ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - ADJOURNMENT - Environment: Kosciuszko National Park

During the winter recess we will, as parliamentarians, go back into our electorates. It will be cold. Some of us may work, some of us may do other things but, all the while, we should think about and reflect upon what will be happening in Kosciuszko National Park, because what will be happening there, unfortunately, is the aerial culling of our beautiful brumbies will continue. Horses will be shot out of helicopters, up to a dozen—15—times, and mares with foals at foot will be left to bleed out. In this day and age, when we talk about animal cruelty and animal welfare, it just doesn't add up. It doesn't stack up.

Tomorrow, in the New South Wales Supreme Court, Sydney, the Snowy Mountains Bush Users Group are taking on the New South Wales Minister for the Environment, Penny Sharpe. Three days have been set aside for a hearing to potentially determine the fate of the brumbies this winter. Last Thursday, when parliament had retired for the week, I was on a Zoom meeting with no less than Tom Burlinson. He is an Australian legend. He starred of course in Phar Lap and he starred in the movie the Man from Snowy River in 1982. It had one of the best soundtracks. We all remember the theme. You know the soundtrack. We all loved the soundtrack, and so many of the wonderful songs evoked stirring memories of brumbies going down the mountainside, being rounded up and being rehomed, being used, being productive in a worthwhile way.

Whilst driving home from Sydney last Saturday, the ABC were playing the best soundtracks and that Man from Snowy River was in the top 100, and it should have been too because that movie was so good. Tom Burlinson is such a great actor. It not only had the famous Kirk Douglas but also local actors like Jack Thompson and Lorraine Bayly. It also had Sigrid Thornton. We all remember the movie and how we cheered and admired those beautiful brumbies, those beasts of the wilderness. But what are we doing 42 years on? We're shooting them in the name of the environment and it doesn't add up. It's so cruel.

Some of those brumbies have the blood of Glenmarkie in them. Glenmarkie was an English import, a thoroughbred, that sired the 1892 Melbourne Cup winner. When James Sutherland at Lockhart's Creek couldn't afford his horses he set them loose up near Towong way, up in the high country, near Corryong. You know, they also supported us in our time of need in World War I as walers.

The Invasive Species Council, indeed the RSPCA, indeed the National Parks and Wildlife Service, some of what has been claimed by those organisations and others about the numbers of brumbies running wild in Kosciuszko and the high country is fake. They have used those numbers to excuse what they're doing. The park has now been locked off, and the cruelty can't be seen by those locals because they're not allowed in. But you take the viewpoints of such people as Dr Brenda Laurence, from Millmerran in Queensland. She's a registered veterinary surgeon. She believes what's happening in Kosciuszko and elsewhere is extremely inhumane—horses being shot many times; many shot in the chest to drown in blood, some even in the abdomen.

I know it sounds gross and some might say this is not the place to say this, but if not here then where? Brumbies need our protection; they don't deserve this. As long as I'm in this place I will stand and I will fight for them, because they need someone to protect them. They are voiceless and they need somebody to be their voice. I'm just disappointed that there aren't more people in the New South Wales government who would stand and do the same for our beautiful brumbies, an Australian iconic heritage.