Letter to firearm owners in the Electorate of Kingston about Susan Jeanes, Liberal Politician
19 June 1997
On June 19th, Susan Jeanes, the Liberal Federal Member for Kingston, wrote an article, "Day of the Dead Ducks", which she proudly asserts is all her own, every word of it.
It described a morning in which Ms Jeanes went to a duck hunting venue with some "experienced rescuers" to see shooting for herself. She did not mention that this venue, Bool Lagoon, was originally created almost entirely by hunters and would not even exist without them today.
In the article, she asks herself what she was doing there, "miles away from (her) electorate whose major problems relate to unemployment and family issues". It is an excellent question.
She found that "the definition of serenity", the lagoon, was "destroyed by an explosion of gunfire", which was a "vulgar expression of human creativity" and the "most bizarre thing" she had ever experienced.
She described the way ducks "die slowly if they aren't found" (perhaps never having heard of predators). She takes offence at the shooters "wearing their ducks as trophies, hanging from their belts by the neck".
At a veterinary station, she "met" seven ducks. (One wonders how the introductions were carried out.) The vet there was intriguingly said to have declared the duck Ms Jeanes fetched in had "had its wing blasted off in a previous shoot", something ballistically very difficult to achieve with a shotgun.
On reading this, and more, the SSAA dispatched someone to interview Ms Jeanes. Some of the questions asked of her are now listed in italics, with the replies she gave.
Q: Before making a public statement about a hunting-related matter, did you contact the Sporting Shooters' Association, the local hunting body, or any well known animal management figures or teachers?
A: No.
Q: Before forming any opinion on duck hunting, did you contact any recognized body with conservation involvement, such as the CSIRO?
A: (To this question, Ms Jeanes said she once worked for a Shadow Minister for the Environment. She appeared to believe this an animal-management qualification of significance.)
Q: Can you indicate one country where organized, seasonal hunting was stopped, to the demonstrated benefit of a species?
A: No.
Q: Are you familiar with one country where controlled seasonal hunting of a species caused an increase in the numbers of that species?
A: No.
What a pity. This is babies'-grade stuff to anyone genuinely involved in conservation. It was pointed out to Ms Jeanes that the globe abounds with birds (the canvasback duck, the pintail duck, the turkey) and animals (the white-tail deer, the black rhinoceros) which have all been on the point of extinction before being turned over to hunting groups for successful management and a subsequent healthy increase in numbers. She did not think this was a valid point to make.
Q: Are you familiar with the waterfowl conservation practices of other modern western nations such as New Zealand, the USA and Canada?
A: No.
Q: Do you know roughly as a percentage how many waterfowl die in the annual cyclical die-off?
A: Pardon?
At this point it was explained to Ms Jeanes in detail that waterfowl harvesting is slotted into the correct time of year to take about three percent out of the sixty percent of the quarry species which are doomed to die anyway each year through starvation and perishing. It was suggested to her that failing to harvest a resource is immoral, especially when those doing the harvesting put in the work to ensure that the overall benefit not only to target species but all waterfowl is positive, and the end result is more birds of all sorts, not fewer.
She said that nobody would ever change her mind about the issue.
Q: Would you support waterfowl hunting if it were incontestibly demonstrated to create larger rather than smaller waterfowl populations?
A: No.
Q: Considering that hunting bans have no demonstrated benefit in conservation, what are you prepared to do in order to publicly support a hunting-related activity with a demonstrated conservation benefit?
A: Nothing.
It was obvious then that there was to be no discussion about the welfare of waterfowl populations. Instead, Ms Jeanes appeared from her answers to have a fixed anti-hunting viewpoint which by her own admission in the interview would never be changed and by acknowledgement in the article has nothing noticeable to do with her electorate. The tone of the article in the newspaper had suggested this already.
Q: In your article, you appeared to take exception to the fact that hunters hang their ducks from their bodies. This was the practice of native hunters before the white man came here. Are you against aboriginal hunting, or only white hunting?
A: Against non-traditional hunting.
Q: Then are you wearing or otherwise using any leather or woollen products, and do you eat meat?
To this, Ms Jeanes said she eats no meat, looks for vinyl when she can, but acknowledged that she wears leather and wool, and did not have any particular defence against what some would call the hypocrisy of this. At this point the interview came to a close.
The facts of the matter are as follows.
Wherever seasonal, managed hunting is practised, the quarry and other species all benefit. Hunters' money is able to reconstitute and augment habitat, which brings a net gain to all populations sharing it. Individualizing animals rather than dealing with whole-population health is anti-conservation, resulting in fewer animals, not more. If Ms Jeanes were serious about animal welfare and not populist vote-catching, would she not have looked closely into the conservation value of hunting, rather than leaving the city wearing her wool and leather and going to the foreign environment of a swamp with some animal liberation activists in order to criticize hunters for doing what she has expressed an intention never to understand? Aren't politicians supposed to listen to electors? - or is that not Liberal practice?
One of the two people who visited Ms Jeanes for the interview is Greek in origin, the other a third-generation Australian. According to her, native Australians are entitled to hunt (as long as they put the ducks out of sight in their non-existent pockets, presumably) but the Greeks have been hunting with firearms for some hundreds of years. Why should one group be allowed to exercise their traditional right to hunt and the other not? What of the third-generation Australian's rights? Has he lost them somewhere?
It is current Liberal policy in Ms Jeanes's state that managed hunting is supported. Let us hope it is better thought out than her personal view. Perhaps as a firearm-owning voter you will work out something in the coming election to reward Ms Jeanes with for her naive and unfortunate anti-conservation stance.
Footnote: in the interview, Ms Jeanes was advised that concern at her article had been expressed by hunters, ordinary people who live in her electorate, and one of whom actually lives in her street. After the interview, which she clearly perceived did not show her in a good light, she telephoned SSAA National Office with a complaint that she had been intimidated by being told this. She claimed to interpret as some kind of intimidation the news that "a man with a gun" lives in her street. She suggested possible Federal Police action. Readers must draw their own conclusions about this extraordinary behaviour.
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