Thursday, 20 February 2025

Duck hunting

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (17:51): (1440) My adjournment this evening is to the Minister for Outdoor Recreation, and the action I seek is to cancel the 2025 duck shooting season. This is because of comprehensive evidence of biosecurity risks from the avian influenza outbreak, declining duck population numbers and decreasing wetland habitat. It seems obvious that Labor is once again cravenly pandering to the shooting lobby and the small number of Victorians they represent, rather than protecting the health and welfare of waterbirds and regional communities.

In the words of Dr Carmen Lawrence, the then Premier of Western Australia when that Labor government banned shooting:

Our community has reached a stage of enlightenment where it can no longer accept the institutionalised killing of native birds for recreation.

And that was back in 1990. On 8 February 2025 Agriculture Victoria confirmed that a new outbreak of high-pathogenicity avian influenza – HPAI – was present in Victoria and that lab tests showed that this was a different strain than was reported in Victoria in 2024. Agriculture Victoria provided a further update on 17 February this year outlining that affected townships included Euroa, Violet Town, Longwood, Ruffy, Avenel and Strathbogie. I have asked the minister separately about what biosecurity advice had been received from the federal government with regard to cancelling or reducing the 2025 duck shooting season in Victoria, given that HPAI can be spread by both wild and domestic birds and that the death, injury and disruption that shooting causes to bird populations are likely virus-spreading activities.

The minister’s decision to continue with the 2025 duck shooting season also appears to ignore completely findings from the 2024 eastern Australian waterbird aerial survey, which is a joint effort initiative across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Conducted annually since 1983, it is one of the great Australian datasets, and it monitors changes in the distribution and abundance of waterbirds and their breeding, as well as change in the extent of wetland habitat over time, tracking trends in more than 70 species of waterbirds. The 2024 survey was released just four months ago and found that:

All game species of ducks had abundances below their long-term averages

Specifically that breeding abundance had decreased steeply compared to the previous year, falling by:

an order of magnitude for the second successive year to well below the long-term average and one of the lowest on record.

Another key finding:

Wetland area decreased considerably from the previous year, to well below the long-term average … Availability of wetland habitat is a major driver of water bird abundance, breeding and diversity. Reductions in habitat area and persistence due to climate change, river regulation and water extraction have resulted in ongoing declines …

across many duck species. Minister, given these conditions, I implore you: cancel the 2025 duck shooting season.