Duck shooting battle shifts to Victorian parliament

Callum Godde | March 5, 2023

A long-running battle over duck shooting in Victoria is shifting to the halls of power ahead of what animal welfare advocates suspect will be the state’s last season.

A motion to establish an upper house inquiry to examine the practice’s future will be introduced on Tuesday, before being debated on Thursday.

Newly-elected Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers’ Jeff Bourman and Greens newcomer Katherine Copsey are expected to be the crossbenchers appointed to the committee.

Ms Purcell, who has spent 11 years rescuing wounded ducks on the opening day of the shooting season, is confident the government-led inquiry will provide a platform for change amid renewed calls for a ban.

“We’re hoping they’re not just trying to keep us busy and wasting our time,” she says.

Victoria’s Game Management Authority last month confirmed a shortened five-week season would run from late April, with a bag limit of four birds a day and ban on potting the threatened blue-winged shoveler and hardhead.

Outdoor Recreation Minister Sonya Kilkenny announced the select committee to coincide with the decision, citing duck hunting’s “increasingly contested” nature.

Ms Purcell was surprised the Andrews government opted not to cancel the season after winning a fresh four-year term in November and growing dissension within its ranks.

“With this reduced season and the writing on the wall for the future of duck shooting in Victoria, we have great concerns it’s going to be a blood bath,” she says.

Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are the only states where duck shooting is permitted.

Western Australia, NSW and Queensland banned it in 1990, 1995 and 2005 respectively.

In SA, the Malinauskas Labor government also established an inquiry into recreational native bird hunting when announcing its 2023 season.

Minister Lizzie Blandthorn and cabinet secretary Steve McGhie have expressed dismay at Victoria’s duck season going ahead while backing the review.

Another Labor MP speaking on condition of anonymity has told AAP about two-thirds of the party room is opposed to duck shooting and the caucus was led to believe this season would be different.

Premier Daniel Andrews says he’s not concerned about the issue dividing his party room and has branded the parliamentary committee an important step.

“If one set of stakeholders think you’ve gone too far and the other set of stakeholders think you haven’t gone far enough, sometimes you’ve found the right place,” he told reporters last week.

In what has become a grisly annual tradition, the premier can expect more dead native birds to be dumped outside his Treasury Place office on the first Monday after the season opens.

Coalition Against Duck Shooting campaign director Laurie Levy, who has been rescuing maimed ducks since 1986 and leading the yearly demonstration, says the government’s position is outdated.

“The premier of a progressive Labor government has the same policy on duck shooting the late Sir Henry Bolte’s Liberal government had in the 1950s,” he says.

“The ducks are in trouble because of climate change, they’re in trouble because of the cruelty, they’re in trouble because their numbers are way down. We’ve got to stop the rot before we have other extinctions.”

While less than half of Victoria’s 23,000-odd licensed duck hunters are thought to have participated last season, more than 260,000 birds were killed and estimates of those wounded vary between 15,700 and 105,000.

The regulator’s annual helicopter survey of duck numbers was paused in October with swathes of the state in flood.

In a statement to AAP, a GMA spokesman confirmed the 2022 poll wrapped up in mid-December and it would publish a report with the results once finalised.

But the regulator’s season announcement cited long-term declines in waterbird abundance, breeding and habitat availability, as well as concerns over wounding rates and some hunters’ poor behaviour, as reasons for its more precautionary settings.

Mr Bourman, who was spurred to run for parliament over firearm regulation changes in 2012, says animal rights activists are presenting evidence that doesn’t stand up to inspection.

“People who happily eat farmed duck are brainwashed into thinking duck hunting is somehow cruel, yet farmed ducks being killed is not,” he adds.

Field and Game Australia say figures show hunter compliance to be “exceptionally high” and point to two experts recommending a full-length season based on harvest modelling.

The organising body raised more than $25,000 within 24 hours of calling for donations to secure experts and a lawyer for Victoria and SA’s select committees.

“Australian hunters are in for a fight and we know duck hunting is the ‘canary in the coal mine’,” it says.

Hunting, animal welfare and regional community groups will be given the opportunity to speak and make submissions to the parliamentary committee before it hands down a final report by August 31.

Now 81, Mr Levy is optimistic an outright ban is within reach.

“This will be the last year,” he says.