Yes, by all means, get Amber Heard back here, drag her into court with her partner in crime, Depp, and penalize the pair of them to the full extent of the applicable laws.
Let’s be abundantly clear for the intellectually impaired, most of them city folks who think Minister Joyce and the Australian government over-reacted in response to the illegal entry of Pistol and Boo.
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| Various bio-security threats |
The Minister's response was one of the most manifestly responsible and appropriate decisions made by an Aussie politician, with neither fear nor favour, in the past decade.
Heard and Depp demonstrated the sort of elitist disregard and arrogant contempt for our bio-security laws that is synonymous with the self-important nouveau riche.
The havoc those two darling little puppy-dogs might have wrought on the Australian economy and the suffering and death they might have facilitated among Australia’s fragile and unique ecology cannot be overstated.
But did the Australian public and the media rally behind a man who strove to protect the nation from diseases like rabies that kill people as well as wildlife and is all but impossible to eradicate once established?
Not on your nelly!
“Bugger Australian, we love Johnny!” was the cowardly, shallow response from the media and populous.
Yet should a dentist shoot a lion on the other side of the world, the pitchforks are sharpened ‘til they gleam in the moonlight, torches are lit, scaffolds erected and pacifists across the globe indulge their propensity for hatred with a billion violent threats via social media.
Perhaps had the dentist worn a pirate costume and pranced about like he had a kilo tub of MeadowLea melting in his underwear things might have been different, ‘eh?
If I have any criticism of Barnaby Joyce, it’s that he gave Depp and Heard time to decide if they wanted to abide by Australian law. Way too much time...time they had no right to...time you and I would not have been given!
The two dogs involved should have been impounded immediately and quarantined. If the nation was intent on sucking-up to the famous Yank, it would have been sufficient that we didn’t euthanize the dogs, giving their owners the option of flying them home immediately and contained in something other than an urn.
The irresponsible attitudes we’re developing in this country, harboured to a large extent by city folk increasingly remote from basic realities, are truly frightening.
The public outcry from the fundamentally ignorant resulting from a recent call for the identification of a season during which, in times of over abundance (so-called ‘plagues’) kangaroos might be responsibly harvested by hunters, is a case in point.
“Oh no, we mustn’t hunt kangaroos. If they must be culled (heaven forefend!), it should be done by professionals and in the most humane way possible” says the various ‘expert’ social commentators assembled by such bastions of the emoting intellectualism as 7’s “The Morning Show”.
NEWSFLASH – Professional roo shooters do not ‘hunt’, they harvest. The difference lies in the need to take the animals as economically as possible.
On the ground, this means shooting them where they can be found in the open and in mobs, usually under spotlights. Once a mob has dispersed to cover, the roo shooter does not follow and it doesn’t take long for a mob to disperse once the action commences.
The commercial roo meat industry demands animals of a certain size and age are taken in order to meet consumer demand for flavour and texture and the price per kilo a roo shooter gets for his efforts is abysmal.
Professional cullers do not harvest or hunt, they simply kill. The carcass is left where it drops, unless the corpses are likely to offend delicate sensibilities that is, in which case they may be shifted out of sight but not consumed in any manner.
The key to keeping numbers down consistently is the introduction of hunters into the equation. Licensed hunters are more likely to ‘hunt’, which is to say to pursue an individual animal, away from open paddocks and off the beaten track.
They are not driven by economies of scale, so they can perhaps be a little more discerning in their choice of a quarry and this in turn helps to minimize the shooting of jills carrying developed joeys.
Hunters are also more likely to use their quarry efficiently. Meat unsuitable for the restaurant or supermarket will be taken by the hunter and once the prime cuts are removed for human consumption, the remainder will be harvested for pets.
Fur and sinew may also be harvested for tanning and various crafts.
But as we are so often told by the likes of The Greens and the National Parks Association, "hunting is not an efficient means of controlling animal populations!" Which strikes me as an odd claim, given they're also quick to claim hunting puts pressure on species that may lead to extinctions.
Ah, there's nothing like an each-way bet is there?
Ah, there's nothing like an each-way bet is there?
Kangaroos and wallabies are not in decline. Claims of declining populations are manufactured by the likes of The Greens to influence the views of our increasingly city-centric population, which is increasingly remote from rural realities.
One way or another, two-centuries of European farming practice has all but drought proofed the land from the macropods' perspective.
We’ve built dams, sunk bores, opened up millions of acres of pasture. We’ve irrigated and managed the land in countless other ways to ensure the survival of domestic herds.
All of it results in food and water security for kangaroos and wallabies and the population explosions, unchecked by natural disaster, such as we see in parts of Victoria and NSW.
Rural folk see the plagues and the impact they have, not only on the environment, but on the macropods themselves. Unfortunately and ever-increasingly, the vast majority of Australia’s live in cities far removed from the harsh realities of life and this makes them easy and willing stooges for the lies fed them by those with an extremist, often irrational, animal rights agenda.
Sadly, as a result of our increasing gravitation towards city-living and the associated hive mind, it is these gullible stooges who account for the vast majority of voting Australians who influence decisions about all manner of rural issues they have no knowledge of whatsoever.
This is the flaw in the democratic process. It works just fine when everyone is looking at issues from more or less the same knowledge-base and sphere of experience...which of course they don’t.
Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...
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Yes Garry, once again the double standard is applied, Barnaby should have had the little mutts put down, and the likes of mentally impaired Karl and Lisa should have been held up for public shaming, but then Lisa's oh so holier than thou hankyheaded husband would have been screaming fire and brimstone in their defence, but then morning televisions ratings mean everything , hence "save Pistol ", "save Boo" for gods sake where is this country heading. Last weekend I went for a deer hunt on a mates property in the mountains, I started counting the number of dead roos on the side of the road between Canberra and Cooma ,by the time I had reached Michelago I had counted 47 dead animals, each of them by coincidence were fully grown males, each of them or a high proportion of them at least more than likely hit by one of the "Latte sets" cars heading for the snow, and that was only the ones visible from the edge of the road. The insurance bill must have been astounding, each of these drivers would probably have a different point of view concerning loveable hop away joey now, but let sensible hunting practices be implemented of no, how dare those vile hunters even suggest such a thing. As an aside my fathers day hunt now sees me with a freezer full of prime young venison, there is one shelf left empty, alas no Roo back straps will ever fill that shelf until common sense prevails.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, that only accounts for the animals killed "instantly". Triple the number at least to account for those that made it off the road before dying, perhaps days later, in absolute agony, without some precious little person armed with a can of pink paint checking pouches.
ReplyDeleteI once suggested in the local paper, that if folks were truly concerned about native animals (their excuse for wanting hunting banned) we should consider dropping the speed limit between Bega and Canberra by 10kms to 80. That would improve braking time and both driver and animal response times, saving thousands of natives every year.
Oh, but that would inconvenience those with a stake in getting to and from Canberra in a timely manner and that would never do. But banning hunting is easy, because those who want it banned don’t do it, so it doesn't inconvenience them in the least.
This is the essence of the stake-holder based debate. It’s dead easy to ban stuff you don’t like or do and thus will not inconvenience you in the least, but asked to make a 30 minute sacrifice to save untold thousands of lives and like children they will scream “But that’s not fair for me!”