Tuesday, 30 April 2024

Duck hunting

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (18:50): (841) My adjournment today is to the Premier. As is becoming a worrying signature of this government, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory earlier this year when the Premier made a captain’s call to approve another season of slaughter of our native ducks. In doing so, she ignored the views of a majority of Victorians and the recommendations of Labor’s own inquiry. During the second week in April, when the shooting started, I joined the vets from Wildlife Victoria and brave volunteers from the Coalition Against Duck Shooting at wetlands in northern Victoria. We saw native waterbirds that had not been retrieved, giving lie to this claim that shooting is done for food. We saw waterbirds that were not on the approved list and therefore were shot illegally. CADS and Wildlife Victoria laid out dozens of dead ducks outside the Premier’s office, including illegally shot threatened blue-winged shovelers that were recovered by rescuers in just the first five days of this season. This is just further evidence that the waterfowl identification test taken by shooters is either ineffective or is being ignored.

The social licence for this brutal activity, whatever there was of it, is already clearly diminished. The number of shooters has fallen significantly from around 100,000 many years ago to an estimated no more than 5000 shooters out there this year. Why then is so much of Victoria locked up for nearly two months each year for the exclusive use of this brutal few? To my colleagues on the government benches, it is time to refresh your memory that it was Labor premiers who banned the practice in their states – Carmen Lawrence in WA in 1990, Bob Carr in New South Wales in 1995. And when Queensland banned duck shooting in 2005, Premier Peter Beattie stated that Queensland was now the smart state for protecting their native waterbirds. An admirable Labor tradition from reforming progressive premiers that accepted facts based on clear evidence – a tradition your Premier is turning away from. Progressive Victoria? I think we are starting to see evidence of regressive Victoria instead. Premier, the action I seek is to end duck shooting in Victoria for good.