ADJOURNMENT

Senator BLEYER (Tasmania) (20:09): I rise to speak about a longstanding invasive species and biosecurity issue in Tasmania that is seriously impacting our farmers: feral cats. Feral cats have contributed to the extinction of at least 27 native Australian animals. Feral cats cost us as a society up to $6 billion a year, largely due to their impacts on human health and livestock production, and $12 million of the cost is directly borne by our farmers.

Diseases carried by feral cats, like toxoplasmosis, cause ewes to abort their pregnancies, reducing lamb survival rates. It is more critical than ever that we act to control feral cats. The arrival of bird flu is putting wild bird populations under even more pressure than feral cats already do.

There is only one way to deal with feral cats: trapping them and humanely euthanizing them. We can't take a 'spray and pray' approach, relying on AI powered gel guns to tell the difference between a feral cat and a Tasmanian devil or a spotted-tail quoll before dousing the animal in lethal poison. That poison is needlessly cruel.

If an animal ingests it, it is subject to an agonising death over 24 hours as its muscles spasm before its brain shuts down. We cannot continue to put such harmful chemicals into our natural environment, where we have no control over where they ultimately end up. We can embrace new technology that exists to remotely monitor feral cat traps.

This will significantly cut down the amount of time spent checking and resetting traps, which I can tell you from my own experience is the most time-consuming component of feral cat control. Before I became a senator, I was Chair of the Northern Area Advisory Group to the West Tamar Council in Tasmania's north and was involved in a successful feral cat control program in that capacity.

Since 2020, the group has run a successful feral cat control program in collaboration with the local group Landcare Tasmania and my mate local farmer Greg Squires. We have controlled the feral cat population at Greens Beach, Kelso and Clarence Point and saw the return of blue superb fairywrens and bandicoots. The program was initially funded with a modest $20,000, money that the group eked out over the next few years to pay for traps, microchip scanners and a professional feral cat trapper.

The feral cat control program must continue, or the feral cats will quite quickly get out of control again. But the program cannot continue without money, and we can do better than expecting our farmers and volunteers to keep bearing the burden of these programs. Farmers need to focus on farming.

We need to help our farmers focus on farming, and we can. Feral cats are federally listed as a key threatening process, so this federal government needs to step up and invest the money required to control feral cats. We have a community based program that we have proved works.

We just need to fund Landcare Tasmania and let them embrace the existing new technology to remotely monitor feral cat traps. This will enhance our proven program, allow feral cats to be controlled across Tasmania more quickly, and let Tasmania and Australia be a world leader in feral cat control. The cost would be pocket change compared to the cost currently caused by feral cats.

I want to be clear. I am not anti cat; I'm just anti feral cat. I am a proud cat mama to my two beautiful microchipped and desexed cats.

They are happy and safe indoors.