THE RSPCA should stop being a petty tyrant, writes CHRISTOPHER BANTICK
You may have seen the full-page broadsheet advertisement in weekend newspapers taken out by the RSPCA.
It was timed for the opening of the duck season.
With an image of a duck looking at the viewer, to prompt a mixture of innocence and reader guilt, the advertisement read in shouting capitals: "VICTORIA'S DAY OF SHAME 19 MARCH 2011".
The following paragraph was at the foot of the poster size image:
"This Saturday marks the beginning of what could be the biggest massacre of native duck populations on record. Victoria is one of the last states to allow this cruelty to our native wildlife. Join us by telling the Premier this has to stop."
Of course the media will play right into the RSPCA hands.
Protesters harassing shooters will be given prime time and any accidents with protesters will be shown as reason enough to get rid of duck shooting.
But when was the last time you ever saw on television or in the media an interview with a duck shooter presenting his or her case.
What the RSPCA tactics are is all too plain to see.
They are blasting away not with a 12-bore but with a highly emotive public advertising campaign to make those who do not shoot feel guilty about those who do.
It is a clever ploy to get a groundswell of support that is built on ignorance.
There is an assumption in the kind of advertising that the RSPCA presents.
People who shoot are, by association, cruel.
They are party to a massacre.
There is no mention of the minute number of ducks that are killed out of the whole duck population. It is likely to not even be 1 per cent.
What the RSPCA does is focus on the injured ducks.
A few ducks that are hit and do not die immediately is a fact.
Some do not get retrieved.
This is not sufficient grounds to demand that the duck season should get closed down.
A similar argument has been voiced over mulesing with devastating effects.
The RSPCA wants you to feel that every duck shooter and every farmer mulesing stock are inherently cruel and should be made to feel as a social pariah.
I am yet to meet a duck shooter who is not concerned about injured ducks.
I have yet to meet a farmer who delights in mulesing.
I do not shoot.
Not because I don't want to or I think it is wrong.
It is just an activity that I am not especially interested in doing.
But I do not think that just because I do not do something that it should be stopped.
I have written on these pages previously about the pressure to ban duck shooting and recreational fishing but with no concern from the RSPCA as to what hardships country towns would face from this.
After the devastating Victorian floods, the duck season may just have the tills ringing again.
The RSPCA is behaving like a petty tyrant.
It is massaging public opinion in an unconscionable way.
The RSPCA knows that governments are sensitive to public pressure.
The Greens are pretty savvy about this and have turned it into an art form.
But where the RSPCA's stance is contemptible is that it is prepared to play dirty.
In this we should all be ducking for cover.
The plan is to open up on the public with a blunderbuss in the hope that it will put a few holes in the conscience of gullible readers.
Its targets, who know nothing about duck shooting, will say: "Yeah. That's a bad thing."
They vote and the RSPCA knows it.
- Christopher Bantick is a writer and reviewer for The Weekly Times.
