HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-11-13 Daily Xml
Contents
Xml

Duck Shooting Prohibition

Ms THOMPSON (Davenport) (15:16): Today, I received and tabled a petition signed by 22,500 South Australians, the largest petition received by this parliament this term, calling for an end to recreational duck shooting in our state—22,500 South Australians from every region and every walk of life, all saying with one voice that this outdated cruelty must end. That is an extraordinary act of civic participation and it deserves recognition in this chamber.

I want to acknowledge the tireless work of the RSPCA South Australia, Birds SA, the Conservation Council, South Aussies for Animals and every volunteer who has spent the last five months standing outside shops, markets and local events collecting handwritten signatures. They have brought this issue from the wetlands to the steps of Parliament House and it is people power in its purest form.

In 2023, a parliamentary inquiry into native bird hunting examined this issue in depth. It heard from hunters, scientists, conservationists, wildlife carers and animal welfare experts, and the evidence was sobering. The inquiry found what many in our community already knew, that monitoring and enforcing compliance across vast wetlands is almost impossible, and that too many birds are wounded, not killed outright.

The RSPCA presented footage from the very first day of the 2023 season, footage not taken by regulators but taken by independent observers, showing wounded ducks left flapping on piles, dogs encouraged to snap at still-living birds and inhumane attempts to kill injured ducks by windmilling them by the neck or stomping them into the ground. These are not isolated incidents. These are scenes witnessed year after year, and the scale of suffering is significant. The RSPCA estimates that as many as 10,000 ducks each season may be left to suffer slow, painful deaths after being shot. One experienced hunter told the committee he refuses to shoot ducks at all, not because he is against hunting but because the wounded rate is simply too high.

For those who have never witnessed it, it is important to understand what duck hunting actually involves. A shotgun does not fire a single bullet. It sprays hundreds of tiny metal pellets into the air, a wide cloud of shot aimed roughly towards a moving bird. The birds on the edge of that spray are struck in their wings, their legs, their backs, injured but still alive. Some birds fall into the water and struggle, others fly on with pellets embedded inside them, only to die slowly over hours or days from pain, infection or predation. It is not clean and it is not quick. As even hunters told the inquiry, wounding is inevitable, not because shooters lack skill but because the very method makes cruelty unavoidable.

When we talk about sport, let's be honest about what that means. It is hundreds of lead pellets scattered through the air, hitting living creatures at random. Duck hunting in South Australia is carried out by less than 0.05 per cent of the population. There are 711 permit holders in a state of 1.8 million people, yet each of those hunters can legally shoot up to 10 ducks per day across a three-month season. It is a pastime for a few but suffering for thousands.

The vast majority of South Australians, as multiple polls have shown, want this cruelty to end. Three independent polls in recent years found around 70 per cent of South Australians support a ban, and almost 90 per cent of South Australians say that when animals are killed it should be done quickly and humanely. That standard is simply not possible during duck shooting.

As the RSPCA points out, we do not talk about wounding rates in abattoirs because humane killing requires control, precision and certainty. Shotguns in a wetland cannot deliver that. Other states have grappled with the same question. New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia all banned duck shooting decades ago. South Australia remains one of the few states that still allows recreational shooting of native birds.

Every year, volunteers from rescue groups and the RSPCA spend their weekends retrieving wounded birds, comforting the dying and witnessing suffering most of us never see. They do this because they believe that every life matters, and their evidence, their lived experience, must be part of this conversation. As the Conservation Council has noted, people living near wetlands are tired of the gunfire, tired of injured birds washing up on their properties, tired of seeing habitat disrupted and breeding disturbed.

So today, as I table this petition, I do so with deep gratitude to the RSPCA, to all partner organisations and to every South Australian who signed their name to this case—22,500 signatures. Our community has spoken.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT