RSPCA Victoria has joined other animal rights organisations today, pushing out data that falsely infers that banning duck hunting would somehow be a political winner for the Government.
In 2016, in the wake of a scathing independent review of RSPCA Victoria’s operations, their CEO, Dr Liz Walker, went on a PR offensive to convince the Victorian public (and the Parliament) that the organisation had learned its lessons, “we certainly understand that over the past few years there have been issues which we have campaigned on, and their tone and the way we have done that definitely impacted on our trust with our stakeholders and we apologise for that” Dr Walker said at the time.
Dr Walker also acknowledged that the RSPCA’s activism had compromised the vital work of their inspectors, “it puts them (the inspectors) in an untenable position to have to do that whilst the organisation that employs them has in the past openly and very emotionally and stridently advocated against the existing laws”. At the time, the RSPCA actively withdrew from its anti duck hunting campaign. Seven years on, the RSPCA continues to demonstrate that its apparent remorse at the time was all lip service as it engages in blatant activism against the existing laws.
Today’s media release from the RSPCA includes a crude table showing actual duck licence numbers in marginal electorates alongside “supporters” of RSPCA, Wildlife Victoria and Animals Australia. Each animal rights organisation uses a different criterion for what constitutes a “supporter”, with some as spurious as people who have clicked on one of their campaign links over the past five years. From a data perspective, it’s fundamentally flawed. From a political perspective, it’s total nonsense.
A year ago, the RSPCA and SSAA Victoria each commissioned credible research into public opinions on duck hunting in Victoria. The RSPCA research was statewide; the SSAA Victoria research focused on seven Labor-held outer metropolitan and regional electorates. Both asked, “Would you support new rules on duck hunting to protect native species and allow hunting to continue, such as introducing mandatory training for duck hunting licence holders?”. The RSPCA research found that 62% of voters statewide would support such a change, and the SSAA Victoria research found that 56% of voters in Labor-held electorates would support such a change.
It’s little wonder that this year, instead of conducting credible research, the RSPCA went out to hoodwink the Government with dodgy data…the real stuff doesn’t tell a story that the animal rights movement wants people to hear.
Image: The animal rights lobby in 2016 posing for a propaganda campaign with a long-dead (of natural causes) Black Swan.