Combined Firearms Council of Victoria

If shooters ignore our voting system, it won’t be a question of “if” the Greens will hold the balance of power in State Parliament, but “when”.

Here’s a number that should worry every shooter. 037.

0– That’s the number of Greens MPs in our state parliament ten years ago today.
3 – the number of Greens who got elected to the upper house in 2006, when the “proportional representation” voting system was introduced.
7– the number of Greens in state parliament right now. Five of them are in the upper house and two in the lower house.

Beware the Greens

If you aren’t already aware, the Greens’ policy on hunting is simple: to ban recreational hunting. They also want a complete ban on the use of handguns – and more national parks to keep everyone out.

Their success was due in part to hard work on their part, going from door to door months before the election.

However they also benefited from preference deals for upper house candidates.

Be careful how you vote

If you voted “above-the-line” for someone who you thought supported what you stood for, without knowing where their preferences went, then your trust was misplaced.  You might have been duped.

The role of the CFCV

Fortunately the CFCV and some shooting organisations saw through this and published their advice on this before the election.

However their ability to get this to shooters who aren’t members of a shooting organisation, was limited. That’s around 140,000 shooters who might have been unaware where their vote ended up going.

This has to change.

It’s why we’re undertaking a concerted effort to reach out to every shooter who has internet access, which would be most of them.

The best thing you can do is follow our voting recommendations

Following the CFCV will ensure you stay up to date on issues concerning the political future of your sport, who to vote for and who to avoid.

We need to ensure that 0-3-7 doesn’t become 0-3-7-10.  It needs to be 0-3-7-0.

If the Greens do get the “balance of power” in either the upper or lower houses of Parliament, then we might as well make anti duck hunting campaigner, Laurie Levy, Premier. Duck hunting will be the first to go.

Deer hunting, gun collecting and letting our kids get involved in target shooting, will be under severe pressure. Money for range development will disappear.

Spread the word

Don’t let this happen. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or join our email list today so you don’t miss out on important voting information.

It’s too important to not do this. Share this article so your shooting mates so the same.

This article was originally published on 5 June 2015 when we first started out on Facebook. It got such a good run, we thought we’d run it again now we have nearly 1,500 followers.