While the Greens were failing to rally support against hunting, we hunters were out achieving practical results.

Matho’s blog: Greens’ excellent petitions


The Greens managed to get just 20 people out of 7 million to sign a widely publicised petition to shut down the NSW Game Council, proving their anti-shooting campaign has become a farce.

David Shoebridge MLC, the NSW Greens’ most vocal opponent of anything to do with guns and hunting, still tabled the petition in the state parliament yesterday, along with another complete flop that failed utterly to uphold his belief that the population opposed hunting.

The second one was a petition opposing changes that would allow minors to hunt in limited circumstances on public land without a adult in their direct presence. It attracted only 100 signatures.

A hundred and twenty people? That’s pathetic.

We couldn’t have tabled better petitions ourselves, frankly. They prove that the anti-hunting lobby doesn’t even deserve the credibility of being labelled a minority.

The NSW population is about 7.25 million and all that propaganda, all that table-banging, all that rhetoric by the Greens persuaded just 120 of them to scribble a signature on a couple of petitions. (Let’s give them the right to double-count the individuals who signed both, even if David Shoebridge and Cate Faehrmann were among them.)

And the Greens reckon our side of the argument is out of touch with the population, despite media polls almost always coming out overwhelmingly in our favour.

People are sick of the sensationalist garbage spewed by the Greens. People are much more tuned in to the balanced and rational (and right!) arguments we’ve been putting forth for many years now. Oh, and people are discovering they like shooting, evidenced by the growing number of license holders out there and the success of try-shooting days at ranges.

Here’s what 20 people told NSW parliament in the Greens’ first petition: “The Game Council of New South Wales is a body that was supposed to be self funding but currently receives more than $2.75 million of public funding per year to promote recreational hunting on public land, is a pro-hunting lobby group that should not have statutory support or public funding as it promotes a pro-gun culture and is a body that promotes ‘conservation hunting’ but in practice it is carried out by amateurs, has little effect on the eradication of feral animals and produces needless animal suffering.”

All 20 of those righteously indignant citizens demanded the government “abolish the Game Council of New South Wales and legislate to permanently end recreational hunting on public land”.

Did those 20 people know that public benefit assessments revealed the Game Council provided several times more value to NSW than it cost? Do they know it has been responsible for the destruction of around a million ferals and game animals?

Let’s not even bother to respond to the ideologically driven comments in the petition, nor the appalling hypocrisy demonstrated by the Greens in claiming hunting causes “needless animal suffering” when they support the use of 1080 poison.

The other petition was no more admirable. Only 100 people don’t like the idea of 12- to 17-year-olds hunting without an adult right there beside them, despite the Greens painting it in a sinister light and not acknowledging the prior education and testing involved.

I wonder if it Shoebridge cringed inwardly as he tabled the petitions?

 

 

 


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Mick Matheson

Mick grew up with guns and journalism, and has included both in his career. A life-long hunter, he has long-distant military experience and holds licence categories A, B and H. In the glory days of print media, he edited six national magazines in total, and has written about, photographed and filmed firearms and hunting for more than 15 years.

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