We’ve all seen the distressing footage of an American influencer taking a wombat joey away from its mother. The joey hisses and stirs, while the distraught mother circles the woman until she eventually drops it back to the side of the road.
The tourist calls herself both a conservationist and an ecologist. But most of us can recognise that this is not the behaviour of someone who values our native wildlife.
Over the past 48 hours, the whole country has mobilised. We’ve had coverage from all major media outlets, commentary from international influencers, and heard from Australia’s home affairs minister on the possibility of getting the individual’s visa status revoked. There was even condemnation from our own prime minister, encouraging her to try it again with “some other Australian animals” that could actually cause her harm.
We don’t know if the mother wombat and her joey were reunited. In fact, we don’t know much at all about the incident – despite desperately searching for answers.
I’ve reported the incident to Crime Stoppers, along with many other wildlife advocates and concerned citizens. Not everyone is aware, but wildlife, too, can be victims of crime, and reporting to Crime Stoppers is currently one of the most effective ways that we can protect them as such.
But the actions of this individual have opened the door for us to confront the much larger and more urgent issue at hand.
Our leaders will openly condemn this incident, yet there is a glaring hypocrisy in their own governance on wombats, and with many other native animals in this country.
Wombats are currently being shot, killed and poisoned under the government’s sanctioned authority to control wildlife (ATCW) permits. Under the code of practice, landholders are even given the green light to “destroy the brain” of a wombat joey as the prescribed method for removing it from their property.
The irony of our country’s leaders condemning the actions of a young tourist’s treatment of a wombat while shamelessly sanctioning their slaughter is impossible to overlook.
Kangaroos, native birds, possums, black swans and emus are just a few of the many native animals that landholders are granted licences to kill under the ATCW list.
Even Victoria’s native dingoes are being lethally controlled under misguided and ineffective “wild dog” control programs, which saw the Victorian government extend the “unprotection order” that allows dingoes to be killed on private land and within a 3km buffer zone along public land boundaries.
According to the wildlife protection charity Defend the Wild, it is these legislative choices, which prioritise killing over coexistence, that reinforce a harmful culture towards our native wildlife like we all saw play out on our phone screens this week.
I urge our leaders to recognise the hypocrisy in their own words before attacking the actions of one individual. This incident should be about addressing the ideas at play, not focusing purely on personal attacks against her actions.
We should not have to endure lectures from our leaders on how to respect wildlife when their own policies continue to exploit and harm these animals with such obvious disregard.
It’s hard not to look deeper into the prime minister’s satirical comment telling the young woman in the video to “take another animal that can actually fight back” as a retaliation to her actions, rather than recognising the broader issues of wildlife suffering that are being allowed under his watch.
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This kind of rhetoric only distracts from the real conversation about how we can protect and respect our native wildlife.
While common wombats – like the pair featured in the viral video – are not currently under threat (like the critically endangered northern hairy-nosed wombat or the near-threatened southern hairy-nosed wombat), they are increasingly affected by habitat destruction, road strikes, mange and the ongoing threat of lethal control permits.
As an MP for the Animal Justice party, my focus is on improving the lives of animals across the state of Victoria – not confected outrage. That is why next week in parliament, I will be bringing this issue of sanctioned wombat killing forward for debate.
Our leaders have a lot to answer for and must confront the uncomfortable truth of their own involvement in wildlife destruction.
They can no longer ignore the role they play in enabling the harm of native animals while lecturing others on respect for wildlife.
What’s happening to wombats across Victoria and the rest of the country is just as horrific as what we witnessed in that video.
The only difference is that it’s happening behind closed doors, away from the public eye and at the hands of those we rely on to ensure they’re protected.