Hunters slugged: Game licence fee hike of 57 per cent

Hunters discovered their game licence fees had jumped 57 per cent, after opening renewal notices that arrived last week.

Victorian hunters are now paying the highest license fees in Australia. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Victoria’s 58,611 hunters will have to pay 57 per cent more in game licence fees to harvest deer, duck and quail.

Licence renewal notices sent out over the past week show the cost of an annual game licence for all species has risen from $95.40 to $150.20, while a three-year licence rose from $286.20 to $450.80.

The hike in fees now makes Victoria the most expensive state to hunt, with licences now costing far more than in South Australia, Tasmania, NSW, the Northern Territory and even New Zealand.

The decision to hike the fees was made in September, as part of a rewrite of Victoria’s Wildlife (Game) Regulations 2024, but was not mentioned in Outdoor Recreation Minister Steve Dimopoulos media release at that time.

Field and Game Australia chief executive Lucas Cooke said hunters only become aware of the fee hike after renewal notices went out last week.

The Allan Government hiked the fees in response a regulatory impact statement on the new regulations that found it was spending $7.6 million to $9m a year on the Game Management Authority, while collecting less than $4m from hunters in game licence revenue.

Mr Cooke said “we understand the government’s reasoning, but don’t agree”.

He said fees should have remained the same for compliant hunters, while increasing those for non-compliant hunters and penalties for activists.

Victorian Duck Hunters Association spokesman Danny Ryan said the hike in fees would act as a barrier to people taking up or continuing hunting, “especially in the middle of a cost of living crisis”.

The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (Victoria) hunting development manager David Laird said while nobody liked cost increases “the annual cost of a game licence is still in line with its historical percentage of the average weekly wage”.

The government set aside $11.6m in the May 2024-25 budget to be spent over the next four years on what Mr Dimopoulos has previously stated was an investment in better compliance “with more officers in the field to make sure the rules are followed”.

But Mr Ryan said hunter compliance was already sitting at 99.4 per cent and now hunters were being forced to subsidise the GMA’s cost of dealing with activists.

The regulations also introduced a ban on lead shot for quail hunting from 2025, as well as requiring hunters to make every effort to immediately dispatch struck deer and allowing the use of handheld thermal imaging devices during the daytime.

Mr Dimopoulos’s office said the new regulations “improve the safety and responsibility of game hunting while supporting game populations, and environment and wildlife protections.”

Prior to its decision licence fees had simply been increased each year in line with the consumer price index.