Silencers, night vision and cultural hunting: Shooters Party reveals its demands

A new state body to manage “conservation hunting” would recognise “cultural hunting” among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike, and encourage recreational shooters to use silencers and night vision technology to kill pest species, under a proposal now being considered by the Minns government.

Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party leader Robert Borsak said the proposed council of seven members – four of whom would be nominated by shooters organisations – would operate under the oversight of a newly appointed hunting minister. It would take on some of the responsibilities of the Game Council of NSW, which was abolished after a scathing report into its operations in 2013.

Shooters Party leader Robert Borsak, posing with an elephant he shot in Africa, has proposed a new body to take over some of the duties of the disbanded Game Council, which he once chaired.

Then-premier Barry O’Farrell said at the time: “Essentially it made the point that the Game Council was both the promoter and the operator in relation to hunting activities across NSW as well as the regulator. That posed an unacceptable risk to the government.”

Under the latest proposal, the new body would have less control over revenues from licensing than the Game Council had, but according to a briefing paper on the changes written by the Shooters Party and provided to some NSW MPs, it would oversee licensing and policy development.

“The bill supports a new licensing framework, including a proposed Conservation Hunting Licence, to manage ethical public land access and encourages the use of advanced technology (e.g. night vision, thermal scopes, sound moderators) for humane and efficient pest control on private land,” the briefing paper says.

It would also create bounties for pest animals such as pigs, feral cats and foxes, providing what it said was a cost-effective way to support government-funded pest control.

Borsak said the proposed changes would also increase access to Crown land for hunters, but could not say which land. He said he understood the government would support the proposal. A spokesperson for Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty said the bill would go through “internal party processes this morning”.

The O’Farrell government called for a report into the original Game Council after its chief executive was arrested for illegally hunting on private land. He was later convicted of illegal hunting and firearms charges.

The report found that after a decade of operations, “the Game Council has no overarching governance framework; lacks a strategic planning framework; lacks some of the skills, tools and resources to ensure effective compliance with its regulatory framework; has no internal regulatory compliance program (and has compliance breaches for example with records, privacy, and information access legislation); has no approved enterprise-wide risk management framework; and has an inadequate policy framework.

“Without any real mandate or direction the Game Council has expanded its governance role beyond its statutory functions, and attempted to reinvent its statutory objects with a focus on the use of the term conservation hunting.”

Opponents of so-called “conservation hunting” say it is ineffective because recreational hunters have an interest in maintaining, or even spreading, pest species through the landscape rather than eradicating them.

Invasive Species Council chief executive Jack Gough wrote to the government urging it to oppose the changes. He wrote that the bill as it stood would provide the hunting lobby and Shooters Party “with a publicly funded platform (a propaganda machine) to promote themselves and misleading claims about recreational hunting and its effectiveness for conservation”, and boost “the influence of hunters over management of state forests to stop effective management of feral animals”.

He told the Herald that the hunting lobby had long opposed more effective methods of pest control, such as aerial shooting and baiting because it did not want game eradicated.

Greens MP and environment spokesperson Sue Higginson said the establishment of the Game Council by former premier Bob Carr was an unmitigated disaster, and that the Minns government was now backing the creation of a similar body in order to “buy votes in the Legislative Council” for planned changes to workers’ compensation programs.

“The bill before the parliament is a giant lie. It is being justified by the premier under the false premise that ‘conservation hunting’ will reduce invasive species for the benefit of the environment. The premier knows this is untrue and is contrary to expert advice,” Higginson said.

“This new Game Council 2.0 law has been drafted so that the new Hunting Authority can only promote the benefits of hunting, in what can only be described as science denialism. It will have an absolute majority of gun advocates in voting positions and has significant power to recommend government policy.”

Minns raised eyebrows last week when an interview on FM radio in Coffs Harbour about flooding on the Mid North Coast took an abrupt detour in which he announced he was open to paying hunters to kill feral pigs and cats. At the time, both the Shooters and the government denied a deal had been struck.

Get to the heart of what’s happening with climate change and the environment. Sign up for our fortnightly Environment newsletter.