At a recent meeting of stakeholders hosted by the Victorian Game Management Authority, the RSPCA’s Victorian CEO, Dr. Liz Walker, presented opinion polling which had been commissioned by the RSPCA with a clear intent of forwarding a campaign to end legal duck hunting in Victoria.
In recent years Dr. Walker has taken a back seat in these discussions as the RSPCA has more or less focused on their relatively narrow animal welfare remit in these types of discussions and submissions.
Readers might remember Dr. Walker from her bizarre and embarrassing posing in early 2016 with, what was clearly a long dead (and one can only assume quite pungent) swan which the RSPCA inferred was killed that morning by recreational duck hunters.
It is simply not conceivable that a veterinarian of Dr. Walker’s experience and standing did not almost immediately know that the story, much like the departed swan, wouldn’t fly.
Later that same year, following a damning internal review into how the RSPCA missed a series of warnings about the appalling treatment of 23 horses at a property in Bulla, on the outskirts of Melbourne, a suitably chastened and contrite Dr. Walker fronted the media to take her medicine.
“We certainly understand that over the past few years there have been issues which we have campaigned on, and their tone and the way we have done that definitely impacted on our trust with our stakeholders and we apologise for that”.
Dr. Walker also acknowledged that the RSPCA’s activism had compromised the vital work of their inspectors.
“it puts them (the inspectors) in an untenable position to have to do that whilst the organisation that employs them has in the past openly and very emotionally and stridently advocated against the existing laws”.
We can only take on face value that Dr. Walker was sincere at the time, her statements certainly took the public pressure off the RSPCA.
The RSPCA has a stated position on recreational hunting:
“The RSPCA opposes recreational hunting due to the inherent and inevitable pain and suffering caused”
It is flawed, misleading and simplistic, but arguably defendable position with a veneer of scientific basis (albeit somewhat hypocritical given RSPCA’s profiteering from endorsing intensive agriculture practices).
Engaging a market research firm to push poll “attitudes” of Victorians towards native ducks is not objective science – it’s naked activism.
At the ADA we know very well what activism is – we unashamedly engage in it in order to prosecute our shared values and drive better outcomes for recreational hunters and wild deer management. That means that we know it we see it.
There are around 100,000 described species of native wildlife in Australia. To focus on the attitudes of the community to less than ten of them is not some happy coincidence, it’s the zealous pursuit of a political agenda.
It would seem that the RSPCA’s entrenched culture has proven far more enduring than Dr. Walker’s pious contrition following those significant failures just five years ago.
The RSPCA is back in the activism game and, if history, and their own internal analysis is anything to go by, their vital role as safeguards of animal welfare will be all the poorer for that.
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