Here is the Nature Knowledge Channels’ submission to the South Australian Government Inquiry into Kangaroo and Wallaby populations.

This submission is by Andrea and Peter Hylands, Nature Knowledge Channel. We have made numerous submissions to environment related government inquiries in Australia at both state and Commonwealth level, using our own financial resources to do so. The knowledge built from a vast amount of work and investment, over decades, to try to assist Australian species to survive the dire circumstances in which they find themselves. The outcome of all this sustained effort (against a wall of government funding and an army of highly paid bureaucrats funded to create precisely the opposite outcome) was precisely zero.

Public submissions opened to this inquiry in early March 2025. Since then a lot has happened in Australian politics. A Federal Election was held in early May 2025, which in turn, delivered a new Federal Environment Minister and fast tracking of a number of major decisions impacting the environment.

Not the least of which is the updating, Australia’s nature laws were described as broken, of the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, which is to undergo major reforms, with key legislation passing Parliament in late 2025 (effective mid-2026) to and we quote:

“Create stronger, more efficient environmental laws, including establishing a new National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) and National Environmental Standards”.

What everyone fails to understand, and I include all Australian Governments at Federal, State and Territory level, is that ‘at the behest of government Australian protected wildlife killing’, that is, the killing of some 4 to 5 million protected Australian animals across the continent each and every year, covering up to, but not every year, 100 protected Australian species. The government mechanisms for this are commercial exploitation, as is the case in the above Kangaroo submission, harms permits (a different name in each state), recreational killing, secretive killing of species like Koalas and unprotection, including a number of parrot species.

As intentions stand, not one of these 4 to 5 million protected Australian animals will be saved by the updating of the Act, not this year, nor any other year.

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