ABC Sydney interview with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

CRAIG REUCASSEL, HOST: Do you love cats? How many cats do you have in your home, and do you keep them inside as well?

The Federal Government thinks there should be a cap potentially on the number of cats in each household. It's part of a plan to control the pet cat population, which it claims kills 546 million animals a year in Australia, including 323 million native animals.

Tanya Plibersek is the Federal Environment Minister and joins us now.

Morning, Minister.

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Hi Craig, how are you?

REUCASSEL: Is this a brave position to take in a democracy, to be seen as not liking cats?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'm not sure that you could say that I don't like cats, but I do think that we need to really do something about feral cats in Australia, and I do encourage people who love their pet cats to be responsible pet owners.

We've got cats, feral cats now on almost the whole of the Australian mainland. The only place that we don't have feral cats are the specifically fenced areas that have been built to protect our native wildlife, and those feral cats kill over 1.5 billion native mammals, birds, reptiles, frogs, basically vertebrate animals every year, and more than a billion invertebrates. And pet cats kill about half a billion native vertebrate animals every year. So this is a massive impact on our wildlife.

REUCASSEL: It is huge.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's as big an impact every year as the Black Summer bushfires were, and it's not just that they're killing these animals, they're actually implicated in the extinction of animals like types of bandicoots, the lesser bilby, the broad faced potoroo – like, there's a whole range of mammals that are extinct because of feral cats in Australia, and there's a whole lot more that are at risk of extinction because of feral cats. So, we've got to get on top of this problem.

REUCASSEL: Okay. We'll get to domestic cats in a second. With the feral cats, and you know, there's about 5.5 million of them, what is the intention here? Is there going to be a cull of them? How's it going to be done?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, there's a few things we need to do. Yes, we need to reduce the numbers in the wild, and there's various ways of doing that. So, we've announced a $60 million program for 55 on ground projects right around Australia to eradicate feral cats. They're particularly using really advanced type of technologies, like there's an artificial intelligence based trap called the "Felixer" that sprays the cats with a toxic gel that they lick off, ingest, and die. There's animal nets that send an alert if a cat gets trapped in it so that it can go and be disposed of. There's drones that use thermal imaging so that we can find cats under scrub, and so on.

We're really trying to go from dealing with individual cats to scaling this up so that we can really deal with them on a landscape level, and we're particularly targeting in the first instance some of the islands, like Christmas Island, Bruny Island, Kangaroo Island, where we've got incredible native wildlife, and the cats are a real risk to it. Because if we can get rid of the cats on islands, obviously we've got a real opportunity for wildlife to bounce back. But this is across desert environments, rainforest, they are literally everywhere.

REUCASSEL: Okay. That's the feral cats. So, I guess potentially the more controversial part of this is about domestic cats. One of the proposals you're looking at is a curfew on cats. What is the idea here?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, the Federal Government doesn't control what people do with their domestic cats, it really is something for local government in partnership with state and territory governments. But we have been working with our state and territory colleagues and the Australian Local Government Association to develop a national cat threat abatement plan, which is a way of managing all of the problems that come from feral and potentially domestic cats, you know, more consistently across Australia.  

And we consulted on the draft plan, we had 1,600 submissions come back from that, and many, many people were saying we need more responsible cat ownership. And that means desexing your cat, it means the cat wearing a bell if it's outside, it means making sure that your cat's supervised outside, not letting it roam, it means locking it up at night, when, you know, the cats are out there – they are very, very efficient killers.  The average cat kills six or seven animals a night. And we know that everybody loves their pet cat. They say, "Oh, my cat doesn't do things like that", but science tells us that cats are, you know, responsible for a massive impact on our wildlife.

REUCASSEL: Yeah, absolutely.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: So we are saying to pet owners, desex your cat, keep it inside.

REUCASSEL: And what's interesting though – I mean, firstly, I must admit on the text lines today we've been asking this question throughout the show. We've had a lot of cat owners who seem to be in agreement with this idea, who say, "We definitely have to keep our cats inside or have, you know, runs so they can go outside but not escape".

It definitely seems to be done on a lot of fronts like that. But you know, it's interesting, how do we get to this next level of actually enforcing it? We did ask Penny Sharpe's office about whether New South Wales had a plan for pet cats; they said they didn't have anyone.

So, is this Federal Government having to get councils to actually do it, to actually put this in place?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, it's a partnership. This is not about us imposing anything, it's an effort to have consistent rules wherever we can across the nation. I think some councils are really leading the way, particularly where you see new suburbs being developed near bushland, or more established suburbs that are those very leafy kind of suburbs that back on to national parks, and so on.  

A lot of those councils understand that, you know, your pet cat out in the backyard is more likely to, you know, kill a blue tongued lizard or a parrot and bring it in as a little gift for you.

That is, you know, when you think about the number of cats we've got across Australia, the combined impact of that on nature – pet cats, we've got more than 5 million of them across Australia.

REUCASSEL: Well, it's interesting you say that because you also mentioned   you also mentioned desexing there. Actually, we had a few texts this morning, for instance, this one from Sam that says, "One of the major issues with the over population of cats is the high cost of desexing. Perhaps the government should provide free desexing of cats so their numbers can be controlled". Is that something you've looked at?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think if you're a responsible pet owner you've got to accept that there are costs that come with having a pet, and desexing, and regular vet – 

REUCASSEL: Yes, but obviously some people are struggling at the moment and that's why we lead to this problem.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I understand that, but it's a choice to have a pet, and if you choose to have a pet, you've got to feed it properly, you've got to look after it. I’ve just, you know, had my dog's teeth scaled. I agree it's expensive, but it really is a personal choice to have a pet, and if you make that personal choice, I think it's, you know, it's important to accept that it comes with responsibilities.

I'd also say that if you get a pet from a shelter, they come desexed, so yes, there are of course costs in getting that pet, but you know –

REUCASSEL: A shelter's another way of doing it, yeah.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I don't think it's the responsibility of every taxpayer to pay for your choice to have a pet.

REUCASSEL: Yeah, okay. We’re speaking to the Federal Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek. It is 7:45AM.

On another topic, Peter Dutton is on the front page of The Daily Telegraph today pledging that he will get the McPhillamys gold mine project up and running. He's described your decision to shut down the project as "sending a chill across the resources industry and painting a very bleak future for mining in our country".

Is there any movement on this? I know the New South Wales Government has also been opposed to this. Is there any movement on it, or is this decision made and finalised?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: What an absolutely nonsense thing for Peter Dutton to say. I've actually approved more than 40 mining projects since becoming the Environment Minister, and I haven't stopped the McPhillamys gold mine. I've told them they have to relocate their tailings dam. They want to build it on the headwaters and springs of the Belubula River, which has been important for thousands of years to local Wiradjuri people.

The mining company shares have gone up, last time I checked, by 8 per cent since I made my decision. So plainly, their shareholders think there's a way through. One of the directors bought another 15,000 shares. Again, plainly they think that there's a way through. I've said if they can come up with a new design for the tailings dam that isn't on the 400 hectares that I've said is particularly significant to Wiradjuri people, the project can go ahead.

This is a 2,500 hectare site. I've protected 400 hectares of it, and there's a great degree of hysteria from the Coalition on this.

What's really interesting about Peter Dutton's statement is he hasn't seen any of the evidence, he hasn't read any of the reports, he hasn't spoken to the local Traditional Owners, and suddenly he's an expert, and thinks that it's going to go ahead come what may.

I mean Peter Dutton, along with everybody else, after the destruction of Juukan Gorge, said that we needed a better approach to cultural heritage in this country. That we can't keep destroying things that are important to First Nations Australians, and suddenly there he is with none of the evidence, none of the consultation, prepared to break the rules, and this is exactly what happened with the colour coded spreadsheets for sports rorts and carpark rorts and paying above the odds for the Leppington Triangle. If the Coalition like you, you get a big tick, and if they don't like you, you suffer. But nobody wants to return to that period of government with secret ministries and colour coded spreadsheets.

REUCASSEL: I think some of the coverage in the media has been suggesting there's perhaps disagreements within the Aboriginal community, disagreements between, for instance, the Aboriginal land corporation and the Wiradjuri Traditional Owners there.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'm very happy to answer that question. I listened to the Wiradjuri Traditional Owners Central West Aboriginal Corporation, which is exactly the same group of representative people that Sussan Ley listened to when she made a similar declaration, it's called a Section 10 declaration, less than 50 kilometres from the site in Blayney that I've made the declaration over. She listened to the same group of people, used the same reasons that I have used to make the same type of declaration. Are the Coalition now saying that Sussan Ley was wrong when she made the same declaration when she was the Environment Minister? Or is it just that, you know, that the rules go out the window when they're in Opposition.

REUCASSEL: Well, thanks for speaking to us, Minister, we appreciate it.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's a pleasure, Craig, thank you.