Wednesday, 5 February 2025

Duck hunting

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (18:27): (1374) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Environment, and the action I seek is for him to abide by expert advice and remove all threatened species from the game list. The Allan government is yet to announce whether the 2025 duck-shooting season will go ahead, despite the grave risk of avian influenza, severe noncompliance by shooters last year and the ever-declining populations of our native waterbirds.

Last year the Premier called the changes proposed for 2025 ‘common sense’. Excuse my misunderstanding, but I believe common sense would mean listening to the recommendations of their own parliamentary inquiry that recommend they ban duck shooting. But they clearly define it differently, because in documents obtained under FOI last week, it was revealed that the Minister for Environment not only did not ban duck shooting but went against his own department’s advice on the 2024 hunting regulations by personally signing and ordering to please leave the blue-winged shoveler on the game list. This advice by the minister was made only three days after 5500 public submissions and survey responses were received last year. It is actually quite astonishing how fast he could apparently read and make that decision, and of course this was against his own department’s advice to leave the blue-winged shoveler off the game list due to its threatened status.

The Allan government clearly cannot be relied upon to protect our wildlife, and they would rather see our wetlands littered with dead native waterbirds drowning after they have received gunshot wounds but have not been killed than to admit they were wrong and should have followed the advice they were given in the first place.

The minister actually did not stop there. He also personally overrode advice that said to ban electronic duck callers, which astonishingly, even many shooters themselves admit to being unethical devices. They are banned in many parts of the world, but the Minister for Environment independently acted to support their use. So now we know for certain that not only does the Allan government not listen to their own parliamentary inquiries but some of their ministers are not even listening to their own departments on the advice that they receive when it comes to our native animals.

I seek for the minister to rectify his uninformed decisions and to ensure that all threatened species are removed from the game list if a duck-shooting season is to proceed in 2025.