Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L01747:reg:4:p35
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L01747
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 4 (pt 35/80)
Character Range: 100686–103863

involvement of other parties where needed.

Research-focused actions to address key knowledge gaps and thus support achievement of the objectives are collated in a listing of key knowledge gaps at Appendix 3.

     8.1 Objective 1. Coordinate and enhance the legislative, regulatory and planning frameworks

     Rationale

The management of cats in Australia is a complex challenge, involving Commonwealth, state/territory and local government levels, many disparate stakeholder groups with diverse perspectives and values and a maze of legislation and regulation. This objective seeks that legislative, regulatory and planning frameworks are appropriately facilitative of best practice feral cat control and pet cat management.

Conservation outcomes sought from cat management are more likely to be achieved where there is collaboration, consistency and harmonisation in this effort and in the overall legislative context, to the extent possible. There has been substantial progress in collaboration in the policy settings for, and management of, cats across Australia over recent years. Such developments include the commitment to the national declaration of feral cats as a pest by the environment ministers in 2015: most jurisdictions accordingly now recognise feral cats as a pest (see Appendix 4). The establishment in 2015 and subsequent operation of a national Feral Cat Taskforce has also served to increase coordination in the management of feral cats across Australia. The Threatened Species Action Plan 2022-2032 commits to maintaining this coordination: 'Promote best practice management through the National Feral Cat and Fox Management Coordinator and Feral Cat Taskforce to coordinate consistent on-ground actions'.

Notwithstanding this progress, there is considerable scope for further coordination and collaborations. For example, more work is needed to make current control options more consistently available across jurisdictions (Appendix 5); for regulatory mechanisms to be faster and more responsive, so that control approaches can be adapted quickly in response to changed conditions; and for control options to be more accessible to all management groups, including First Nations rangers.

Legislation governing pet cat management remains highly variable across jurisdictions; moreover, the management of pet cats mostly falls to local governments, which can, to varying extents, introduce their own bylaws with specific provisions, and which need to direct limited resources towards community-identified priorities which may not include cat management. The resulting patchwork of regulations is confusing to the public, and hard to enforce. Improving alignment of companion animal legislation across jurisdictions, and across local governments, and enabling local governments to set bylaws (such as cat prohibition) to suit local conditions more easily, would help lift the standards of pet cat management, and reduce the biodiversity impacts of pet cats.

Information about cat impacts and cat management options has improved substantially in recent years, but these knowledge advances have not necessarily been transferred to other conservation