Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Duck hunting

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (14:40): The final long weekend of Victoria’s 2025 duck-shooting season ended as it started – reportedly quiet, with very few shooters. To prop up this cruel practice for just 0.2 per cent of Victoria’s population is a shocking misuse of public funds, and it locks up public land. As Laurie Levy and the tireless campaigners at Regional Victorians Opposed to Duck Shooting have shown, this barbarism not only wastes public funds, it routinely results in the suffering of protected and threatened species, with injured birds left to die slowly, and the terrorising of native wildlife. Regional communities, particularly those living near wetlands, have had enough. The noise, violence and disruption caused by duck shooting does not support local economies – it drives visitors and locals away, out of their wetlands. In towns like Kerang and Camperdown families are demanding peace on their wetlands and an end to the seasonal invasion by shooters. A far more sustainable and positive approach would be keeping these wetlands open to communities and visitors year round and investing in a thriving, nature-based tourism industry. Polling shows that the public agrees that duck shooting is out of step with our values. Victoria has the opportunity to follow the science, community sentiment and common sense by making the 2025 season the last. It is time to protect our precious wetlands and not treat them as sites of slaughter.