Call to ban duck hunting: not backed by majority

A majority of MPs on Victoria’s Select Committee inquiry into duck hunting have opposed a ban despite bureaucrats throwing a smokescreen around a significant report.

Victorian Labor's first female Aboriginal MP has opposed a ban on duck hunting.

The majority of Upper House MPs sitting on Victoria’s Select Committee inquiry into native bird hunting have refused to back a ban on the annual duck and quail harvest.

Four members of the committee released what they called a “majority report” last week, recommending hunting bans on all private and public land.

Yet five members published minority reports opposing a ban – three from the Liberal-Nationals Coalition, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers member Jeff Bourman and Labor MP Sheena Watt.

Ms Watt took a stand against her Labor colleagues’ position, producing her own minority report that recommends duck hunting continue, but under more stringent controls.

She said her call was “in stark contrast with the majority report, which did not effectively engage with several thousand submissions from ordinary working Victorians, many from regional Victoria, outlining how the outdoor recreational pursuit of native bird hunting is important to them, their families and their communities”.

Despite this, Select Committee chair and Labor MP Ryan Batchelor still published what he called a majority report that called for a ban on duck and quail hunting based on “considerable environmental evidence of long-term decline in native bird populations, and a worsening outlook as our climate continues to change”.

The call for a ban comes amid revelations Outdoor Recreation Minister Sonya Kilkenny and her department bureaucrats withheld a crucial government-commissioned report from the Select Committee, which states a “harvest quota of 10 to 20 per cent” of game ducks surveyed each year is sustainable.

South Australian mathematical ecologist Thomas Prowse delivered his report to the Victorian Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions on July 6, but his report was not supplied to the Select Committee until the day before their report was tabled in parliament last week.

Victorian Sporting Shooters Association of Australia hunting development manager David Laird said the Department’s delay in delivering the report was “too clever by half.

“This makes a total mockery of the Select Committee’s report,” he said. “They based their recommendation on the premise that the sustainability of hunting was a real problem when, all the while, the government was hiding research that proves that premise to be false.”

Victoria’s union movement has called on the Andrews government to dismiss the select committee’s majority report.

A Government spokeswoman said it would “thoroughly consider the (Select Committee’s) report, its recommendations and will respond in due course”.