WHY BOTHER WITH FACTS WHEN YOU CAN BE 'SAFE'

As HuntFest nears, so too the activities of its detractors become darker.

HuntFest’s organisers have long been plagued by the most offensive anonymous late night phone calls wishing all manner of violence upon them. The most recent caller advised HuntFest organiser, Mr Dan Field, that he was the most “hated man in the entire Eurobodalla Shire.” The caller, a woman, went on to compare Dan and all hunters, with child molesters, assuring him that those who oppose HuntFest will not rest until he, and all others like him, "are driven from the community." 

And of course because I have dared to speak out about the deception associated with anti-HuntFest sentiment and activity, I too have been targeted. Offensive signs have been hung on my front fence, just metres from a school bus-stop. My car has been keyed in the area surrounding a HuntFest sticker, and each time a letter to the Editor appears in the local papers, I’m treated to a predictable influx of hate calls, often expressing the callers’ desire to see me shot through the head, along with my children of course, before they can pass-on the evils of hunting I condone and visit upon an 'innocent' animal kingdom.

Facebook is host to many sites that exist solely to celebrate hunting accidents. Such sites allow animal rights campaigners to bask in the warm fuzzy glow derived from news of serious injury to men, women and even children. Who can forget the young ‘lady’ who expressed her wish to see rusty saws inserted in the orifices of a hunter’s children so they could be torn out while the children were filmed being clubbed to death, “so I can watch and laugh all the way through!”, she said.

Closer to home there was the anti-HuntFest facebook community that featured the photograph of a HuntFest organiser as the focus of community scorn. Dan Field’s photograph was permitted to host comments suggesting that he looked like a paedophile. And of course they trotted out a golden oldie, suggesting that his big gun was an indication of a small penis.

Even after Dan's teenage daughters discovered the page and begged its administrators to remove the childish and offensive snipes about their dad, a high-profile member of the local chapter of the Greens sought to justify the comments on the grounds of freedom of speech about a very emotive issue. 

The comments, and indeed the cause page itself, were finally removed but only after a concerted effort by hunters who stood in support of Dan's daughters in their aguish and public humiliation at the hands of the community’s anti-HuntFest lobby.

It was no doubt coincidental that on the same night that the anti-HuntFest facebook page was pulled down, the Eurobodalla Greens facebook presence also went missing. It has been suggested this was done in an effort to ensure that no link between the two sites could ever be established. It is fortuitous then, that both sites were saved as stand-alone files before they went AWOL.

The hatred and bile expressed against hunters by “more enlightened people”, both locally and in the wider community, is extraordinary, to the point where it becomes very clear why such people hate hunting and guns in particular. It’s because they are deeply concerned that guns might fall into the hands of angry, intolerant and hateful people just like themselves!

And why does all this divisive animus suddenly exist in the once sleepy little community of Narooma? It’s because a very small minority of people hate hunting, guns and people who do not feel about them as they do.

Such people speak about the evils of “an emerging hunting culture” in NSW and the development of a US-style guns culture in Australia. They express their concerns that HuntFest will attract hunters to the Eurobodalla and the Bega Valley. They manipulate the community through the propagation of emotive terminology constructed to create anxiety. They will even brazenly admit that supplying the community with facts is the least of their concerns.

Take the “Stop Arms Fairs in Eurobodalla” (SAFE) website for example (here). Right at the bottom of the home page, in ant-print one quarter the size of the other text on the page, the following advice appears:

“It is hard to know what is 'absolute truth'. For this reason, we quote our sources.” 

This statement sums up the lengths local anti-hunting campaigners will go to in order to deceive the community. Forget the facts, we'll report rumour as fact, just so long as it furthers our agenda.

One can only guess at the cost to ratepayers so far, of the constant stream of complaints about HuntFest which Council continues to receive from a tiny minority of fanatical Eurobodalla residents, for whom facts are not so important. One can only speculate as to the amount and nature of important Council business that has been delayed as the result of vexatious complaints about the size of HuntFest signs and whether or not a not-for-profit community group has the right to hold a community event in a community facility.

 
Their latest bleat is “community consultation”. There has not been enough of it, claims SAFE and the NPA. This is both a lie and a deception perpetrated against their fellow citizens. There has in fact been a great deal of community consultation, all of it engaged in without concern for the principles of objective consultative processes.

SAFE, the NPA and the Greens have blitzed Eurobodalla mailboxes with their bias brand of ‘consultation’, aimed at promoting outrage about HuntFest in an effort to rally support to their cause. They failed, miserably, despite running complementary media campaigns via email, Facebook, via radio (ABC South East has been particularly sympathetic to their cause) and in the local papers. Their bias self-serving and often offensive consultation revealed that the overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens do not share SAFE’s, the NPA’s or the Greens’ hatred of hunting nor their zealous opposition to responsible weapons ownership.

Now SAFE and the Greens are crying foul, claiming there has been no community consultation, and in so doing they conspire to spring yet another unethical trap on the community.

You see consultation is only a valid tool when those engaging in it are willing to abide by the outcome of an ethical, unbiased process.  Neither SAFE or the Greens or even the NPA for that matter, can enter into such a process in a spirit of cooperation with Council and goodwill toward the community’s wishes. They harbour a deep, all-abiding and zealous hatred of hunting, bows and firearms that will permit them to accept no outcome that doesn’t support their philosophy and satisfy their demands.

In fact, it is my view that no such consultation could be undertaken in the first place, simply because identifying its terms of reference would require a level of commitment to an unbiased process that SAFE, the NPA and the Greens are utterly incapable of.

Any consultation entered into on the topic of HuntFest can only serve to waste huge amounts of ratepayers’ money while occupying Council staff in a pointless process for which the outcome is already known i.e. while the vast majority of the Eurobodalla’s population does not object to HuntFest, they do object to being played for fools by SAFE, the NPA and the Greens.

SAFE’s latest poster-bombing of the local area is a prime example. Said poster, depicting Shooters & Fishers MP Robert Borsak looming over a trophy elephant, bears the caption, “Is this what you want for the Eurobodalla?” 

Yep, if HuntFest goes ahead the Eurobodalla’s remaining wild elephant population won’t stand a chance!

There is no “emerging” hunting or guns culture in NSW, the Eurobodalla or the Bega Valley.  The hunting culture in NSW and indeed the rest of Australia can be traced back at least 40,000 years. The Bega Valley and the Eurobodalla share a very strong and proud hunting culture among non-Aboriginal people too, extending back to settlement.

People in the Bega Valley and the Eurobodalla have always had guns. They have always hunted. In fact were it not for the good ol’ dependable .22 riffle that rested atop dad's wardrobe for many decades before Port Arthur, tens of thousands  of Australian families would have perished during the Great Depression, when all that stood between life and death was the meat of the humble bunny and the modest income derived from the sale of pelts to the felt trade.

Hunting has always been a part of Australian culture. If anything is “emerging” it is the hatred associated with the rhetoric and activities of the anti-hunting campaigner. That hate runs deep, it is vindictive, unwholesome and extremely  troubling.

The use of deliberately manipulative, sensational terminology is a hallmark of the anti-hunting, anti-HuntFest strategy. HuntFest isn’t an outdoors expo with some guns and bows on display, oh no. It’s an ARMS FAIR! 

Hunters can’t possibly engage in their activities as a legitimate cultural pursuit with conservation benefits, heaven forfend. They hunt for the THRILL OF THE KILL! 

In this era which extols the benefits and ethics of free-range organic harvest, the hunters’ only motivation lies in CRUELTY AND CARNAGE! 

And of course there’s my favourite generalisation, everyone who strives to kill an animal illegally is a hunter. Every other country draws the distinction between ethical legal hunting activities and the illegal, unethical activities of the poacher, but not in Australia, and certainly not SAFE, the NPA or the Greens. If one owns a bow or a gun; if one is a hunter, one is beneath contempt and has only mayhem in mind.

As a pro-hunting member of the public I have often been challenged to put myself in the shoes of the victims of the “Port Arthur massacre”. I usually decline to do so because milking another’s tragedy for political advantage seems rather tasteless, however, I am willing to share my views about another event.

Many years ago, a 10 year-old boy was violently assaulted, raped and shot by a serial killer – Rodney Francis Cameron – known as the “lonely hearts killer”.  So far as he is aware, he is the only survivor of Cameron’s attentions. In his teens, the boy moved with his family to the Bega Valley, where he has lived ever since. 

Despite having been the victim of fairly extreme violence, he does not visit the sins of one psychopath on the blameless men and women of his community who hunt and use arms responsibly. 

He does not own guns, but nor does he blame the availability of guns for what happened to him.

He does not use his personal circumstances to justify deceptive campaigns that peddle intolerance and nurture hatred.

He does not milk human tragedy to foster a climate of fear and loathing that serves a political agenda.

And having said all that, he’s gonna get outaya way now....    

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