Following South Australia’s lead, to subsidise yet more Kangaroo killing, Victoria is now doing something similar. This does not appear to be a direct bounty as is the case in South Australia but we are still unclear as to how the amount of money being paid to a particular land holder will be measured. And I can tell you now that there will not be any permits for non-lethal control, so the government will need to provide the split between lethal and non-lethal control and provide the detail of which species are being targeted (ATCWs target all species of Kangaroo and Wallaby in Victoria}.

Coming in from where?

"We know that Kangaroos are coming in and putting some extra pressure on pastures. We've got to do it humanely, we've got to look at how it can be done through non-lethal control mechanisms, but it's got to be done.” Jacinta Allan, Premier of Victoria

So we are clear on the quantum of what actually occurs, since 2021 the Victorian Government has been required to publish the split between lethal and non-lethal ATCW permits it issues. For the three species of Kangaroo in Victoria (the Wallaby species fare no better) this is what happened in relation to the issuing of  ATCW permits in the four years 2021 to 2024:

• For the Red Kangaroo, and mostly on public land including National Parks (Parks Victoria), lethal permits were issued to kill 28,516 Red Kangaroos plus their joeys. There were NO non-lethal permits issued in the period;
• For the Eastern Grey Kangaroo lethal permits were issued to kill 284,790 Eastern Grey Kangaroos plus their joeys, non-lethal permits were issued to ‘control’ just 2,012 Eastern Grey Kangaroos; and
• For the Western Grey Kangaroo lethal permits were issued to kill 23,944 Western Grey Kangaroos plus their joeys, non-lethal permits were issued to ‘control’ just 20 Western Grey Kangaroos.

So to try and dress up the latest effort at Kangaroo extermination as being humane and talking about non-lethal permits in its pronouncements, is a bridge too far from a government already the focus of international attention for its extreme treatment of Australian wildlife in the state.

It will also be interesting to see just how many of the Kangaroos killed in the now subsidised activity end up as pet food.

The following has now appeared on the Agriculture Victoria website (13 June 2025).

"Kangaroo management: Funding of 1.8 million dollars is being provided to support farmers manage Kangaroos on their property. Drought-affected farmers whose livestock are competing with Kangaroos for fodder will soon be able to apply for rebates to engage professional shooters to control Kangaroos under an approved authority to control wildlife (ATCW). The rebate program will help already time-poor farmers to hire authorised professional shooters, with harvesting accreditation from the Game Management Authority, to help control Kangaroos on drought-affected properties. The program will also speed up the assessment of lethal and non-lethal control permits for Kangaroos and other wildlife through the Conservation Regulator – reducing average processing time for applications to less than one week".

We should note that in the period 2021 to 2024, of the 339,282 Kangaroos targeted for control using the ATCW permit system (supposed to be non-commercial), just 0.006 percent (2,032 animals) were to be controlled by non-lethal means.

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Group think and Australia’s Kangaroo Myth

Australia’s Kangaroo species are now in very deep trouble and this is why.

There is a deeply entrenched ‘group think’ about booming populations of Kangaroos ‘descending on or coming in’ to Australia’s landscapes. Landholders and the ABC and other rural journalists that support the spin, standing in empty paddocks totally devoid of any wildlife, complaining about the impact of Kangaroos. Politicians make similar claims, as do public servants, and when you ask to be shown the evidence, there is never a response.

Australian Universities are central to the ‘group think’ problem for Kangaroos. Dissenters in academia, in the public service and among the politicians are not tolerated and they don’t last long.

The amounts of funding from the public purse this ‘group think’ generates across the Australian continent is staggering. On the other side of the ledger rescuers and carers and dissenters get short shrift.

The difference now is that the gloves are really off, we are back to the 1850s with bounties and subsidies to kill yet more Kangaroos, when the Kangaroo killers can’t fill, and all too often by a very long way, the quotas they already have. The bounties and subsidies are just a way of breathing a little more life into a collapsing commercial activity where ‘products’ are increasingly few and far between.

Investigating some of the detail can be expensive, with South Australia’s ‘environment’ department (DEW) attempting to charge $30,000 plus to respond to FOI requests from those trying to submit to the South Australian Government’s own Inquiry into Kangaroo and Wallaby populations in the state. In Victoria there are handouts and free services for the Kangaroo killers, on the other side of the ledger the Victorian Government wants money from the people who care for making a FOI request, to find out about what is really going on.

A fair go as they say in Australia? Strewth no, a fair go it is not.

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