Page 2793 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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water. This is an issue which the department, in its quiet way, has been going about rectifying. There is no need, as was suggested recently, for some major inquiry into this issue; it is being handled appropriately. I table, for the information of members, a list of dumping sites in the ACT and a map showing approximately the location of those sites.
Dog Control
MR COLLAERY: My question is to Mr Wood, the Minister responsible for some urban affairs. Mr Wood, when I returned from the Raiders game on Sunday I found some feathers in my back garden, various mounds of feathers.
Mr Duby: White ones?
MR COLLAERY: They were white ones and brown ones. I recognised the feathers as belonging somewhere in our household. I wish to assure the surviving good sisters of those few chooks of ours who perished during the game that you will bring in the amendments to the Dog Control Act quickly. I ask Mr Wood whether he will outline what provisions are intended to be brought forward and whether any public campaign will be mounted before the summer season on the constant problem in our city of unleashed dogs which, in my case, have dealt heavily with our fowl population.
MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, I am sorry that Mr Collaery came home to that problem. I thought it might have been the feathers of the magpies that you found in your backyard; perhaps they remained at Bruce Stadium.
I can give you a briefing in some detail about the legislation we are bringing forward. I am not sure that I need to, because I am sure you are already fairly well informed. It will not be vastly different from the legislation that began in Ms Follett's first time. It was brought pretty much to finality in your time, about which I am sure you are well informed, and is now sitting on my desk upstairs pending my signature on that yellow document to take it to Cabinet. So, it is at an advanced level of discussion and it will be down in the coming weeks. It does impose greater requirements on owners of dogs to have responsibility for what those dogs do. There are, of course, problems of policing, but we will attend to those as best we can.
I was interested to find that the cost of maintaining the existing measure of dog control is about $400,000 a year. We do not do anything like recoup that amount of money through dog licence fees. So, the fees will be another matter that will be increased, maybe to cover the costs, although that is not the prime consideration. Education, as you indicate, is a major factor. I think we have to
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