“What you need to know for Victoria is there is zero consideration of any person’s safety or repose, or the impact of the relentless massacre on neighbouring land use or business. Speak out and speak loud, because once it starts it won’t stop”. Diane Smith

“By the end of the 1880s many Australians were feeling a great sense of rapport with the Kangaroo as the embodiment of the Australian experience and were ready to complete its conversion from a wild bush-creature into Australia’s analogue. From stamp-designers to craftsman making gifts for Royalty, from writers to bookshop-owners, the adroit were finding in the courtly animal an effective means of attracting attention to their wares, while expressing Australian self-esteem.

Many Australians were beginning to out grow the narrow attitudes that had developed from the colonies’ separate founding and had been compounded by colonial self-government. A sense of national destiny was growing.

Constructive people were fostering a spirit of national sentiment, and in the vanguard of the symbolism accompanying the new outlook stood the solid and familiar figure of the Kangaroo, already a proven mainstay for the dearly loved motto, Advance Australia”. R M Younger

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Well, we might say, what ever happened to that?

Today the Kangaroo is the target of campaigns that denigrate this wonderful animal. The national broadcaster, the ABC, is in the frontline of this grim and cruel task, along with governments and universities and on the list goes.

So it all sounds okay given who is doing the spin of denigration?

Must be true and must be right then?

Don't believe a word of it.

The Kangaroo has become a corrupting process for all those trying to harm the animal. From numbers to words, in lecture theatres, newspapers, radio and TV, in parliaments and from the mouths of politicians and their public servants.

So as they all spin their concoctions, they are destroying an animal that has lived on the Australian Continent for millions of years. And the biggest lie of all, those promoting and enabling the mechanised killing, cruelty and exploitation, like to pretend they have helped this animal, and that there are now many more of them than there ever were, and all this in the land that they, themselves, have trashed.

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Here is an activity that has moved from the outback of Australia to the suburbs of Melbourne where Kangaroos still live.

Australia’s Kangaroo world is a dark one, a world of dodgy numbers, disinformation and propaganda, questionable animal health and human health standards, retribution and intimidation, denial of climate change impacts, extreme cruelty, questionable economic benefit and divisive impacts on regional communities.

In order to maintain the Kangaroo population estimates published by governments, new shooting zones and regions are added as others close because the Kangaroos are gone. In the case of South Australia, new species, as well as new shooting zones are added, as so-called quotas are never met, again and simply because the Kangaroos they are trying to kill do not exist.

In the case of Victoria's Kangaroos, no further commercial expansion is possible (unless in state and national parks) as the entire state with the exception of inner Melbourne is covered by the seven shooting zones.

The Australian media struggles to understand what is going on, choosing in most part to believe the nonsense they are being fed by press releases from governments and the exploiters of wildlife they support.

A recent report commissioned by then Victorian politician Andy Meddick, on the impact of the commercial exploitation of Kangaroos (August 2022 Kyahl Anderson, University of Melbourne) on residents and business people in the state found that:

• The commercial exploitation of Kangaroos relies on no less than 16 ministerial portfolios for its mandate;
• The report demonstrates the ways in which the Victorian Government’s Kangaroo killing policies are undermining regional communities by recording detailed testimonies from Victorian residents impacted by the killing;
• That Kangaroo killing in the state is corroding human safety, economic prosperity, community cohesion, mental health, and business and tourism.;
• The report demonstrates that consultations with First Nations People was insufficient and tokenistic; and
• That the night-time killing is violent, and the aftermath gruesome, generating fear amongst women, families and the elderly.

“We are talking high powered rifles here, the Victorian regulations state, Kangaroos must only be shot with a calibre of ammunition that equals or is greater than 0.224 inches or 5.69 millimetres with a cartridge size of .222R, .223, .22/250 with a soft or hollowpoint projectile of 50 grains or more or 0.204 inches or 5.18 millimetres with a cartridge size of .204 Ruger with a soft or hollowpoint projectile of 40 grains or more. Frightening stuff”. Peter Hylands

• No one in Victoria, from Ministers down, appear to be accountable for this mess, numerous departments involved and they buck pass from one to another;
• Serious breaches of human rights and conduct by government employees are ignored;
• Children involved in the brutal killing; and
• The ABC fuels the fire of disinformation.

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Don’t be fooled, a lot of money and effort has gone into marketing an industry that is neither humane, nor sustainable. And the world does not like it. Be suspicious if you see these words used in material about Kangaroos: Overabundance, booming, abundance, exploding, erupting, eruptions, irruption, waste, compost (yes compost), pest, plagues, over-grazing, dangerous, control, controlling, harvest, harvesting, destroying infrastructure, dressed-in-the-field, humane (perhaps the weaseliest word of all), sustainable, hygienic, nibbling, biodiversity conservation, chomping, disease, diseased, descending, invading. Now they are shooting almost as many females than males, a new phrase has crept into the government reports - male-bias.

The next trick is to try and conflate invasive species and native species, a new phrase appearing in the soft propaganda is pigs, ferals and other competition (means Kangaroos).

The national broadcaster continues to promote poorly researched Kangaroo nonsense in all states and territories. In Western Australia in early May 223, the ABC reports that the Kangaroo is a declared pest species (ie official government listing) in that state which is false. Following formal press complaints, then the ABC retracts its claims, but the damage is already done:

"Editors note 22 May 2023: A previous version of the segments summary said the Kangaroo was a declared pest. They are not pests and the reference has been removed". ABC Western Australia

It remains both shameful and unconscionable that the ABC, the national broadcaster in Australia, continues to target Australian species with misleading and false information that enables and results in serious harm. They need to stop.

All of the spin carefully created especially for you and probably paid for by government..

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