2016-08-18
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Just on this amendment made by Mr Young and also I think intermingled with the other changes that are made by the bill itself as to the emergency declarations, I have got a number of questions. Minister, you have been engaging with stakeholders in relation to this proposal to abolish this committee. This committee and the membership on it of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), now generally known as BirdLife Australia, are the only source of independent ecological advice, independent of the Game Management Authority, whose job it is to actually promote hunting, and independent of the department and all their various agendas.
The independent advice that at the moment you must consider before you make these emergency declarations comes from BirdLife Australia, and you are voting on the urging of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party to abolish it. What has BirdLife Australia said to you about this proposal to abolish the committee that they sit on?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Thank you, Minister. We will come back to your amendments and the debacle that was last year's duck season shortly. But just back onto Mr Young's amendments, it would have been better, I think, if you said that you were advised that BirdLife support the abolition of this committee, because then I would have been able to say that you have been wrongly advised. I spoke yesterday to the CEO of BirdLife, who said that they did not want the committee abolished, but they did want major changes to the way this committee operates, because quite clearly it is stacked with shooters. BirdLife are the one group on it that actually represent an independent, ecological interest. Given the timing of those discussions, can I ask you: when did you first decide that you were going to entertain the abolition of the committee? Was it when Mr Young produced his amendments back on Tuesday afternoon of this sitting week?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I am just getting the time lines: Mr Young presented the amendments to you I am assuming sometime around Tuesday afternoon, when he shared them with the rest of us, and it was then that you decided that they were a good idea. Following that, you then sought to make contact with BirdLife, which are, as I say, the ecological representative on this committee. Is that the way that the sequence of events has rolled out this week?
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Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Yes, Minister, but your bill was supposed to fix all that. You brought into the lower house, passed it through there and brought up to this house a bill which contained a fix for the very problem that you described. In fact not only did your bill not abolish the committee but it actually added an extra member to the committee to increase its size from six to seven, had a member actually nominated to you and also changed the name from RAOU to BirdLife. Your solution, which was going to fix the problem you had in duck season last year, was actually to change the structure of the committee, not to get rid of it. I just want to be sure that you changed your mind when Mr Young presented his amendments on Tuesday and that then you went to speak to BirdLife to inform them about what it is you are intending to do now in voting for the Shooters and Fishers Party amendments.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Again, I am still not sure exactly why it is that you have preferred Mr Young's approach over your own, because your bill intends, as stated in the explanatory memorandum, that:
If it is impracticable for the minister to obtain the advice of the advisory committee, the minister may obtain the advice of the Game Management Authority —
instead. So you have given yourself a possibility here with this clause to just simply skip over that step and go on and declare a wetland closed. You seem to suddenly have decided when Mr Young mentioned it to you that, rather than improving the committee and giving yourself more administrative flexibility in relation to the committee, you will actually just get rid of the committee. As I say, it is the only body in this whole scheme of decision-making where you must at least consider the advice they are giving and where an independent scientifically-based ecological group is going to give advice.
If it is in order to deal with a few more of the issues around these amendments before we actually vote on Mr Young's amendments, in relation to your bill, Minister, what was it that was so difficult about the operations of the clauses in the principal act in the run-up to — that is, the week prior to — the opening of duck season last year that has led to this bill itself being presented?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — So, Minister, in the run-up to this year's duck season opening day, which was a Saturday, on what day were you advised by your advisers, the GMA, the department or whoever that there were 155 blue-billed ducks at Lake Elizabeth? On what day, in that time line that you have been expanding on, were you told that?
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Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — And when did the GMA first know that there were 155 blue-billed ducks at Lake Elizabeth?
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Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — And then what was the next step, them having become aware? They then sought to convene the wetlands closures committee — am I right about that?
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Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Well, how much more responsive could it have been, Minister? The GMA only detected the birds on the Tuesday and, as you say, the hunters had arrived a couple of days early to start shooting on Saturday. Is the problem here the cumbersome process or is the problem here the inability of the GMA to actually know where all these threatened species are across a vast number of wetlands when the birds themselves are constantly moving?
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Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Thank you for that information, Minister. I was aware that that was the mechanism used because I actually visited Lake Elizabeth on the Saturday morning and saw the notice. But that was not what I was dealing with. I will support your new clauses in this bill, but I want to get to the bottom of how they will operate.
You say the problem was that hunters were inconvenienced because they were not allowed to go shooting on this wetland that contained 155 blue-billed ducks which they, who had been there for two days, had not reported but the GMA somehow found out about. The new mechanism you have here, though, does allow you to do an emergency closure for seven days virtually on a whim, on the spot. If you use that measure, and I certainly hope you do use that measure whenever you observe that there are threatened species on a wetland, then the poor little duck hunters are going to be inconvenienced because you will use that mechanism whenever those species are spotted.
I find it amazing that the people who participate in this cruel sport that the vast majority of Victorians oppose still manage to sound both like victims and at the same time entitled to shoot on a wetland where there are 155 blue-billed ducks, a threatened species, present. But the issue would be, would it not, that under this new clause you will be able to snap your fingers and stop shooting for seven days whenever you want to at any stage under one new mechanism and under the other mechanism, if you want to do a larger and more long-running closure, you will actually have to go through a whole range of steps, so you may be removing the cumbersome bit of the old scheme. Personally I believe it was the injunction by Animals Australia on the Friday afternoon that finally spurred you and your fellow minister into action. But certainly in terms of this extra clause here, the seven-day closure, is it not correct that you will be able to do that any time you want to?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr Barber interjected.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Well, let us look at that clause 26, 'Emergency closure notices'. What it says is:
If the Minister is satisfied that any threatened wildlife or that significant numbers of protected wildlife other than game is under immediate threat of destruction, injury or disturbance from hunting or the presence of hunters, the Minister may, by notice published in the Government Gazette—
(a) prohibit absolutely or regulate or control the taking or destroying or hunting of any particular kind or taxon of wildlife in any area and for any period, not exceeding 7 days, specified in the notice …
So is it not the case that if the same situation arose and on the Tuesday you found out that there were 155 blue-billed ducks on Lake Elizabeth, you could in fact ban all hunting on that wetland at any moment of your choosing, assuming you could get out a copy of the Government Gazette. You could do it Tuesday afternoon; you could do it Wednesday morning; if you found out about the ducks on Friday morning, you could do it on Friday, and there would be no shooting on Saturday. Is that the way this new clause will operate?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Well, I really hope you use it liberally, Minister, because as well as the lawyers picnic that you were going through at that particular time last year, you were no doubt getting monstered by the shooters lobby, who were having a complete tanty about this whole matter, when the real issue should have been that there were 155 threatened ducks on that wetland and that shooting was not appropriate. So I am glad to hear you say that in the same circumstances with the same facts you would use this new law to achieve the same result.
Just one more question. As you noted, I was at the wetland itself, and I was at other wetlands on that day. Have you yourself yet visited a wetland where shooting is occurring on duck hunting opening day or at any time during the season?
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