Committee report on Recreational Hunting Systems

Today the report by the Upper House Committee on Recreational Hunting Systems was tabled with members of the upper house, including the Hon Rick Mazza of the Shooters and Fishers Party, able to comment on the report.  Yesterday we encouraged everyone to attend the event, and though many of you had to work, it was great to see the support by many shooters that were able to attend this event.

Bill Beaton, the director of Beaton Firearms, attended the hearing today and was delighted with more than 50 fellow shooters attending the event.  This is a great turn out.  But what really impressed Bill was that no one who attended the event was against recreational hunting on public lands.  This represents a great positive, sensible view by the Western Australian public.

The committee’s Majority Report, summarised by the chairperson Hon Liz Behjat, was in support on a 2 year trial for recreational hunting on public lands.  There was also a minority report tabled by the two Labor members of the committee- the contents of which are irrelevant.

It was encouraging that Green upper house member the Hon Lynn Maclaren’s meandering argument that was supposed to be against the report, but which spent more time on drum lines and other irrelevant recurring topics popular with the Greens, was drowned out by the laughter from the rest of the sitting parliament.  The chairperson, Hon Liz Behjat, was quite correct in giving a quite scathing final rebuttal of the Greens’ members’ minimal contributions.  The Hon Lynn Maclaren’s complete disinterest and ignorance for the investigation and subsequent report, which she was given a full 24 hours to read before giving her speech but chose not to, begs the question – how does the Hon Lynn Maclaren feel comfortable taking money from the government for her employment and not complete any of the tasks that are expected of her?  If she were employed in the private sector and demonstrated similar poor performance, she would be sacked.

Overall, the day had a very positive outcome.  With such a positive report recommending the introduction of recreational hunting on public lands we should soon see more people out shooting and a decline in feral animal populations, which will be good for all Western Australians.