New regulations fail to iron out access issues for hounds

Today, the Victorian Government has released the regulations that will govern camping on public land that is subject to grazing licences. The change is a partial fulfilment of the Government's 2018 election commitment to fishing groups. 

Farming groups had sought to prevent any access for camping to the large tracts of public land on the basis that their members' payment of around $70 a year for agistment should give an effective right of veto on access. 

The ADA supports the right of the public to access public land as much as possible and has supported an opening up of camping on that basis. 

In the end, the Victorian Government's final regulations represent a significant compromise on the level of access that was promised to fishing groups at the 2018 State Election. 

An article in The Weekly Times gives a good overview of the practical effect of the changes. 

Disappointingly, the Victorian Government has missed the opportunity with these regulations to clarify an anomaly in access for hound hunting. 

The ADA identified the issue during consultation on the changes back in April 2021 and submitted it to the process.

In the ADA's submission, we pointed out that the proposed regulation to manage the use of dogs on regulated land with consideration of hunting was flawed in that it (properly) considered hunting in the context of the Wildlife Act 1975 but then used a narrow definition of acceptable dogs, effectively excluding 'hounds' and 'deer hunting dogs. The dominant public land hunted with dogs in Victoria, and where there is an interface with the regulated land being considered in the regulations, is State Forest, which is regulated markedly accessible for deer hunting in much of the State. We argued that the use of regulated land is very different for deer hunters than for duck hunters. While duck hunting is typically conducted entirely on the regulated land, deer hunting crosses over from adjacent freehold and public land where permissions exist.

Unfortunately, the regulation as written will unnecessarily exclude many hunters and lead to confusion and considerable compliance challenges where permissions on adjacent freehold and public land already exist.

This simple problem has a simple solution - changing just a few words in the regulations would fix the problem with no discernable potential impact on other stakeholders. The ADA will continue to work with other like-minded groups in advocating for the Victorian Government to make that change.