John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to put a different attitude on this. First of all, why would you want to shoot a lion? That would be the last thing I would want to shoot, but some people do. I remember back in the 1970s when I sheared about 100 sheep a day, I would get paid $40. I bought myself a 0.17 calibre rifle, the same calibre as an air rifle, specifically for shooting foxes. I would shoot two foxes each night and skin them. I would get $40 for the two fox skins, the equivalent of a full day's shearing wage. Given I was not a gun shearer, 100 or 120 a day was my limit in those days.

People do go trophy hunting, shooting these animals. I think what happened to Cecil the lion was a disgrace. It was shot with an arrow, lured out of the national park and then left for 40 hours until it was put out of its misery. That is a disgraceful act. No-one should be shooting animals in national parks, especially lions with the need to keep their numbers up. Canned hunting is a disgraceful act. It was banned years ago. Canned hunting is where they drug the lions and let them out of a cage. They have no hope of survival. People shoot them and then bring the trophies back.

These days farming lions goes on. They might be on 10,000 acres and past their breeding cycle. Someone might want to pay $50,000 to shoot a lion and then have the animal stuffed and brought back to America or Australia. It is something I would never do but the reason I think this regulation is over the top is that it takes so much money out of the poor communities that rely on this activity to put food on their plates—whatever they eat; I have never been to Africa—to look after very poor people and to give them a job.

Canned hunting is disgraceful. Luring animals out of national parks is disgraceful. I would never want to shoot a lion. I have shot many wild pigs and many foxes in my day and will continue to do so. Imagine if you were out on a station in western New South Wales or western Queensland and wild dogs were killing your sheep, and if some American doctor came out and said 'I'll pay you $50,000 to shoot that dingo on your property' and you want the dingo gone. Dingoes are nothing but animal killers, the way they prey on lambs, and now in Queensland wild dogs are killing calves as they are being born. It is a huge cost to agriculture and to the export of our food supply. If they want to pay $50,000 and take the trophy home, then so be it. The reason I do not agree with this regulation is that it will take money out of the communities where they farm lions, where they protect their numbers and run a business.

If my wife and I ran a business on our farm and allowed the wild pigs to breed up, which we would never do, we could charge people to shoot wild pigs. Wild pigs do tremendous damage to our country through soil erosion, the death of animals and the destruction of fences. They are a huge cost to agriculture in Australia. For people who do want to shoot lions for trophy, if they play by the rules, so be it. They are the rules of that country. It brings money to those places. It is something I would never ever do and would never want to do, but I do not want to see us cutting money off from poor people. Not allowing the trophy to be brought back to Australia still does not stop the lions being shot. An Australian can go there and pay to shoot a farmed lion that is on a 10,000 acre property, hunted down or whatever. I do not know why you would want to do it, but people do. Then they cannot bring the trophy back. That will probably prevent them from doing it and that will leave it to wealthy people from western countries to go over there to do exactly that.

The other problem I have is that Ray Hammond at Guyra has informed me that when the guillotine came down on the day the minister announced this, they could not bring the trophies, the lions which had already been shot, back to Australia. It takes months to get an export permit out of a place like South Africa by the time the lion is stuffed and prepared. It might be 42 days to get the permit to bring it into Australia. Those trophies are now not being brought in. The minister should have been given extended time to allow trophies to be brought here. The hunters have paid their money.

As I said, I would never want to shoot a lion or any such animal, but I disagree because it cuts off money from the people who farm lions for a business. They rely on that money for income. They are very poor communities, in Zimbabwe especially. We know how their economy has gone after the disgraceful things their government has done over the last 10 years. That is why I have some reservations about this regulation.

I will not be crossing the floor. I will not be supporting the disallowance. I just want to put on the record that people have the right to go to the farmed lion areas—not canned, not nation parks—where they farm the animals for an income. I see nothing wrong with that.