Notwithstanding widespread media reporting characterising the recommendation of the Select Committee into Native Bird Hunting as being to “end the annual native bird hunting season”, that is an exercise in selective semantics more so than it is an exercise in reality.
The real story is that five of the nine committee members delivered written minority reports that unambiguously call for native bird hunting in Victoria to continue. The most extraordinary and compelling of those minority reports came from Government MP Sheena Watt. Ms Watt’s report is extraordinary for two reasons.
The first reason is that it is extremely rare in Australian democracies for MPs to break ranks with their parties; when they do, it is never without ramifications, and it is invariably an act of conscience and moral integrity.
The second reason is that, in this case, the cause of dissent is a female indigenous MP highlighting that, on matters important to indigenous Victorians, her non-indigenous colleagues have failed to listen to the indigenous community. As Ms Watt so eloquently put it, “I felt it necessary to make recommendations that speak to a commitment to self-determination and that highlight the cultural practices important to the path to Treaty that this state boldly embarked upon, in this, a most pivotal year for First Nations Peoples in Victoria”.
If adopted, the (so-called) majority report recommendations would carve out an exemption for Traditional Owners to continue hunting. This recommendation contradicts the advice and the evidence of traditional owners (both pro and anti-hunting) throughout the Select Committee inquiry. That recommendation has been met with scorn by those traditional owners. Dja Dja Wurrung group CEO and First People’s Assembly member Rodney Carter told the inquiry, “I think – with the brilliant respect that the state has afforded First Nations people – that my descendants and I will enjoy hunting for all time. If the inquiry and the government can somewhat see it in their mind to afford other Victorians the opportunity – and visitors to our homelands – to be able to enjoy something similar, I think truly it can be managed”. Anti-hunting activist, executive member of the Victorian Traditional Owner Land Justice Group and First People’s Assembly member Gary Murray was equally concerned with the recommendation singling out indigenous Victorians.
Ms Watt’s report makes seven considered recommendations for the Government that, as she puts it, “embody the wishes of Victorians, especially those in regional communities, and centralise the importance of traditional cultural practices to the identity of First Nations Victorians”. If implemented, some of Ms Watt’s recommendations would be incredibly challenging for the hunting community. We accept, however, that they are the result of a genuine, considered and balanced weighing of the evidence that was put before the inquiry.
Ms Watt is the only indigenous MP in the Victorian Parliament. In her dissenting report, she compellingly provided her Government with a path forward for duck hunting in Victoria. The challenge for the Victorian Government in this instance is not the absence of an indigenous voice on the issue; it has a strong and articulate one of those. The Government’s challenge is doing what its non-indigenous MPs on the inquiry either could or would not: opening up non-indigenous ears to listen to that voice when it speaks.
