Feral Deer

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:16): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Will the government consider introducing a deer bounty to complement the ongoing strategies for deer eradication in South Australia? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: Funding for South Australia's Feral Deer Eradication Program is due to run out in mid-2025. In a recent ABC article, stakeholders were warned the recent culling figures don't account for ongoing breeding and ultimately will amount to little more than sustainable harvesting.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (14:16): I am very pleased to be asked a question about the state of feral deer in South Australia. They are an absolute catastrophe not just for the environment, but very acutely and financially for farmers, for primary producers. They wreck the landscape. We have at last estimate some 40,000 head of feral deer in South Australia and recently we were able to announce as part of the eradication program that we have managed to get rid of 20,000.

Now, of course, 20,000 is good but they have been breeding in the meantime, so we have to try to keep ahead, and the member is absolutely right to point out that at present the funding that has been established for that ends at the beginning of the next financial year. We are already actively involved in trying to get some more funding from the federal government. One of my staff members very kindly agreed to be the person to go on a very small plane with people from the commonwealth, to go over and have a look at some more of the properties that were affected by feral deer, alongside the landscape board that has been significantly championing this approach.

There are, however, continuing challenges and I am glad that the member has proposed the idea of a bounty because it suggests that the member is indeed also committed to the idea of eradicating feral deer. Bounties do have some challenges, though, as a policy instrument and they tend not to be used in an eradication program; they are used more when management is the goal rather than eradication. The reasons are manifold: one is that it does tend to encourage people who want to make a living out of the bounty to continue to have some animals for next year, so they tend not to go after the animals that are likely to breed again, and it creates sort of an ongoing industry for them, so that's why it's one that's not often used.

But there is also a perversity with this particular species where bounties could be a problem because there are landholders—let's say it in the plural although there is one in particular, of course—who have essentially feral deer, so untagged deer, on property and inadequate fencing. Whether, hypothetically, the landholder might choose to get people to pay to come on to do hunting for recreational purposes or maybe do that for free for some people, people come in, they enjoy doing the recreational hunting, and then having done all of that and having inadequately managed the fencing of their property which means that a whole lot of deer go across the boundary and into landholders' neighbouring properties, they might then try to collect a bounty on each of those heads.

That is not making any difference to the management of feral deer, so we need to be very careful in how we use incentives like that in a way that might be effective in actually driving down the numbers. As I say, we are chasing federal money, because federal money is the best money, and we are also looking at our own priorities to see how far we have gone and whether we need to reallocate some landscape money to this.

But make no mistake: feral deer are a menace. They need to be got rid of. You either have farmed deer, in which case you have excellent deer-proof fencing all around your property and you eartag your deer so they are identifiable, or you have feral deer on your property and you need to get rid of them. We are happy to come and do it. So get on board for the landholders who have got these problems as soon as possible. Let's see if we can get on top of this. It is not a species that we want to keep around for recreational hunting. This is a species, as a feral species, that needs to go from South Australia.