2016-02-23
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — The Labor Party's decision to allow a duck shooting season this year, announced at 10.00 p.m. on Friday, 23 January, is more than disappointing — it is a disgrace and is completely unjustifiable. The primary consideration of any government should be the protection and preservation of our native birds and animals, yet successive governments have put the interests of a small but noisy cohort of duck shooters ahead of the welfare of our native species. The Labor government has done that again this year when the science clearly shows that the season should not go ahead.
According to the publication Considerations for the 2016 duck season, released by the Game Management Authority, which was set up by the previous government and supported by Labor to essentially support hunting, the 2015 waterbird all birds abundance index is below the long-term average and is the second lowest ever recorded. Predicted rainfall is not expected to improve conditions for waterbirds in the short term. Comparable conditions in 2008–09 saw those duck seasons cancelled. But, no, in order to appease the shooting lobby, Labor has allowed a full season — March to June — with a token reduction in the number of ducks allowed to be shot each day. This is basically business as usual, as monitoring of bag limits is woeful and shooters will continue to leave injured and unwanted birds on the water and discard smaller ones if they shoot a bigger one and so avoid the so-called bag limits, which will make no difference.
We will continue to see protected species such as freckled ducks, swans, coots, grebes, kites and other birds killed on our wetlands. This duck season should be cancelled and this should herald the end of this brutal and barbaric so-called sport forever, as the majority of Victorians want to see.