Address to the Federation Chamber, Constituency Statements - National Threatened Species Day

Monday 11 September 2023

Last week we recognised National Threatened Species Day, marking 87 years since Australia's last Tasmanian tiger went extinct. Australia is home to between 600,000 and 700,000 species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. In the ACT and Bean, as part of our threatened species action plan, the Albanese government has worked diligently to protect threatened species such as the Canberra grassland earless dragon, the swift parrot and the eastern quoll. Last week, some in this chamber may have met some of my furry constituents who visited the House. Earlier this year I partnered with the Conservation Council ACT Region's Bush Buds program to promote local threatened species, where I chose the gang-gang cockatoo to be my bush bud.

We can all do our part to protect our threatened species—ensuring we are responsible cat owners, for example, or volunteering at a local community organisation. We should all be working together to do what we can in this place and outside this place to reverse these trends and end mass extinctions, like what happened with the Tasmanian tiger.