Brian Sherman AM, Director of Voiceless, the animal protection institute, today called upon the NSW Government to reject a deal with the Shooters’ Party which would open up 13 national parks to recreational hunters in return for ongoing support in the upper house.

Speaking at a press conference at Parliament House in Sydney, Katrina Sharman, Voiceless’s corporate counsel, criticized the private members’ bill introduced by Shooters’ Party MLC Robert Brown, as a retrograde step, calling it “an attempt by the Shooters’ Party to give legitimacy to a blood sport.

“The Bill is an attempt to expand so-called ‘conservation hunting’…it will sanction immeasurable, unnecessary suffering to countless numbers of sentient beings.”

Under the provisions of the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009, the species that can be legitimately shot will expand to include kangaroos, galahs and black swans.

The Bill also seeks to establish private game reserves where animals can be bred before being released into the wild where they will be “lawfully pursued by recreational hunters as young as 12 armed with firearms, packs of dogs – and even bow and arrows – playing out hunters’ fantasies of some medieval war-game.”

“The Game Reserve provisions disclose this Bill for what it is – an attempt by the Shooters Party to give legitimacy to a blood sport.”

Sharman called on the Government to reject the Bill’s amendments. “The cruelty that the Act condones is an offence to the decent people of this nation…the Bill should be blocked and the Act…should be repealed,” she said.

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