The Shooters and Fishers Party has told the only remaining Greens MP in the ACT to shoot feral animals and “do something real and good for conservation”.
The party’s challenge came in response to comments by ACT Minister Shane Rattenbury, who vowed hunting would never be allowed in the territory’s national parks.
Rattenbury implied NSW hunters were threatening to cross the borders of the capital and start shooting animals there.
The SFP said the idea was “farcical … exactly the kind of posturing hunters expect from the Greens”.
“Rattenbury’s department will spend $350,000 poisoning, trapping and shooting pest animals in the ACT this year and yet Rattenbury cannot tell us how many animals will be removed,” said SFP MLC Robert Borsak. “Nor does he concede that most of those animals – as well as uncounted native marsupials and birds – will die agonising deaths over many hours thanks to the poisons used.
“Too long following the Green and Animal Liberation agenda, Mr Rattenbury should get out of his office and shoot a few ferals – do something real and good for conservation.
“Will he make a positive change, or continue to ignore the message delivered to the Greens in the last ACT election, when three-quarters of their MPs were voted out?”
Rattenbury’s attack on hunters, which included accusations that hunting had nothing to do with conservation and that hunters had no interest in removing feral pests, was matched in the past few days by the NSW Greens as they desperately tried to halt the progress of the SFP’s bill to change how duck hunting is managed in NSW.
“The O’Farrell government looks likely to expand the unwanted guns and hunting culture in NSW by supporting duck hunting legislation proposed by the fringe right wing Shooters Party,” was how one of David Shoebridge’s media releases began.
He referred to “pro-gun extremists”, an “emerging US style culture of guns and hunting” and an “open season on ducks”, as well as calling duck hunting an “extremely cruel practice” and referring to the game bird mitigation program as having an “Orwellian” name.
During parliamentary debate yesterday, Shoebridge suggested the O’Farrell government was pondering “what native animal we can kill” to get its legislation through as he again accused the government and SFP as doing “dirty deals”.
Other Greens and the Labor Opposition also made disparaging comments, and the Nature Conservation Council weighed in, too, called duck hunting “unconscionable”.
NCC CEO Pepe Clarke said hunters do not discriminate between legal and protected species and claimed “if the media or wildlife officers are not present when hunting occurs it would be a free-for-all”.
“Wild water bird numbers are only now recovering from the effects of the worst drought in living memory,” he claimed, despite plague numbers being present on rice crops over the past few years. “Given the effects of climate change, those populations may never return to the levels before the drought in the 1980s and 1990s.”
None of these responses were presented with any basis whatsoever, and appear to be no more than grabs for media attention – which was successful, given how many made it into print.
The SFP, in its reply to Rattenbury, picked up on the tactic: “Rattenbury deliberately ignores the clear distinctions between feral and game animals – and how they are managed – by telling the public that listing deer as a game animal is proof that hunters don’t want to eradicate feral pests. It’s like saying that because Greens like a good latte they’re not interested in uncaging civets. The only proof offered here is that Rattenbury has no idea about conservation management.”
Similarly, most of the publicly aired opposition to the SFP’s duck hunting bill has shown ignorance of the content of the bill, which will not create an “open season” on ducks and will allow the Game Council to manage game bird hunting on a sustainable basis.
Perhaps with that kind of management in mind, the SFP told Rattenbury that “if he and the rest of the Greens cared to open their eyes, they’d find many studies backing the importance of hunting as one of the tools available to tackle feral animals in Australia”.
See the SFP’s full response to Rattenbury here. Asking viewers to forgive the laughter, Aussie Feral Control uploaded this video of David Shoebridge in the NSW upper house yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKXqlEIOHho
0 Comments