Game Council CEO Brian Boyle has taken the extraordinary step of using the right of reply to the NSW parliament after the Greens launched an attack on him in the upper house.
Mr Boyle has rebutted statements made by Greens MLCs Jeremy Buckingham, Cate Faehrmann and David Shoebridge, who he said made “misleading or incorrect statements” about him during a heated debate over game and feral animal control legislation.
The Greens’ comments have been seen as evidence of the levels they will stoop to in their vitriolic opposition to hunting.
The statements were not only an attack on Mr Boyle, but on the Game Council that they desperately oppose.
It is not the first time the Greens have been loose with the truth, but this time a complaint against them has been put on the official record.
In his right of reply, Mr Boyle said the Greens went as far as making up quotes they attributed to him and accusing him of engaging in political debate at meetings he did not even attend.
The Greens accused Mr Boyle, who has been a public servant for 26 years, of running a “fiefdom”, being “a political figure in the Shooters and Fishers Party” and of “pursuing his ongoing political advancement”.
“I have no ties to or membership of any political party – I am a public servant,” Mr Boyle said. He also said he had did not “have any interest in ‘political advancement’.”
Referring in parliament to the possibility of opening up national park at Mt Canobolas to conservation hunting, Buckingham quoted Boyle as saying, “Isn’t it great that I will be able to shoot up here? I can let off a high powered rifle through a thicket of bush, in the fog, with no idea who else is in the park.”
Buckingham added, “Inevitably, someone will end up being shot.”
Mr Boyle denied saying the words Buckingham attributed to him, and pointed out that the area he was in during an ABC television interview was clear, as can be seen in the footage.
He detailed a number of other incorrect and misleading statements made by the Greens MLCs, who are protected by parliamentary privilege from any potential legal action over their comments.
Mr Boyle’s full right of reply, which has now been accepted in the Hansard record, can be found on the NSW parliament website.
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