Tuesday, 2 June 2026

 Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:52): I am pleased to rise to speak on the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill 2026 on behalf of my colleague Melina Bath in the other place as the shadow minister and to outline a few views on this important area of activity in our state and in the government. From the outset I make the point that what this legislation is doing is effectively merging the two authorities, the Game Management Authority and the Victorian Fisheries Authority. The Game Management Authority was set up by my predecessor the member for Murray Plains when we were in government last as an important regulator and overseer of the hunting sector, and also one that supports and promotes the industry and ensures that the right things are happening in it. The Victorian Fisheries Authority as well is being merged together with this, so this is a fairly significant reform.

But I make the point that this reform is not occurring because the government thinks it is important to make these changes with respect to outdoor recreation, hunting, fishing and other activities. It is happening because of the Silver review, and the Silver review happened because this government cannot manage money, and it is Victorians who pay the price. Whether this particular legislation, this outcome, is about paying the price – that will be open to debate. We are not going to oppose this legislation, although we do have quite a number of amendments that we will be putting forward in the other place, and I will talk to those as I go through my contribution. But it is important to understand that this is not the government acting on some great reform drive to better promote outdoor recreation or fishing or hunting or any of those. It is because the government had run out of money and had to go to a review to understand how it could actually save some money, and the Silver review did make this recommendation.

I find it bemusing – ‘galling’ might be another way of putting it, too – that we have had ministers in question time today and over the last week or so issuing media statements making all sorts of allegations about what the very nasty opposition is apparently going to do when it comes to public service jobs. But it is actually this government that has been cutting public service jobs. I remind members, if they did not see it, of a great little video of the Premier being quizzed at a press conference and attacking the opposition for having the temerity to freeze public service numbers and being asked, ‘Didn’t you cut some public service numbers?’ ‘Yes,’ said the Premier. ‘And how many was it? Was it hundreds?’ And the Premier replied, ‘It was thousands.’ That is the fact: it is thousands of jobs that the Premier and this government have been cutting, because they have lost control of the finances.

That is not just across the board in the public service. It has, of course, also occurred in the fisheries sector in particular. Last year we saw the government announce cuts of nearly 50 per cent of fishery officer positions statewide, reducing the overall numbers from about 69 to as few as 39. I do not think the government was quite prepared for the backlash that came from that. I think they probably thought, ‘Oh, the fishos will be okay with it,’ because, you know, it means less enforcement and everything. But actually, Victorian fishermen and women, recreational or commercial, are pretty keen to ensure that we do have a sustainable fishery in our state – in our rivers, our inland bays and inlets and our offshore zone as well – and those cuts were savage. It was a very big cut to fisheries officers. That generated a level of concern, I can say, and I am sure members opposite are still getting comments from people on Facebook about those cuts. I get them just about every post I put up. It does not matter what it is, but someone will be raising it. Because that was simply another case of a government that cannot manage money and frontline services being impacted. So as I said, literally about half of the fisheries officers were taken away. A number of fisheries stations were closed, and that has an impact on the fisheries themselves. That is what the genesis of this legislation is. It is not about a government that thinks, ‘Oh, we can do better on promoting hunting, fishing, outdoor recreation.’ It is a government that is strapped for cash and is desperately looking for ways to make the budget look better and, as a result, went to the Silver review. This is a result of that. This is one part of the legislation.

I say from the outset, as Leader of the Nationals, that the Nationals strongly support our outdoor recreation sector, whether that is hunting, fishing, four-wheel driving or prospectors and miners, who do such wonderful things around the state, or whether it is mountain biking, all of those things. They are good for people. They are good for health and fitness. They are good for people understanding our environment and being out and about and appreciating it.

From a hunting perspective, of course, it is critical – the number of pest animals that are taken out by hunters, whether that is foxes, deer, wild dogs, feral cats, all of those things. I know that not just in a recreational sense but in a formal sense there are recreational hunters who are engaged by the government in places like Wilsons Prom to go in and reduce deer numbers that are impacting on our local environments. So I strongly support the hunting sector. It is an activity that allows people to get out with their families. It allows them to get out with their friends and secure wild-grown food. It is a misnomer – so many of those opposite and particularly their so-called friends in the Greens up the back do not understand what hunting is about – and I hate it when duck hunting in particular is referred to as a ‘sport’. Because if you talk to any of the duck hunters that go out, it is so much more than that. It is not a sport; it is about harvesting wild-caught food and doing it sustainably. All the evidence provided by the Game Management Authority over the years and by the other scientists will show that it is sustainable, and I strongly support it myself.

I am a member of Field and Game. I am not a hunter myself. I did have a shooters licence until recently when I unfortunately allowed it to lapse. I would now need to go back through the process to get it again. I do not have any firearms myself, so it is not an issue, but I strongly support those who do. When you get to mingle with those hunters, whether they are duck hunters or deer hunters or taking out feral animals, you see they are good people and they are law-abiding people in the main. There will be a bad egg in every bunch. I looked around the group that Melina Bath in the other place had down for a debate on a petition on firearms a few months ago – many of them from my own electorate, from the Sale branch of Field and Game – and they are really good humans. They are really good citizens. They do a lot of work in conservation, and they absolutely should be applauded for it, particularly Field and Game. As I said, I am a member of the Sale branch. I get all the emails and all the invitations. They do so much work on our local wetlands in particular, supporting not just ducks but all wildlife.

If anyone has the opportunity, they should visit the Heart Morass just out of Sale, which is a property that Field and Game and the Wetlands Environmental Taskforce purchased back in 2006, I think it was, at the height of a drought. It was a degraded grazing property, and Field and Game and the WET trust and others have done extraordinary work in renovating that property. When you see the photos of what it was when they purchased it, admittedly in the middle of a drought, you see it was a dust bowl and there was not a lot of vegetation there. It is now a very well-functioning ecological site directly adjacent to the Latrobe River, not far from where it goes out into Lake Wellington. The habitat that they have built – the trees and shrubs they have planted and the work that they have done with nest boxes for ducks – is astounding. As a member I had the privilege a number of years ago of getting the keys one day and taking my kids down to camp. We lucked out with some beautiful weather; I think it was on the grand final weekend. Getting out in the morning and seeing the birds that come in – there are birds that come literally from Japan to nest and breed there. We could hear the hog deer honking during the night and early in the morning. We went out in the night with a spotlight and saw possums and other wildlife in the trees. It is a beautiful location and a highlight of the sort of work that our hunters can do for our environment. They know, as every good hunter does, that if you protect the environment and you protect the habitat, then you will have sustainable hunting for the future.

As it happens, I was walking around Lake Guyatt in Sale on the weekend and saw a panel remembering Herb Guyatt, who it was named after. He was a member of Field and Game for many, many years in the Sale area and one of the people that set that up. I know Pud Howard, who is a driving force behind Field and Game and particularly the Heart property, said that Herb Guyatt said to him, ‘You need to look after the habitat. If you look after the habitat, you’ll hunt forever and a day.’ That is something that our hunters do so well. Similarly, the Australian Deer Association and the sporting shooters association have the best interests of the environment at heart. Naturally they want to do their activity, but they can only do it if they look after the environment, so I strongly support them.

As I said, the Nationals and the Liberals are very strongly in favour of outdoor recreation pursuits. I think one of the things that we get concerned about is the way much of our public land gets locked up and is not available whether it is for recreational pursuits or whether it is for commercial pursuits. That seems to be the approach of Labor governments over many years, driven particularly now by the Greens, and we saw it most recently with the central west national parks establishment.

We have a very different perspective on the management of public land. You do not manage public land by putting a line around it and giving it a different name. Simply saying ‘This is a national park, so it is now protected’ does not actually protect it, particularly if you effectively lock it up and leave it. We see that time and time again. Governments think that because they have changed the name on a piece of paper here in this place and put a sign out the front that says it is now a national park, not a state forest or whatever it might be, that somehow that is protecting it. You do not protect it. You need to manage the land.

That was why when I became leader of the party and appointed Melina Bath in the other place to a portfolio it was very deliberate that her portfolio is called ‘public land management’, because that is what we need to do. We need to protect the opportunities for outdoor recreation for hunters, for fishers, for four-wheel drivers, for mountain bikers, for motorbike riders, for horse riders, for prospectors and miners and for all of those activities but also for the environment itself. The land has been managed for 60,000 years by our Indigenous predecessors, and obviously it is done differently now and needs to be done differently, but that is an issue that I am very passionate about. We need to make that public land available to the public, and we need to make sure that we can continue to manage the land and ensure that it is well looked after in the future.

As I said, I do not think the approach of some Labor people is right. I think there are some on the other side that have actually got this and have been doing the right thing. I have been noticing in particular recently that Forest Fire Management Victoria are actively promoting more often their planned fuel reduction burns, which tells me that they are off the leash a bit and are trying to do the right thing. I know there are members of Parliament who are supportive of better management, but there are those still of the ‘lock it up and leave it’ approach.

The second part of the approach that is of concern is the neglect. Again, it comes back to finances or it comes back to a lack of care for anything outside the city. I will go to a couple of examples when it comes to our environment. The Sealers Cove boardwalk through a swampy area on Wilsons Prom in my electorate was damaged and destroyed effectively in 2021. It is only now being fixed in 2026, five years later. It is a project that would have been insured or at least self-insured by the government, and yet it has taken five years for the government to rebuild that track. All that time has robbed visitors and the people of South Gippsland of opportunities to head to Sealers Cove. It has particularly robbed our local businesses of more tourism, because it is a significant tourism attraction.

Likewise, the Thurra River bridge, which the member for Gippsland East and I have been talking about for six years now. It was burnt down in the Black Summer bushfires. It is a critical link to part of Croajingolong National Park, the Thurra River campground and the Point Hicks lighthouse, and it took five years for the government to rebuild it. I was there at the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee asking questions about it repeatedly, and I repeatedly got answers saying, ‘It’s about to happen, Mr O’Brien. It’s about to happen.’ It did not happen for five years. It highlights the frustration. The Cape Conran cabins were similar. They were also burnt and damaged in the Black Summer fires. I think the member for Gippsland East is coming up shortly. He will be able to correct me if I am wrong, but I think they still have not been rebuilt or relocated back.

Likewise, we have seen what has happened in the west, in the member for Lowan’s electorate, with Mount Arapiles and rock climbing, where rock climbers have been shut out. That is not an approach that has been based on good practical evidence or science. It is something that has caused a lot of concern in what is a world-class and global destination for rock climbing. It has an impact on the community of Natimuk, which also was impacted by fire this year. Then we had the debacle a few years ago, last term, with riverside Crown land access, which was mismanaged by the government, forcing farmers who had Crown land reserve frontage to permit access. That was certainly a concern that did not get the balance right.

I mentioned duck hunting, and I am pleased that that is continuing. That is one area where the government made the right call, despite many on their side being very committed to shutting down duck hunting.

Likewise, while I am on a positive bent again, the decision last week of the government to not propose a cap on firearm numbers for law-abiding firearms owners is a critical one that I strongly support. We have been going around the state meeting with firearms owners and with hunting groups, and they were very concerned that we would follow the same path as New South Wales and WA and introduce caps. As I have said time and time again, capping the number of guns does not stop a terrorist incident. Indeed the law as it stands now in New South Wales, with caps of four guns per licensee, would not have stopped Bondi, because they had three guns. Leaving aside the guns, they also had improvised explosive devices. Those Islamic terrorists were committed to causing carnage and causing death and mayhem, and it was not the gun that was the issue that did it, it was the ideology. I give the government credit, though, for acknowledging that that was not going to actually make the community any safer and for not agreeing to the recommendation for the introduction of caps.

This legislation and part of the amendments that we will be proposing also go to the issues of commercial fishing. One of the concerns that we certainly have with this legislation and this decision to merge the VFA and the GMA is that commercial fishing will not be adequately considered and protected. That is something, again, pretty close to my heart. I have the only remaining bay and inlet fishery in Victoria, in Corner Inlet. It is a magnificent fishery. It is a great fishery for recreational fishermen as well, and yes, I get complaints occasionally that there are no fish because the netters have taken them all. But in general the recreational fishermen understand that we have had commercial netting in Corner Inlet for 150-odd years. We have gone from dozens and dozens of commercial fishermen down to I think it is 19 now, if I am not mistaken, who operate there. There have been some who have gone pretty hard in recent years, but generally speaking, the industry is very sustainable. We know the fishery is sustainable.

I had the pleasure of going out with Luke Anneda, a fisherman out of Port Welshpool, last year. I happened to pick a day in January, I think it was, when the water was like glass. There was not a breath of air. It was a magnificent day. I am sure that Corner Inlet is not like that every day – in fact I have been out there on days when it is not – but this day in particular was magnificent, and Luke and his crew showed me how they fish. They literally put the net out, they bring it in and they – by hand – take the fish out of the net. They take the bycatch, and the bycatch goes straight back out. It is not even in the net, generally, it is just caught in a pool, and as a result there is no unnecessary bycatch. They are only taking the fish species that they want. In particular Corner Inlet is famous for its King George whiting, for its flathead and for its calamari. But the King George whiting – if you have never had fresh King George whiting, do yourself a favour. It is unbelievable, simply cooked with a bit of lemon, a bit of flour. It is just unbelievable. If you cannot get down to Corner Inlet – and it is actually hard to get access to it now – I think certainly one of the restaurants on Southbank, and the name has escaped me at the moment, literally used to have Bruce Collis’s name on the menu, as ‘King George whiting supplied by Bruce Collis from Corner Inlet’. It was Rockpool. I am not sure if it is actually still there – no, it is gone. But that fish is coming into Melbourne and to some of our best restaurants because it is top quality. As I say, it is important that we actually look after commercial fishing as well, and that is perhaps a segue for me to go.

I should just mention, too, that with Melina Bath recently I was at San Remo co-op, and also last Sunday, with the Leader of the Opposition the member for Kew and the Liberal candidate for Bass Rochelle Halstead. We were at San Remo again, and the member for Kew and Rochelle Halstead both had a go at the crays.

The member for Kew did a great job holding a live cray. I do not think she was terribly comfortable about it. San Remo co-op is a great part of our state and is doing great things with fresh seafood.

To some of the concerns that we have and some of the amendments as a result, as I said, we are particularly concerned about respect for and consideration of the commercial fishing industry. Some of the amendments that we are looking to pursue include that we think the name Outdoor Recreation Victoria is somewhat limiting, so we are proposing to amend the legislation to create the name ‘Victorian Fishing, Hunting and Outdoor Authority’ to highlight the fishing aspect of it. That is important when it comes to the commercial fishing industry. We will move an amendment to ensure there is a provision in there clarifying that nothing in the bill affects the operation of the Fisheries Act 1995, which includes any lawful commercial fishing licences, quotas, entitlements or management arrangements.

We believe there is a need to clarify some of the definitions, so inserting a definition of ‘seafood’; inserting some definitions around ‘outdoor recreation’, including four-wheel driving, recreational motorcycling and trail bike riding, prospecting and fossicking and horse riding and equestrian activities; and also, when it comes to outdoor recreation interests, which is a little bit of a concern, inserting definitions that include motorised and non-motorised recreation, hunting and fishing, prospecting and fossicking and equestrian activities. The rationale for that is to prevent arbitrary interpretation of what outdoor recreation interests are and ensure consistent inclusion in governance and conflict provisions. When it comes to having a board for this, we think that people who have voluntary roles in outdoor recreation should not be excluded from the board – in fact they should be encouraged, because we need that sort of expertise.

We will make an amendment to clause 7with respect to fishing and aquaculture to include additional objects to promote and support access to aquatic resources for sustainable wild catch and aquaculture and to optimise the social, cultural and economic benefits of commercial fishing and aquaculture.

There is a concern that there is nothing in the legislation about services, particularly licensing services, to be provided in non-digital channels, so we are looking at an amendment to that. As the member for Murray Plains just raised in his contribution in members statements, there are always concerns. Every time the government does something and it is online only, we all get – and I am sure government members must get them as well – complaints from people who either are not technology literate or do not have access to the internet or do not have access to devices. We need to ensure that there are paper-based or personal options to deal with that.

We will have an amendment with respect to reporting to ensure that the new agency prepares and publishes an annual report on public land access, which is critical. If I get time at the end, I will come back to that issue of public reporting.

Regulatory independence – there are aspects of the legislation giving the minister significant powers. One thing that we want to ensure, though, is that ministerial powers must not relate to a particular person or a specific licence or permit. That is critical. That should be, I would have thought, taken as a given, but it is important that ministers cannot intervene in a particular case.

With respect to decision-making, clause 10, we will insert a requirement that ORV must consider sustainable commercial fishing and aquaculture and access to aquatic resources.

Clauses 16 and 18 clarify what the definition of ‘best available information’ is. This is important. What we are looking to do is to include that best available information when we are making decisions about outdoor recreation may include scientific research, regional data, stakeholder knowledge and on-ground evidence. Too often we see governments making decisions based on academic theory, based on scientific knowledge, but absolutely ignoring those on the ground who live and breathe it every day. That is critical.

We will continue on with respect to board governance and an amendment to require the board to collectively include experience in outdoor recreation, commercial fishing and/or aquaculture and, as far as practicable, hunting, recreational fishing, public land access and management, and regional Victoria. Again, this goes to that question. We do not want a board for Outdoor Recreation Victoria that is made up of a whole lot of city-based academics or public servants or scientists. We need people who understand what this is about and can bring some lived experience to it. I hate to use that terminology, but it is relevant in this case.

The bill has access panels, including a Land Access Panel, and we will make amendments to require a majority of external members, allow advice beyond the ministerial terms of reference and require written responses from land managers, to put some transparency into it. We also are seeking to establish an aquatic resources access panel. This is a new clause that would establish an aquatic resources panel just as there is a Land Access Panel. We need, for both our recreational and commercial fishing but also aquaculture, to have access to advice and input to government on access to aquatic areas.

That is a broad summary of the amendments that are being proposed. As I have said, it is important that the commercial fishing interests are understood and that their views are well represented and they do not become an afterthought in this new body, because it already is a little bit the case where the Victorian Fisheries Authority was both recreational and commercial and putting it into another body potentially dilutes their influence, their expertise and their representation. We have certainly heard from commercial fishing stakeholders who have expressed concern that the bill does not adequately safeguard fisheries management and science, including the continuity of stock assessment. That is one of the issues that is very concerning to them, ensuring their specialist scientific staff and long-term research programs. They are the things that that the commercial sector is concerned about.

In summary, there are good parts of this bill. I think time will tell as to whether putting the hunting and fishing sectors together and putting the regulatory and promotion sectors together is the right thing or not. We are not opposing it, but we do think there are significant amendments that need to be made to ensure that our hunting and recreational outdoor pursuits are protected and so is commercial fishing.

 Alison MARCHANT (Bellarine) (17:22): It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill 2026. It really is a pleasure to speak on this bill, because the Bellarine very much recognises that the outdoors are really important to us. But we do not see it really as recreation; it is almost just a part of who we are. Living on the Bellarine there are incredible natural environments where you can go and explore or participate in activities, whether that is fishing from your local jetty or heading out on the bay in your boat or a kayak. There are a lot of people who sail and paddle in our waterways. We have a lot of snorkelers and diving sites that people like to go and explore. There is walking on our magnificent beaches and in our coastal reserves. We have a Bellarine Rail Trail, where you can cycle right through the middle of the Bellarine from one end to the other into Geelong. You might want to catch a wave and do some surfing along our coastline. We have camping under the stars, maybe not the five stars but lots of stars over the Bellarine. It is really woven into almost our everyday lives across the Bellarine. We certainly enjoy people coming to experience it as tourists as well.

I am very fortunate to live in a beautiful place. The Bellarine has so much to offer in terms of outdoors, and what that really does too is bring people together. It certainly connects people and communities. It creates sporting clubs, walking clubs, volunteers and environment groups, and some of the strongest community connections are formed through them. It has an economic benefit to our region as well. When people come to visit and experience our wonderful Bellarine environment, they stay in local accommodation, they eat in our local cafes and restaurants and support our local businesses. On the Bellarine tourism and outdoor recreation are closely linked, and they do help drive economic activity across our region.

I also want to touch on that being outdoors and in the outdoor recreation space certainly contributes significantly to our wellbeing – it is great for our health. In an increasingly busy world, connecting outside is certainly something that is invaluable. It improves your physical health and your stress levels and supports your mental health and wellbeing. Whether it might be a morning walk on the beach or camping or fishing, it certainly is very good for your health as well.

We have talked a little bit about fisheries today, and I would also like to talk about fishing and the fisheries activity as well – I will come to that in just a moment. When I am talking about connecting communities and bringing community together in the outdoors, I would like to give a shout-out to Richelle, who has an organisation called Escaping Your Comfort Zone. She is about supporting women coming along with other women and bushwalking at different various levels – some really hard walks and other quite easy walks. She brings generations together and women who maybe have come to the Bellarine anew. They have come from a different area, and they are wanting connection as well but they are doing that outdoors; they are getting healthy, they are walking. I would like to thank Richelle for her passion in creating this organisation where it is women supporting women and challenging themselves at the same time.

We do have a very passionate fishing community across the Bellarine as well. We have got great fishing and boat ramps that we have invested in so people can come safely and participate in their boating, recreation and fishing. I think the previous VRFish CEO used to call it the ‘Bellarine seafood basket’. You are able to go out and you can catch a whiting, you can catch a flathead, you can get squid and calamari. There really is a selection of fish that you can come home with if you head out off the Bellarine as well.

As we want our communities to be engaged in the outdoors and as we want our outdoor spaces to be public spaces, we do need to make sure that we have a well-managed outdoor recreation entity, which is what this will do. It is about accessibility and protecting and enhancing for our future generations, and that is why this establishment of Outdoor Recreation Victoria is so important. It is about putting a new statutory authority together that will strengthen the Victorian Fisheries Authority and the Game Management Authority. It also is going to expand their role to ensure that they have support and a much broader vision for our outdoor recreation.

I know that the last speaker was saying ‘time will tell’. I am really excited about this. I think it is a really great opportunity to be able to support what we are trying to achieve here in the state to make sure people have access to our outdoors, and this bill is going to do that. This bill goes a bit further in making sure that we have robust education, we have robust compliance, we have robust enforcement and also those research functions. This new role is encouraging that participation in the great outdoors, and it might be fishing, boating, camping or four-wheel driving. The authority will help create that simple pathway for people to find information and how they can participate responsibly.

I do want to just put on the record and acknowledge the work of fisheries, because it is a really important part of the Bellarine community. I want to acknowledge the work that has been undertaken by fisheries officers, particularly in the Bellarine, who have served communities on the Bellarine. I know, and some members in this place will know, that I took a really strong interest in the fisheries workforce changes that occurred last year. I certainly raised concerns on behalf of my community. I understood the importance of maintaining a really strong local presence on the Bellarine. We wanted to ensure our coastal communities continue to have the support, education and, really importantly, the compliance service that they rely on. I love fishing myself – our family go fishing; my son loves fishing. We certainly want to see a sustainable fishing industry and sector, and we want to make sure people are doing the right thing.

Sometimes the work undertaken by our fisheries officers is not really widely seen by the public, but it is certainly very important. These officers play a really vital role ensuring our fisheries resources and that they are educating our recreational fishers. Obviously that compliance with regulations is really important, and safeguarding our marine environments as well.

We know that when you have a really strong marine environment that is ensuring a sustainable fishing sector and also making sure we are keeping our fish healthy and our stocks healthy for future generations.

I also need to acknowledge it is not easy work. Fisheries officers frequently work in those really challenging conditions on the water. They also go onto some pretty remote stretches of coastline. They would work outside normal business hours, and they are required to undertake those compliance activities and enforcement activities, which can be complex and on occasion can be quite dangerous. I really want to take this opportunity to place on record my appreciation of their professionalism, their dedication and their commitment to serving Victorian communities. Their knowledge, expertise and local understanding really make an important contribution to the sustainability and the management of our fisheries. So I want to just thank them, and I want to thank them for engaging with me last year particularly in conversation and advocacy for their sector. I want to put that on the record as well. I am really pleased that this bill is going to create this authority that is importantly going to continue the regulatory functions that the authorities currently have. That is not going to change. We want to ensure that both these sectors can have a really strong future.

We want people to enjoy the outdoors. For regional communities such as those on the Bellarine, these types of bills are really significant, because they talk to our everyday lives. As I have talked about, outdoor recreation is the way we live and it is who we are. It does bring economic value to the Bellarine communities. They support local businesses. They come to our local attractions and our beautiful environment that we have. It really defines the character of our region. As our population grows and as more Victorians and others want to come and seek this experience – I suppose across Victoria, not just on the Bellarine – we certainly want to make sure that this legislation improves and strengthens the availability and accessibility for people to enjoy the outdoors, just like I do and just like I did when I was growing up. We want our future generations to enjoy the same opportunities. For the people of the Bellarine and right across Victoria, this investment and this bill are really important. It is worth making these decisions, and I commend this bill to the house.

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (17:32): Outdoor recreation is critical in my electorate. I have the hills of the High Country, the heavily forested areas of valleys and the rivers, so game hunting and fishing and all forms of outdoor recreation are particularly important. I want to mention as part of that not just game hunting and fishing but boating and aquaculture and any of the four-wheel driving activities and biking activities. There is so much that is undertaken in the great outdoors, particularly in my area.

This bill is not really going to set the world on fire, because it is merging two existing organisations, it is not creating something new and something different. The licensing and those things that happen already are going to continue to happen; they are just going to happen in a different way through a merged body. Why are we pursuing this? The Silver review was the main driver here. We know the Silver review was an independent review of Victoria’s public service that was undertaken by Helen Silver. It was undertaken because of the financial pressures the government was under with the mismanagement of their budget and to have a look at areas for efficiency in service delivery. We know this is because the state is broke and the government are looking for every opportunity to repair the budget. Not only is there spiralling debt but there is spiralling spending as well. With the interest rate as it is – you know, with $1.2 million in interest every hour – the government needs to look at doing something.

I want to quote from the Silver review, because she recommended the merging of GMA and VFA, the Game Management Authority and the Victorian Fisheries Authority, to:

… create a unified regulator body for wildlife management, improving coordination and reducing administrative duplication. Over time, a single entity would enhance data sharing, streamline enforcement, and provide a more consistent regulatory experience for recreational and commercial users, while supporting a holistic approach to ecosystem and species management.

So the important elements are going to be transferred and picked up here, the staff and the assets and the liabilities of the game management and the fisheries authorities are going to be transferred to this new body. There are a number of things that I really want to flag with the government that are important when you undertake merging. Whilst the bill talks about the governance structures, the board structures and how some things might look, there is a really important piece there about bringing people together and how you do that and maintain morale, because I can tell you already, the morale is not always great, especially with the fisheries where they have had government cuts imposed on them previously. The people piece is really important and often that gets left behind. Structures get put in place, people are told ‘Do this, do that’, and there is no real buy-in and blending of the people to that new organisation. I cannot stress the importance of that – if the government want this to go successfully, that people piece is really important.

I have mentioned outdoor recreation, and whilst there are a number of outdoor activities that are undertaken generally, there are quite a number of activities that are not mentioned specifically and that is causing a little bit of grief for those being excluded. What that really means going forward – because essentially this is just about merging game and fisheries. In doing that, merging the fisheries into this, the commercial fishers do have some concerns and have raised concerns – and I thought maybe the member for Bellarine might have actually been tuned into that – that because this is a recreation-focused Outdoor Recreation Victoria, the commercial seafood industry risks being overlooked or marginalised despite its role as a food-producing primary industry and significant regional economic contributor. That is important, and I know the government know that this is something that is particularly important to us.

I will mention fisheries, though, more specifically in relation to my electorate. I have mentioned that I have lots of valleys and rivers. Snobs Creek fish hatchery is just in Eildon, and we have Lake Eildon and the pondage. The pondage is where a lot of fish get released for the different programs that governments have to stock the rivers. It is really important that these are done with temperatures at the right level, because sometimes, if it is too hot or too cold, the fingerlings might not have a long life. In the Goulburn River and its tributaries, whether that is from Eildon, Thornton, Molesworth, Killingworth or from Yea and going on to Seymour, fishing is really important in those areas. I did mention earlier that there have been government fisheries and compliance officer cuts. In May 2025, not so long ago, the Allan government announced cuts of approximately 44 to 47 fishery officer positions statewide, reducing the numbers from around 69 to as few as 39. The member for Bellarine said she made a lot of noise and made sure that they were maintained in her area. If that is correct, well then we have all dipped out because they have been stacked in Labor-held seats.

There is an emphasis from enforcement here to engage in education and engagement, and there are concerns about how this will go because there is activity around illegal fishing, there are safety risks, and sometimes there are organised crime activities. We hear a lot of this around the bay and the coastal areas as well; it is not something that is particular to my electorate. But commercial fisheries – I have Goulburn River Trout. It has been up since the 1970s. In the mid-80s the Meggitt family took over and Ed and Derrick Meggitt continue to run this business, which is a major hatchery, it is a fish farm. They breed, they process, they distribute. They have got 25 employees and they have over a thousand tonnes of fresh and smoked rainbow trout. They do an amazing job there. They have also suffered a little bit with some of the floods over time.

I cannot help but mention that the VFA were the drivers behind camping on licensed riverfrontages, which has caused no end of grief, and there are huge risks associated with that in my electorate.

I want to talk about deer hunting, because deer cause incredible grief. It is difficult to know the numbers in the High Country and across all of the forests in the northern and eastern parts of the state. They do enormous damage to the environment and to agricultural businesses. There are too many very close interactions between vehicles and deer as well. There is no doubt that deer hunting is particularly important in my electorate. It has economic importance for small towns like Jamieson and Kevington and larger towns like Mansfield. Mansfield Hunting and Fishing, who I have mentioned before, do a particularly great job in responsibly working with and servicing hunters. The Game Management Authority does licensing and renewals for people who want to be involved in hunting, and that is going to continue for the some 4 million hectares of public land available. Also in that game are duck and quail, but essentially in my area it is about the deer. There is not enough being done to manage the exploding population, which is estimated to be well over a million deer.

The bill is generally supported by hunters and shooters, but what is a concern for me also is the composition and structure of the board, because with the way it is we could end up with a board that does not have people who really, truly understand the core businesses of outdoor recreation, fishing or game and have that practical knowledge. I think it is particularly important that this is recognised. We would be looking to make amendments around this to clarify that these roles should have people that are experienced in hunting, recreational fishing and aquaculture as well, and perhaps a regional perspective, because the biggest risk is having people who might pop up to the High Country or down to the coast every few weeks, or maybe not – maybe every six months. They have a peripheral understanding, but they may have skills in other areas. I absolutely endorse the need for skills-based boards, but you have to complement it with those who have a very detailed understanding of what it means at the grassroots, on the ground, so they can truly represent the people at the board table. That is particularly important.

 Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (17:43): It is really good to rise to speak on the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill 2026. I will begin with what in some respects might seem to be a very self-evident observation but one that I think is nonetheless quite important and can get forgotten sometimes. Public land belongs to the public, and Victorians should have the opportunity to responsibly enjoy the outdoor experiences that that public land offers. This bill is a step towards that. It is about making outdoor recreation more accessible, more affordable and easier to enjoy for people across our great state. It is practical reform that at its heart involves an amalgamation of the Victorian Fisheries Authority (VFA) and the Game Management Authority into ORV – so the creation of a new acronym.

Whether it is recreational fishing, hunting, boating, four-wheel driving, bush camping or other outdoor pursuits, Victorians deserve practical pathways to access our public land and waterways. Outdoor recreation is not a niche activity; it is a valued part of life for hundreds of thousands of Victorians and a vital contributor to our regional communities and local economies, as the member for Eildon noted. It is an activity that is deeply held and passionately engaged with by tens of thousands of those in the communities that I represent in Meadow Heights, Roxburgh Park, Greenvale, Westmeadows and Craigieburn. Indeed across Melbourne’s northern and outer suburbs, like Greenvale, Roxy and Meadow Heights, many migrant and multicultural communities have embraced outdoor recreation as a way to connect with family, friends and the beautiful Victorian landscape, from the High Country to the Prom to the lakes of the Wimmera – all of it. On any given weekend you will find families from a wide range of cultural backgrounds – Turkish, Maltese, Italian – heading into regional Victoria to camp, to fish, to hunt, to explore public forests, to enjoy four-wheel driving tracks and to participate, as I say, in those lawful hunting activities.

For many, outdoor recreation provides an opportunity to build a connection with Australia – a new home for many – bringing together grandparents, parents, children and cousins in shared outdoor experiences. It is so important. The demand for access to public land is growing because of that participation in outdoor recreation. It is not confined and it should not be – it must not be – confined to a narrow section of our community. Communities across Melbourne’s north, including many culturally diverse communities, are demonstrating an increased interest in camping, four-wheel driving, fishing and hunting as accessible and affordable forms of recreation, and it is public land that provides the opportunities for people from all of those backgrounds to experience nature, to develop outdoor skills and to enjoy activities that contribute to physical and mental wellbeing.

We do not want to be a country like the UK or others where access to rivers, to land and to beautiful open spaces is locked up and where it is prohibitively expensive for people to engage in those pursuits. It is something that we as a society and we as a Parliament I think hold dear, and it is something that this bill helps to safeguard. But as Victoria’s population becomes more diverse, our approach to outdoor recreation must also recognise and support the diversity of people who use and value public land. Expanding opportunities for lawful outdoor recreation is about ensuring that future generations of Victorians, regardless of where they were born or the language that they speak at home, have the same opportunity to enjoy the bush as those who came before them. This bill helps to ensure that public land remains accessible and welcoming for the broad cross-section of Victorian communities who increasingly see camping, hunting, fishing and four-wheel driving as part of their lifestyle and connection to the outdoors.

The creation of Outdoor Recreation Victoria recognises that access matters. It brings together expertise and resources that better support participation in the bush and remove unnecessary barriers to getting outdoors. Crucially – and I want to emphasise this point – the reforms are not about dismantling existing arrangements but rather preserving strong regulatory oversight, which is really important in the context of activities such as hunting which have a dimension of risk inherent in them. They instead create a more coordinated approach to supporting outdoor recreation and ensuring that our environment, and the fish, the wildlife and so forth that exist within it, is properly managed. In doing so we are building on the success of the Victorian Fisheries Authority (VFA) and the Game Management Authority, organisations that have delivered real benefits through very significant infrastructure investment, improved management and strong compliance outcomes.

I want to acknowledge the leadership of both organisations. Just a couple of weeks ago we had the leadership of the VFA, led by Travis Dowling, here at the Parliament to celebrate and showcase the work that they do in so many communities across our state. And that is not confined to beautiful rural areas. The VFA has also been involved in working with councils in my local area in Melbourne’s north, where they have stocked lakes with fish, which is deeply valued by many recreational anglers. I also note that an organisation that represents the interests of many of my constituents, the Australian Deer Association, welcomed the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill and its associated reforms and suggested, indeed asserted publicly, that the new authority will improve advocacy for recreational hunting, expand opportunities for public land access and ensure that hunters are represented through a dedicated hunting advisory committee. They have, under their fantastic leadership, described the reforms as a positive step for the future of recreational hunting in Victoria.

By bringing all of these functions together we can better champion the interests of outdoor recreation participants and deliver a stronger voice for access to public land and waterways. As I have said, responsible access to public land should be encouraged, not treated as an afterthought, and this bill places public access at the centre of future planning and decision-making. ORV will work with land managers, work with traditional owners and work with local communities and stakeholders across Victoria to identify practical opportunities to expand and improve access for recreational users, and I think the establishment of a dedicated Land Access Panel is a significant step forward. It creates a mechanism to identify new opportunities for community access and ensure that those opportunities are considered across government, not just in silos.

Public land management should recognise multiple legitimate uses, including recreational activities that connect people with nature, support wellbeing and foster the stewardship of the environment. Greater access does not mean lower standards. Stronger regulation, compliance and environmental protections remain fundamental to the operation of Outdoor Recreation Victoria, and as I have also emphasised, existing authorised officers and compliance capabilities will be retained and strengthened to ensure that outdoor recreation continues to operate with robust and science-based regulatory frameworks.

This bill acknowledges an important principle: people who value and use public land are often amongst its strongest advocates and custodians. I want to reflect on a conversation I had on the weekend in the context of that. I was at Meadow Heights on Saturday morning talking with constituents, and a young man – in fact a school student – came up to me and was talking about how much he loves fishing. It is the first time, he said, he had engaged with a local representative, but what he wanted to talk about was the stocking of fish, specifically redfin, which I used to fish for in Lake Fyans up in the Grampians. It is quite a good eating fish by freshwater standards. He wanted more redfin to be stocked in the lakes locally so that he could and his friends could engage in recreational fishing. He was talking about how their work had helped to get rid of the carp in those local lakes, and I think it was a good exemplification of how the people who are engaged in these pastimes are really keen to ensure that invasive species like carp are not taking over our local waterways but instead native fish like redfin are able to thrive, so that they can then in turn be fished and propagate so that there is enjoyment for generations to come. It struck me as a really insightful contribution from a young man. I will not call him out by name in this place, but I want to acknowledge his contribution, not just to my thinking on this bill but to our local environment.

Communities like Meadow Heights are passionate about fishing and indeed about hunting. I note that there are over 50,000 licensed game hunters in Victoria. Many of those would be in Greenvale. As I have alluded to before, the Italian, the Maltese, the Turkish communities, all of these are passionate about the outdoors and enjoy spending time there. Traditional cultures, as it were, of those communities have involved sharing food, sharing a meal, curing salami and all those things, which are a downstream effect of recreational hunting. The added bonus of their engagement in that pastime is that it injects $356 million of economic activity across the state. It pains me to say not all of that may be generated by Greenvale residents, but I suspect a significant proportion of it is. In addition to that, thousands of jobs are created. This is an important bill. I commend it to the house, and I hope it has a speedy passage.

 Emma KEALY (Lowan) (17:52): It is wonderful to be able to contribute in this place on outdoor recreation, and it has also been amazing to hear of so many members of this place who love outdoor recreation and particularly love to come and visit my electorate of Lowan to enjoy all that we have to offer. It was wonderful to hear the previous member speak about how wonderful the Grampians are– Lake Fyans, our wonderful wetlands, our river systems. We have the best of everything in the electorate of Lowan. We are so fortunate to have a natural environment that we want people to enjoy.

That is the message that the Nationals have always held at our heart – that we love the environment. We are conservationists at our heart, and we want to make sure that as many people as possible can get into the great outdoors and enjoy it. Because if we lock up our national parks, if we lock up our state parks, we only see them overgrown with weeds, we see pests thrive and we see destruction of our native wildlife and our flora as well. We see that there is absolutely the balance that can be met in educating the next generation on how to look after our environment, about what we can do when we go into our forests to ensure that we can clean up what should not be there, whether it is around any pests that are in the area, whether it is weeds, whether it is rubbish or things from yesteryear that can be taken out to reduce our footprint on the land.

I commend all of the people who contribute to that and enjoy our great outdoors, because it is not just good for the environment, it is good for our mental health and it is good for our physical health. If people have not looked after themselves recently, if they are feeling like the world is getting a bit too heavy for them, go out to the Grampians National Park for a week, and I can tell you you will come back a happier, healthier and more grounded human being.

The crux of this bill really does touch on a lot of issues that are very, very important to the people of my electorate of Lowan. Of course this does touch on a repeal of GMA, the Game Management Authority. For many people in my electorate and who visit my electorate, hunting is very, very important. I have spoken in the past around visitors from Melbourne who would stay at our farmhouse every year for duck hunting season. They did it because they loved that connection to a beautiful part of the state where they could go camping with their mates, do something that they love, harvest some ducks and enjoy dinner together – the meal they had harvested – that evening. It is an enormously healthy activity, and it is fabulous that now we have got an adaptive harvest management framework, because it means that the amount that hunters can harvest fluctuates depending on the availability of ducks. That is sensible. It means that when we do not have as much water, when we have had drought and there are lower duck numbers, bag limits are reduced or the season is reduced. But when we have a huge number of ducks – and something that some do not recognise is that ducks can become a pest. They create havoc, particularly in the horticultural sector. Ducks love to eat lettuces. I am sure you understand, Acting Speaker Mercurio; you have some horticultural businesses in your electorate. Ducks can be a pest, and they need to be managed.

We also have dingoes in my electorate – wild dogs or dingoes, whatever you want to call them. They are all Canis familiaris. It is causing so much havoc and destruction and heartache for farmers, who are regularly contacting my office just absolutely distressed by what they see on their farms. Farmers care about their stock. They have a connection to their stock that I think people who have not experienced farming really do not understand. They care about their stock, and I can tell you what they do not love at all. They hate going out to their paddock in the morning, driving around and finding lambs slaughtered, their guts hanging out on the ground – they might still be alive and walking along – and to see any sheep who have had the back end ripped out by a wild dog. They cannot be treated. There is no medical intervention. It is a horrific and cruel death. Unfortunately, farmers in my electorate of Lowan around that north-west region, which used to have a protection zone for wild dogs, are seeing this every single day. It is costing a huge amount of money. Lamb prices are not too bad at the moment, and we have got lambs that are being killed in the hundreds on a regular basis.

These farmers cannot access an ATCW, an authority to control wildlife. They cannot do anything to control these pests that are attacking their own stock. It is a failure of the Allan Labor government. It is a failure not to protect landholders, not to allow them to protect their stock against the dogs that are coming out and attacking their lambs. It is absolutely disgraceful. When the minister was asked about this during the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings, their response was, ‘Well, we’ve got companion animals going out there.’ I am sorry, but companion animals are not very good mental health support for some farmer who is looking across their paddock and just seeing dead lambs. It is not working. So I do urge the government, please release some ATCWs to allow farmers to protect their stock. If the government cannot do that or will not do that for whatever reason, then compensate our farmers, because they are paying the price for Labor’s failure to look after the dingoes they want to protect on public land. They are not keeping them on public land. I am sorry, but when you have got hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres of public land in the north-west of the state, 16 kilometres of fence line does not keep dingoes out – what a surprise. Farms are a little bit bigger than just 16 kilometres of fence. It is not keeping the dingoes out. Stock continue to die, and it is simply a cruel death. Give compensation to those farmers; they deserve it.

We also know that there is a huge reduction in farmers being able to access the fox bounty at the moment. There has been an increase from $10 to $14 a scalp, which is a good thing, but the actual total bucket has been reduced to just $2.2 million. It was $6.7 million just five years ago. This is something that Labor do not like to talk about. They do not like to talk about what they are doing because they are cutting things like the fox bounty, but they will not cut the $15 billion that goes to strippers on Big Build sites. That is okay. But they will make sure that what they cut is harming Victorian farmers, and Victorian farmers are the heart of our economy.

They are the heart of our regional communities. They need more support, they need protection and they feel like the Allan Labor government simply is not listening at the moment. So I urge the new minister to take heed – make sure that farmers can protect their stock from dingoes, make sure they can protect their stock from foxes and make sure that they can control the kangaroos on their property that are grazing our pasture and causing immense damage to land as well.

I also want to briefly mention the other aspect which is of great importance to my electorate, and that is rock climbing. Rock climbing is not mentioned in this legislation, and I cannot believe that, for such an important sport for so many Victorians, not just in my electorate but in Melbourne in particular. We have one of the best rock climbing sites in all of the world at Mt Arapiles. Punks in the Gym is one of the best climbs around the world, and people have for generations come to Mt Arapiles, to Natty, to enjoy climbing Punks in the Gym and for the challenge of Punks in the Gym. It is closed at the moment. We have got so many rock climbs that are closed in the Grampians National Park and at Mt Arapiles. I know that there have been discussions ongoing, but this is 4½ years now where these climbs have been closed.

The rock climbing community have been absolutely coming to the party, having the discussions and making sure they are working with particularly Parks Victoria and Barengi Gadjin Land Council. They are coming in good faith, and I understand that now we are at a point where it is understood that only 3 per cent of the climbs at Mt Arapiles need to be closed to protect Aboriginal cultural heritage. Nobody says that that should not happen, but we do not need to shut down the entirety of the park and some of the best climbs in the world, because it is not where the Aboriginal cultural heritage is. If we need to build walkways to cover up the rocks to make sure we do not harm the rock chips that are there, the areas of cultural heritage, then let us get on and do it. But 4½ years is too long. It is creating division, and it is something that does not need to happen. It never needed to happen. It always could have started with a conversation, with ideas coming forward on how we can do both. How can we climb? How can we protect cultural heritage? How can we make sure that we can enjoy our parks, learn more about cultural heritage, enjoy our environment, conserve our environment and make sure that future generations can get out there and enjoy it? Because if people can get out into the environment, no matter how they like to do that, then we know they will understand how important it is, they will fight for it in the future and they will protect it. I urge the Labor government to ensure they are supporting our farmers and our locals to make sure our public land is available and accessible.

 Dylan WIGHT (Tarneit) (18:03): It gives me great pleasure this evening to rise and make a contribution in favour of the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill 2026, a bill that, last time I checked, was about outdoor recreation, not dingoes or foxes or fences or crops.

Members interjecting.

Dylan WIGHT: The last time I checked, it was a bill about outdoor recreation and a bill that moves in Victoria for the GMA, the Game Management Authority, as well as the Victorian Fisheries Authority (VFA) to be merged into one authority called Outdoor Recreation Victoria – a move, if I could hear myself think, to ensure that we have the most efficient regulators possible to make sure that as many Victorians as possible can enjoy our great outdoors, whether that is to indeed go hunting for duck or for deer or for quail or for dingoes, or if that is to go fishing in one of our amazing inland waterways or indeed Port Phillip Bay, adjacent to my electorate of Tarneit, or whether that is to access one of our amazing state parks to camp, to hike and to spend your weekend with friends and family.

Outdoor recreation, as the member for Greenvale so eloquently put – he is always a pretty hard act to follow – contributes $356 million to the Victorian economy each and every year and of course supports thousands of jobs in the process, the vast majority of which are regional jobs. The lion’s share of that $356 million is going into Victoria’s regional economy. As he said quite rightly, access matters. Making sure that people on the weekend – or during the week, whenever they would like to go – can easily and readily have access to our fantastic state parks, waterways et cetera to be able to undertake their recreational activities is incredibly important.

That is why the Land Access Panel as part of this legislation will be incredibly important. Incorporating feedback from Victorians, the bill establishes a Land Access Panel inside ORV to provide advice and information to government to identify new opportunities for community access across public land and waterways. Like the member for green whale – do not hunt them. Like the member for Greenvale, I have a thriving migrant community in my electorate of Tarneit; second- and third-generation migrants, principally in Hoppers Crossing, of Italian and Greek heritage that have taken to outdoor recreation over generations with their family really well. Whether that be hunting, whether that be camping or whether that be bushwalking or hiking, outdoor recreation is something that helps sustain those families and communities in Hoppers Crossing in particular and something that I think has become absolutely fantastic and a fantastic feature of some of our migrant communities in Victoria.

Unfortunately, in my electorate of Tarneit there are no state parks and there is no real opportunity to undertake much outdoor activity. There is Mount Cottrell. You could climb to the summit of Mount Cottrell. Unfortunately, the summit is only 32 metres tall, only about 4000 times smaller than Mount Everest, so if you wish to undertake that activity on the weekend, it will not take you long. But each and every weekend people from my community are migrating from Hoppers Crossing and Tarneit into some amazing state and national parks or game reserves to undertake the recreation that they love to do. Whilst, as I said, my electorate is not really one for state or national parks or to be able to undertake outdoor recreation, it is on the doorstep of some of the most picturesque and amazing state and national parks anywhere in Australia. The You Yangs, only about 20 minutes south of my electorate, I believe in the member for Lara’s electorate – it would be right on the border of the electorates of Werribee and Lara. We have the You Yangs. It is a pretty easy walk up to the top of the You Yangs. You can go there with your children. You can take your children up there. I have done so with my boys on several occasions. There are barbecue facilities down at the bottom and car parking facilities. You can spend an entire day at the You Yangs with your family getting some fresh air and getting some physical activity as well. We have got Werribee Gorge further up towards the member for Melton’s electorate, which is absolutely amazing as well. It is the perfect spot for a picnic or to paddle around in a canoe. It has an amazing hike as well – slightly more challenging than the You Yangs – which I have also done. Lerderderg State Park is dog friendly and has some amazing camping spots as well. There is also a great pub near there at Blackwood. You can take your dog away and go camping with your family and with your loved ones, which is a really amazing aspect, particularly of our state parks.

Do not try and take your dog to a national park – the ranger will fine you. We have also got the Organ Pipes National Park, which is a must-see as well, located at the easternmost edge of the world’s largest ancient volcanic lava flows. Of course if you would like to go a little bit further west, we have the Otway national park as well, which I believe is on track for UNESCO recognition. On the way down to the member for South-West Coast’s electorate and the member for Polwarth’s electorate are some of the most beautiful rainforests and national parks that you will see anywhere in the world, full of amazing waterfalls like Stevensons Falls. As I said at the outset of my contribution, merging the VFA and the GMA is incredibly important just to make sure that we have got the most efficient regulators that we possibly can in Victoria, so as many people as possible in Victoria can enjoy our great outdoors. Victoria is the most beautiful state in the country. I would argue it is one of the most beautiful states anywhere in the world, with picturesque state and national parks, picturesque beaches and fantastic fishing. Go down to Portland during tuna season – absolutely amazing.

Outdoor recreation, as I said, contributes $356 million each and every year to our economy and supports thousands of jobs, but what it also does, and the member for Lowan was absolutely right, is in its own way reduce a burden on Victoria’s health system by making sure that people are fit and physically active and are also looking after their mental health. I can tell you right now, if you have had a hard week, going out into one of our fantastic state or national parks and camping for the night, being amongst nature, going for a hike, doing some exercise, apart from having a surf, is probably the best tonic to get you back into a good frame of mind.

I will repeat: this legislation is incredibly important both for the efficiency of the regulations but also for access as well with that Land Access Panel that exists in the new ORV. It is great legislation, and I commend it to the house.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (18:13): I rise to speak on the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill 2026. This is a bill that abolishes two longstanding specialist agencies, the Victorian Fisheries Authority and the Game Management Authority, and replaces them with a new single body called Outdoor Recreation Victoria. The new authority will oversee fishing, hunting, boating, compliance, licensing, public land access, infrastructure and recreational activities under one centralised structure. The government says it will streamline administration and improve coordination.

However, the concerns raised by stakeholders, industry groups and the shadow minister are significant and should not be dismissed. The bill increases ministerial control, weakens specialist representation and creates a real risk that important sectors, particularly commercial fishing, will lose their voice inside a broad, recreation-focused bureaucracy. We have an important and strong fishing industry in South-West Coast, and I have heard loud and clear their serious concerns about the governance arrangements and the lack of guaranteed regional representation, the absence of safeguards around commercial fishing interests and the failure to guarantee adequate fisheries enforcement capability into the future. There are also concerns that the authority attempts to combine advocacy, promotion and enforcement all under the one roof. This creates a very real tension. Regulators are supposed to regulate, advocates are supposed to advocate, and combining both can blur accountability and weaken confidence. The shadow minister has rightly identified the risks around weakened independence, reduced stakeholder representation and the lack of protections ensuring commercial fisheries’ science and expertise remain central to the decision-making.

As the former Shadow Minister for Boating and Fishing, I particularly want to focus on the concerns surrounding commercial fishing and fisheries management. Commercial fishing fleets across Victoria, particularly in South-West Coast, feel nervous about this restructure. Commercial fishing is not a recreational pastime, it is an important and proud primary industry. It supports jobs, regional economies, exports, tourism and local food security. Victorians value our local seafood industry enormously. People buy Victorian seafood because they trust it. They trust the clean waters, they trust the sustainability and they trust the people catching it. Frankly, most Victorians would far rather eat seafood harvested from the pristine waters of Portland, Port Fairy or Warrnambool than seafood imported from parts of Asia where environmental standards and water quality can be uncertain. Our seafood industry has spent decades building that strong reputation. Commercial fishers are not environmental vandals, as some activists like to portray them. In fact many are amongst the most passionate custodians of our marine environment because their livelihoods depend on healthy fisheries for generations to come. South-west fishers understand sustainability better than most people sitting behind desks in Melbourne bureaucracies. They know if you abuse or destroy the resource, you destroy your own future. That is why much investment has gone into fisheries science, stock assessments and sustainability programs funded through industry levies and partnerships with government and researchers. This is an industry that has embraced science, this is an industry that understands stewardship and this is an industry that has worked hard to ensure sustainability is not just spoken about but actually delivered.

I saw this many times firsthand over the years, working alongside both commercial and recreational fishers. One of the best examples came from Portland years ago with what became known locally as a gentlemen’s agreement: commercial fishers volunteered to stop netting in the bay because they understood the importance of protecting local fish stocks and maintaining balance between recreation and commercial interests. That was about 40 years ago. It was not imposed by bureaucracy; it was achieved through cooperation, trust and local knowledge. And when one rogue operator threatened later to undermine the arrangement and potentially ruin it for everyone, something remarkable happened: commercial and recreational fishers stood shoulder to shoulder. They worked hand in glove to protect the long-term sustainability of the fishery for fishers and preserve a fair outcome for all users.

I was really pleased to help facilitate those discussions at the time, because it showed what regional communities can achieve when people work together with common sense and local knowledge instead of ideological division. That is what many commercial fishers are now deeply concerned about in this bill. They fear that specialist fisheries’ knowledge, local understanding and practical expertise will be swallowed by a giant, centralised recreational authority where commercial fishing becomes little more than an afterthought. Unfortunately these concerns are made even worse by the actions this government has already taken. At a time when the Allan Labor government claims to care deeply about sustainability and environmental protection, it has drastically cut fisheries officers across Victoria. You cannot claim to care about sustainability and the environment by removing the very people who are responsible for protecting them. Fisheries officers are absolutely critical. They enforce the rules, they monitor illegal activity and they protect fish stocks. They ensure sustainability measures are meaningful and applied. Without proper compliance and enforcement, laws become little more than words on paper. Regional communities are rightly alarmed that fishery officer numbers have been slashed so severely, because everybody knows what happens when compliance disappears. That is what the Labor government have done by cutting the fisheries.

Victoria has seen this before. We all remember the bad old days when illegal abalone poaching exploded. Organised crime infiltrated parts of the industry and sustainability came under enormous pressure. Those lessons should not be forgotten. Healthy fisheries do not happen by accident; they require proper science, proper monitoring and proper enforcement. Once stocks are damaged, recovery can take years or even decades. That is why cutting fisheries officers is such a dangerous false economy. It risks undermining decades of good work carried out by responsible commercial fishers, recreational anglers, scientists and fishery managers. It sends the entirely wrong message to people doing the wrong thing.

The bill talks extensively about recreation, access and participation, but many in the commercial seafood sector feel their role as primary food producers and custodians has been diminished. That is why the amendments proposed by the Liberals and the Nationals are important. They seek to strengthen governance, preserve specialist expertise, guarantee proper representation for commercial fishing and regional Victoria, improve transparency and ensure the fisheries, science and enforcement remain protected. Commercial fishermen deserve confidence that their industry will not simply disappear into a bureaucratic mega agency dominated by Melbourne-based administrations. When it comes to fisheries management, locals matter; their knowledge matters, practical experience matters and regional voices matter. The fishermen of south-west Victoria have spent generations proving they are responsible custodians of our marine environment. They deserve respect for that work, not uncertainty about whether their industry will still have a strong voice into the future. I support sensible reform where it improves outcomes, but I do not support changes that weaken specialist expertise, undermine compliance capability or leave commercial fisheries wondering whether they have been forgotten altogether.

This is a government who pretend to care about the environment. They talk a big game and talk the talk, but when it comes to action, what we actually see are cuts. They make claims that we here on the Liberal–National side of the chamber are threatening cuts, but they are actually making cuts, and the evidence is clear to see. The evidence is clear in the fisheries. The evidence is clear in Regional Development Victoria funding. The evidence is clear in the funding cuts through the agricultural department, with the amount of people that have been taken out of that department and the corporate knowledge that has been lost. That has been supporting farmers and fisheries for some years, and it has been absolutely slashed by this government. This is a government who gets up in this chamber and says, ‘The Liberals will cut.’ Well, no, we are not the ones doing the cutting. That is what I am seeing every day when I walk out of this chamber and go home to South-West Coast. With Tower Hill and the management of that state game park – it is just absolutely covered in weeds, the paths are overgrown and the vermin are absolutely taking over. I see a government who say, ‘We care about the environment,’ but what we see in real life, on the ground, is the evidence of those cuts that this government have made. The Victorian seafood industry is too important to be treated as an afterthought and the environment that we care for in the regions is too important. But this is not a government that cares; this is a government that cuts.

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (18:22): As we get underway with the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill 2026, what a great legacy of outdoor recreation and investment in all the activities that take place in the great outdoors it will be. I am sure, Acting Speaker Cameron, you would see me as a great aficionado in outdoor recreation. We get the big wide-brim hat on and out we go with the 4 litres of sunscreen. We love to get amongst it. Normally my outdoor recreation is scuba diving out in Bass Strait, which I think is classed as outdoor recreation.

But when we think of outdoor recreation, it means those formative memories out in various areas of country Victoria and rural and regional Victoria that really connect to who we are, and those formative memories can be with families, can be with grandparents and can be with friends. When you think of those moments, what do they mean? It could be recreational fishing and the investment that this government has made. From Target One Million it has gone absolutely brilliantly with that policy setting. We have had the first Minister for Fishing and Boating, an outstanding contribution to put on the radar that we as a government are for the outdoors, for recreation and for that connection that comes from some of these key activities. I think we had one of the nation’s first outdoor recreation ministers. I want to give a massive shout-out to the former minister, Minister Dimopoulos. He gets out in the countryside. He has gone all around the state to all points of the compass. He is now the Minister for Economic Growth and Jobs. This is one of the most significant parts of our portfolio and our truly Victorian story, which is that these activities and these connections are more than just for the sake of it; they are our identity and who we are. It connects families, it keeps people connected to their mental health and wellbeing and it is truly something we need to lift up and appreciate. The former parliamentary secretary, who is now the Minister for Youth and Minister for Carers and Volunteers, did an outstanding job in that space, bringing about the awareness and lifting up the investment and that engagement.

So on the back of that work, on the back of the validation of this as a key ministerial responsibility, we see the creation of Outdoor Recreation Victoria. This looks at bringing together the Game Management Authority and the Victorian Fisheries Authority into a new statutory agency. This is about strengthening and uplifting two organisations into one and the efficiencies that come from that, rather than the two standalone identities.

I want to give a shout-out as well, an awareness to some of the work of the Game Management Authority. There are a few parliamentarians in here that were on a parliamentary committee into invasive species. It might not surprise you, Acting Speaker Cameron, that that is not really my forte. We have had a few deer run through Mordialloc before, probably from Mildura, just letting them down, coming through.

Jade Benham: We don’t have deer in Mildura.

Tim RICHARDSON: They do not have deer up there.

A member: Warrandyte.

Tim RICHARDSON: It is very much in Warrandyte, but very much in the north-east and the Grampians. We said that there could be a million deer that are feral, invasive and have huge impact on farmers. What is the crossover there between how we manage that – we had a full inquiry into the role of recreational shooting and hunting in that. Now, to be honest – and this is one of the most beautiful things of parliamentary inquiries in this place – you learn so much with colleagues, and we had regional and rural. I mean, the best rural example for me is – I am probably peri-urban at best, that is how far out I have gone. But I have a curiosity and an interest and then to team up with a range of different colleagues to understand that and the impacts was really important. It validated the generational place of recreational hunting in Victoria. That was quite clear. It explored some of the opportunities around harvesting of a range of game species and varieties and that impact as well. And the tourism, I think the member for Mildura might have mentioned this – I think you have been on this, or maybe I imagined it, member for Mildura, or maybe the member for Lowan made this point as well – about the place of tourism and attendance in these regional and rural towns of people who are going out, a lot of them are generational contributions, spending money in the patch, spending money in regional and rural areas and then making that contribution as well.

The Game Management Authority has had a really important role in best practice in safety and regulation, and the regulation that the shooting and hunting community does of each other. We know that if a wide section of people bring down the standards of safe hunting practices and shooting practices, it impacts on everyone. So if everyone has a collective buy-in to that important work in that oversight, including bag limits, limits on what can be shot and taken and the harvesting of game as well, then everyone is strengthened with that as well.

I obviously have a lot more awareness of the Victorian Fisheries Authority, being in one of the best parts of Victoria – Port Phillip Bay is pristine, absolutely pristine, and is one of the most significant parts of our communities. My electorate of Mordialloc obviously straddles the bay. When the snapper season happens, we are all out there, out on the boats, out on the tinnies. Mordialloc was, post changes to First Nations presence in the 1800s, known as a fishing village, so this is part of generations that have gone through and what Mordialloc has been known for. And when it is absolutely packed down at Patterson River, at Mordialloc Creek and Western Port Bay, it is absolutely a hive of activity.

I am really buoyed by the fact that this is about the strengthening of two agencies by coming together, the work that will be done in that space, the investment, the fairness and that real understanding that this is a big part of our responsibility as well. The bill also establishes a strong framework for governance of Outdoor Recreation Victoria. It will be led by an independent skills-based board, and that transition and continuity from the basis of those two organisations into what we will see will be really formative in getting those skills right, and for the people that drive the strategic direction of Outdoor Recreation Victoria going forward as well. Importantly I am heartened by the fact that there will be no losses of jobs through this transition and transfer as well.

I am also heartened on behalf of my community that Outdoor Recreation Victoria will receive base funding currently assigned to Game Management Authority and the Victorian Fisheries Authority of approximately $29 million per annum, giving them that certainty, and the Better Boating Fund and Recreational Fishing Licence Trust Account will remain unchanged.

These are reassurances in the transition of organisations and how they front up going forward. This makes a lot of sense in terms of the modernisation and the expectations that this government has created around our want and our need to invest in outdoor recreation in all its facets. Hundreds of thousands of Victorians have a great connection to it, whether it is on long weekends, whether it is during school holidays or whether it is over that Christmas period, and some of those generational, formative moments that make us, as individuals, the people we are today have been experienced in some of those activities and those outcomes. When we look at all those facets together, it makes sense.

It probably would not have been possible to get to this point if the Allan Labor government had not put outdoor recreation so heavily on the agenda. I know at the time there was some interesting commentary around why this was created, but when you look at it as a portfolio area, when you look at the economic contribution, when you look at the benefit for regional and rural towns and when you look at all of those things together – and the investment this government has made in recreational fishing, in Go Fishing Victoria and in a range of different areas around our state – you see that that has set up this organisation with a great structure and a great charter to really thrive into the future. I love the recreational fishing stats: it provides employment for almost 20,000 Victorians and contributes $2.3 billion to the Victorian economy. Some of the most avid recreational fishers are down at Port Phillip Bay – along Mordialloc, the Kingston–Frankston areas and the Greater Dandenong areas – and are out there each and every time. As soon as we kick into snapper season it absolutely goes off down in my community.

This is a bill that makes a lot of sense. I want to recognise the work of the department to get to this point. It is a cluttered legislative program, as we know, but there has been some outstanding work from the department to make this happen. I want to acknowledge that work and the work of the former minister, his parliamentary secretary and now the new minister, who is up and about in the other place, Minister Erdogan. I think he is very excited. I think he is going to set a new tone in outdoor recreation. I do not know if you can get more excited than Minister Dimopoulos, but Minister Erdogan is going to try to set the tone, so we wish him all the very best. We are going to see him out in every bit of hunting and shooting and fishing in the next little while.

 Gabrielle DE VIETRI (Richmond) (18:32): I rise on behalf of the Victorian Greens to oppose the Outdoor Recreation Bill 2026. This bill repeals and amends various acts and then establishes Outdoor Recreation Victoria and the Land Access Panel. The government presents this bill as a positive consolidation to get more Victorians outdoors and to make access easier. The Greens are all in favour of getting Victorians outdoors. We support people being able to walk, camp, paddle, picnic, hike, birdwatch, swim, ride and enjoy public land. But public land is not just a blank recreational asset. It is habitat. It is country. It is threatened species, waterways, old trees, wetlands, coastlines, forests and cultural landscapes. It is also a place for quiet recreation, family recreation, nature appreciation and recovery. When the government talks about access, the question is always: access for whom, for what purpose and with what safeguards?

Outdoor Recreation Victoria is not simply being established as a neutral access body. The bill gives it regulatory functions over game hunting, fishing, aquaculture and recreational boating. It also gives the organisation functions to promote participation in outdoor recreation, support sector development, facilitate access to public land and optimise the social, cultural and economic benefits of outdoor recreation. This is a serious governance tension. A regulator should regulate, a promoter should promote. When a single body is asked to do both, the public is entitled to ask which function wins when there is a conflict. We know the answer to this because the government was warned about this nearly a decade ago. In 2017 the government’s own independent Pegasus review of Game Management Authority (GMA) compliance and enforcement functions warned about exactly the structural conflict that this bill now recreates.

The review found that the GMA had not been able to effectively fulfil its compliance and enforcement responsibilities. It found noncompliance with game hunting laws was commonplace and widespread. It found the GMA was widely perceived as unable to ensure compliance with game hunting laws or effectively sanction offenders. It also found that, as a small statutory body, the GMA was vulnerable to influence from the interests it was supposed to regulate. Most importantly, the Pegasus compliance report found tensions and potential conflicts between the GMA’s regulatory role and its other roles, and it said that the GMA was sometimes perceived as playing and occasionally slid into advocacy and promotional roles that conflicted with its responsibilities as a regulator. Pegasus recommended separating regulatory functions from advisory and promotional activities. The government is now literally doing the opposite. The bill gives Outdoor Recreation Victoria, ORV, regulatory functions over game hunting, fishing and boating, but it also gives them functions to promote participation in outdoor recreation, but only a very limited and particular type of outdoor recreation. ORV will only promote recreational fishing, boating, four-wheel driving, bush camping and game hunting.

We see that risk being sharpened by the new Land Access Panel, which the bill establishes to advise the minister on community access to public land for outdoor recreation. The minister appoints the members. The bill only requires that members have knowledge or experience relevant to the panel’s function, which, according to the minister’s second-reading speech, is limited only to recreational fishing, boating, game hunting, bush camping and four-wheel driving. When the minister appoints members of the Land Access Panel, will there be a seat at the table for conservation organisations or another seat for passive recreation users? No, I do not think so. Nor will there be representation of birdwatchers, bushwalkers, photographers, citizen scientists, volunteers, families who use parks for picnics, or communities who want safe, quiet, nature-rich public land. Collectively those people are far from a fringe group. They are the majority of Victorians, as we can clearly see in recent reporting and polling. First Nations stakeholders have also contacted us, asking simply: if the public land under discussion is Aboriginal land and the Victorian government is committed to Aboriginal self-determination and partnership, why does this panel about access to traditional owners’ land exclude their voice and decision-making?

This government talks about access, but access is not neutral. Access for whom? Access for what? Access to drive massive four-wheel drives further into fragile landscapes? Access to shoot in more places? Access to intensify pressure on parks and waterways already struggling under climate change, invasive species, underfunding and biodiversity decline? Funding for Victoria’s national parks, home to our threatened species, is at record lows. Eighty-four per cent of Victorians say national parks are important to them, and 80 per cent support the creation of new national parks, with those figures showing very similar levels of support across Labor, coalition and Greens voters as well as across metropolitan and regional Victoria. When Victorians are asked what they actually do in the bush, the most common activities – they are not shooting or hunting or trail bike riding; they are short bushwalks, picnics, photography, camping and birdwatching. When asked what would encourage them to visit national parks more often, people nominated waterfalls and rivers, peace and quiet, more walking tracks and trails. That is the silent majority this bill is locking out from decisions about what comprises outdoor recreation in this state.

Victorians care deeply about our native wildlife, and we want to see it protected. But at a time when native species are already at risk due to climate change, bushfires and drought, Labor continues to roll out policies across the state that are harming the very animals it should be safeguarding, and it is chronically underfunding our biodiversity initiatives and our wildlife rescue services. In 2025, Wildlife Victoria responded to 189,000 reports of wildlife in danger, and as greenfield developments expand and more native habitat is destroyed, and as outdoor recreation is encouraged to threaten our native wildlife even further, their task simply grows, and yet their funding has flatlined.

This year in Labor’s recent budget only 5 per cent of their operations were funded, leaving them to scramble to meet costs for their 365-days-a-year, 24-hours-a-day service that they provide across the state to coordinate our wildlife rescue. They do incredible work in advocacy as well, particularly around stopping brutal duck shooting here in Victoria. It is unbelievable that duck shooting under Labor is still legal here in Victoria. Waterbird numbers are in long-term decline due to drought and habitat destruction. Our native ducks are struggling. The final report from the parliamentary inquiry into bird hunting recommended the end of duck shooting here in Victoria, and yet Labor continues to cater to the shooting lobby by greenlighting the slaughter of ducks in yearly shooting seasons. Duck shooters represent less than half of 1 per cent of Victoria’s population. Most Victorians want duck shooting to end, and Victoria is lagging behind the other states, with WA, New South Wales and Queensland all banning the practice decades ago on animal cruelty and environmental protection grounds. Plantation forest is dismally under-regulated too, which leads to hundreds of koalas being bulldozed and starved. Labor’s ongoing disregard for wildlife habitat and the animals that depend on it is completely out of step with what Victorians expect from their government.

This bill sits within a much broader pattern of environmental agencies being asked to do more with less while biodiversity continues to decline and compliance work is weakened. We have seen continued pressure on Parks Victoria and cuts and restructuring across the environmental department, and Victorian Fisheries Authority workforce changes have caused concern about loss of frontline capacity. The real test of this bill is whether it strengthens independent regulation, protects biodiversity, respects traditional ownership, safeguards the quiet enjoyment of public land and gives the public a genuine seat at the table. On every one of those tests this bill fails, and the Greens will oppose it. My Greens colleagues in the other place will have a number of amendments.

Danny Pearson: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, I would like to draw the house’s attention to the fact that the member for Richmond was speaking on an environmental bill and stood down with 10 minutes and I think 18 seconds left on the clock, so she has failed to use her allotted time to speak on an environmental matter when she is a member of the Greens political party.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Martin Cameron): That is not a point of order.

 Steve McGHIE (Melton) (18:43): It was interesting; I was actually thinking I was just going to miss out on getting up tonight because I thought you would go your full 20 minutes, but anyway, not to worry. I rise to support the Outdoor Recreation Bill 2026. At its heart this legislation is about something simple but deeply important: making it easier for Victorians to get outdoors. We all love doing that and enjoying our environment and connecting with the natural surrounds and spaces that belong to all of us. Too often in this place we speak about infrastructure, regulation, policy and technical terms alone, but of course outdoor recreation is not just about administration; it is about people, it is about our families spending time together, it is about our children learning patience and respect for nature and it is also about our mates camping by a river, people getting out for a walk, anglers standing by the water – hopefully they are throwing a line and trying to catch some fish – and communities rediscovering places that have too often been overlooked or locked away. That is why I welcome this bill and the establishment of Outdoor Recreation Victoria.

People here will probably know that I have a great love for the outdoors, and come December I will be off experiencing and exploring the outdoors right around this countryside, not only in Victoria but interstate. I am heading west in February next year and looking forward to it. I map out my trips by looking where the closest wineries are; I normally do that. I am heading towards Margaret River in February next year, and we will be going via the Eyre Peninsula. I can assure you that the wineries will enjoy me calling through, let me say.

This bill brings together the Victorian Fisheries Authority and the Game Management Authority into a new authority with a broader purpose, not simply just regulating activity but actively promoting participation and helping people access the outdoors. Victorians have made it very clear that they want more opportunities to enjoy nature and participate in outdoor recreation.

I think it was brought home during the COVID pandemic how important our outdoors and recreational opportunities are, and that came to fruition obviously during COVID. Whether you are out fishing, boating, camping or bushwalking or simply just spending time near water and open spaces, people want access to the outdoors and they want government to help remove any barriers that stand in the way of enjoying those activities in our outdoor areas.

I am hoping to do a lot of that, as I have said, later this year. This is something that I had to delay eight years ago. I have lost eight years of that travel, but I will be making up for it. Hopefully I last long enough to make up for the lost eight years. We will be revving up the motorhome very shortly at the end of the year and we will be off. You will not see us for dust. It was interesting that I saw the former member for Lara coming back into the house today. It was great to see him, and he looks great. He looks well, but I can assure you I do not think you will see me back here very often, let me tell you. Not unless you put a winery out the back.

Anyway, we will move on. Of course the enjoyment of the outdoors is exactly the direction that this legislation takes us. We have got a fantastic long weekend coming up this weekend. The example, we will see it this weekend with many, many people getting out in the outdoors, whether that be camping, fishing or boating. Whatever it might be, people will be out and about this weekend regardless of what the weather is, and that is the great thing about it. People can find a recreational source that suits their needs, and it is fantastic to see. There will be thousands of people out, and I am sure there will be thousands in the campgrounds. They are probably booked out already. Again, it is a good reminder of how important our outdoors and recreational facilities are.

I particularly welcome the inclusion of the Land Access Panel, because one of the greatest frustrations that our communities raise is not the lack of interest in outdoor recreation but the difficulty of access. Again, people want to have greater access to those outdoor and recreational facilities. We have great waterways and parklands and natural assets across Victoria, but too often communities encounter a bit of confusion, fragmented responsibility or longstanding barriers that prevent them getting out. This bill recognises that challenge and creates a mechanism to identify opportunities and work in a collaborative way across government and with land and water managers to improve access, and that is a practical reform.

We know the benefits of outdoor recreation are significant: the physical benefits; the mental benefits obviously in getting outdoors and having nature around you, which are just amazing; and of course the social benefits of getting outdoors with either family or friends and enjoying that social aspect of it. We know that spending time outdoors improves everyone’s wellbeing, which is so important these days. It reduces social isolation and it strengthens the community connections, and that is a great thing to see. It is so important in the current times that we have.

People going fishing and boating alone support thousands of jobs, and they have contributed billions of dollars to the Victorian economy. It is great to see when you go. I remember the member for Mordialloc spoke about on his doorstep the beautiful bay that we have, and there is fishing and boating. It is great to see when you go to places around the coastline all the boaters and fisherpeople – not fishermen but fisherpeople. It is great to see them out there enjoying themselves.

I was telling a story at the transport event before about being – I do not know how I did it – conned by a couple of young guys in New South Wales to go out game fishing one time. I get seasick, and I knew I would get seasick. Of course there I was camping in New South Wales, and these two young guys had the most magnificent boat, and they convinced me to go out at 5 o’clock in the morning. Now, what idiot would get up at 5 o’clock when you are on holidays camping? I did. I went out on the boat just out through the heads at South West Rocks, and the first thing that happened was a big wave came over the boat, and guess who caught the lot of it? Me. So it was a great start to the fishing expedition.

I do not know how far we went out – probably an hour from the coast. As soon as they stopped the motor, that was the end of me. I mean, the boat is up and down, the stomach is up and down and I tell you what, I put plenty of burley into that sea. We never caught a fish, and the two young blokes looked at me as if to say, ‘Why the hell did we bring him out?’ Thank God, an hour or two later we were back on land. The greatest thing for me was to get back on land, and I said to them, ‘If ever I’m going to go fishing again, it’ll be around the corner to the fish shop,’ so it will not be out on a boat chucking my guts up and not catching any fish. It was just ridiculous. But anyway, sorry about that story.

My electorate of Melton is one of the fastest growing communities in the country, and of course we are a community of very young families. It is such a diverse community, and they love the outdoors, they love recreational facilities, and it is fantastic to see. We have some great waterways in Melton, in Navan Park and the Melton Reservoir, and of course there is a nice little lake in the middle of the Melton Botanic Gardens. It is fantastic. And we have stocked those waterways. It is great to see kids, after school or on holidays, going down to those waterways and doing some fishing. We gave out the fishing rods to, I think, it was the year 5s only about 12 months ago, and it was fantastic to see them using those rods. In fact, there is a local story that a few of the parents knocked the fishing rods off the kids, unfortunately, and used the rods for themselves rather than allowing their kids to use the rods.

As I say, we have fantastic waterways out in Melton, very close to central Melbourne. You have the Melbourne Runabout & Speedboat Club on the Melton Reservoir – a fantastic club. They do a lot of waterskiing and things out there, and they have a lot of skiing competitions. We managed to get some money to have a jetty put into that reservoir, and I know there was some opposition to it. The jetty has not been built yet, but there is some planning in that for it. There is a group, a committee, through the Melton City Council trying to work through that issue. Unfortunately, I have not been invited to any of the meetings. For some reason the Melton City Council have decided that they do not want me at those meetings but, anyway, that is okay. That jetty was to provide for people wanting to do fishing in their little tinnies off the bank and for whatever – a picnic area. Again, it is a great asset for Melton to have that waterway, that reservoir there. Yes, the boat club can still have their skiing and boat races and things like that, but the fishing can be at the other end of the waterway. It is a great asset. This is a really important bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (18:53): I have not got long, and I have got a lot of things to talk about with this bill, so I will get straight to it. I want to start with the member for Richmond. I just want to offer a couple of little insights, but that is a really good insight there on why local knowledge is really important on boards and advisory councils where outdoor recreation, fisheries and game management are concerned.

Let us talk about ducks and duck shooting. Yes, we still control ducks in this state with duck season, and the bag limits are probably too low. When the member for Richmond said that duck numbers are dwindling, I would invite anyone that wants to see duck numbers exploding to come out to – farmers have been incentivised in the past to create wetlands on their land, which is fantastic. But let me talk you through botulism and what happens with avian botulism when it gets into duck populations, and that tends to happen in wetlands like those are away from a naturally flowing waterway like the Murray River, for example. Avian botulism gets into duck populations. It can also then affect pets, and it can affect humans. But what happens to the ducks – and this happens in times of overpopulation during the warmer months, for example – is they will drown. It is botulism, right, so they become paralysed, which means they can drown or they cannot move. So I think the more savage death of a duck is a virus like avian botulism. When it goes through a wetland or gets into a farm dam, then it can infect the crop that that water is going to, if in fact it is going to a crop. But that is just one of the reasons why game management in this state is still really important.

Full disclosure: I am a card-carrying member of Field and Game Australia and a member of the Sunraysia Field and Game club, so I know a thing or two about this. There are a lot of people that travel up for what is now a very, very short duck season with a very, very small bag limit. But they love it. They come and camp and they love it, and it is a great way and a cost-effective way for farmers – because they are all under pressure – to control duck populations in those wetlands that have been created and to make sure those environments remain healthy, because honestly, if we had an outbreak, then it could be all sorts of detrimental.

I wanted to also address the member for Tarneit, who pulled up the member for Lowan, although – and I will have to check Hansard – I am sure he said later that the member for Lowan was right. I do not know what exactly he was referring to, but she was probably right; she usually is. But he also made a point of saying he does not know what game management and wild dogs have got to do with this bill. Well, game management, kangaroos – that is game management. That is one of the organisations that is now being merged into Outdoor Recreation Victoria.

The simple fact of the matter is, for the member for Lowan, whose electorate covers 20 per cent of this state – and in my electorate, which covers nearly 17 per cent of this state, I have almost half a million hectares of national park. The perimeter is – it would be hard to measure accurately, but there is anywhere from 350 kilometres to 450 kilometres of boundary to Wyperfeld National Park. Another reason why local knowledge is important for things like this: anyone that knows that national park knows that it is referred to as ‘whipper-field’, not ‘wiper-feld’, national park. Local knowledge is important. Sixteen kilometres of eradication fencing does not really help keep the dingoes out of the flocks; it just does not. There used to be a wild dog fence – quick history lesson – which was built in the 1800s, that spanned from Nyah, up on the Murray River, and wound its way down over to the South Australian border to keep the dogs out or to keep them in, depending on what side of it you were on. So the 16 kilometres of fence that the government is funding and patting themselves on the back for makes absolutely no difference. The guardian animals that are out there to protect sheep flocks from wild dogs do very little. As much as I love a llama or an alpaca and I love a maremma, I have seen some maremmas out there that are scared of thunderstorms – not very effective in being guardian animals all the time. So that is what that has to do with that.

If we get onto other forms of game management, on-farm again, and kangaroos, if you get an authority to control wildlife on your property, the maximum that you can harvest per year is 35. I could get that in a night, particularly –

Will Fowles interjected.

Jade BENHAM: Yes, well, the member for Ringwood I am sure knows, being from near the High Country, that you can go out and it would take you sometimes 2 or 3 hours. You could get 35 pretty easily.

However, the member for Mordialloc did make reference earlier to the fact that it does create the hunting and game tourism market, and it really does. Getting back to the benefits of duck shooting for areas like mine and the kangaroo harvesting program, the restrictions around the authority to control wildlife and the lack of ability to get one to control wild dogs because of a loophole are an issue, but it does create tourism. There are a lot of people that come to our region to hunt, particularly for duck season, and if you have got one of those ATCWs, then that is also a way that – you know, I was out shooting kangaroos from a very, very young age. It was something that we loved to do with my grandparents when they were out on a farm at Warrenmang. I think you are going to pull me up, aren’t you?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! I am required by sessional orders to interrupt the member now. The member will have the call when the matter comes back to the house.

Business interrupted under sessional orders.