Mr BARRESI (11:28 AM) —I rise in support of the Wildlife Protection (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Amendment Bill 1998 [1999] on behalf of an electorate where people care deeply about environmental and conservation issues and which is home to a large number of activists in these increasingly important areas. I think that Australians everywhere would be delighted with this legislation. Under the wildlife protection act, Australia currently bans the importation, and in some cases possession, of products containing endangered species. Despite the fact that there are products in this country containing such contraband, no prosecutions have been possible because the law puts the onus on the prosecutors to comprehensively prove the existence of substances from protected species. It is an expensive and inefficient process to forensically scrutinise these products, and detection has so far proven to be difficult.

This amendment means that a claim on a label is proof enough—that is, if a claim is made, the law holds that claim to be true. This is an important change to procedure; one that seeks to further protect several animal species whose very survival has been placed at risk by the greed of mankind. Importantly, it is also about affording some protection to the many herbalists, alternative medicine and exotic food importers which operate in my electorate—good, decent, small businesses.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora—CITES—prohibits international and domestic trade in species under threat. By way of example of the importance of this legislation, I would like to refer to one particular animal, an animal we have all known and loved from childhood: the tiger. Often depicted as a cuddly toy, a cartoon, a nursery rhyme character or even a mascot of a football team, the tiger becomes, in a child's mind, an object of affection. In reality, they are not the warm and fuzzy beasts as portrayed to children. They are powerful, majestic felines at the very top of the food chain.

It is believed that tigers evolved over one million years ago in what we know today as southern China. Their search for territory and prey took them to eastern Russia, to Indonesia, to the subcontinent, to Turkey and around the Caspian Sea. It has been estimated that at the turn of this century there were over 100,000 of these magnificent beasts. Today, estimates put the earth's tiger population at 7,500 at best, but probably closer to 5,000. Caspian Sea tigers were extinct by the 1950s and the tiger populations of Bali and Java have also gone. In south China there are as few as 20 to 30 tigers in the wild, and those in Chinese zoos are the descendants of the same six tigers. Not surprisingly, the rate of reproduction there is limited.

Given the illusive and secretive nature of the tiger, it is nearly impossible to gauge accurately the numbers that survive. India has the largest population of tigers, probably somewhere between 3,000 and 4,500. The tiger has struggled for survival as human settlement has expanded. Forests and jungles have disappeared, rivers have been dammed, industry has grown. The difficulties in providing and maintaining suitable reserves, sanctuaries for the tigers, have often proven disastrous for these animals.

While it is illegal to hunt tigers, that has not stopped poachers from doing so. Unlike the American buffalo which was hunted for food by America's indigenous tribes, the tiger is killed so its parts can be used in traditional Chinese medicines. While this has always been the case, with the standards of living rising in Asia and the emigration of many from that part of the world to Western countries, the use of these medicines has risen markedly.

By way of illustration, we can compare the expenditure of Australians on these treatments with our expenditure on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. We spend approximately $3 billion on the PBS and a staggering $1 billion on alternatives. This is not to suggest that Australia is a huge haven for products containing illegally hunted animals, but merely to suggest that sales of alternative medicines have experienced enormous growth. In Hong Kong, China, Japan and South Korea, where there are long-held beliefs about the powers and supposed powers of these products, sales are astronomical. In large markets such as the United States and Great Britain, sales are also sizeable. Huge volumes of tiger products, in the form of wine, powders and pills, are imported and sold in Japan, the US and the UK, despite the protections offered by legislative bans against importation and sale.

In countries where the law has changed in a similar fashion to what we are proposing here today, such as in the USA and in Europe, successful prosecutions have increased. In the USA, the World Wildlife Fund has noticed an increased public awareness of threats to tigers and a reduction of market availability of tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine. They attribute this to the outreach and education campaign that was targeted at San Francisco.

The Bay area is home to many Asian immigrants and the users of traditional Chinese medicines. Last year the World Wildlife Fund worked with the American College of Chinese Medicine on a pilot program to implement steps for reducing demand for tiger based products. In February, at the end of the lunar year, these organisations held an award ceremony in San Francisco's Chinatown to honour key players in the Year of the Tiger conservation efforts.

Likewise, I am happy that this government is making the local industry more aware of the dangers. Through involvement in symposiums in various cities, we are also educating the industry about the role it can play in conservation of threatened species. I note that there is such a symposium happening this weekend in Melbourne at RMIT. I wish the government's representative, the member for Dunkley, all the best at that symposium. I trust that he will be well received and the symposium itself will make landmark breakthroughs in its education campaign in Australian society.

I believe that an education campaign can be an effective measure, given that it is the very claim on the label that is ensuring rapid sale, and the demand is driving poachers to even greater feats of ruthlessness. It should be a matter of great sadness and human disgrace that the greater the threat to the survival of the species, the greater the demand for its body parts.

By the estimate of the Zoological Society of London, Japan imported 1,900 kilograms of tiger bones from Taiwan. That is equivalent to between 400 and 500 tigers in one year, perhaps nearly 10 per cent of the world's tiger population. Japan is by no means the largest market for tiger products. That dubious honour belongs to Hong Kong, which accounts for around 50 per cent of the market.

The poor tiger suffers the indignity of its bones being ground down for inclusion in various potions and powders supposedly to benefit the sufferers of rheumatism or paralysis. Its whiskers are plucked to cure toothache; its tail is used for the treatment of skin disease; its brain proffered as a cure to laziness and pimples, and its eyeballs for epilepsy. The dead tiger, it seems, is looked upon as a veritable cure-all. Tiger claws are claimed to help with insomnia; its teeth to fight fever; its fat to treat leprosy; its nose leather to soothe bites; its bile to help children with meningitis; its dung to treat haemorrhoids, boils and alcoholism; and its penis to help our virility.

Now that Viagra has come along and been approved for sale in many countries, perhaps the demand for endangered species like the tiger, the seahorse and the rhinoceros will ease somewhat. The rhinoceros is also as sad a case as the tiger. Only 14,000 now survive because of a huge illegal trade in rhino horns. Their declining numbers are the result of large-scale destruction of habitat, especially by deforestation, ruthless hunting and the rise of illegal trade in rhinoceros products. The black rhinoceros has suffered most. There are now about 3,000 black rhinos in Africa, compared with 65,000 to 100,000 that roamed that continent just 30 years ago.

In conclusion, I recently saw a film which best depicts the often ruthless relationship between mankind and our endangered species. `Tell me what the drums are saying,' says one of the characters in the movie. The reply comes, `They always say the same: white hunter—black heart.'