Rules-as-code · Plain-English guide
A 2003 Governor-in-Council Order that does one thing: it tells the licensing rules that the Common Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) is not a protected species across the whole of Victoria. It is a single switch, not a licence in its own right.
How to read this guide
This is one of several Governor in Council (GIC) Orders encoded alongside the main wildlife-licensing rules. On its own it grants nothing and forbids nothing. Its only job is to set a single computed fact — whether a species counts as protected — which the licensing and control rules then read. Here the Order flips that fact to “not protected” for one animal. Colour code throughout: Rules work out, applies / true, does not apply / false.
Under the Wildlife Act 1975 most native animals are protected — you generally need a licence or authority to take, keep or destroy them. A Governor in Council Order can carve out an exception by declaring a particular species unprotected, in a stated area, for a period of time.
This ruleset is the machine-readable version of the 2003 Order for the Common Brushtail Possum. It checks a single fact — “is the animal in this application a common brushtail possum?” — and, if so, records that the species is not protected. That recorded conclusion is what the rest of the rules build on; this Order does not itself decide any licence, fee or offence.
Idea 1
The Order's whole output is the computed flag isProtectedSpecies. Everything downstream — whether a controller licence is needed, whether destroying the animal is permitted — is decided by other rules that read this flag.
Idea 2
The rule is guarded by “is this a common brushtail possum?”. For any other animal it does nothing at all, so it can sit safely alongside the Orders for wombats, dingoes and the rest.
Idea 3
The same switch is applied on the application side (someone applying) and the licence side (an existing licence), so both views of “this animal” agree on its protected status.
This Order touches only a corner of the shared wildlife data model. It reads one thing and writes one thing, on each of two records.
The animal described in an application, and the animal covered by a licence. Both carry the same handful of species flags.
“Is a Common Brushtail Possum” is currently a yes/no the applicant supplies; the ontology notes it “will be a lookup eventually”, i.e. driven from a species list rather than a manual tick.
The ruleset is a single labelled group — “declares the Common Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) to be unprotected wildlife in the area being the whole of Victoria” — containing two mirror-image rules:
| When | The rule sets | To |
|---|---|---|
| Application's wildlife is a common brushtail possum | application.wildlife.isProtectedSpecies | False (not protected) |
| Licence's wildlife is a common brushtail possum | licence.wildlife.isProtectedSpecies | False (not protected) |
Each side is guarded independently, so the application flag is set only when the application's animal is a possum, and the licence flag only when the licence's animal is. If the animal is anything else, neither rule runs and the protected status is left exactly as it was.
Points a reviewer of the encoding might want to confirm. None is necessarily a defect — several depend on how the surrounding rules and future species lookups are intended to work.
1 · “Whole of Victoria” is not tested
The Order's own words limit the declaration to “the area being the whole of Victoria”. The encoded rule has no location check — it fires wherever the animal is a common brushtail possum. That matches the stated scope today, but if the geography ever narrows, the rule would need a place condition to stay faithful.
2 · Species identification is a manual flag
Everything hinges on the yes/no isCommonBrushtailPossum. There is no cross-check against a scientific-name or schedule lookup, so a mis-tick silently unprotects (or fails to unprotect) the animal. The ontology anticipates replacing this with a lookup.
3 · No time limit encoded
GIC Orders are typically time-bounded. This encoding carries no start or end date, so the declaration is effectively permanent until the ruleset is changed.