The Great Australian Ugliness: how supporters of conservative political parties act on polling day

so at lunchtime I stopped at an IGA this is in the semi-rural seat of Hawkesbury on the very fringe of north-west Sydney and it has all these fridges and freezers stacked with south Asian food dahl and curries and samosas. The man at the counter is maybe 60yo wearing a turban

— Ingrid M (@iMusing) March 25, 2019

A few hours later I am back on duty and the man from the IGA in the Sikh turban and his wife (I assume) who is also wearing clothes from her culture arrive and the Liberals and SFF who are all sitting together say go home Mohammad hahahaHAHAHA

— Ingrid M (@iMusing) March 25, 2019

The gall of this disgraced former NSW Nationals politician takes my breath away

Feigning ignorance Steven Rhett Cansdell seeks to re-enter politics.....

The Daily Examiner, 14 June 2018. p.1:

Former Clarence MP Steve Cansdell’s return to public life began with an apology.

“Firstly I want to nip things in the bud,” Mr Cansdell began when he spoke yesterday at the Grafton Hotel to reveal why he would stand for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party at the 2019 NSW Election.

“Seven years ago I stuffed up through ignorance, but ignorance is not an excuse,” he said.

“I had to resign. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, to resign from parliament, and the people I served and expected things from me, to let them down.

“To them I apologise.”

Mr Cansdell resigned from Parliament in September 2011 after he revealed he had illegally signed a statutory declaration six years earlier to avoid a speeding ticket and loss of his driver’s licence.....

The Shooters Fishers and Farmers party MLC Robert Brown said the party had recruited Mr Cansdell about two months ago.

“Somebody who knows him knew he was thinking of having another crack,” Mr Brown said.

“So they put him in touch with us.

“We met with him in Sydney two months ago then we danced around it a bit because I don’t think he’d made up his mind yet and we hadn’t made up our mind.

“As we got to know him we decided if we’re going to have a go in the Clarence, this is the sort of bloke we’d campaign for and we think he has a shot.”

Why Brown and Cansdell appear to believe that his past bad behaviour will matter little to voters in the Clarence electorate is something of a puzzle.

NSW Shooters and Fishers Party brags online about weakening state gun laws

The NSW Shooters and Fishers Party intends to contest the 2015 state elections.

This is the damage this fringe group has done so far:

S&F Achievements

* The introduction of a new management plan for a NSW Marine Estate

* The Game Council of NSW now has access to over 4 million acres across the State

* Introduced legislation to make "Try Shooting" easier for everyone

* Changed the rules regarding purchase of a second firearm

* Shooting clubs have received $6.5 million under the MACOSC Grants Scheme

* Introduced a moratorium on the creation and expansion of Marine Parks until an independent scientific review is completed

* We will negotiate further amendments to the Firearms Act to remove unnecessary red tape

* Expand the successful Game Council Feral Animal Control Program to National Parks

and more

This is the damage the party intends if its sitting members are re-elected in 2015:

The Shooters and Fishers Party commits to:

* Ensure the NSW Department of Education and Training recognise Shooting and Fishing as

'appropriate' cultural activities and sports for all public schools.

* Re-assign the compliance and enforcement functions for animal welfare matters from charitable

organisations to a relevant Government agency.

* We will respect the cultural activities of Hunting and Fishing by having them enshrined in NSW

Law. We will propose a Bill that will recognise the fundamental importance of these activities to

the well being of our society.

* We will oppose all government legislation that seeks to support the removal of the significant

social advantages that cheap coal offers NSW.

* We will propose a Bill to abolish Ethics classes in NSW public schools.

* We will support moves to remove the trial Homophobia education program being run in the NSW

schools.

* We will move to review Department of Education procedures for staff acquisition and curriculum

setting.

The NSW Government has suspended recreational hunting - but only in 400 State Forests & 2 Crown Land areas

Excerpts from 14 June 2013 the Governance Review of the Game Council of NSW also known as the Dunn Review:

There is a serious question about how the current situation has been allowed to develop. The Game Council has its roots deeply embedded in politics. It was established because of, and has grown with, the influence and power of the Shooters and Fishers Party in the NSW Legislative Council.

In the opinion of the review this power has resulted in the development of an inappropriate service delivery model. What should always have been a service delivery function undertaken by a government department, became a statutory body. What could have still been a tightly controlled body, has drifted, its autonomy encouraging governance risk taking and a lack of accountability.

The Shooters and Fishers Party argued and fought for autonomy and independence through the establishment of a statutory body. But winning that debate was the easy part. The hard part has been making it work. Despite many of those involved having highly credible private sector, political, and hunting expertise, that expertise could not substitute for the skills and experience required to set up and administer a new government function through a new statutory body in a way that meets government and community requirements and expectations.

Despite lots of hard work and well meaning effort by councillors and staff, and the ad-hoc support of other government agencies, the Game Council has become further and further isolated from mainstream government administration.

It has been argued that a high degree of autonomy and independence is desirable because the Game Council needs to be entrepreneurial if it is to achieve its ambition to be largely independent of government funding. But the Game Council is dependent on government for the majority of its funding and this situation is unlikely to change; so that justification fails.

With autonomy and independence should come ultimate accountability for actions and risk. But accountability clearly lies with government and that is highly unlikely to change…..

In less than a decade the Game Council has built its business to the point where it now licences over 20,000 hunters to either hunt on public land, or to hunt certain game animals on private land…..

The Game Council has its roots deeply embedded in politics. It is commonly known that for many years the support of the Shooters and Fishers Party has been important to the Government of the day to ensure the passage of legislation through the Legislative Council. Mr Brown said the Shooters and Fishers Party has a general philosophy of supporting the legislative agenda of the Government but expects to be able to promote its own policy agenda in return, and aims to get support for at least some elements of that agenda…..

MEDIA STATEMENT

5 July 2013

On Thursday 4 July 2013 the Minister for Primary Industries announced the dissolution of Game Council NSW as a result of recommendations made following the NSW Government’s governance review.

The NSW Government has suspended hunting in all NSW State forests, pending a new risk assessment. All issued Written Permissions are now invalid. Game Council and the Forestry Corporation of NSW will attempt to call all licence holders with bookings to confirm cancellation of their permits in the coming week.

Game Council is committed to working with the NSW Government as the report recommendations are implemented and will also be working closely with NSW game hunting licence holders to minimise the impact of interim arrangements.

Media Contact: Brett Fifield P: (02) 6391 3311, M: 0427 029 511 or brett.fifield@dpi.nsw.gov.au

www.gamecouncil.nsw.gov.au

The Sydney Morning Herald 4 July 2013:

In a simultaneous announcement, Environment Minister Robyn Parker revealed the introduction of amateur hunting to national parks will proceed in October, but on a trial basis in 12 parks.

Pending the results, hunting may be rolled out in up to 75 parks and reserves as previously announced by the government under a deal with the Shooters and Fishers Party.

Robert Borsak and his friends want to slaughter this little brown duck and Barry O'Farrell said, Sure, go ahead!

Pink-eared Duck

Malacorhynchus membranaceus
Anatidae

approx. 38-40 cm in length

 carnivorous & mostly consumes aquatic invertebrates, primarily chironomid larvae

prefers to breed on receding floodwaters and forage on wetland margins

[Floodplain Wetland Biota in the Murray-Darling Basin, 2011]

 

Will the NSW Premier admit the Government got it wrong?  Will he remove the Pink-eared Duck from the Shooters and Fishers kill list?  asks the Clarence Valley Conservation Coalition on 10 June 2013.

 

Female Pink-eared Duck with ducklings

 

Not content with the O'Farrell Government opening up National Parks in New South Wales to hunters and passing the Game and Feral Animal Control Further Amendment Act 2012 to allow the killing of 14 native birds species on private land, Robert Borsack MLC now appears to have green lighting the re-introduction into the Australian community of semi-automatic weapons on his wish list.

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.

In the loop? Out of the loop? Fruit loop? Decide for yourself.

A few years back The Daily Examiner had a prize (a Lottery/Lotto ticket pack) for the week's best letter to the editor. If such a prize still existed it would surely have to go to John  Edwards of South Grafton for his letter in today's Examiner.

Shooters and Fishers

Following the announcement of a Shooters and Fishers Party-sponsored inquiry into the management of public land, the Clarence Environment Centre wrote to the Member for Clarence, Chris Gulaptis, posing three questions.

One of these was: "Would you support the opening up of national parks to recreational hunting?"

On May 22 we received the following response: "There is no proposal for recreational hunting in national parks in the Clarence electorate being considered by me or the NSW Liberals & Nationals Government."

Less than 10 days later the Government announced 79 national parks and nature reserves where recreational hunting will be allowed.

I'll let readers form their own opinion on their member's response.

Among the affected parks that have been reported in the media are Kosciuszko and Dorrigo, which are among the most visited reserves in Australia, and where tourists will now experience the tranquillity of those forests being shattered by the noise of gunfire, and the possibility of being shot.

The decision has outraged many in the community, but has been welcomed by hunters who claim they are the answer to feral animal control.

However, if there is a serious feral animal problem, it is because successive governments have failed to properly fund control programs.

Recreational shooters have been hunting in state forests for over five years, and I challenge anyone to produce evidence that they have had any significant impact on feral species in those forests.

In fact last year the national parks service had to run local eradication programs for feral pigs which they believe were deliberately introduced by hunters.

In trying to justify breaking an electoral promise, Barry O'Farrell claims it was necessary to balance political expedience with public interest.

This isn't the first time this government has sacrificed public interest, and I'll guarantee it won't be the last.

John Edwards, South Grafton