Rules-as-code · Plain-English guide
A 2018 Governor-in-Council Order (version 2) that makes the Dingo unprotected where the applicant's land is private property — and, there, permits it to be destroyed without a controller licence. It goes a step further than the other species Orders: as well as flipping the protected flag, it grants a permission and waives a licence.
How to read this guide
This is one of several Governor in Council (GIC) Orders encoded alongside the wildlife-licensing rules. Unlike the plain possum and wombat switches, this Order does three things when its conditions are met: it marks the dingo not protected, it makes destroying it Permitted, and it records that no controller licence is required. Everything hinges on one input: whether the relevant land is private property. Colour code: Rules work out, Permitted / true, Not protected / false.
The real Order declares the dingo (Canis lupus dingo), except when kept in captivity, to be unprotected wildlife on private land in a defined area — and on public land within 3 km of it — subject to conditions on who may take them and how. The encoded ruleset captures the private-land core of that: when the animal is a dingo and the applicant's land is private property, the dingo is unprotected, may be destroyed, and needs no controller licence.
The parts of the Order about public land within 3 km, the captivity exception, and the specific permitted methods (traps, baiting, shooting) are not encoded — see the Observations.
Idea 1
The whole Order turns on one thing: is the relevant land private property? The rule checks three places it might be recorded — the applicant's residential address, their business premises, or (for a company) the responsible person's residential address — and fires if any is private property.
Idea 2
Beyond flipping the protected flag, the rule attaches a Permitted modality to “destroy wildlife”. That is a stronger statement than the possum/wombat switches — it actively authorises an action, not just a status.
Idea 3
A second group says: for an unprotected dingo on private land, a controller licence is not required. It reflects that controlling an unprotected animal on your own land doesn't need the authority a protected animal would.
The Order draws on the shared application/licence model. It reads whether the animal is a dingo and whether the land is private, and it writes a protected flag, a destroy permission and a licence-required flag.
The animal in the application and on the licence.
Any of three addresses can carry the “private property” flag that triggers the Order.
What the Order authorises and waives.
Group 1 — “Dingo … unprotected wildlife.” If the application's wildlife is a dingo and the relevant land is private property, the rule makes four writes together:
| Write | Property | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Permission | application.desiredActivities.destroyWildlife | Permitted |
| Permission | licence.activities.destroyWildlife | Permitted |
| Value | licence.wildlife.isProtectedSpecies | False |
| Value | application.wildlife.isProtectedSpecies | False |
Group 2 — “Where unprotected, the Dingo can be taken or killed…”. If the licence's wildlife is a dingo and it is now not protected, and the land is private property, then:
| Write | Property | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Value | application.licences.isControllerLicenceRequired | False (not required) |
Group 2 depends on Group 1 having already marked the dingo unprotected, so the order of evaluation matters: the protected flag is switched off first, then the controller-licence waiver reads it. A third group, “should we enumerate methods to control Dingo?”, is an empty note — a reminder to encode the permitted methods later (Observation 3).
Where the encoded rule departs from the words of the Order, or leans on evaluation order.
1 · Public land within 3 km is not encoded
The Order declares the dingo unprotected on private land and on public land within 3 km of that private land. The rule only tests isPrivateProperty; there is no representation of the 3 km public-land buffer, so control on nearby public land is not covered.
2 · The “except in captivity” exception is missing
The Order excludes dingoes kept in captivity from being unprotected. There is no captivity check, so a captive dingo on private land would be treated the same as a wild one.
3 · Permitted methods are a TODO
The Order specifies exactly how a dingo may be taken (leghold, confinement and net traps, poison baiting, shooting) with detailed conditions. The ruleset's third group is an empty placeholder asking “should we enumerate methods to control Dingo?” — none of the method rules or their animal-welfare conditions are encoded.
4 · Group 2 spans the application and licence sides
Group 1 flips the protected flag off the application's dingo guard, while Group 2 reads the licence's dingo and protected flag. The chain works when both sides describe the same animal, but relies on that alignment; a mismatch between the application and licence wildlife would break the controller-licence waiver.