Responsible Crocodile Management

The Australian environment minister, Peter Garrett, has introduced a five-year plan, including regulated trafficking in juveniles, to control some of the country's most powerful and dangerous reptiles outside the Murdoch family. The government of the Northern Territory had submitted a proposal which provided for safaris where tourists and trophy hunters would be able to pay for the privilege of killing a quota of the beasts each year; Garrett rejected the proposal after the usual "careful consideration". The Northern Territory's minister for parks and wildlife claimed that the safari arrangement would benefit the indigenous community, which is rarely the best way to get things done in a former colony, and especially a former colony with so recent and disastrous a record of electing John Howard.