The aim of the Game Council was to provide for the effective management of introduced species of game animals, as well as promoting responsible and orderly hunting of those game animals on public and private land and of certain pest animals on public land. The Act specified a range of functions for the Game Council centred on administering the game hunting licensing system, representing the interests of game hunters, making recommendations and providing advice to the Minister on game and feral animal control, liaising with other stakeholders in managing game and feral animals, promoting and funding research into game and feral animal control issues and engaging in such other activities relating to the objects of the Act as are prescribed by the regulations. An annual Public Benefit Assessment was conducted, based on survey data from licence holders, that reported the Game Council's activities as a community service and as a cost-effective method of achieving its natural resource management objectives, specifically game and feral animal control. In 2009-10, there was an increase in public benefit reported.
Controversies
In May 2012, supported by the Game Council, the NSW Government announced plans to allow pest control by licensed individuals to help control pest animals in selected national parks, nature reserves and state conservation areas. The Game Council was to play a role as both the licensing agency and as the regulating agency. The proposal generated significant community resistance, and was subjected to a campaign from its opponents in an environment where a group of hunters were shooting at kangaroos in a national park camping ground an illegal act and the hunting of native animals close to metropolitan areas, In January 2013 it was reported that two of the staff of the Game Council, including the council's communications manager and acting chief executive, Greg McFarland, were suspended from work by the Minister as police investigated allegations that McFarland hunted on private property near Cobar without permission, in a Game Council-owned vehicle. Police charged McFarland with a raft of offences including hunting without permission, possessing a prohibited weapon in a nature reserve and firing a firearm onto enclosed lands. The other staff member was found to have been in Sydney at the time of the incident and was exonerated by police. At the same time, the government commissioned a review of the governance of the Game Council; that ultimately led to its abolition.
