Toad Media
MEDIA RELEASE
Friday 8 December 2006
Haase’s Howler
Member for Kalgoorlie misleads Australian Parliament.
In a recent speech to Parliament the Federal Member for Kalgoorlie
Barry Haase has managed to so confuse established facts on cane
toad control in WA that he has mislead Parliament.
In his media release of Dec 4th, which quotes his own speech directly,
Barry Haase says that “The Western Australian State Government
provides considerable funds to a Perth based group called Stop the
Toad Foundation. This is despite the debatable value of its work
after $500,000 was spent on an awareness campaign which resulted
in a mere 45 calls in five months.”
Among other things, the Member for Kalgoorlie seems to have confused
the Stop the Toad Foundation with the government of Western Australia.
The STTF is a not-for profit community organisation with bases in
Kununurra and Perth. The Foundation does not have a toad sightings
hotline. STTF has never undertaken or overseen the $500,000 awareness
campaign Mr Haase refers to. The WA government has invested in a
media campaign and a call line for toad sightings inside the WA
border. The Foundation welcomes such government initiatives and
will support all informed efforts, whether private or governmental,
to keep WA cane toad free. Along with funding from the private sector,
the STTF has had support from the WA government to the tune of $500,000.
“These are simple, recorded facts that anyone familiar with
toad control issues in WA understands,” said STTF Strategic
Campaign Manager Dennis Beros today. “Really, I’m amazed
that Barry Haase should have got the basic stuff so wrong when reporting
to our national parliament. It's right there in Hansard. I can only
hope that such howlers are the result of haste or confusion rather
than anything deliberate. He needs to get his facts straight before
he speaks on such a vital matter. Either way, he should set the
record straight.”
Had the Member availed himself of all the current information he
might have understood that the STTF is the community organisation
which recently ran the highly successful and widely-reported GREAT
TOAD MUSTER just across the border in the Northern Territory.
The six-week Muster took out more than 48,000 toads at the frontline,
100km from the border with the effort of 126 volunteers. It was
the first strategic landscape-scale operation of its kind. No other
government or community organisation has attempted such a sustained
and successful action before, which is why it was so widely documented
on radio, TV and print media at a regional, state, national and
international level. In addition to information on the public record
Mr Haase has been in correspondence with a Kimberley-based member
of the STTF board since its incorporation in late 2005. So why the
sudden mashing of facts?
In the course of orchestrating the GREAT TOAD MUSTER the Foundation
has developed a blueprint for effective, focussed and cost-efficient
toad control. The plan centres on removing cane toads from their
westernmost front-line using multiple-night toad busts over a sustained
period. Doing this at the tail end of the dry season, a time when
toads can only survive the harsh climate by being close to any water
remaining in the landscape, drives toad numbers right down. This
creates a cane toad free ‘buffer zone’ which can be
reworked each year to keep cane toads out of WA until a biological
fix is found. And the GREAT TOAD MUSTER is just one of the Foundation’s
initiatives for protecting WA from the cane toad.
“The Foundation’s work is widely known in the community
and has the support of volunteers and businesses far and wide in
Mr Haase’s own constituency,” said Dennis Beros.
“We call on him to correct the record. He should go one step
further and acknowledge and honour the passion and commitment of
all those hard working volunteers who have put their heart and soul
into keeping WA cane toad free.”
More information on the work of the Foundation can be found at www.stopthetoad.org.au
For media comment contact Dennis Beros: 0409 244 029
Teams ready to begin the night’s work - GREAT TOAD MUSTER
October 2006
|
