Just to let taxpayers know where your money is going, the following article was placed on a public website (download below, TT here) on 3rd of August 2012.
Then one hour later I noticed a critical amendment – based on a CRC Invasive Animals announcement.
At 8.02 am the posted article clearly states that an optimal strategy to eradicate foxes from Tasmania was to be part of the $72 million Government and participant funding, yet within the hour after this article being posted on Tasmanian Times it was dramatically changed.
From: “No new vertebrate pests established in Australia – including research underpinning an optimal strategy to eradicate foxes from Tasmania,…”
At 9.20 am the same website had changed that statement
To: “No new vertebrate pests established in Australia – through developing a national incursions response system including research underpinning an optimal strategy to eradicate species that might emerge in a new area (foxes in Tasmania, as a theoretical example), and detecting new pest fish incursions, particularly tilapia, using new environmental DNA techniques.”
Over the years since foxes were claimed to be at large in Tasmania as a result of a deliberate large scale introduction, the CRC Invasive Animal members such as Animal Control Technologies (manufacturers of FoxOff baits) and the Institute of Applied Ecology at Canberra University (fox scat and forensic testers for the fox program) have made millions and millions of dollars from this fox-less folly.
I named the industry partners in 2004 on the Tasmanian Times Fox Reward site and I was very quickly asked to withdraw and threatened with a law suit.
Yet in 2009 the then CEO of Invasive Animals CRC sniggered and laughed his way through sworn testimony at the Parliamentary Accounts Committee Inquiry into foxes in Tasmania, at one stage quoting that he had just written out a cheque for six dollars for Canberra University.
Ruth Forrest MLC joked at that inquiry that the Canberra University would have been “pleased with that”.
Some four years passed until the truth came out about the alleged illegal introduction which after a very thorough Tasmania Police investigation in 2001 involving some six detectives it became apparent that not one ounce of truth was contained in the allegations levelled against the three young Tasmanians.
Still today, when it suits, this allegation is still used as the founding event for foxes in Tasmania.
Without all the fox rhetoric and history discussed again, I feel it is time for a Judicial Inquiry or even a Royal Commission.
After all taxpayers of Australia it is your money.
Please note the full list of participants marked under ‘here’ in the second last paragraph of this article. http://www.invasiveanimals.com/about-us/participants/
Download:
2012_08_03_Beef_Central_72_Five-Year_Plan_For_Feral_Control_Version8.02am-Version9_.14am_.pdf
