SSAA Victoria reported on acts of clear political interference in the intense debate about the administration of duck hunting in Victoria earlier in the year.
Since the announcement of the select committee inquiry, we have seen interference in publishing compliance data and a Government Minister’s incredibly biased contribution in Parliament.
In the inquiry, we saw the fringe animal rights movement given more speaking slots than pro-hunting voices and the animal rights movement afforded the last slot of the day (the right of reply) every day except for one. Yesterday afternoon, we saw the Select Committee’s chair and deputy chair mugging for the camera with their comrades in the animal rights movement. The final report that came out is reflective of all of that bias.
Each of those incidents, alone, could perhaps be explained away by the Governnment as a coincidence, miscommunication or an honest mistake. Viewed together, they paint a clear picture.
Perhaps the most blatant and disturbing incidents of bias have been what SSAA Victoria views as the deliberate hindrance of the select committee’s work by elements of the public service.
The most galling example of this surrounds the stonewalling of the Committee’s requests for access to the Conservation and Sustainable Harvest Models for Game Duck Species report.
This report was a commitment under the Sustainable Hunting Action Plan, and it makes recommendations on annual game duck harvest quotas to ensure that populations are maintained above a minimum population threshold to not compromise the viability of game duck species. When it comes to the question of ensuring that game duck seasons in Victoria are environmentally sustainable, this report is the most compelling answer imaginable.
Knowing that the Select Committee was deeply concerned with this question and that the report had been completed, Jeff Bourman MP asked the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions (DJSIR) for the report at a public hearing on Monday, 3 July. At the hearing, DJSIR erroneously advised that the Game Management Authority (GMA) had carriage of the report.
On 27 July, in response to a written request, DJSIR provided the Select Committee with further information: “The Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions (DJSIR) commissioned an independent expert to research and develop population models for Victorian game duck species. The research was commissioned to inform the identification of sustainable rates of harvest of game ducks and guidelines for setting the annual recreational hunting arrangements, and to support the development of a game duck adaptive harvest management framework and strategy. This research contributes to action 3.2 of the Sustainable Hunting Action Plan 2021-2024. The research was completed on 6 July 2023 and is under consideration by DJSIR”.
On 21 August, the Select Committee deliberated on the final report. This was the last occasion on which anything in the final report could be altered and, except for the theatrics of tabling the report, the end of the committee’s work.
On 28 August, just hours before the tabling of the Select Committee report and a full week after the last possible occasion when it could have been of any practical use to the Select Committee, DJSIR provided the Conservation and Sustainable Harvest Models for Game Duck Species report.
On 29 August, just hours after the Select Committee report was tabled in Parliament, DJSIR quietly published the Conservation and Sustainable Harvest Models for Game Duck Species report on its website.
When the Select Committee did report, its primary recommendation was “That the Victorian Government ends the annual recreational native bird hunting season opening on all public and private land from 2024”. Its core rationale for that recommendation was sustainability.
For fifty-three days, a Government department sat on a report the Select Committee explicitly requested. That report unequivocally shatters the core rationale for the Select Committee’s primary recommendation. Regardless of people’s views on hunting, they ought to be outraged at this scandalous interference in what was purported to be an unbiased process.
