There probably aren’t many political strategists sitting around campaign headquarters talking about feral deer.
Perhaps they should be.
New polling commissioned by the Invasive Species Council suggests action on invasive species could matter at the ballot box this Victorian election – particularly in the outer suburban and regional communities already living with the impacts of deer.
The DemosAU survey found just over one in four people would be more likely to vote for a political party that committed to increased funding and action on invasive species such as feral deer, cats and weeds.
That effect cuts across political lines.
Among people currently intending to vote for the Coalition, 27 per cent said stronger invasive species action would make them more likely to vote for a party making that commitment. The figure was 30 per cent among Labor voters, 28 per cent among Greens voters and 27 per cent among One Nation voters.
Those numbers should make every party contesting this election pay attention.
Victorian elections are fought seat by seat, and relatively small shifts in support can matter enormously in close contests. This election, preference flows and order of election mean a few hundred votes in a handful of seats could decide the result.
That is particularly relevant when some of the communities dealing with Victoria’s deer problem sit in electorates that will be politically important this election.
For people living in those communities, deer are not an abstract environmental debate.
They are animals smashing fences and eating pasture. They are appearing on roads and around homes. They are trampling waterways, spreading weeds and damaging native vegetation and threatened species habitat.
Victoria now has a deer problem that reaches from Melbourne’s suburban fringe deep into eastern Victoria, while populations are also establishing further west.
Yet the state’s core response has barely grown with the problem.
Last week the Victorian government confirmed $4.4 million a year in ongoing funding for its Deer Control Strategy, alongside an additional $1.7 million investment in deer control.
While indexed, it should be sitting around $6.5 million, after years of underinvestment, it shows the party is recognising the power of this issue ahead of the November election and is listening to communities that have been calling for stronger action.
With an election approaching, there is now an opportunity for a genuine contest of ideas between Labor, the Coalition, the Greens and other parties over who has the strongest plan to bring Victoria’s feral deer problem under control.
That contest should include permanently increasing Victoria’s base deer-control funding, restoring community deer coordinator roles, investing in eradication while it is still achievable in western Victoria, and removing regulatory barriers that make deer control unnecessarily difficult.
Most obviously, Victoria needs to deal with the extraordinary contradiction of continuing to classify feral deer as protected wildlife.
Victoria is now the only mainland state that still protects deer as a game species. That creates unnecessary barriers to control, limiting access to standard control methods and even preventing some Landcare groups from accessing pest-control funding. People dealing with deer need a system that enables action, rather than standing in its way.
There is also an opportunity to avoid repeating eastern Victoria’s mistakes in the west.
Where deer populations are still small and isolated, eradication remains possible. Acting early is cheaper, easier and better for farms and the environment than allowing populations to establish and then paying indefinitely to suppress them.
That is what smart invasive species policy looks like: spend relatively small amounts early to avoid much larger costs later.
For years, invasive species have struggled for political attention because their impacts are dispersed across farms, forests, waterways and communities. There is rarely one dramatic moment that captures the scale of the problem.
But the polling suggests voters are paying attention.
In an election where individual seats can turn on relatively small numbers of votes, parties would be foolish to assume issues like feral deer do not matter simply because they rarely dominate the front page.
For people who live with deer, they matter every day.
The Victorian government has put its first offer on the table.
Now there should be a bidding war over who is prepared to go further.
Invasive Species Council Victorian Conservation Advocate, John Kelly
Photo: Karin Ruff.