LION TROPHY IMPORTATION
The Hon. ROBERT BORSAK [9.44 p.m.]: Tonight I wish to talk about the plight of the African lion. Across their range, African lions have declined alarmingly over the past few decades, especially in the western and eastern parts of the African continent. In contrast, however, in Southern Africa lion populations are largely stable and their numbers have increased with the inclusion of conservancies in Zimbabwe and more than 45 smaller reserves in South Africa. While they are notoriously difficult to survey, a formal periodic review by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature last year estimated that between 32,000 and 35,000 lions are left in Arica. Importantly, the report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Periodic Review noted that the major leading threats recognised by each lion range state are habitat loss and retaliatory killing and not international trade.
However, despite the collective knowledge of 199 of the world's leading lion management experts who attended the meeting, Australia's arrogant Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, feels he knows better. In response to lobbying by animal rights activists and his Liberal colleague Jason Wood in early 2014, the Minister launched what can only be described as a misguided and misinformed consideration of a proposal to prohibit the importation of all lion specimens, including legally and sustainably acquired hunting trophies. The Minister's proposal was nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on sustainable and ethical trophy hunting that was packaged and heavily sold by the Minister to the media as a means to reduce the unethical practice of "canned hunting". Frankly, the Department of the Environment's public consultation on the proposal was a farce. Documents obtained by my office under freedom of information legislation reveal a litany of qualitative and quantitative errors, which were also acknowledged by the Minister in a letter to me on 5 January this year.
The Commonwealth Parliamentary Library advised Mr Wood in March 2014 that 144 African lion hunting trophies were imported into Australia between 2010 and 2014. However, after the Minister directed his department to review its records in January this year, the number of African lion hunting trophies imported into Australia was revised down to just 18. In addition to the gross errors in Australian wildlife import data, numerous procedural anomalies have also come to light. The net impact is that a gross breach of the rules of natural justice has been inflicted on Australia's hunters. This whole sorry saga culminated in a carefully staged public announcement by the Minister on 13 March this year banning the importation of all African lion imports, including sustainably obtained hunting trophies obtained under fair chase. In response to the Minister's announcement, Dr Duan Biggs at the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland stated:
… [a] decision to ban all hunting trophies, like the Australian Government did with lion trophies from Africa, is like banning all blueberries from Asia because some from one country were contaminated.
He went on to state:
The reality is we either allow the hunting of a few old animals that no longer contribute to the continuation of the species, or we let the entire species get closer to extinction.
Clearly, contrary to what the animal rights activists and the Federal Minister for the Environment would have us believe, well-regulated trophy hunting is not a threat to lions. Despite repeated requests, the Minister never made himself available to meet with me, and internationally recognised wildlife management expert Professor Grahame Webb to discuss his proposed ban on the importation of lion specimens, including hunting trophies. However, the Minister was only too happy to meet with animal rights activists and to hear their side of the story.
In his speech on canned hunting to the Australian Parliament on 27 May 2014, the member for La Trobe, Jason Wood, said that there is "a huge deception taking place". He is damned right—a huge deception is taking place. However, the deception is being perpetrated by the member for La Trobe, the Minister and the Australian Department of the Environment. Shame on them! On behalf of all Australian trophy hunters and for the sake of the conservation of the African lions, the Shooters and Fishers Party will continue working to remove this counterproductive trade ban. If the Minister does not care about Africa and how such decisions impact on their local communities, the Shooters and Fishers Party does.
92 Wednesday 6 May 2015 Legislative Council
