Whale Of A Bureaucratic Mess: NSW’s Latest Carcass Cock-Up And The Rush To Create Yet Another Agency
Another dead whale washes up. Another botched operation. Another round of finger-pointing. And now, predictably, the solution on offer is a shiny new centralised agency dedicated to whale carcasses — complete with the usual promise of “coordinated” experts, Aboriginal input, scientists, and, of course, more taxpayer-funded salaries.
Let’s recap the latest fiasco at Bellambi.
A sperm whale stranded on the rocks at Era Point in Royal National Park. Instead of a clean, well-planned offshore tow, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service decided to drag it to Bellambi Boat Ramp. An excavator then hauled the carcass out of the water in full view of the public.
The result? Blood and gore turned the water into a shark magnet. At least 16 sharks showed up. Divers, surfers and swimmers were in the area with zero warnings issued.
Wollongong Mayor Tania Brown later admitted mistakes were made and communications had collapsed. NPWS apparently told council the operation was theirs and marked emails “not for distribution.” So no one told the public the water was about to fill with sharks.
Classic inter-agency buck-passing dressed up as “coordination.”
This wasn’t an unavoidable accident. It was the direct result of an earlier failure. NPWS had previously tried towing a carcass offshore. It washed back ashore. Rather than learn from that and improve the method (modern tracking exists and has worked elsewhere), they simply decided offshore disposal was too risky.
So this time they brought the problem to a busy boat ramp instead — and created a brand new public safety hazard in the process.
Now the response to this self-inflicted debacle is the familiar bureaucratic reflex: create a new dedicated centralised agency or team to handle whale carcasses. Because when government stuffs up coordination, safety, communication and basic risk management, the answer is apparently more government, more layers, and more people on the public payroll doing the job that was already being done badly.
The logic is as circular as it is expensive.
We failed because responsibilities were fragmented and nobody was clearly in charge. Therefore we need a new central body with its own staff, its own meetings, its own salaries and its own inevitable growth.
Rinse, repeat.
Whale populations have recovered strongly along our coast. Strandings are going to keep happening. The public deserves a system that can actually manage them competently: proper risk assessment, timely public warnings when operations create shark attractants, and the willingness to use the best available method rather than the one that avoids yesterday’s specific mistake.
The Straightforward Solution That Needs No New Department
Contract the work out to professional tug and salvage operators who move heavy awkward loads at sea for a living. Established Australian firms in Sydney, Newcastle and Port Kembla already have the vessels, winches, GPS tracking gear and experienced crews. Queensland has successfully trialled tracked offshore tows — nutrients return to the ocean, far lower costs, and no beach chaos or landfill bills.
Why Contracting Beats Another Centralised Agency:
- Far cheaper — pay per job or standing contract. No permanent salaries, offices or pensions in quiet years.
- Real competence — private operators succeed or lose business. Contracts can mandate public warnings, shark monitoring, timing and offshore default.
- Clear accountability — one contractor owns the entire job end-to-end.
- Simple protocol — on-site assessment → tug tows offshore where feasible → mandatory alerts the moment blood risk appears.
Taxpayers are already on the hook for these operations. The question is whether we keep paying for repeated failures followed by bureaucratic empire-building, or demand clear accountability, simple protocols, and actual learning from mistakes.
The Bellambi episode showed exactly what happens when nobody owns the problem end-to-end. Contracting professionals to handle the heavy lifting while a small coordination cell oversees is the obvious, cost-effective path forward. Creating a new department is just the next chapter in the same story — only now with bigger titles and bigger budgets.
Until someone demonstrates they can run a carcass removal without endangering the public and without needing an entire new agency to clean up their own mess, the rest of us are entitled to remain deeply unimpressed.
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