Duck hunting
Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (09:54): Thirty-five years ago the Western Australian government banned duck shooting. Thirty years ago the New South Wales government banned duck shooting. Twenty years ago the Queensland government banned duck shooting. Two years ago a parliamentary inquiry here in Victoria recommended that Victoria ban duck shooting immediately, but what did this Labor government do? They continued it. Not only that, but this year they have expanded the season, made it longer and allowed people to kill more ducks every single day. Make it make sense, because it is just baffling to me how this Labor government continues to allow people to cruelly kill our native waterbirds just for fun, particularly when the vast, vast majority of Victorians do not support this practice and it has been banned in almost every other jurisdiction.
We are consistently seeing our waterbirds threatened. We have many, many species of native waterbirds here that are on the threatened species list, yet every year they end up killed as part of duck-shooting season. It is absolutely ridiculous and cruel that this Labor government continues to pander to the less than 1 per cent of the population who want to shoot waterbirds for fun when the vast, vast majority of Victorians do not want to see this cruel practice continue. So on behalf of the millions of Victorians who want it banned, just ban it.