As we reported on 2 June, there has been a level of misinformation circulating in the hunting and shooting community about the purported impacts of a recent Agriculture Amendment Bill. SSAA Victoria spoke to a range of MPs prior to the passage of this bill and have examined the existing Acts and the changes closely and in their full context. The Association takes this approach with every piece of legislation that has the potential to impact licensed shooters and hunters. The clear view on the Agriculture Amendment Bill has been, and remains, that it presents no change to hunters.
In recent weeks, first the Shadow Minister for Agriculture Peter Walsh and then the Minister for Agriculture Mary-Anne Thomas have made efforts to explicitly clarify the situation and address the misinformation.
Speaking in Parliament last Tuesday, Mr Walsh said
I join the debate on the Agriculture Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, which has come back from the upper house. I think there was a lot of misinformation in the community about this bill, and we all received a lot of emails about the idea that somehow under this legislation people were going to have their vegetables seized out of their gardens and were not going to be able to keep their carrots, that they were not going to be able to share meat after people went and hunted game meat. I think tragically, or very unfortunately, one of the upper house members created some of that furore in Victoria by actually directly misquoting what the minister’s answer was, in the upper house, to a question.
Mr Quilty from the other place actually put an article in the Alexandra Eildon Marysville Standard where he talked about the fact that ‘This bill prevents hunters from sharing meat harvested from game animals’.
Mr Quilty said: … hunters could be charged for shooting a pest animal … and feeding it to the next-door neighbour’s cat.
But if you actually look at what was said in the house, Mr Quilty asked Minister Tierney, after thanking her for a very comprehensive response:
Does the bill prevent anyone from slaughtering their own animals or game animals for their own consumption?
Minister Tierney said: The answer is no.
Mr Quilty asked: How about slaughtering their own animals or game animals or feral animals for dog food for their own dogs?
Ms Tierney said: They would be able to do it.
So it is unfortunate that Mr Quilty chose to create a lot of angst within the hunting community, and I thank the minister’s office for putting out a fact sheet that corrected some of this. Field and Game Australia and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia both put out articles to their members correcting the record, because what was put out there is just plainly wrong, but it caused a lot of angst for quite a few people and generated a lot of email traffic obviously to us as members of Parliament. So I think it is important that we get information out to constituents and the wider public, but it is also important that we are being factual when we actually do those things.
Minister Thomas had a letter published in the Weekly Times today, entitled ‘Shooting down falsehood on hunting laws’. The letter said
I’d like to correct the misinformation that has been circulating in relation to the Government’s Agriculture Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, which was passed by the Victorian parliament with bipartisan support.
The amendments will not result in the destruction of crops, nor will they prevent people growing or hunting their own food – any suggestion to the contrary is false and misrepresents changes in the bill. In fact, the bill will help safeguard food security, food safety and access to export markets which are vital for Victoria’s economy.
It is extremely disappointing that Northern Victoria MP Tim Quilty is needlessly causing confusion over the legislation with claims that it will prevent hunters from sharing meat harvested from game animals.
That is completely incorrect.
The bill makes no changes to the way recreational hunters can use game meat.
Under the Meat Industry Act, a recreational hunter can harvest game and either process it themselves or use an unlicensed service provider, such as a mobile butcher service, to process the carcass for them.
It is already an offence under the Meat Industry Act for hunters to sell or distribute recreationally harvested game.
Our government has a strong record of backing hunters and delivering more flexibility in the harvesting of game meats. Under the Sustainable Hunting Action Plan we removed regulatory barriers so farmers could dispose of problem deer and they could be processed for human and pet consumption.
Changes were also made to enable recreational hunters to have wild deer processed for their personal consumption by specific unlicensed providers.
The plan supports licensed game hunters to increase the popularity of hunting, improve animal welfare, undertake research and increase the role of Traditional Owners in managing the land where hunting takes place.
Peddling lies and conspiracy theories only serves to scare and confuse the communities that some politicians purport to represent.
SSAA Victoria thanks Minister Thomas and Shadow Minister Walsh for their clarifications and their support for licenced game hunting.
