THE COLOUR OF COWARDICE

When it comes to accusing governments of being environmental policy laughingstocks on the world stage the Australian Greens are always first out of the chute.

Regardless of any concessions made, the Greens want more, they want it faster and regardless of the short-term consequences they are absolutely committed to making tough decisions today, that will ensure the future for generations to come. 

At least that’s the line they peddle.

In truth, the Greens are a party of rebellious teens who crave popularity above all else. Oh they’ll back the hard decisions alright, but if the hard decisions are also unpopular the Greens’ silence is positively deafening.

Take for example, the Australian government’s recent and quite gutsy (if disappointingly minimalist) decision to address the nation's feral cat scourge.

In terms of their impact on rare and endangered native species, feral cats are public enemy number one.

While statistics are difficult to determine when it comes to discreet killers such as cats, it is generally agreed that the Australian continent and surrounding islands play host to 20+million feral cats. 

Between them they dispatch (eat or kill for sport) 75 million native animals every night—more than 20 billion mammals, reptiles, birds and even some vital insects species every year.

There are at least three areas in which the expert authorities are in accord:

1. As a ravenous introduced predator cats have no equal,

2. As a ravenous introduced predator cats have no place in the Australian environment, and

3. The Australian environment would benefit incomprehensibly from the absence of cats.

Here’s the interesting thing – the Greens agree with all 3 points. 

In fact the Australian Greens’ policy position on introduced species is that they should all be ‘removed’ from the environment, a process that would require the ‘removal’ of literally trillions of individuals.

In fact, because they generally oppose all forms of animal exploitation, any future Greens’ Utopia would be achieved only with the ‘removal’ of all non-indigenous species, including cows, sheep, chickens etc., in short, all species currently farmed for food or fibre.

Now I confess, the term ‘removed’ is a little indulgence of my own. The Greens prefer the term ‘control’ and they have listed, as a matter of policy, a number of approved ‘control’ measures. 

These include shooting by “professional shooters”, the deployment of humane poisoned baits, biological controls (e.g. the calicivirus also known as Rabbit haemorrhagic disease) and of course humane trapping, which naturally requires a little follow-up ‘control’ after the fact.

In short, the Greens policy of pest and feral animal ‘control’ consists of various means of killing animals in their hundreds of millions. This is not something the Greens will deny if pressed for confirmation, but it is certainly something they will not volunteer publically.

While the Greens oppose hunting, for instance, they do not oppose the killing aspect of the activity per se, oh no. What they oppose is the notion of people deriving satisfaction from hunting, or what the Greens refer to as the “thrill of killing”.

For instance, at present deer (family Cervidae) enjoy a certain level of protection from outright extermination due to their status as game animals. In essence, this means they may be hunted by licensed hunters and perhaps only during certain seasons, but not baited, trapped or exposed to the Cervidae equivalent of Ebola.

The Greens are not at all happy about this situation, which they are striving to end because they feel the preservation of deer as a public resource is hampering efforts to exterminate every last one of them.

But I began this article with the assertion that the Greens are nothing more than a party of petulant attention-seeking teens who crave popularity above all else and I confess I have digressed, if only in explanation. 

Here is my point...

Given their espoused commitment to making the hard decisions today in order that we might reap the benefits of a brighter tomorrow; given their avowed concern for our international image; given moreover that among the major political options the Greens alone have a Dalek-like commitment to extermination, why have they been so darn quiet lately?

I refer of course to the recent international furore fanned by the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Morrissey and PETA. They have each, in their turn and together, criticised Australia’s decision to act in a fairly decisive manner in relation to its feral cat scourge, referring to the plan as cruel, inhumane, ineffective, shameful, unethical and predictably etc., etc... 

Morrissey, who once advised he goes by a single moniker because all history's great men were known by but a single name - Beethoven, Einstein, Shakespeare (Plllease!) - even went so far as to call Australia a nation governed by, basically, sheep farmers.     

Regardless of the fact the Greens are not delivering the proposed feral cat 'control' program it is very much Greens’ policy to ‘control’ feral cats and by killing them to boot.

It would seem reasonable then to assume that being keenly concerned for Australia’s international image and as the political alternative with conservation at the very forefront of its raison d’etre, the Greens might want to defend Australia just a wee bit by telling Bardot, Morrissey, PETA and all the other bleating hearts to pull their heads in?

Instead there has been silence, and why? 

Because the Greens’ very existence depends on people believing, falsely, that a vote for the Greens means immortality for all the cute and defenceless kitties. 

In short, to stand up and be counted with Australians willing to make hard decisions in the national interest would be political suicide for the Greens and they value their popularity even more than their Utopian ideals.

The term “un-Australian” is bandied about a lot these days, but for me it has always proved hard to define succinctly. Until that joysome day arrives, I suppose I have little choice but to resort  to symbolism...  

Greens Senator and Environment spokesperson Larissa Waters

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

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BIGOTRY IN BLACK AND WHITE

Bigot, noun – a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion. 

Australian journalists have long embraced the tools of the bigot in their emotionally manipulative war on responsible, ethical hunters.

The bigot’s agenda can be promulgated overtly or covertly, both by what is said and by what is left unsaid. 

A glaring example of this can be found in the media’s absolute refusal to distinguish between those few who may engage in illegal activities and the vast majority who hunt legally and responsibly.

Poacher, noun – a person who illegally hunts game, fish, etc, out of season or on someone else's property. 

The term ‘poacher’, adopted by countries worldwide, is both accurate and specific to the vast majority of illegal activity referred to religiously by the Australian media as the work of “illegal hunters”.

Thus, given the media rarely reports a positive hunting story, the only time hunting enters the public consciousness is when associated with illegality of some kind.

The media has a variety of methods of inserting controversy into an otherwise pedestrian story. After all, one measure of journalistic excellence is the number of subsequent stories the original can generate. 

Typically this will involve the use of emotive, often bizarrely tangential headlines and imagery.

For instance, a story about a hunter’s pride in harvesting free-range organic venison for his family while also assisting efforts to control the feral scourge, may appear beneath the headline, “Proud to be a killer”.

Leading into said article on deer hunting, one is likely to find the image of a politician, a dentist or perhaps an ex-cricketer, gun in hand, smiling over his trophy elephant.

Unless the Australian media truly believes deer spin cocoons from which they eventually emerge equipped with enormous ears and tusks, the reason for the elephant's  introduction into a deer hunting story can serve only one purpose - to elicit an emotional response from the reader. 

Any claim by the hunter that his deer hunting activities are responsible, will be repudiated by the representative of an organisation with well established policies in opposition to hunting, whose views the journalist has sought for the purpose of pandering to ignorance and fostering the perfect climate for an emotive public backlash. This they call 'balance'.

Whether necessary or not, words such as ‘killing’, ‘cruel’ and ‘dangerous’ will appear repeatedly throughout the article and because bemoaning all things American is also a favourite pastime of the Australian media, fears for a developing “American-style (insert irrational phobia here) culture” will be expressed courtesy of a quote from the Greens.

Should a hunter suggest he hunts to preserve an age-old cultural pursuit and associated skills passed down to him through the generations, the claim will be lampooned and his culture subjected to the scrutiny and judgement of the court of public opinion, also know as the online comments section, which invariably appears beneath such articles.

Here we will find ignorance, hatred and bigotry given a public platform, which the media, having skilfully whipped-up the frenzy in the first instance, can claim is simply a reflection of genuine public concern.

Respondents (at least those published) generally restrict their ‘analysis’ of hunting to puerile accusations, the top four of these being:

• “Face it, you kill because you like killing!”

• “You have no empathy!”

• “Civilisation has evolved beyond killing”, and of course the perennial

• “I hope your (insert weapon of choice) jams and the (insert animal of choice) tears your throat out so you die in agony you lowlife scumbag”.

All this ignorance and hatred is a fait accompli whenever the Australian media publishes a story about subsistence or conservation hunting. But there is one notable exception, the circumstances of which expose, in black and white, the culture of bigotry and racism manifest in the Australian public and the media alike.

On October 14th, 2015 the Sydney Morning Herald published an article by Science Network journalist Geoff Vivian, entitled Desert cat hunters cut wildlife protection costs.

Nolia Ward with a feral cat that she has just hunted.
Credit: Kate Crossing, Central Desert Native Title Services

In his article Vivian goes to great pains to credit desert aborigines with helping to protect native species by hunting feral cats which, he informs his readers, the Pintupi people of the Gibson Desert have included in their diet for upwards of 100 years.

The article points out that this hunting takes place on protected land, similar in nature to a national park and the economic benefits of this free conservation hunting activity are enthusiastically extolled.

As a result, the conservation hunting activities of the Pintupi people are credited as a significant factor in the thriving populations of native species ostensibly suffering elsewhere for the lack of conservation hunting activity.

The article even includes a picture (above) of a Pintupi woman smiling for the camera with a dead cat draped across her shoulders, captioned “Nolia Ward with a feral cat that she has just hunted”.

But of most interest perhaps, is what the article does not include.

The words ‘dead’ and ‘killed’ have been omitted throughout in favour of the words ‘hunt’ and ‘hunted’.

There is no speculation as to the cultural validity of hunting cats for both food and conservation purposes, nor any suggestion that doing so might be inefficient, unjustifiably cruel, sadistic or otherwise unethical.

No emotive quotes questioning the effectiveness of conservation hunting have been included from the anti-hunting lobby for ‘balance’, despite the fact that unlike other Australian hunters, Aboriginal people are at liberty to hunt native species.

In what can only be termed a fundamental break with reporting tradition, this conservation hunting article is not headed by the obligatory picture of a high-profile trophy hunter and his elephant, and the caption accompanying the image of the successful cat hunter infers nothing about the joys of "killing for sport".

In fact there is nothing to indicate the quarry is dead, save for the fact that if Ms Ward was posing with a live feral cat draped casually across her shoulders its vigour would be immediately evident by the rivulets of blood coursing down the hunter’s clothing, all of it hers!

Finally, no comments section has been provided below the article, in which the usual hateful and disparaging remarks about Ms Ward's sadistic cruelty, lack of empathy and general suitability as a mother might be voiced as ‘feedback’.

In fact the media might be criticised for its uncharacteristic and quite callous disregard for the need of Ricky Gervais, Brigitte Bardot, Morressey and their collective minions to vent their communal spleen at Ms Ward.

Overall the article makes a clear statement. Hunting can be  a legitimate, beneficial and even praiseworthy pursuit, provided the hunters’ race and culture are such that we deem them valid.

This principle applies only to Aboriginal Australians for whom it appears our expectations are generally quite low in 'evolutionary' terms. Thus we are willing to indulge the hunters’ activities much as a patient parent might endure the behaviour of an incorrigible child in the hope it's just a phase he'll someday grow out of.

For everyone else the message is clear, “We expect you to have evolved beyond such primitive activities, which we simply will not tolerate in white folks!” 

Who are the final arbiters of cultural validity in Australia? Is it really the media as it would so often appear, or is it those representatives of the public given to statements of intolerance and hatred in response to the various self-serving contrivances of journalistic bias? 

In closing it behooves me to state, for the record, that I do not accuse Geoff Vivian of bigotry, bias or racist paternalism. For all I know he may simply be a journalist of exemplary calibre. But his is not the only article we've read over the years celebrating the culture and extolling the virtues of Aboriginal hunting activities.

As a person of Aboriginal heritage I guess I could simply embrace the indemnity offered me by the Australian community and quietly go about my business. But to adopt the "I'm alright Jack" philosophy would mean turning a blind eye to the very obvious attacks on European culture I witness almost daily and I will not be forced to abandon one culture for the relative safety of another. 

That was, after all, the premise upon which the assimilation practices of the last century were based.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

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BECAUSE IMAGE IS EVERYTHING

Those among us striving to portray hunting and hunters in an ethical, responsible and moderate light, know how quickly even the most rational and persuasive arguments can be unravelled by arrogance, naivety or just plain run-of-the-mill stupidity. 

If we continue to whine about what ‘should be’ but isn’t; if we complain about rights we’re being denied that we never actually enjoyed, while arrogantly refusing to acknowledge the impact of negative community perceptions, our own shortsightedness will be our undoing.

The way I see it, we have two primary enemies – their ignorance and our arrogance – only one of which we are prepared to address.  Guess which?

It is negative public perceptions that are doing us the most damage and they can be addressed, but not for so long as we choose to live in the state of resolute denial that has served us so very poorly to date.

Approximately 70% of Australians live in cities. Their experience of ‘wildlife’ extends to dogs, cats, budgies, pony-club on the weekends and perhaps the odd possum, all of which they would happily accommodate at the foot of their beds at night. 

While we often hear reports of the growing tree/sea-change movement, this phenomenon affects a tiny fraction of urbanites. The vast majority are more than happy to live in one-another’s pockets under lights so bright they need a weatherman to tell them the phases of the moon, and it’s likely this will always be the case.

Furthermore, the idea that more city-folk moving to the ‘bush’ equates to a gradual increase in general appreciation for rural living and associated pursuits, is a forlorn hope at best.  

As those of us who have lived in the migratory zones can attest, city-folk may relish abandoning the hustle and bustle of urban congestion with its heartless anonymity, but they do so only to spend the next 20 years lobbying rural councils to turn their quiet retreats into carbon copies of the urban nightmares they fled.

In short, they rarely integrate per se, but rather demand rural folk adopt their measures of necessity, morals, ethics and ‘civilisation’ in general.

With metropolitan mindsets dominating, it’s time to reassess our approach to re-normalising the hunters’ activities and the rural ethos in general. To do so successfully, some strategic sacrifices will need to be made over years to come, despite the inevitable resentment that will accompany the process.

Hunting has been an ‘Australian’ tradition for between 50,000 and 200 years, depending on the hunter’s cultural heritage. Yet it wasn’t so much as a blip on the collective Australian consciousness until around 10 years ago.

Sure, it may have been cause for concern among certain hardline animal rights/welfare activists, but in terms of broad public concern, a hunter divulging his weekend exploits in ‘mixed company’ was liable to be greeted with strains of “Oh, how could you!” and that’s about it.

This all changed about 10 years ago, before which time, people who didn’t like hunting, demonstrated their disapproval in a very traditional and appropriate manner – by not engaging in it and by not discussing it with those who did.

This begs the question, what happened a decade ago to make hunting a social and political issue worthy of the unprecedented media attention it ‘enjoys’ today?

• Facebook was launched on February 4, 2004 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States)

• Mobile-phone cameras of some quality and general affordability became readily available in 2005.

• Twitter was launched on March 21, 2006 (San Francisco, California, United States)

• Youtube was launched on February 14, 2005 (San Mateo, California, United States) 

And almost immediately, hunters began populating the above with literally millions of graphic accounts of the hunters’ trade, in full colour via totally unsecured media. 

Farewell the days when the anti-hunter was forced to infiltrate a hunting group, spy with a long lens from afar or trawl the hunting journals for a suspect shot that slipped past a dozy sub-editor. 

Welcome an era where millions of tasteless shots appear on social media every day, complete with a handy share or forward button. 

And let’s not forget Youtube where, thanks to GoPro and its ilk, tasteless moving images abound, replete with the sorts of moronic commentaries that add weight to inbred hillbilly stereotypes.  

Yes-yes, none of that should matter. After all, what we do is legal! But hunting would not be the first previously legal activity to be banned as a result of community outrage and associated opportunist political pressure. 

Just the other day, an email turned up in my inbox – again! It was from the kind folks at Twitter, eager to introduce me to new people they thought I might like. Among the examples of political aspirants, craft enthusiasts and media commentators’ there was a post from a fox hunter’s feed. 

Proud of his efficiency with firearms, he quite reasonable boasted he had just taken-out a fox with a single shot to the brain, occasioning instantaneous and therefore desirably humane death. All good! 

What was not so good was the photo that accompanied his prideful note - said dead fox, eyes bulging out of their sockets onto its muzzle resulting from the explosive expansion of brain-matter within. It is true the fox did appear to be smiling, but one doubts that had anything to do with gratitude for a swift ascendancy to the ethereal choir.  

Now, if I received that post from Twitter, just on spec, how many thousands of unsuspecting non-hunters also received it?  That it was circulated by offended recipients to the sorts of people who will make use of it for anti-hunting ends is a fait accompli. 

The people they distribute it to will not see a fox that died instantly. They will only see a fox that died horribly, unlike their sweet little Sooty or Mr. Tinkles, who, after many happy years curled up snug at the foot of the bed, went peacefully to God with veterinary assistance.

How we portray what we do DOES matter. In fact, right now it matters more than just about anything else.

Yes, this snap has it all. Disrespectful objectification of "an innocent animal",
a clear view of the "instrument of torture and death" with a little blood for
added drama and, of course, "the feet of a coward". 

Hunting is not a universal public ‘right’ in this country. It is a privilege extended under licence. That licence can be revoked at the stroke of a pen and the way we’re going, it will be a pen we've provided.

We can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but we can stop rubbing the bloody bottle!

When the media needs content to illuminate a negative story, social media is their first port of call, so it stands to reason it should be our clean-up priority.

• Striving for 10,000 ‘Likes’ at any cost may serve the ego but it doesn’t serve the cause. Hunters’ Facebook accounts should have the tightest possible security settings to prevent casual browsing. The same goes for commercial pages, though it must be said, for the most part they are more discerning about the nature of posts they let through.

• Youtube footage of yobbos laughing hysterically while poorly shot animals struggle, or dogs tear pigs apart, are not just a curse, they’re pathetic and the source of much justification for the old yodel, “hunters just enjoy killing things”. Leave a reprimanding comment, identifying yourself as an ethical hunter, so the public at large can see we don’t like irresponsible idiots either.

• When editing GoPro footage of your hunt, freeze on your quarry at the instant of the riffle report. Cutting to a still shot immediately after, showing a hunter with his quarry, both of which should be in a clean and respectful pose, will convey the outcome just fine. We don’t need to see it staggering about a field or tumbling down a mountainside to know the shot was good.

• Cries of unity such as “Never-ever apologise for being a hunter” are inane and arrogant without the addition of one of two words – ethical or responsible. We should not appear to support any and all hunting activities for the same reason we wouldn't say, “Never-ever apologise for being a driver” i.e. because we do not stand united with drunks who get behind the wheel.
  
  "Never-ever apologise for being an ethical hunter” is a message I’ll wear with both pride and resolve.

• Many reading this article will want to shoot the messenger. For God’s sake, clean away some of the blood and gore before you post my picture on social media. The best hunter/quarry shots exhibit no signs of death whatsoever. It’s enough that you’re pictured sitting right next to your quarry, which should look like it’s the star attraction of a petting-zoo. We’re not stupid; we all know nothing lets you get that close unless it’s dead....or perhaps a Greens candidate.
  
  In fact, I would love to see the editors and producers of our journals and TV series etc., getting together around a table to develop a set of guidelines for publication. Given that so many people take hunting snaps with hopes of having them published, why not set guidelines and a basic standard they should all meet?

A pretty good example of how it can be done

• Finally, we need to work together to ensure the media starts calling so-called 'illegal hunting' by its proper name - poaching. The term is used world-wide, but not in Australia where the media is wedded to reporting on hunting only when it can be associated with illegality.
  
  Ergo, by exploiting this bias and with united insistence that 'poaching' is used where applicable, we can ensure that 'hunting' is never mentioned in the press at all, which is surely better than having it constantly associated with illegal activity?
  
  If those of us who are occasionally approached for interviews refuse to engage unless journalists adopt the correct language, they will soon find themselves short of respondents.  A basic rule of journalism runs along the lines of "without a talking head/respondent, there is no story". 

The sooner we begin to take some strategic ownership of our public image, the sooner the public will see, once again, that there is a place for responsible hunting practices in any society that strives for a low-impact, sustainable approach to resource management. 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

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INSULTS CLOSER TO HOME

You hunt because you’re a psychopath who likes killing things; it’s as simple as that!

You take the lives of other sentient creatures because you lack empathy and enjoy the thrill of killing.

You have a small penis resulting in doubts about your masculinity, thus you own big guns in compensation.

Then there’s my personal favourite, “real men shoot with cameras!” 

It seems even in this progressive era in which we're constantly told it’s wrong to impose gender stereotypes, or to call into question another’s character with thinly veiled homophobic taunts, it’s quite alright to do so as long as one’s hatred for the individual is deeply enough entrenched.

Journalist and author Peter Fitzsimons

In a February 2015 article in the Herald, columnist Peter Fitzsimons indulged his penchant for self-righteous outrage, claiming he’d been unable to draw hunters out on Twitter to justify their activities to him.

In his article, Fitzsimons levelled the usual ignorant accusations and belittling stereotypical insults at hunters and their motivations, such that one might expect to hear from any drunken barfly.

However, like the many angry people who support Fitzsimons’ pontificate, he gave absolutely no indication, whatsoever, that his motivation for engaging hunters on Twitter was the pursuit of respectful inquiry or intellectual debate.

What angered Fitzsimons was hunters’ refusal to make themselves the targets of puerile insult and ridicule for his personal amusement and professional gain.

He was angered because hunters saw nothing productive in giving oxygen to an aggressor who sought only to make a public spectacle of his ignorance and disdain.

He is not alone in his belief that ill-informed abuse equates somehow to reason and that the higher one’s platform and the louder one hurls insults, the more correct and noble one is.

So why have I chosen to focus on Fitzsimons, you ask...or perhaps you don’t - pfft?

After all, he’s just another angry middle-aged man whose opinions are given voice so his lack of restraint and simplistic tirades might sate the insatiable popular appetite for media witch-hunts.

It’s not as if he doesn’t give us fair warning of his penchant for righteous fury. He does, after all, wear a red cloth about his brain and as many will know attaching a red rag to an extremity has long been the traditional method of identifying a random threat to public safety.

No, his views on hunting are neither original nor, in and of themselves, any more offensive than those of his media colleagues. However, his authorship of various books exploring Australian military history adds an interesting dimension to his proudly avowed contempt for people who enjoy the hunters’ pursuits.

“So let's talk about hunters and let's talk about miserable bastards who get their jollies by stalking and killing defenceless animals. But I repeat myself” is an example of both his contempt for hunters and his willingness to rip-off the quotes of notable authors such as Mark Twain when stumped for original inspiration himself.

Later, in the same article, he claims “killing wild animals is in fact, appalling” and that being a hunter is something worthy of a public apology, which might just about win the reformed hunter a provisional indulgence under the Fitzsimons’ popular pontificate.

The notion of killing wild animals “makes me sick to the stomach” he waxes predictable, later drawing a parallel between hunting animals and the rape of women. 

On many other occasions Fitzsimons has spoken of his abiding contempt for the sorts of men who would participate in the practice of hunting “innocent wild animals” for enjoyment, making it very clear hunters are not the folks he’d be caught dead consorting with.

Yes, he loathes and detests the likes of those who hunt alrighty and he’s proud to say so, but here’s the rub...

Until very recently, hunting was a longstanding Aussie traditional and perfectly acceptable male occupation, enjoyed by almost every rural resident and not a few city-slickers too. Including those we know collectively as Anzacs, many thousands of whom were, apparently, miserable bastards who make Fitzsimons sick; men who get their jollies doing the appalling things he loathes, and gutless cowards akin to rapists etc.

It strikes me as odd that so many in the community can so easily and proudly take to social media and the press, expressing unmitigated contempt for the hunters of today, apparently unconcerned that what motivates us, is what motivated the men of yesteryear, among them their uncles, grandfathers and great-grandfather ad infinitum.

If what motivates us is hatred, a psychopathic lack of empathy, cowardice, blood lust, the thrill of killing for killing’s sake, small penises and our dark inner-rapists, surely they’re all defects that motivated pop, perhaps even nanna and a beloved uncle Bob or two also.

Born in the early 1960s, Fitzsimons is the 7th and last child of northern NSW citrus farmers. Hunting was common in the era, especially among men on the land who hunted for  both practical purposes and recreation. 

Who knows, perhaps Fitzsimons is himself the product of the very "miserable bastards" he finds so contemptible?   

It’s all too easy to forget that hunting is not some recently emerged ‘curse’ besetting an otherwise civilised society and that few Australians can claim to come from four generations of proud city-raised stock that enjoyed neither the opportunity nor the inclination to hunt.

It is all too easy to forget that if today’s hunters are motivated by latent perversions and murderous instincts, our fathers, grandfathers and uncles were the perverts and murderers of yesteryear.

Perhaps some people actually believe this is the case...perhaps they are comfortable levelling vile, irrational and self-serving accusations at their antecedents? 

Or perhaps folk should pause a moment to reflect on the impact their unrestrained, vengeful and highly offensive tirades may have on people who are not strangers to them at all. 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now....

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BRAVO BARNABY JOYCE

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. 

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?

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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