THE DUCK STOPS HERE
Member for Western Victoria Region, Bev McArthur used an adjournment debate to ask the Minister for Environment to announce the commencement of the 2020 duck hunting season.
The season is due to start on the 3rd of March, but the announcement is now long overdue, normally taking place in January. Reports suggest that the Minister for Environment is considering cancelling the season.
In 2013 the Department of Environment and Primary Industries estimated that duck hunting contributed $106.3 million per year to the Victorian economy.
Quotes attributable to Bev McArthur MP:
“Country Victoria is crying out for economic stimulus amidst decimation by natural disasters and the subsequent plummeting of tourism, compounded by fewer foreign tourists as a result of the coronavirus. This Labor government appears ready to turn its back on them.”
“Country Victoria is fed up with Melbourne telling them what they can and cannot do on the land they look after.”
“The perpetual call from extremists to cancel the duck hunting season has been justified by attempting to link the wetlands to bushfires. Guess what? Hunting wetlands do not generally burn — they are full of water.”
“It is utterly shameful that this tragedy has been co-opted to promote an agenda that will be detrimental to rural communities, under the false pretence that it will save a duck.”
“The Victorian Labor Party must decide whether the 2020s will be the decade of their continued drift towards city-centrism in their electoral turf war with the Greens and other activists or whether they will stand up and fight for rural and regional communities who are continuously overlooked in the rush for tram-track votes.”
“The 2020 duck hunting season must go ahead.”
21 February 2020