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The Sustainable Hour no. 591 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Our guests in The Sustainable Hour on 20 May 2026 are David Mould from Geelong Duck Rescue and Hayley Sestokas from Environment Victoria.
This week on The Sustainable Hour we hear an extraordinary keynote speech from Natalie Kyriacou, delivered at the Melbourne Town Hall event “Reclaiming Democracy Together”. In front of a packed audience of 2,000 people, she asks listeners to imagine how future generations might look back on humanity in 2026 – a civilisation with unprecedented scientific knowledge and technological power, yet still unable to agree on protecting the environmental conditions necessary for its own survival.
Drawing lessons from penguins, ravens, honeybees, forests and elephants, Natalie explores empathy, collective intelligence, democracy, monopolies, courage and the importance of community. Her speech paints a confronting picture of modern society while also insisting that the systems we live under are human-made – and therefore can be changed. As she put it: “The world doesn’t have to be this way. We made it this way. … Now we must unmake it.”
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Colin Mockett’s Global Climate Roundup takes us from Africa to Patagonia, Asia and Europe. We hear how United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned African leaders that climate change, shrinking aid budgets and growing inequality are deepening the continent’s challenges despite Africa contributing the least to global emissions. Meanwhile, severe drought and wildfires continue across Patagonia in Argentina and Chile, glaciers are melting rapidly both in the Andes and the Himalayas, and rising sea levels threaten major coastal cities across Asia.
Closer to home, Colin reports on new analysis from Climate Integrity showing how relatively modest political donations from fossil fuel companies continue flowing to Australia’s major parties while enormous gas projects receive approvals with climate consequences lasting decades into the future.
. . .
Our first guest is David Mould, an organiser with Geelong Duck Rescue, who speaks passionately about Victoria’s duck shooting season and the toll it takes on wildlife, volunteers and local communities. David has been involved in wildlife rescue for over 20 years, in particular calling for an end to recreational duck shooting. He has been to wetlands across Victoria but focuses most of his rescue work in the Geelong and Western Vic region.
David explains how volunteer rescuers spend countless hours trying to save wounded birds in wetlands around Geelong while recreational shooters continue operating near suburban areas, parks and walking tracks.
He argues that the practice has become increasingly difficult to justify in a time of biodiversity collapse and climate pressure, especially given polling consistently shows strong public support for a ban. The conversation also explores the political dynamics behind the Victorian government’s decision to keep duck shooting legal, including pressure from sections of the union movement.
David calls on listeners to pressure councils, unions and MPs, support wildlife carers and become more actively involved in protecting wetlands and native birdlife.
According to the estimates of the Game Management Authority (GMA), just over 9,000 duck shooters will this year kill nearly half a million native waterbirds in Victoria for their hobby. Of the seven species of duck they can legally hunt, five are recorded as showing long-term species decline.
In addition, recreational duck shooting will unavoidably leave wounded birds on the wetlands that are not retrieved and are left to suffer for days with shotgun pellets through their bodies.
Living in harmony with nature is not compatible with killing for fun. Recreational duck shooting will unavoidably leave wounded birds on the wetlands that are not retrieved and are left to suffer for days with shotgun pellets through their bodies. These same ducks that are being slaughtered for the pass-time of a tiny minority are the the ducks we visit on our local lakes and waterways, the ones we see when birdwatching at the wetlands.
David believes ‘bloodsports’, as he calls them, are a selfish activity that takes those ducks away from the rest of us who just love them being around.
Geelong hosts a duck shooting location within a few hundred metres of a shopping centre, school, houses and parks. A walking track in Armstrong Creek is right next to the water, just metres from where shotguns are firing, and the pellets rattles over the track as you jog by.
Geelong is a bustling, and rapidly growing, city with major suburbs now surrounding the duck shooting areas. This is the least appropriate place for guns to be firing, surrounded by neighbours who chose this area specifically for its rich natural values. The locals, just like more than 75 per cent of the rest of Victoria, have made it clear they don’t want duck shooting, but the Victorian Labor Government insists on keeping it going. No-one can understand why, says David.
David’s and Geelong Duck Rescue’s aim is to protect as much of our native species as possible, and David encourages people to live peacefully with wildlife.
→ If you would like to find out more about Geelong Duck Rescue, or to join them, go to: www.geelongduckrescue.org.au or link up with them on Facebook.
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Later in the program we speak with Hayley Sestokas from Environment Victoria about the upcoming Victorian Election Climate Convergence, a one‑day summit bringing together climate groups, campaigners and volunteers ahead of the 2026 Victorian election.
This convergence will be held this coming Saturday 23 May 2026 between 10am and 4pm in Malvern East.
Hayley is the Community Organising Co‑Manager at Environment Victoria and part of the movement team behind the convergence. She brings 15 years of experience working with regional communities on the frontlines of coal and gas extraction to lead a fair and equitable shift to renewable energy that safeguards people and the natural environment.
Hayley explains why many climate organisations see the next state election as pivotal for Victoria’s future, particularly as the next government is likely to remain in office well into the 2030s – a decade expected to bring escalating climate impacts. She outlines concerns about proposals to slow renewable energy development, weaken transmission projects and expand gas extraction, while also emphasising the need for stronger climate adaptation, cheaper renewable energy and better public transport.
Our conversation explores the growing challenge climate campaigners face in connecting climate action with cost-of-living pressures, and why many groups now see community organising and coordinated campaigning as more important than ever. It also touches on the importance of elevating diverse voices, particularly young people, and developing compelling narratives that can shift public debate.
The convergence highlights the need for unified, people-powered pressure to secure stronger climate policy, ensure a fair and inclusive transition to clean energy and better protect communities already experiencing the impacts of climate change.
→ You can sign up for the Victorian Election Climate Convergence at environmentvictoria.org.au/action-network
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The episode concludes with the song “Starting From Today” – a reflection on intergenerational responsibility and the small actions that can still shape a better future for us all. You can find it – and 57 more songs – from The Sustainable Hour here.
“It makes it even more necessary for our climate movement to come together and show up in unity and demonstrate that we’re calling on the same things. And so before this has happened, we’ve been working together on establishing a policy platform. And that kind of covers a bunch of these policies that all of our organisations have got together and said, maybe that’s not exactly what I’m campaigning on, but I will back that and I will take that to candidates and MPs and lift up that ask on energy and climate.”
~ Hayley Sestokas, Community Organiser, Environment Victoria
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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Want to make your voice count on climate at the Victorian State Election? Come along to the Victorian Election Climate Convergence this Saturday, 23 May 2026, 10am–5:15pm.
Organised by a coalition of climate and environment groups — including Environment Victoria, Friends of the Earth, Asian Australians for Climate Solutions and Lighter Footprints — it’s a full day of conference sessions and practical training for anyone who wants to push for strong climate commitments from our politicians this election. Register here.
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The climate crisis is no longer primarily a failure of science or information, but a failure of relationship, democracy and collective imagination. Meaningful change will come not through more persuasion attemps, but through rebuilding connection, participation and cultures of belonging.
This blogpost explores how emerging experiments in community, law, storytelling and shared living may already represent the early prototypes of a more regenerative civilisation. What is missing still is ‘the story’ – a collective, public narrative that unifies people around what we are doing, why we are doing it, and where we are headed to.
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 591
Harrison Ford: (00:00)
Bring people together who weren’t talking before. That’s leadership. That’s what moves the needle.
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:26)
Welcome to ‘The Sustainable Hour’ podcast. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to the elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re on stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was, and always will be First Nations land. In nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen, they accumulated a great amount of ancient wisdom. The same ancient wisdom that is very much going to help us to navigate the climate crisis.
Natalie Kyriacou, speaking at the event ‘Reclaiming Democracy Together’: (01:14)
Imagine it’s 500 years from now. How would these future humans or humanoids describe what the world looks like in 2026? How would they explain the rules that guided how we lived in 2026? I’ll start.
We had access to more information than any civilisation in human history and we used it chiefly to quarrel with strangers on small glowing rectangles owned by hairless billionaires who discovered that they could monetise human misery, vanity and emotional instability. We had robust scientific data unlike any generation before us and we used it to form conspiracy theories, deny climate change and perfect plastic surgery techniques.
We built an economic system that prospered from oil spills, war, cancer, drug addiction, gambling addiction, mental health crisis and private prisons. But we didn’t consider human or environmental health. We also invented social media, a tool capable of connecting humanity across continents. And it promptly addicted us, surveilled us, radicalised us, destroyed our attention spans, damaged our children psychologically and gave teenagers eating disorders.
We had institutions to govern the world. Often there would be big events where world leaders would gather to solve problems. These events functioned much like a school group project which involved grand objectives paired with the unspoken understanding that no one was really actually going to do anything. Every three years, millions of people would gather in school halls to perform a sacred ritual. They would vote between a small number of very similar looking men who would go on to lead the country. Then, having performed this sacred election ritual, voters would spend the following years ignoring politics entirely while binge-watching reality-tv and listening to male podcast hosts discuss protein supplements and whether or not women’s rights was ruining civilisation.
We were the only species that actively debated whether or not we should maintain the environmental conditions necessary for our own continued existence. Ensuring the health of things like the atmosphere and forests and oceans and rivers and animals would presumably be an obvious priority for a species that rely entirely on those things to survive, something that we could all agree on. But no, we couldn’t agree on that.
Environmental debates became so tedious that by the end of it, even the environmentalists were sick of the environment.
Children were starving en masse and though we had the ability to stop that, we chose not to.
My god, that’s embarrassing. [Natalie is overcome by tears – crowd applauds]
A very small number of individuals accumulated more wealth than entire nations and then they used it to purchase yachts, media companies, private space programs and often just bought the political system itself. Humans are unique. Not in the impressive way like an octopus that can change colours, but like a person that clips their toenails on the bus. The uniqueness lies in the absurdity.
We have split the atom, we’ve cracked the genetic code, and we’ve hurtled expensive metal objects into space, often with people inside, just to see if we could. We’ve built cities that scrape the sky, machines that think, and we’ve built a global communications network that allows people to yell at each other from any time of the day in any place of the world. But when it comes to the question of whether we should keep our own planet habitable and our own people alive, we remain curiously undecided.
We have turned the simple matter of survival into an endless controversy. And to be clear, these things happen because we allow them to. There is nothing inevitable about the way that we run our economies, or draft our laws, or govern our societies. These systems have no independent existence. They exist because we will them to. They are human constructs.
These are the rules of our own making, rules that we just made up and follow with devotion. Unlike the laws of nature, like gravity, for example, which applies equally to everyone, human-made systems like economics, law, and politics are made up and often structured to the advantage of a small and select group of people. And that is why gravity applies to everybody, but tax loopholes do not.
And these human constructs, these human systems, they normalise the destruction of nature and communities. Human and environmental suffering persist not because we lack alternatives, but because we allow it to remain profitable, socially tolerated and politically viable. But the world does not have to work this way. We made it this way. And that means we can make it work differently. Like all human-made systems, they can be rewritten, assuming, of course, that we want to.
So we need to remake the world. But frankly, humans can’t be trusted to take on this job. We just are simply not qualified. We have proven time and time again that we are not good at taking care of each other and we are not good at taking care of the planet. So perhaps it’s time that we stop looking exclusively to ourselves for guidance. With that in mind, here are five things that we can learn about fixing the world from things that aren’t human. These are lessons from nature.
Lesson 1) Penguins.
During Antarctic winters, emperor penguins form a tight huddle together to keep warm. And every minute or every 30 to 60 seconds, the entire group moves, allowing the penguins on the outer edge of the huddle to move into the warmer, sheltered centre of the huddle. This ensures no individual freezes on the outside of the group. The lesson here is: Survival depends on sharing hardship so no one is left to bear it alone. In penguin society, for example, there are no penguins that charter a private jet to escape to a remote island while everybody else suffers.
Lesson 2) Ravens.
Ravens track how others behave, and they remember who is reliable and who is not. Individuals that cheat, harm, or behave aggressively can be avoided or excluded in future interactions. The lesson here is, in raven society, persistent cheaters do not get socially promoted, and they certainly don’t become president.
Lesson 3) Honey bees.
When honey bees need a new home, hundreds of scout bees fly out to inspect potential sites. On their return to the hive, each scout communicates the location of a potential new home for the hive to consider. And they do this by performing a waggle dance in front of their hive mates. Over the course of several days, the scouts spend hours dancing, each advocating for a possible location. As the days pass, consensus begins to emerge around the best option for a new home. The lesson here is that honeybees understand that healthy democracies depend on transparent information sharing, distributed participation and rewarding the best available evidence. There is no single billionaire bee that controls the information.
Lesson 4) Forests.
Forests survive because no single tree can monopolise resources indefinitely without weakening the broader system. Though they compete for sunlight and space, trees share water and nutrients through underground networks, and they also use those networks to communicate. Trees even send out distress signals to other trees, so when there’s a drought or disease, the other trees will receive these signals. Importantly, when one species becomes too dominant, the ecosystem becomes more fragile and prone to pests and diseases. Trees have natural limits to growth. They can only take so much sunlight, water and space before growth becomes harder, slower and less efficient. The lesson here is healthy forests don’t allow unlimited dominance by a single tree. No system survives unchecked monopolies, not even forests. When too much power sits in one place or when one part of a system takes too many resources, the whole system becomes weaker. In the forest there is no such thing as an oligarchy.
5) Elephants.
There is a photo that is going to come up of elephants. This is of two elephants that mourning the death of another elephant. African elephants have a matriarchal society where the oldest, most experienced female usually leads the herd with wisdom, empathy, and protective care rather than dominance. Elephant matriarchs guide the herd using experience. They remember water sources, droughts, and dangers. Elephants care collectively for calves. They care for the injured, and they care for the elderly. And they share wisdom across generations. The lesson here is success lies not in dominance, but empathy, wisdom, and protection of others. And the other lesson is that perhaps having women lead societies isn’t such a radical idea after all.
The last few years have stripped away the illusion. We have seen plainly and without disguise what our systems have become. The mask is off. We see the decay. We see what emerges when power operates without restraint, without accountability and without conscience. The powers that emerge today, the ones who shield pedophiles or are pedophiles and lock up children and bomb hospitals and raze forests and profit off war, they are symptoms of these systems, systems that we have aided.
The world as we know it is fracturing and in its place something new is taking shape. And the question is, what will we allow it to become? Too many of us have become complacent. We have allowed freedoms to be chipped away bit by bit. We have seen truth distorted. We have watched as the right to protest is eroded, as wealth, information, and power concentrate into fewer and fewer hands.
Too many of us have stood by while others suffered, reassuring ourselves with the most dangerous sentence of them all, at least it’s not happening to me. Too many of us are living through machines and screens while the real world, the one that actually holds our bodies and forests and rivers and our air, becomes something we pass through rather than belong to.
And somewhere in this process, too many of us have lost part of ourselves, our courage, our empathy, our social intelligence, our connection to nature, to community, to reality. And in doing so, we have forgotten something very simple. This world is shared. No species survives alone. And the greatest strength of a species is not singularity and dominance. It is diversity and ability to collaborate. And if I could make one request, it would be this. Remember your role in this world.
You are not a spectator. You are a participant. The people with courage, so many of my friends and colleagues and people in this audience, are fighting every day refusing to accept that this is inevitable, that this is the best that we can do, that this is the world we are handing our children. They are standing on the front lines, taking the brunt of the attacks, and they are wondering where the hell is everybody? We need to be more like
We need to be more like penguins. We leave no one in the cold. We need to be more like ravens. We don’t reward bad behaviour. We need to be more like honeybees. We build collective intelligence. We need to be more like forests. We keep power in check. We need to be more like elephants. We are guided by empathy.
The future isn’t just shaped through grand sweeping gestures, but in the little moments, the tiny choices that we make every day, the small actions that ripple outwards, in the fights that we refuse to abandon, in the status quo we refuse to accept, in the moments that we show up for one another, the moments that we choose empathy over apathy and kindness over cruelty and courage over silence. The world doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t. We made it this way. We tolerate it. We endorse it. And now we must unmake it. Thank you.
Mik Aidt: (15:04)
Natalie Kyriacou OAM who spoke at the Melbourne Town Hall event ‘Reclaiming Democracy Together’ in front of 2,000 people. She’s an ambassador for the Australian Conservation Foundation and she’s out with a book, ‘Nature’s Last Dance’. And with such powerful words that I think got a lot of people thinking about how we can get more involved.
Let’s first have an outlook and hear what’s been happening around the world for that we have another OAM – Colin Mockett – ready with our weekly sustainable hour news bulletin.
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK: (15:43)
Yes, thank you Mik. My world roundup this week begins with the United Nations Secretary-General, that’s António Guterres, who delivered a strong warning at the “Africa Forward Summit” in Nairobi. He was highlighting how climate change, shrinking aid budgets and global inequality are deepening Africa’s economic and social challenges.
Speaking before African and European leaders, Guterres described the situation as a crisis of solidarity, stressing that Africa contributes the least to global emissions of all of the continents, but suffers some of the climate change’s most severe impacts, including drought, food insecurity, and the displacement of people due to their climate changes.
The summit was co-hosted by Kenya and France and it focused on climate justice, sustainable development and economic cooperation and looked to reform global financial systems to redress the imbalance. In his speech, António Guterres called for urgent global action, stronger international cooperation and fairer climate financing to protect vulnerable nations. He stressed that the current African drought crisis was worsened by aid cuts by the world’s richest nations without naming America or Australia. And he said that African nations were well behind the rest of the world in their transition to renewable energy purely because of a lack of investment.
Meanwhile in South America, Patagonia, Argentina and Chile are all suffering drought along with record-breaking wildfires. A world weather attribution found that human-caused climate change made the hot, dry and windy conditions fueling these blazes up to three times more likely. Add to this the Andean glaciers are melting ten times faster than the global cumulative average. The extension of Colombia’s Conejeras glacier and Argentina’s Martial South glacier highlights a broad trend that’s threatening the continent’s drinking water, agriculture and hydroelectric power. And this is for millions of people living in the Andean region and cities.
This coincided with news from the Hindu Kush Himalayas saying that their glacial mount is accelerating too, which is increasing the immediate risk of glacial lake outbursts, floods. So basically the water’s coming down so fast instead of pooling in lakes, it’s bursting beyond that and causing flooding which is increasing the immediate risk of glacial lake outburst floods and jeopardising long-term water security for billions of people living downstream.
Also from Asia came a warning that with nearly half the continent’s population living in low-lying coastal areas, rising sea levels and intense storms threaten to submerge major economic hubs during this coming season. The communities threatened include Mumbai, Bangkok, Jakarta and Shanghai. And the population of Shanghai is bigger than the population of Australia.
But now to Europe, where a new report titled ‘Overheated and Underprepared’ was published by the European Environment Agency. The report was based on an online survey conducted by Eurofound that involved 27,000 respondents from across 27 European countries.
It collated their experiences of climate impacts and concerns about future impacts along with the resilience measures that they have taken. It found that climate change has had an impact on the lives of four out of five EU citizens. But only a quarter of those were equipped to cope with it. The report’s conclusion was that ensuring the wellbeing and prosperity of European societies under a rapidly changing climate requires a broad implementation of measures preventing and preparing for the impacts.
Now back home here in Australia, a report from Climate Integrity shows just how pathetically small the dollar amounts are that keep our federal government in the pockets of fossil fuel multinational companies. The figures they unearthed took quite a bit of digging because the donations are quite well hidden. But anyway, they show that last year, Labor took $85,565 from Chevron. It took $75,950 from the gas company INPEX and $63,200 from Santos.
Tamarind Resources kicked in with 55,000. The Conservative parties took a little bit more. The Liberals and Nationals received $762,085 from the Minerals Council of Australia. Bravus, which was better known as Adani, gave them $659,000 and Gina Rinehart’s company Hancock Prospecting gave $204,000. Now that was quite aside from the jet and the cash that it gave to one nation’s Pauline Hansen.
Associated entities like the Cormac Foundation and Laneway Assets, which are fronts for the Liberal and National parties respectively, received another $734,000. And that money is not given out of charity. It buys access to politicians and secure policies to ensure that the ongoing operations of fossil fuel projects.
The company that found these figures, Climate Integrity is cautious about linking donations to approvals. This is a fine line between support and bribery. Still, nature is full of coincidences, and some are cheaper than others. Woodside gave $53,775 to Labor ahead of the last election. Three weeks after the Albanese government won, Environment Minister Murray Watt announced that he would extend the life of the company’s North West Shelf gas plant by 40 years. The gas the company will export in that period is estimated to be worth $215 billion. The emissions will be roughly equal to 10 years of Australia’s current annual total. And to be safe, Woodside gave another $40,140 to the Coalition. In economic terms, that $94,000 investment ensured $215 billion was a very good investment indeed. In climate terms, it’s a disaster.
The executive director of Climate Integrity, Claire Snyder, said that accepting donations from fossil fuel companies that are dependent on government’s approval process for multi-billion dollar projects is a conflict of interest and begs the question, what are these companies getting in return? “These donations buy access to ministers and shadow ministers often those who have direct decision-making power over controversial fossil fuel project approvals,” she said, adding that it was very obvious that donations from fossil fuel companies should be banned. And that clear but sobering thought ends our global roundup for the week.
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Jingle: (24:38)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future
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Tony: (24:46)
Our guest today is David Mould. David is the head of ‘Geelong Duck Rescue’, which is a very topical issue at the moment. David, thanks for coming in, giving us your time.
David Mould: (25:02)
Thanks very much for having me, it’s great to be here!
Tony: (25:05)
Tell us the reason that you’re on today, essentially. It’s duck season, so I guess it’s around that?
David: (25:12)
Yes, duck shooting season is on. It happens every year for three months of the year in Victoria. It’s a fairly brutal time for wildlife and a lot of the residents in particularly regional areas, nearby shooting spots. I’ve been involved in wildlife rescue for the last 20 years, particularly in duck rescue when it comes to the duck shooting season. It very much consumes the time of wildlife rescuers when the birds start getting shot. So I guess we’re here to talk about why we still have this really outdated pastime for just a handful of people when we’ve got a biodiversity crisis. Species are in decline all over the place. They’ve got pressures like climate change and habitat encroachment. And then on top of it, we add something strange like recreational blood sports.
We’ve got a number of rescuers around the state, but we have a specific dedicated team in Geelong that are out there every weekend and some weekdays to attempt to rescue wounded water birds. And it’s becoming harder and harder to do so. We have fewer and fewer resources and it’s getting harder to even find ducks when they’ve been wounded as they drop into the reeds. The bizarre nature of this is that in Geelong, this happens right alongside parks and houses and shopping centres. It’s a suburb built up around the wetlands and it’s the craziest thing that you can be jogging along a path one minute and hear gunshots just meters away from you as you are literally abutting the wetlands where these shooters like to lurk in camo and blast small birds out of the sky.
The key problem with duck shooting, of course, is that it’s fundamentally cruel. You can’t do a recreational duck shooting season without cruelty. It’s built into the nature of it. You can’t avoid wounding rates. You can’t avoid hitting non-target species. The best that the government can hope is that we reduce those numbers. And even in their own admission, that is just a reduction. But it is still fundamentally a cruel pastime that nobody in the state really wants to see anymore, except for this tiny and ever-shrinking number of duck shooters. By the GMA, the Game Management Authority’s own statistics, the duck shooters’ numbers this year will be about 9,000 active shooters. And there’s about 20,000 that have a license, but less than half of them will even go out once. That’s it.
But between those 9,000, it’s estimated that they will kill half a million ducks this year. They killed half a million last year. They’ll kill half a million this year. And this is the plan that they just continue to keep going on with. Our duck species have been shown to be in continuous decline. Five out of the eight game species that are listed have been showing continuous long-term decline in their numbers. So it beggars belief really that we still allow something like this in 2026 that can further put pressure on those numbers.
Colin: (28:39)
Yes, David, I’m in complete agreement. I can’t understand it. I believe that Victoria is the only state that still allows duck shooting. Am I right or is one of the smaller ones coming in as well?
David: (28:53)
Yeah, not quite. South Australia and Tasmania still have duck shooting. New South Wales banned duck shooting in 1996. I think in 1995, Western Australia had already banned it. And in 2005, Queensland banned duck shooting. ACT never had duck shooting. And in the Northern Territory, it still seems legal to shoot just about everything.
Colin: (29:19)
And I do believe that polls in the past have shown that an overwhelming majority of people in Victoria want it banned, but it’s a pressure group of unions that are pushing the government to retain it. Am I correct in that?
David: (29:35)
There you’re quite right, yes. The numbers showing that Victorians want a ban is anywhere from 75 per cent up to 89 per cent we’ve seen. Sometimes some polls have even gone as high as 92 per cent. So the lowest number you’re likely to see is 75 per cent of Victorians wanting duck shooting banned. And we had a parliamentary inquiry in 2023 where the evidence was just overwhelming of the public support for a ban. We had amazing evidence for the cruelty and the suffering that this practice was causing and then in walks a couple of union representatives from the electrical trades union and the CFMEU, also very topical at the moment, and they said: “if you ban duck shooting we’ll walk off the big build and you’ll get no more photos shoots…”
Colin:
At the tunnels!
David: (30:28)
Exactly. And the government buckled to that. The government, the Labor Party was ready to initiate a ban. They were ready to do so. But the Premier was reported as having made a “captain’s call” to keep the practice, because she decided that it was the way forward and everyone was really unhappy with it. Still really unhappy with it. But it seems like the unions snapped their fingers and she came running. They argued and this will baffle listeners too. They argued that it was important for their workers who had had a hard day on construction sites for their mental health to be allowed to go and shoot ducks. And I would counter that by saying if your mental health is predicated on the notion that you need a gun to go and kill small animals, you’re not the kind of person that should be allowed to have a gun.
I thought that was the most ridiculous argument they could possibly make. And to argue that so many of their members are duck shooters, when only 20,000 people have a duck shooting license, the union’s membership is far larger than that. We’re clearly seeing a small faction within those unions driving their own personal agendas and using their union power to push the government into a position that they weren’t otherwise going to take.
Colin: (31:51)
Am I right in thinking that your organisation has taken over from Laurie Levy, who used to run the Anti-Duck Shooting Coalition?
David: (31:59)
You’ll find Laurie Levy is still active, very, very much focused on, he runs the Coalition Against Duck Shooting and he spends so much of his day, every day, all his time on this. I’ve never met a person with such energy and dedication to one cause, true Australian hero. We are operating as an independent group. We will work in collaboration with the Coalition Against Duck Shooting, but we saw a need to particularly focus on Geelong.
So our group formed, some of the people had been through Coalition Against Duck Shooting and worked directly with Laurie, but we formed specifically to say, Geelong at the very least is not an appropriate place for duck shooting, even if you do have to keep duck shooting around the rest of the state, even if the unions bully the government into keeping it. Surely Geelong being a full metropolis, it’s not some backwater country town with population of two people and a dog that aren’t going to be bothered by gunshots. These are people with children that go to school less than a kilometre away from the wetlands. This just is no place for recreational hunting in a wetland environment that’s bordering a thriving suburb,.
Tony:
The duck shooting season, did that start off with it was just open slather? Ducks were fair game for 12 months of the year and this was a kind of a compromise.
David: (33:27)
The history is a bit murky, but it seems like Henry Bolte back in the 1950s brought in some changes to the duck shooting season and crafted it officially. But it was relatively unregulated. There was a couple of people appointed as game management kind of keepers back then. Even up into the 1980s when Laurie Levy began the campaign, you’d find that the people who were tasked with the job of enforcing the rules were standing side by side with duck shooters, gun in hand, blasting away. They were all duck shooters themselves. Very little has unfortunately changed. They’ve officially made the game management authority. They’ve built in a few extra rules and there are people who are tasked with going out to the wetlands. But a lot of these people are still duck shooters. And that is the problem. Their job they see as to target any rescuers who are getting in the way.
Colin: (34:22)
Given the overwhelming support for banning duck shooting in Victoria, should we in Geelong be pressuring our council and our union, Trades Hall, to put pressure on the Premier, especially in an election year, to reverse her decision?
David: (34:41)
That is an excellent point, and I couldn’t agree with you more. If I take those one at a time, the council strategy I think is really important. Although council will say it’s a state issue and therefore not within their jurisdiction, they actually have a lot of power and influence when they represent their interests to government and they can at least make the case that they don’t want duck shooting to occur within Geelong. It’s not an appropriate place anyway. The argument’s pretty clean cut.
And there are councillors already on board with that strategy that would love to see extra support from the community so they can use that as part of their evidentiary basis to say we need to close duck shooting in this council area at the very least. But the unions, absolutely they seem to be calling the shots at the moment. So it would be very important for them to know that the population sees what they’re doing and is not interested in this particular agenda that they’re pushing and it’s really unpopular.
So I would love anyone who has any free time, five seconds to quickly call council, make it clear what you’re about and that you don’t want to see duck shooting at least in Geelong, preferably everywhere and they can use that to push for that agenda change. And Trades Hall is a great one to be pushing too. All of our unions and many unions have openly come out against duck shooting. And yet they haven’t been able to push it because they don’t have that current political power that the ETU and the CFMEU have.
Mik: (36:14)
You’re listening to The Sustainable Hour on 94.7 The Pulse – we also out as a podcast. And we’re speaking with David Mould about duck shooting. And I would like also… David, before you tell us what listeners can do if they want to support your cause – I would like to also invite any duck shooter to come to The Sustainable Hour and explain what they see, you know… Why they want to continue that practice. But David, if listeners are on your side, what should they do?
David: (36:47)
It’s a tough question because the wetlands have become incredibly restricted. For three months of the year while duck shooters have their playgrounds and their right to go and blast small birds out of the sky, the rest of the population is effectively locked out from those wetlands. If we take Geelong as the prime example, that’s a place for so many different recreational activities. So many people just like walking around the Connewarre State Game Reserve.
We’ve got hospital swamp as part of it, Reedy Lake. These are amazing environments, beautiful for bird watching, but you can’t approach. You can’t go anywhere near the water for certain times of the day or else you risk a fine. These are rules that were specifically brought in to keep rescuers away and to allow the ducks to be just shot and left out there wounded with no ability to be rescued. The government doesn’t have any rescue force of their own. That’s only volunteers. And so we were kept back by these rules.
So it’s become harder and harder to be a direct action helper when it comes to to duck rescue. However, we need a lot of other help. There is so much left to do. For a start, the political side is to keep that pressure on the MPs and say it’s not something that we want. It’s not something that we’ll vote for anymore either. If it really comes to it, we’ll have to be choosing more progressive MPs.
And if that means that the government starts to be pushed into a minority government position, well then maybe that’s the only way they’re going to listen. And so I’m really in favour of people considering putting duck shooting as a key priority for them when it comes to voting. Otherwise we get taken for granted every time and assume, ‘well, your preferences will flow back to the Labor Party anyway’. So we need to give you nothing as people who care about the environment.
Colin: (38:40)
David, if our listeners want to join your organisation as volunteers, how do they contact you?
David: (38:47)
Geelong Duck Rescue is on Facebook and we have our own webpage with our email info at geelongduckrescue.org.au. We would love to have more people. Our team is very dedicated, but it’s not huge. We have quite a few regulars that go out onto the wetlands every weekend but we also have others who help with care of any wounded water birds. So having wildlife carers in the network is crucial and frankly there just are not enough wildlife carers out there. The job is enormous, thankless and heartbreaking. So I can completely understand why people don’t commit to that. But we could use more wildlife carers. But also we have other supporters who sometimes they’ll just bring us coffee down at the wetlands. And on a cold winter morning, I cannot tell you how much that lifts the spirits.
Colin: (39:39)
Incidentally, I used to be a journalist and I can remember working with Laurie back in the 1980s and 1990s on exactly the same problem. That’s why I say we should be looking for slightly out of kilter, putting pressure on the unions rather than on the politicians because clearly it doesn’t work. But one of the things that happened at that time was that the duck shooters themselves formed an organisation and that organisation put breeding boxes in the wetlands that are still there now. So you’ve got this ridiculous situation where the shooters are putting breeding boxes so that ducks will breed on the land that they can, they will then be shot. They’re still there now. If you take the Barwon Heads Road, the wetlands are alongside what used to be Barwon Common. You can see the breeding boxes that were put there by shooters.
David: (40:41)
Quite right. This is one of the arguments that duck shooters will frequently make, trying to justify themselves or paint themselves as conservationists because they put up breeding boxes. To me, that sounds more akin to farming than it does anything to do with conservation. It’s entirely driven by a selfish motive and doesn’t actually help the birds really at all. There’s only a couple of species that would benefit from breeding boxes and then to be shot.
Obviously that hasn’t helped them at all. So I’ve always found some of their arguments as to why duck shooting should be kept to be completely disingenuous and the notion that they’re conservationists is one of the most offensive.
Mik: (41:23)
David, can you give us the website if people want to look you up on the internet?
David: (41:29)
You’ll be able to find us at geelongduckrescue.org.au. If you go to duck.org.au, you’ll have found the Coalition Against Duck Shooting, another admirable organisation. There are a few others too though that are also anti-duck shooting and working really hard, including the End Duck and Quail Shooting Alliance, who I think you’ll only find on Facebook at the moment. They’re establishing a website at the moment.
I mean, the ‘RSPCA’ and ‘Wildlife Victoria’ have all come out strongly against duck shooting. I don’t know how many more organisations we’re going to need before we finally get the message across that this just isn’t wanted anymore. My concern is that this organisation for the duck shooters, the field and game, have a lot more money and resources that they’re willing to throw at this than the rest of us do because we’re all working off tiny donations and forking out of our own pockets. So it seems the gun lobby is still alive and well.
Mik: (42:29)
So over to GeelongDuckRescue.org.au where you’ll find more information about what you’ve heard David Mould talk to us about today. Thank you very much, David!
David: (42:41)
Thanks so much for having me.
. . .
JINGLE
. . .
Tony: (42:43)
Our next guest is Hayley Sestokas from Environment Victoria. Welcome, Hayley! Thanks for coming on.
Hayley Sestokas: (42:57)
Hi Tony, hi Mik, hi Colin! Thanks for having me!
Tony: (43:00)
A pleasure. What’s your role within Environment Victoria?
Hayley: (43:06)
So at Environment Victoria, I am the community organising co-manager. So supporting the program and our campaigns and volunteers across Victoria. But I’m here today in my capacity as being part of the team delivering the Victorian Election Climate Convergence, which is an event that is happening on this coming Saturday the 23rd of May, bringing together a bunch of different organisations and climate groups who really see this Victorian state election as a really pivotal moment in our path, our state’s ability to take real climate action.
You know, we know that the next Victorian government will be in until 2030 and 2030 is the start of a decade which we’re going to see increasing compounding climate impacts. And so it’s really important that the next government that’s elected really, really takes this seriously. So that’s really what’s brought together a bunch of different groups. So we’re working with Friends of the Earth, Jewish Climate Network, Asian Australians for Climate Action, Sweltering Cities, and a whole bunch of smaller local climate action groups as well who are part of this. Yeah, and it’s being held in Malvern East.
The day is going to have workshops, speakers, panels, and a whole bunch of planning sessions as well. From 10 o’clock in the morning at the Phoenix Community Centre in Malvern East on the 23rd of May.
It’s really important that people register. So I’ll speak a bit more about it, but I will just say upfront, if you’re listening today and you hear and you think, actually, this is really interesting to me, or, you know, I might, I’ve been thinking about getting involved in climate action and I’m feeling really called to this. This is open to people, whether they’re experienced, maybe they’re connected as part of a group and looking for how their organisational group might dial up their impact this election, but it’s also open to new volunteers and people who are looking to get involved. So we have a range of things pitched throughout the day for different skill levels.
Colin: (45:20)
Do you have any of the actual players that are going to be taking part in the election, like the Greens or the teal candidates that are standing for the climate? Or are you only on these smaller groups?
Hayley: (45:34)
So I would not say these groups are small in terms of being in the environment and community sector. You know, Environment Victoria, we’re Victoria’s peak independent, not-for-profit environment organisation. But the difference is that we’re not inviting political parties along. So people might come along. But this is, our organisation’s a nonpartisan and our goal is really to get the best outcome for policy.
So this is about bringing together community groups and organisations that are working on an election campaign to push those parties and candidates. And coming out of this, we will be approaching people with a policy platform. We’ll be approaching candidates and MPs with a policy platform. There’s really so much at stake this election. You know, here in Victoria and around the world, we’re already facing serious climate impacts and extremes with a warming world.
And now is not the time for us to slow back on our ambition or policies which are actually going to decarbonise and move to renewables and protect our environment and people. But this is just what the Liberal National Coalition want to do. They’ve already announced that if they get in, they’ll roll back the phase out of household gas and invest in further gas extraction across the state. And this is a recipe for disaster because we’re actually running out of supply. There’s not a lot of blood left to squeeze from the stone.
The Coalition have also promised to introduce a two kilometre setback from wind turbines from homes and pause the major transmission lines that are being built like the VNI West, which is really critical for our transition. You know, we, to be able to close down our ageing and decrepit coal-fired power stations, which are increasingly failing us.
We have to build a large amount of renewables and we have to get that power to people’s homes. So these transmission lines are really critical. But if the Liberal National Coalition was to pause that and create a wind turbine setback of two kilometres, this really amounts to halting almost all renewable energy projects in Victoria. The investment would shut down, everything would kind of seize up and we would be in really big strife.
On top of this, the LNP coalition have also promised to tear up Victoria’s historic treaty with First Nations people. And while this is not directly related to energy, the treaty will make both Aboriginal people’s lives better, but it’s also a path to greater decision making and care for our shared lands and waters and skies. So we really, really don’t want to see that happen.
Renewables in our grid are really what is currently making our energy cheaper and gas is what’s making it so expensive right now. basically if the Liberal National Coalition get their way and they get elected, the action they want to take is going to drive our bills up even further. Renewables are the only thing that’s keeping our electricity prices down at the moment in the face of rising gas costs.
Mik: (48:43)
I’m surprised you’re not mentioning the new player in the field. We saw in the Farrer election… a new party coming in, and they are very strong on that they’re going to abolish anything with climate if they get to power federally. They are certainly very upset about the net zero 2050 goal.
Hayley: (49:04)
Look, we’re considering the threat of One Nation and I think we can kind of throw them in this same basket with the Liberal Nationals is that if they get in, they’re going to destroy things. Basically with energy policy. What we really need to do is be holding, pushing all of these candidates and parties and holding them to account. And one of the ways we can do that is by lifting up people’s stories and impact and making sure that we’re really, first of all, connecting with voters and everyday people and letting them know that, you know, the cost of living crisis, because this is one of our challenges at the moment, is that we know that Victorians care deeply about climate action. We’ve been to previous elections where this was a top voter issue. People’s lives are getting harder.
And in part this is due to increasing pressures of climate change, but those pressures are more often showing up as high energy bills or the cost of petrol, insurance, healthcare, food and housing. So naturally when our basic needs aren’t being met and people are struggling, we’re to be thinking about those things more. And so cost of living is top of people’s minds. What our job is really going to be is helping people see those connections and seeing that actually taking action on climate change, taking proactive action, investing in renewables, abundant energy from wind and solar, you know, that we can continue to make and gives us an energy independence of a sort. We’re not reliable on other countries and even other states and we can create our own energy for cheaper, helps us live better lives and actually does save us in the long run in a lot of ways.
Colin: (50:56)
Two questions from that, Hayley. First up, you’ve really targeted all of the right side of politics and not mentioned the government, the Labor Party which is in government now. And in many regards, especially since the oil crisis in Iran, the government has backtracked on its renewables. It’s putting more into cheapening the cost of petrol and making more petrol and diesel available than it is on saying to people we should be switching to electric. Are you, as an environment group, going to be pressuring the Labor Party, bearing in mind it’s likely to be returned, even if in a coalition of its own, rather than just the former coalition which is likely to lose, probably, to One Nation? That’s my one first question. The second one is: Are you going to be taking part in the election itself? Are you going to be there handing out leaflets as people go in? Or are you just merely pressuring now? Or at the meeting this coming Saturday, is it?
Hayley: (52:08)
Yes. All right. To go back to your first question, Colin, good question. And absolutely, we are pressuring Labor. As I said, we’re nonpartisan. we are and we’re pushing for better energy and climate policy across the board. So Labor, you know, and we’re really looking here at Victorian Labor and what they’ve been doing when it comes to climate action across Australia.
Victoria is leading the pack in our renewable energy targets. We’re really up there in some of the best in the country. But there are still more things that Labor can do. And I think they’ve been in now for 12 years and we need to push them and let them know that we actually need them to go further if they’re going to be returned. And so that is going to look like pushing them to reinvest into and expand the solar homes package, which allows renters and apartments to access rooftop solar and batteries because currently they’ve been locked out. We need labor to get serious about electric bus services for more people so we can actually have better public transport, particularly around the west of Melbourne, where those services haven’t grown with the population. And one place where labor’s really not doing well enough on this front is taking steps to prepare and protect communities in the face of uncertainty for climate change, like investing into the Victorian Community Climate Adaption Fund and scaling up resilience packages. So yes, we are definitely pushing the Labor Party to go further. So I guess then to your second question, which is, we going to be doing things throughout the election?
You can kind of consider this as a bit of a launch. So this is one big event with all of us coming together. And so, yeah, like I named a bunch of those groups earlier. I think we’ve probably got about 30 groups that are actually on board with this. And I think that really the important thing with this convergence is this coming together is important because climate is not the top of the voting agenda.
It makes it even more necessary for our climate movement to come together and show up in unity and demonstrate that we’re calling on the same things. And so before this has happened, we’ve been working together on establishing a policy platform. And that kind of covers a bunch of these policies that all of our organisations have got together and said, maybe that’s not exactly what I’m campaigning on, but I will back that and I will take that to candidates and MPs and lift up that ask on energy and climate.
Yeah, it’s out of the day. We’ll be looking for alignment for different groups and organisations to work together in different ways. So whether that be developing messaging, working on supporting folks and training up on how to run MP and candidates forums and scorecard campaigns, like you’ve mentioned, getting out there and having community conversations and meeting with MPs as well. So there’ll be workshops on meet MP advocacy.
And we’ll be continuing this collaboration over the next six months and supporting groups and volunteers to really get active and out on the streets. So yes, we’ll definitely be out there talking to voters, probably handing out some form of scorecards as we get a little bit closer, and hopefully in the media and on billboards too. So we really need to make this a massive election issue by linking the cost of inaction on climate with the cost to people’s hip pocket.
Mik: (55:50)
We’re speaking with Hayley from Environment Victoria, and Hayley, just rounding off, if listeners want to come on Saturday to this event and want to get engaged in the election from a climate point of view, where can they go? I can hear you have a very busy mailbox, so we’ll let you go, but before you go: where can people go in terms of… is there a website they can look up?
Hayley: (56:16)
Yeah, look, if you head to environmentvictoria.org, you’ll be able to find a link there to join to the event. Yeah, as I said, it’s a shared event, but you can head along there to find the link.
. . .
JINGLE
. . .
Mik: (56:30)
That’s how many ducks and how much politics we could fill into one Sustainable Hour. Thank you very much! We have reached the ‘Be-Section’. David, what would you say that our listeners should be, just to round off?
David: (56:45)
I think most listeners already are this, but let’s be more compassionate! Let’s be more aware of our wildlife and when we’re enjoying it, and let’s be our values, all the time, and our values are not about killing animals for fun.
Colin: (57:02)
And ‘Be aware’ also covers everything we’ve spoken about today.
Mik: (57:03)
Be your values!
. . .
SONG (57:10)
‘Starting From Today’
Verse 1:
Looking at your face right now
As you scroll through the headlines
I see the worry in your eyes
About the world we leave behind
And I know you’re wondering
If anyone will make it right
But baby, let me tell you something
That keeps me up at night
There’s still time to change the way
Things are going day by day
And when you feel like giving up
Remember what I say
Chorus:
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
Verse 2:
Dad, I’ve seen the videos
Of how things used to be
Clear skies and clean waters
It’s hard to believe
But I’m not just sitting here
Waiting for a miracle
Got my friends beside me now
We’re making it possible
Every small step counts, they say
Little changes pave the way
When it seems too much to bear
Listen close, I swear
Chorus:
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
Bridge:
We rise together
Hand in hand we’ll find a way
We rise together
Every choice we make today
Shapes tomorrow’s way
Chorus:
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
Outro:
We rise together
Starting from today
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CALENDARS
Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
Over 60 works by 40 artists
at Untether Gallery in Geelong
21 MAY – 06 JUNE
“WHIM is the moment when imagination wanders off the sensible path.”
MEET THE ARTISTS
Official opening
Saturday 23 May
1:30-3:30pm
Untether Gallery is open Thursday 11am-6pm, Friday & Saturday 11am-4pm,
Centrepoint Arcade 5/132 Little Malop Street, Geelong Victoria.
Events in Victoria
The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.
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→ List of running petitions where we encourage you to add your name
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