that it is calling for the orderly phase-out of 1080. And that orderly phase-out is an animal welfare priority of the highest order. In some environments, that orderly phase-out would mean an immediate ban or a reinstatement of the ban because other alternatives are available, other more humane and just-as-effective alternatives are available. In others, a staged phase-out would mean, yes, we keep using 1080 while new, more humane alternatives are approved and regulated.

There is no doubt that 1080 is currently used in circumstances where it's not justified and where it should not be used. Senator Hinch talked about the use of 1080 for deer populations. In the eastern states, 1080 is not widely used for killing deer populations. There are other methods of control that should be being used but are not being used for deer populations. In Tasmanian eucalypt plantations, 1080 is being used to kill off small wallabies, which is totally unjustified. The use of 1080 for the killing of wild dogs is also, in many circumstances, not justified, because there are other poisons available that have fewer animal welfare concerns.

Where there are other alternatives, 1080 should be immediately phased out. But where those alternatives don't yet exist, the government must massively scale up research and innovation to develop those alternatives. Greens policy, which I'll summarise, says that on the interaction of animal welfare and protection of animal species, we must use the most humane, effective means available in the control of introduced species, including humane population management methods. We need much more research and development of those more humane methods for the management and control of introduced species. It's important to note that in general those alternatives are generally going to be more effective and more humane if they don't require the wide-spread killing of mature animals, and that there is so much potential for biological control and fertility control. If you have methods that use those, that is a much more effective and much, more humane method of dealing with pest animals than the use of poisons which require you to go out and kill large numbers of mature animals.

To achieve this balancing act of protecting animal welfare and dealing with pest animals is only going to be possible with a government that puts a high priority on both animal welfare and environment protection. Bring on that government. The Greens look forward to being part of such a government, because it will surprise no-one that the current government cares about neither. You can see its lack of care about animal welfare, its lack of care about environment protection. You can see it in its failure to ban the horrendous practice of live exports. You can see it in its addiction to facilitating broad-scale land clearing. You can see it in its rolling over of its failed logging laws that destroy both our forests and the animals that live in them. You can see it in the fossil fuel expansion and its never-ending cuts to the environment department.

But even if the government were to find its inner environmentalist, its inner animal welfarist, there is the relocation of the APVMA and the catastrophic damage to its functioning. Because the APVMA is having its capacity completely slashed due to the relocation, the regulatory changes that would be required to bring in these new methods of pest animal control and to facilitate new and more effective solutions would be stuck in limbo for months, if not years. It's simply not good enough.

To sum up, the Greens fully acknowledge there is work to be done on the transition away from 1080. Alternatives are needed for the role it now plays in protecting native wildlife. But it is absolutely necessary that that work begins as soon as possible. That is why the Greens will be giving support to this motion today.