Shooters, Fishers and Farmers join the big league

The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party has developed into a significant political force in NSW.

Robert Borsak from the Shooters and Fishers Party.

From a group that started as a pro-gun NSW protest movement nearly 30 years ago, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party has ­developed into a significant political force in NSW and a noticeable presence in other states.

According to its website, what was first called the Shooters Party grew out of resentment at the NSW government’s 1992 Firearms Amendment Act that cracked down on gun ownership.

“Shooters and hunters felt it was designed to make them the scapegoats for criminal misuse of firearms by others,” it says.

The force behind the creation of the Shooters Party was journalist and broadcaster John Tingle, who claimed the new laws would prevent citizens from owning firearms for self defence.

Mr Tingle, whose daughter is the prominent ABC political journalist Laura Tingle, was elected to the NSW upper house at the 1995 state election. He was re-elected to a second eight-year term in 2003, but resigned in 2006 over health issues.

Over the years, the party has developed a broader range of campaign issues and in 2016 changed its name to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.

It remains primarily a party of the bush, although its NSW leader, Robert Borsak, who holds one of two of the party’s upper house seats, is an accountant and businessman who lives in Sydney.

Mark Banasiak, who will hold the other NSW upper house seat for the party, had a teaching ­career, and like Mr Borsak, is a keen hunter and fisherman.

Apart from shooters’ issues, the party focuses on farmers’ rights, recreational fishing, water management, and rural and regional health services.

Former police prosecutor Philip Donato won the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers’ first NSW lower house seat, Orange, from the Nationals in a by-election in 2016. He says the party is distinguished by having candidates who have been part of the local community in jobs where they meet a wide variety of constituents.

In his role in the police, Mr Donato worked in several towns in the region.

“It’s not rocket science, it’s ­getting out there and talking to ­people,” Mr Donato saidyesterday. “And we don’t have to toe the line for the Liberals.”

While the party is strongest in NSW, where it now has two members in the upper house and three in the lower house, it has made inroads into other states.

At the 2014 Victorian election two Shooters and Fishers candidates, Jeffrey Bourman and Daniel Young, were elected to the Legislative Council.

At the 2018 poll, Mr Bourman was re-elected, but Mr Young lost his seat.

In Western Australia, Shooters and Fishers candidate Rick Mazza was elected to the Legislative Council at the 2013 state election. Nigel Hallett was elected for the Liberal Party, but defected to the Shooters, Fishers in 2016.

Mr Mazza retained his seat at the 2017 poll, and formed a “conservative bloc’’ with One Nation and the Liberal Democratic Party. Mr Hallett was not re-elected.

The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers have run in electoral contests in the other states, but have yet to win a seat there.