Elizabeth Farrelly

Nichols (NZ) Ltd is a "supplier of quality tanned skins of New Zealand and Australian origin." It is based at 29 Wickham Street, Bromley, Christchurch, New Zealand and is a subsidiary of UK based L H Nichols Ltd.

Nichols slaughters Australian native possums for commercial profit.


Nichols (NZ) Ltd is a "supplier of quality tanned skins of New Zealand and Australian origin". It is based at 29 Wickham Street, Bromley, Christchurch, New Zealand and is a subsidiary of UK based L H Nichols Ltd.

The Nichols Group has operated since the 1950's and now includes tanneries in both the United Kingdom and Christchurch, New Zealand and also operates in Victoria, Australia.

Nichols has a well established customer base in Australasia, The Americas, Europe and Asia, offering manufacturers high quality finished leathers, and other tanners, carefully selected and graded raw material.

Nichols slaughters Australian native possums for commercial profit.
Nichols argues it is doing New Zealand a favour in the process.
How is it killing them?

Meanhile, back in their native home Australia, possums are respected as an important native animal by the volunteer Wildlife Informaton Rescue and Education Service Ince. [WIRES]

The NSW Wildlife Information,Rescue and Education Service Incorporated WIRES is the largest wildlife rescue organisation in Australia. When an echidna is hit by a car, a possum is attacked by a cat or a lizard gets its head stuck in a drink can - WIRES is there to help.

Since 1985, WIRES has established a network of hundreds of volunteers who rescue, rehabilitate and release sick, injured or orphaned native animals. Each year WIRES receives over 100,000 phone calls and rescue over 56,000 native animals, from injured bluetongues to orphaned wombats.

WIRES is a non-profit, non-political charity with branches operating across NSW. Over 90 per cent of our funding comes from public donations. Each year we receive a small grant from the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the NSW Department of Agriculture these grants represent less than 2.5per cent of our funding.

At WIRES, the best interests of the animal are always placed first. After treatment - often involving intensive veterinary care and nursing by unpaid rescuers and carers - animals are returned to the wild, with as little human intervention as possible.

See also: candobetter.net/Wildliferescue - Ed, 6 Apr15

Columnist Elizabeth Farrelly, in her Fairfax article ‘Critter cullers turn our lives into roadkill’ (2-Jul-09) claims "so disdainful are Kiwis of our beloved Trichosurus vulpecula (Australian possums) that, not content with persecuting what they carelessly tag the "common brushtail", they pay themselves a hundred bucks a pelt, call it conservation and use the fur for beanies and rugby scarves. (And no, the critters are not simply shorn).”

Farrelly, like many Kiwi’s acknowledges New Zealand’s introduced possum problem, but like many Kiwi’s with an Australian chip on their shoulder, she is quick to deride anything Australian. On the New Zealand introduced possum problem, Farrelly is defeatist. Why not offer a genuine suggestion to New Zealand’s introduced possum long ignored plight? But instead, Farrelly quips “happily shoot the little varmints, pink noses and all” or even “shove them home through some great sub-Tasman possum pipeline.”

Farrelly, an urban futurist in her 2008 book ‘Blubberland: The Dangers of Happiness’ prescribes a utopian urban Australia as one that crams urban sprawl vertically into extreme high-rise where people aspire to the ‘simple life’ by “growing veggies on a postage stamp city lot”. And Farrelly's an urban planner?

In Fairfax media, 5-Aug-09 Farrelly taunts “make climbing the Rock an initiation rite for every Australian." Is this ignorance or a neo-colonist contempt of Aboriginal spiritual lore?

Farrelly is disdainful and condescending of this author's proposal in CanDoBetter to repatriate possums humanely back to Australia. Perhaps Farrelly has a better humane suggestion? Or perhaps to balance the population scores, the repatriation could be reciprocated by repatriating introduced Kiwis taking Aussie jobs should packed up humanely back to New Zealand? This would simultaneously address Australia’s population sprawl, caused by the many immigrants displacing Australians and underpinning the sprawl of which Farrelly is so critical in her book.

Kiwis in glass houses....

Out of Australia’s dark white colonial past, colonial antagonism towards its indigenous people and fauna has been typically incited by smug prejudiced colonists. 'Colonialism' is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. [Stanford Dictionary].

Colonialism is a form of cultural imperialism and should be relegated to dark white history. Neo-colonialsm is immigration. Immigrants to any country have a moral duty to be respectful of the values of their new country of choice. Immigrants do have a choice after all.

When offered Australian citizenship, one of the greatest privileges anyone on the planet could be granted, Australia's compulsory 'Pledge of Commitment' reads:
“From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.”

But smug new Australians in their generous host country have a nerve to sling off and put down locals, indigenous peoples and their culture, and to condemn its nature. Asserting acquired situational narcissism involving racist vilification should be a breach of conditions of citizenship and a precursor to questioning permanent residency privileges.

During 2008-09, short-term arrivals of New Zealand citizens totalled 1 354 500, an increase of 0.9 percent over the previous year. [ABS]