If this right-wing political party wasn't so dangerous to NSW communities, it would be a state-wide laughing stock

hunting holds profound cultural and spiritual significance to many who identify hunting as part of their culture

Shooters and Fishers Party website 4 March 2013

Robert Borsak in The Sydney Morning Herald 2 August 2010

This is Robert Borsak of The Shooters and Fishers Party posting on the party website on 4 March 2013. Apparently this member of the NSW Upper House believes that a good many people living in the Northern Rivers are conspiring to destroy the capitalist system of economic wealth and job creation.

Restore balance to the land

Shooters and Fishers Party MLC, Robert Borsak, says recent Party efforts to restore some balance, particularly to environment, land use and firearms debate in NSW are making some of the state’s extreme green groups more spiteful than ever.

“The Total Environment Centre says we have “excessive influence” on the Government and the Nature Conservation Council extends its criticism to the Game Council, which is a NSW Government statutory body administering licensed hunting in NSW, saying it has an “undue level of influence on government policy”.

“This from a pair that has been part of the unholy alliance of Greens, the Office of Environment and Heritage, leftist unions and fellow so-called conservation groups who lorded it over this state for two decades

“Private land rights and entitlements have been appropriated by government at the instigation of the Greens and ‘conservation’ groups who in truth are social engineers seeking to destroy the capitalist system of economic wealth and job creation.

“Instead of working to create more opportunities through Crown access to public land held in trust for the citizens of NSW, the power of government has been used to close access, divert state forests from timber production to national parks and state reserves, destroying local communities, jobs and land values. In turn, laws were extended to allow OEH governance over private land by usurping water rights and imposing land clearing prohibitions. Further, recent Labor rezoning of rural private land has taken the theft of private land and the ability to farm to new levels of Green depravity.

“It is now not only impossible to clear private land of woody weeds in NSW, but recent rezoning of private rural land as E2 or E3 effectively stops farming development on most of the rural land in NSW so zoned. If you are a farmer subjected to these zonings your days are limited.

“The Government should immediately repeal the Native Vegetation Act and all zonings of rural land that restrict private farming activities, land clearance and water licences. It should also remove any grants and subsidies to organisations such as the Nature Conservation Council, the Total Environment Centre, the NSW National Parks Association and other Greens-linked organisations seeking to destroy the rural economic and wealth creation in NSW.

“It’s time to get the NSW rural economy going again,” he said.

In a letter to the editor published in The Daily Examiner, 26 March 2013, John Edwards of the Clarence Environment Centre said this:

Borsak's tirade was also supporting the embattled NSW Game Council, a recruiting ground for the Shooters Party, and another legacy bequeathed to the people of NSW by ex-minister Ian Macdonald. That organisation was described by its former CEO as deeply flawed and rendered ineffective by infighting and self-interest, and has been subsidised by NSW taxpayers to the tune of more than $2 million a year for the past six or seven years.

I cannot speak for all environment groups, but can confirm that, to the best of my knowledge, our local Environment Centre has never received a cent of NSW Government money.

One thing is certain, the total moneys granted to green groups around NSW would pale into insignificance when compared to the millions of dollars granted annually to the NSW Game Council simply to administer hunting licences.

If this right-wing political party wasn't so dangerous to democractic processes and civil liberties (see its support of the abolition of the right to silence), it would be a state-wide laughing stock. All Borsak’s world view lacks is a cadre of brown-shirted enforcers.