Duck Hunting Season

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:05): A supplementary to the minister, based on the minister's answers: I ask the minister whether he will seek advice from his department as to whether wood duck should be excluded from seasonal duck shooting and be able to be taken out at any time of the year. Would he please investigate and see what the department has done to address the massive amount of wood ducks that are working against the economy of agriculturalists in many parts of this state?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:05): It really surprises me that the honourable member, who works so very closely with nature in his second job, who should have a very good and strong appreciation of the way the natural environment works together in balance, would seek to ask the minister to allow him, and presumably others, to have an open season on some species of duck without, I expect, any reflection on the impacts that might have on, for example, insect species or even other weed species.

The honourable member comes in here with simplistic questions. He doesn't understand the web of life and how everything in nature is interconnected. The honourable member wants to completely take out one species in an environmental chain with his six-gauge. He wants to wipe them out completely and is saying, 'Take them off the restricted list.' He doesn't understand how interconnected everything is in his local ecological community.

It may well be he should go back and look at The Web of Life, the year 12 biology textbook which would have been around in schools in his day. He might have a better understanding of how everything is connected. Focusing on taking out one species, as we have learnt, I think, to our chagrin in this country, doesn't work. You need to work with a balance in the ecological community.

The PRESIDENT: A supplementary, the Hon. Mr Stephens.