Speaker 1: This is part two of a two part series. If
Speaker 1: you haven't yet, you can start by listening to part one.
Speaker 1: Inside Australia's secretive crocodile skin Industry. It's in your feed
Speaker 1: now and just a warning, this episode deals with some
Speaker 1: disturbing themes bestiality, animal cruelty and child abuse. Please take
Speaker 1: care while listening, So Kat. At one point, the croc
Speaker 1: skin industry was considered so successful in the Northern Territory
Speaker 1: that there was talk of emulating it or attempting to
Speaker 1: in another state. In Queensland, tell me a bit about
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: The territory had grown one hundred million dollar croc industry
Speaker 3: and Queensland wanted a piece of it.
Speaker 2: So Queensland introduced.
Speaker 3: A new law that allowed wild crock eggs to be
Speaker 3: foraged by licensees, and these licensees would sell them for
Speaker 3: again around twenty five dollars apiece to factory farms. And
Speaker 3: the new law was supported by the all powerful CATA party,
Speaker 3: who also wanted and quoting here, indigenous groups to host
Speaker 3: crocodile hunting safaris. As you can imagine, there was a
Speaker 3: lot of opposition to the idea even in celebrity circles,
Speaker 3: and in twenty nineteen at Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast,
Speaker 3: Bindy Irwin urged her Instagram followers, five point seven million
Speaker 3: of them, to sign a petition to scrap this new law.
Speaker 3: And she warned that crocodile hatchlings would be used to
Speaker 3: turn into boots and bags and belts, and that Australia
Speaker 3: Zoo's research with the UNI of Queensland showed that it
Speaker 3: would be devastating to crop populations to take their babies.
Speaker 3: Her petition provoked these two scientists at Charles Darwin University
Speaker 3: to give her campaign an absolute drubbing. So these two
Speaker 3: scientists research reportedly underpinned Queensland and Territory laws, and their
Speaker 3: research showed that when wild salty eggs get too wet
Speaker 3: or too dry, most eggs die anyway, and even viable
Speaker 3: hatchlings had a slim chance of survival to maturity. And
Speaker 3: so therefore ranching, which is collecting the eggs, had minimal
Speaker 3: impact on crop populations, they argued. In fact, they said
Speaker 3: it had conservation benefits.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there was a pair of scientists arguing that
Speaker 1: collecting the crocodile eggs was actually good for the environment.
Speaker 1: Who are these two scientists?
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the duo was Graham Webb, who is
Speaker 3: quite a celebrity scientist. He's a blokey, silver head raconteur.
Speaker 4: There's maybe one hundred thousand crocodiles now, it's about one
Speaker 4: hundred million dollars a year in turn out with everybody.
Speaker 4: It extends out in Aboriginal communities and it helps the
Speaker 4: tourist indus year here. So we've made them an acid.
Speaker 3: He owns Crocodili's Park, which is a Darwin factory farm
Speaker 3: and it has an adjoining zoo and research lab and Bindi.
Speaker 2: Owen's other detractor was.
Speaker 3: A man named Adam Britton, quite a celebrity scientist, who
Speaker 3: is this eloquent zoologist who was then in his forties
Speaker 3: and he was mentored by web.
Speaker 5: When you work with crocodiles, you have to be very
Speaker 5: respectful of what they're capable of. And if it goes wrong,
Speaker 5: that's why and you lose your hand. That's when you
Speaker 5: lose your arm, that's where potentially you could lose your life.
Speaker 3: He had hobnobbed with Royalty. He'd featured in National Geographic
Speaker 3: and David Attenborough documentaries. Today, crocodile specialist doctor Adam Britton
Speaker 3: is writing along with Rabie.
Speaker 5: He's collecting DNA to help create a genetic map of
Speaker 5: Dorwin's crocodiles. What we're doing is we're taking tissue samples
Speaker 5: from crocodiles that were in Darwen Harboring.
Speaker 3: And like Graham Web, Adam Britton ran a media business
Speaker 3: and he provided peace to camera expertise and crop for
Speaker 3: hire talent, and he accused Bindy Irwin of trying to.
Speaker 2: Make up facts.
Speaker 3: But as her petition gained momentum, so did a transnational
Speaker 3: police probe into Adam Britton's own fictions. And his research
Speaker 3: colleague told me that none of Darwin's research community could
Speaker 3: have possibly imagined in their worst nightmares what he was
Speaker 3: capable of.
Speaker 1: What did police uncover about Adam Britton.
Speaker 2: Through online sales sites like Gumtree.
Speaker 3: Britian had been scamming residents who were relocating or retiring,
Speaker 3: and he was offering to rehome their dogs, and he'd
Speaker 3: sent them some fictional updates on their pets welfare with
Speaker 3: photos had taken before he abused.
Speaker 2: The dogs inside what he called his torture room.
Speaker 3: And This was a shipping container at the back of
Speaker 3: his home in Darwin's Southeast. He then fed the dog's
Speaker 3: body parts to Smorg, and Smorg was his talent for
Speaker 3: higher crocodile In Autumn twenty twenty two, police raided Britain's home,
Speaker 3: and by August twenty twenty four he was serving a
Speaker 3: ten year jail sentence. He was found guilty of fifty
Speaker 3: six charges, including best reality, animal cruelty and possessing child pornography.
Speaker 3: So before his crimes were exposed, his colleagues had suspected nothing.
Speaker 3: Most had considered him a nice guy, quiet and gentle nerdy,
Speaker 3: but then they started asking if he duped peers and
Speaker 3: dog owners, then what else was.
Speaker 2: Chicnery coming up?
Speaker 1: CAF visits Britain in prison and interrogates the conservation claims
Speaker 1: at the heart of the crocodile skin industry. So cap
Speaker 1: when Adam Britton's crimes were revealed that he had been
Speaker 1: prolifically abusing animals, people began to look at his research
Speaker 1: and question what a conviction like that meant. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me about the questions people had and the conclusions
Speaker 1: that they came to about his crocodile research.
Speaker 3: The research conducted by Adam Britton and Graham Webb asked
Speaker 3: questions like if we remove s from wild crotness to
Speaker 3: supply factory farms, does that have an ecological impact? Their
Speaker 3: research concluded that extracting wild eggs and farming crocodiles was
Speaker 3: actually good for conservation, and these findings continue to underpin
Speaker 3: territory and Queensland laws as well as global conservation science,
Speaker 3: and they also informed federal laws governing farm welfare codes.
Speaker 2: Plus, Britains and.
Speaker 3: Webs claims helped frame the territories in Queensland's crocodile management plans,
Speaker 3: and the science Britain helped produce underpins not just government
Speaker 3: policy but also public messaging that gives social.
Speaker 2: License to this industry.
Speaker 3: But soon after his arrest for cruelty investiality, some of
Speaker 3: his colleagues then went searching for the hard data that
Speaker 3: supports Britains and Webs claims, and they couldn't find any
Speaker 3: worse Still, as study by a group of scientists has
Speaker 3: now found that wild extraction for crop farming actually expediates
Speaker 3: ecosystem decline.
Speaker 1: Okay, and so what is Adam Britton saying about all
Speaker 1: of this? Now? You visited him in Dale, didn't you?
Speaker 1: So tell me what he was like and what he said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Britain is now an inmate at Darwin Correctional Center,
Speaker 3: and I was really scared of meeting him.
Speaker 2: His crimes were unfathomably cruel.
Speaker 3: You really can't read the court transcript and maintain your composure.
Speaker 3: And as well as having child abuse material, he's been
Speaker 3: dubbed the world's worst and a lal.
Speaker 2: Abuser, so I was pretty nervous.
Speaker 3: What was extraordinary to me was that when we shook hands,
Speaker 3: his hand was clammy and his body was trembling, And
Speaker 3: I soon realized that it was possible that this man
Speaker 3: was as scared of me as I was of him.
Speaker 3: He acknowledged that animal welfare opinion coming from a zoasatus
Speaker 3: might seem hypocritical, but he wrote to me that when
Speaker 3: it comes to animal cruelty on.
Speaker 2: Crocodile farms, the small size.
Speaker 3: Of cages and conditions in farms gave Cross a limited
Speaker 3: behavioral repertoire. And I'll read a little more of that letter.
Speaker 3: It reads single crocodile pens have come in for particular
Speaker 3: criticism because of their small size.
Speaker 2: While I think it's possible.
Speaker 3: For crocodiles to be kept in single pens that don't
Speaker 3: impact their overall welfare. I'd like to see regulations tightened
Speaker 3: up to ensure this.
Speaker 1: He acknowledged that there are welfare concerns in the crocodile industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he was tacitly admitting that, which is
Speaker 3: significant because his former research colleague, Graham Webb had said
Speaker 3: animal advocates are misguided and that crops enjoy a better
Speaker 3: life in captivity because it's brutal for.
Speaker 2: Them in the wild.
Speaker 3: Where still stands by the industry, even though he's distanced
Speaker 3: himself from Britain, and he still claims that Aboriginal works
Speaker 3: are key beneficiaries of the industry. But when I tried
Speaker 3: sourcing evidence to support this claim.
Speaker 2: I hit a wall.
Speaker 3: There's nothing in government data nor industry auditing that suggests
Speaker 3: that Aboriginal people are key beneficiaries of this industry.
Speaker 1: Okay. And to come back to Adam Britain, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a man who it seems was one of
Speaker 1: the worst animal abuses in the country, if not the world.
Speaker 1: His research before he was discovered underpins the way that
Speaker 1: the crocodile industry works now, so what does that say
Speaker 1: to you about how we should be thinking about the
Speaker 1: crocodile industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first, I think lawmakers really mass review whether
Speaker 3: it's okay to have laws concerning animal welfare informed by.
Speaker 2: A zoa sadist.
Speaker 3: Many animal advocates described this as a cruel and unnecessary
Speaker 3: industry that exists solely to cater for the rich. It's
Speaker 3: also been described as secretive, and I know from my
Speaker 3: interviews that very few people employed by the industry are
Speaker 3: prepared to speak out. Many of them are bound by
Speaker 3: non disclosure agreements, and some ex workers wouldn't go on
Speaker 3: the record because they feared industry figures, and some of
Speaker 3: the scientists I spoke we also wouldn't go on the record,
Speaker 3: as the research community in Darwin is really small and
Speaker 3: the university sector is very political.
Speaker 2: And so I think it's useful to think about the industry.
Speaker 3: As Donnie and Belong described it as a very outdated
Speaker 3: and colonial industry.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned that more recent research has thrown into
Speaker 1: question those claims around conservation and crocodile farming. At this
Speaker 1: moment in time, is there anyone who is looking into
Speaker 1: the industry. Do you say that there might be reform
Speaker 1: that comes from this.
Speaker 2: I think there might be reform.
Speaker 3: There is a study about to come out, it's been
Speaker 3: peer reviewed. Hopefully the territory government will look into the
Speaker 3: science now and review the science. Bodies like the RUCN.
Speaker 3: Graham Web no longer sits on that body. His chief
Speaker 3: scientist still does, but bodies like those are starting to
Speaker 3: question whether it's okay to have its advisory groups kind
Speaker 3: of stacked with industry based scientists rather than what they
Speaker 3: call more blue sky scientists or filled research based scientists.
Speaker 2: I think things are slowly shifting.
Speaker 3: I think people in the fashion justice sector would like
Speaker 3: to see this industry band and transition into something more
Speaker 3: productive that doesn't cater solely towards a rich market.
Speaker 1: Well, now, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you Ruby.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Quantus faces a ninety million
Speaker 1: dollar penalty of its illegal outsourcing of more than one thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred ground handling jobs during the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 1: Federal Court Justice Michael Lee said fifty million dollars should
Speaker 1: be paid to the Transport Workers' Union, with the rest
Speaker 1: to be determined at a later hearing. Justice Lee said
Speaker 1: Pontus had shown the wrong kind of sorry, as it
Speaker 1: was more worried about the impact on the company than
Speaker 1: the impact on illegally sacked workers. And younger Australians face
Speaker 1: lower living standards than their parents, the chair of the
Speaker 1: Productivity Commission has warned. In an address to the Press
Speaker 1: Clubney Wood says the generation born in the nineties were
Speaker 1: the first not to earn more than people born a
Speaker 1: decade before them. She says this same generation will bear
Speaker 1: the brunt of population aging and the pressure it will
Speaker 1: put on the care workforce and government budgets, while at
Speaker 1: the same time having to deal with the cost of
Speaker 1: inaction on climate change policy. I'm Ruby Jones. This is
Speaker 1: seven am and I'll be back tomorrow with a full
Speaker 1: breakdown of Donald Trump's meetings with Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelenski.
Speaker 2: See then.