HUNTFEST: THE SAGA CONCLUDES

HuntFest’s organisers have learned that their Event Licence will be amended at a Eurobodalla Shire Council meeting on Tuesday evening (August 26th, 2014), in a deal stitched up between Eurobodalla Shire Mayor Lindsay Brown and the Eurobodalla Greens. HuntFest’s organisers have received no formal notification about this ambush, but rather heard about it via a Council whistleblower appalled by the ongoing victimisation of the event’s organisers, which is aimed at crippling HuntFest’s volunteer organising committee.

It has been revealed that thanks largely to the Greens and their various guerrilla groups in the community, HuntFest is the most administratively strictured event in the entire Eurobodalla Shire. The proposed amendment to HuntFest’s Event Licence will push the level of bureaucratic red tape beyond that which the event’s volunteer management committee is willing and able to undertake annually.

Greens secure Mayoral support against HuntFest

In a nutshell, the amendments will mean that even the most minor changes to the event plan – for instance, the repositioning of signage – will not be possible without at least a months’ notice and an extensive public consultation process. This is a condition long sought by the Greens, and until now long recognised as totally unreasonable by a majority of Councilors.

The likely result will be the end of HuntFest as a Eurobodalla event, and the loss to the community of the millions of dollars the event attracts to the area annually. Yes, millions of dollars! Though HuntFest is only in its second year, the event attracted an estimated $900.000 to Narooma alone in 2014 and as the event and its reputation grew, so too would the revenue it yielded for the area during its off-season.

It seems, however, that this prosperity is of less importance to the Eurobodalla’s Mayor than the furtherance of his personal political agenda and aspirations.

Sources advise that Lord Mayor Lindsay Brown has indicated that he will “vote with the Greens on Tuesday, regardless of what anyone says!” and this is likely to tip the scales in favour of HuntFest’s opposition within Council’s ranks. It will tip the scales because HuntFest’s usually strong support-base within Council will be diminished due to absences among supportive Councillors at next Tuesday’s meeting.

Hang on a minute....no notice about the proposed amendments.....key Councillors absent from the meeting?  Struth, what a coincidence!

Frankly I’m not sure much can be done to save HuntFest at this point; I suspect the Greens have won. But they have not won, as they will no-doubt attempt to portray it, on the basis of community opposition to the event.

Despite the Greens’ and S.A.F.E’s many statements to the contrary, we know for a fact that opposition to HuntFest amongst the local population is infinitesimally small. This fact has been evidenced time and again by the incredibly poor support enjoyed by anti-HuntFest petitions, public meetings and protests. In fact protests have been so poorly supported that not one of the event protests threatened by the Greens or S.A.F.E has ever materialised.

No, if HuntFest folds, the Greens and S.A.F.E will have won by forging grubby allegiances, by bullying the organisers and the community, and by spreading such offensive lies about the nature of the event and the intentions of its volunteer organisers that they are simply unwilling to continue.

In effect, the Greens and S.A.F.E will have won through battery; through the verbal abuse and bullying of men and women in their community, whose culture and pursuits the Greens don’t approve of. Through basic cultural intolerance!

So what’s next? Fishing perhaps; there is already a strong push against recreational fishing in the Eurobodalla. Perhaps a ban on all 4x4 activities, trail riding, mountain bikes?

If you live in the Eurobodalla and are among the many people who support HuntFest, you have just two years to wait and watch before making your vote count in Council elections, remembering of course that a vote for the current Mayor is a vote for the Greens and against your culture and recreational activities.

If you are not a resident, but rather a regular visitor to the Eurobodalla, now may be the time to begin searching for holiday destinations elsewhere in NSW? Believe it or not, there are holiday destinations that appreciate the contribution your tourist dollars make to a small rural economy. Just look at Bendigo and its annual Wild Deer Hunting & Guiding Expo.

The Bendigo community has embraced this event for many years, with no sign of the many and various catastrophic ill-effects Narooma’s residents have been assured will beset their community if they allow HuntFest to develop. No increase in rapes, murders, or other violent crimes, suicides or domestic violence. No rare native animal species hunted to extinction. No quantum increase in the number of cruel random attacks on wildlife. No mounting list of hapless bushwalkers shot by irresponsible hunters, or random assassinations of moonlight truffle hunters.

In fact the Wild Deer Hunting & Guiding Expo is the biggest event of its kind in the southern hemisphere, and all the revenue commensurate with such an event pours into Bendigo’s economy annually.  

HuntFest was destined to be such an event in Narooma, drawing outdoors-persons to the area from around Australia, but you’d never have known it by the way some Eurobodalla Shire Councillors and crazed extremist minority groups have besieged the event from the outset, on the Greens' behalf.

There is no doubt that some other community will open a goldmine to replace the one Eurobodalla’s short-sighted Council is about to close, but one wonders what plans those who oppose HuntFest have to replace the money it is currently bring to the community in the off-season; vital off-peak income that, based on the experience of towns such as Bendigo, seemed set to grow in years to come?

The cynical Greens and S.A.F.E contrived “Animals in the wild” photographic competition was an act of sabotage organised specifically to damage HuntFest and lobby opposition to it.  Like all preceding protests it was very poorly attended and contributed absolutely nothing to the community’s coffers, as opposed to HuntFest’s $900.000 (2014) contribution. Now that HuntFest has been bushwhacked and bullied into dissolution, will the Greens' photo-competition develop to take HuntFest’s place as a money spinner for Narooma? It seems very unlikely.

So, business people of Narooma, how will you vote at the next Council/Mayoral election? Will you re-elect the Councillors and Mayor who voted money out of your tills at Tuesday night’s Council meeting?

Will you demand that given Council is intent on destroying HuntFest, it outlines plans to replace HuntFest with an alternative festival, organised, financed and managed for free, by volunteers, and not at the ratepayers expense, with all profits ploughed back into the event so as to develop it as an off-peak season event yielding an income to the community during hard times, guaranteed to grow each and every year, as HuntFest has repeatedly proven its potential to do?

Even if the Greens have some yet-to-be unveiled plan to launch a magnificent off-peak alternative to HuntFest, it will take some years to establish, and unlike HuntFest, which was wholly funded by a small local community group, establishment of an alternative event will cost the ratepayer. And haven't the Greens and S.A.F.E already cost the ratepayer dear.

It is a seldom considered fact that the bullying antics of these zealous minority groups have already cost the ratepayer tens of thousands of dollars. For years now Council has been deluged with letters from citizens requiring reassurance after being tricked into totally unwarranted concerns, and by ridiculously weak petitions that take up time at Council meetings that might otherwise be devoted to matters of substance. Letter campaigns have occupied already busy Council staff, as have vexatious complaints about licencing breaches that never took place, and threats of protests that never transpired have cost the community thousands in precautionary security, and has often resulted in precious Police resources being diverted from where they are really needed.

One can only speculate as to the total cost to the ratepayer, just as one can only wonder how many vital projects have been delayed while the Greens and the anti-hunting fraternity indulge their hysteria and petty prejudices. 

Sadly, the hard working men and women behind the scenes at HuntFest appear to have had enough of the constant threats of physical violence against them and their families, the late night threatening phone calls, the damage done to their cars and property, the lies, the slurs against their character, the inveterate bullying and all the other unethical actitivies that have become hallmarks of Greens' community activism. 

And if HuntFest folds the bullies will prance about claiming victory, completely comfortable with the toll their appalling conduct has wrought on the community. As is the case with all zealots, they are incapable of tolerance and completely unconcerned about facts. All they do not approve off must be declared anathema and destroyed, and they are single minded in the pursuit of those ends.

Perhaps this outcome was inevitable? In many ways striving to have a fair and rational debate with the Greens is like playing chess with a pigeon.  It doesn't matter how good you are, at the end of the day the pigeon is just going to knock-over all the pieces, crap on the board and strut about with his chest puffed telling everybody he won.


Anyway, I'll get outaya way now....


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