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Flaws revealed

Staff ReporterFremantle Gazette

First, we heard that members of the public repeatedly try to save a great white that had stranded itself off the beach, at personal risk to themselves ” one must assume that they are not part of the Premier’s imagined ‘silent majority’ who support his desire to exterminate large sharks off our beaches.

Secondly, descriptions of this shark match the species and size of shark that the Government aimed to kill this summer (albeit while failing to do so), yet we also learn this great white had been fitted with an acoustic tag by researchers in South Australia. This highlights one of the main policy ‘fails’ of the Government’s drum lining strategy.

On one hand, it spends taxpayer funds on WA having a world-class acoustic array and large shark tagging and tracking system so that we can learn more about the shark hazard, including by working with research organisations in South Australia, but on the other hand it plans to spend millions killing the same animals.

The Government is yet to produce an answer as to what it would do if its drum lines captured a large white great white fitted with an acoustic tag, at considerable expense and effort by either our own Fisheries Department, South Australian authorities or the CSIRO.

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If this were to occur, the Government would have some serious apologising to do, not just to the research organisations whose research it has jeopardised but also to WA taxpayers for wasting their money.

LYNN MacLAREN MLC, Greens Member for South Metropolitan Region