PEST ANIMALS AND WEEDS

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (15:37): Let me initially put on the record my congratulations to the new member for Ramsay and also the new member for Port Adelaide: congratulations to them both at a personal level on their recent election win.

I would like to use the time I have available to me today to talk about invasive pests and weeds. An enormous amount of work goes into this. As members of this house would know, the natural resources standing committee of parliament has recently done an enormous amount of work and written a report in relation to this, and landholders all over South Australia put in an enormous amount of effort in this area. NRM boards, local government councils, volunteer groups and all sorts of people do their very best, but we are not on top of this problem.

I would particularly like to focus on pest animals, in particular, foxes. There are many examples of pest animals. In the feral category are mice, foxes, cats, goats, pigs, carp, pearl oysters, cane toads, and there are many others affecting South Australia. We also have overly-abundant native species which fall into the pest animal category, and they include corellas, Australian plague locusts, seemingly New Zealand fur seals, and dingoes below the dog fence. This is a very big issue. Their impact on the environment and recreation—the use of the land, rivers, lakes and sea which we all enjoy—and, very importantly, on primary producers, cannot be underestimated.

As I said before, I really would like to concentrate on foxes in the small amount of time I have available to me today. Foxes do an enormous amount of damage, particularly to our native animals. I would say that cats and foxes probably do more damage than any other ferals to native animals and foxes to our primary producers. Anybody who has had the misfortune to come across lambs with their tongue ripped out, which is what foxes do when they get into a paddock of lambs—and there are plenty of them around—will know that they do not bother about eating the whole lamb; they just go and eat a tongue, move to the next one, eat a tongue, move to the next one, which, of course, is devastating for the lambs, to the ewes, to the flock and to the grazier.

With regard to foxes, I commend the Eyre Peninsula program that is taking place at the moment. It seems that nearly the entire Eyre Peninsula has got together to do a baiting program, with the support of the local NRM and other organisations. I think that is fantastic. I would encourage the rest of the regional areas of South Australia to consider something very similar. I can tell you from first-hand experience, and also from information brought to me from constituents, that in the electorate of Stuart fox numbers are growing at an alarming rate.

Just one example that I can give you is a local person who told me that in one night in the Bundaleer Forest he saw 50 foxes. He is a kangaroo shooter, so an experienced person who is out and about with a spotlight; this is information and evidence to be given genuine credit. I encourage all of regional South Australia to get together and utilise a baiting program such as they are doing on the Eyre Peninsula at the moment.

When combating this sort of problem the very first step is to work with your local Natural Resource Management Board. They have the tools, they have the skills, they have the research and they have the funding to help you with this sort of program. Whatever your area of interest is, of course, I suppose there is never quite enough funding, but I encourage everybody to work with their NRM boards and participate in whatever programs they put together in their local communities.

If those programs do not work, then I would like the government, the NRM boards, PIRSA, and Biosecurity SA to very seriously consider the reintroduction of a bounty for foxes. Members of this house will know that I raised this issue with regard to dingoes below the dog fence several months ago. It is not something that you would enter into lightly and I make it very clear that in my mind any sort of bounty should only be collectable by landowners, so that it does not encourage people to sneak onto land to go shooting without permission to collect foxes, whether it be tails, ears, noses, scalps, or whatever is required. It can only be collected by landowners, land managers or pastoralists, for foxes shot on their property, and those landowners must already be participating in another NRM program of some sort to eradicate foxes on their property.

The SPEAKER: Thank you, member for Stuart. I am sure, like me, that you have noticed the increase in the number of foxes dead on the side of the road in the last 12 months. The member for Torrens.