Page 884 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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through before announcing the composition of the committee. Certainly, we are gathering names at the moment and working on the membership, but I think it is only proper and prudent to wait until the legislation is up and running before making an announcement. I can assure Ms Szuty, who made some comment about that, that we will be seeking the expertise of those groups who have been so helpful so far, and we will be using that expertise. Mr Westende was a little concerned that maybe the committee will be dominated by animal liberationists. To my memory, there was one person from that community on the panel that produced the policy document, and I should think there will be one on the advisory committee. That may be an underrepresentation. But it is not going to be a committee dominated by any one group. It will be a group that is broadly very representative.
The other matter that Mr Westende complained about - although I suspect that the Liberal Party supports the proposal - is continuing the ban on rodeos in the ACT. As we all acknowledge, a National Party senator, Senator Brownhill, criticised the Government for this ban on rodeos. He said that he had something to do with a Senate committee; but he did not read the Senate committee report very carefully, because that committee document expressed a lot of reservations about rodeos. Rodeos are cruel. Maybe the time will come when rodeos will not use the flank strap, the purpose of which I would not detail in this house with a sensitive Assembly and gallery. Maybe they will not use spurs. Maybe they will not throw ropes around the necks of the calves and violently jerk them to the ground. But people such as the honourable senator suggest that there is no cruelty in rodeos. That is just a nonsense. Someone made a comment about horseracing. I think the time will come - and I do not think it is far away - when whips will be banned in horseracing, and I would have no objection to that.
A major part of this debate tonight has been about the supposed lack of consultation - and it is only a supposed lack of consultation, because other speakers have mentioned how long back consultation goes. Perhaps the problem that Mr Westende and Mr Moore perceived is not a lack of consultation but - let me be frank about this - the fact that progress on the Bill towards its finalisation was slow. There was a change of government - - -
Mr Moore: The Bill has gone. The amendments are the only things we are talking about.
MR WOOD: That is not Mr Westende's view entirely. I take it that it is yours. There was a change of government shortly after the paper was prepared. The Bill was just about ready at the end of last year, but we held it over. So the Bill in its final form did take some time to emerge. It was also a difficult Bill to frame. I do not want to suggest that the people in the department were by any means responsible for what happened. They worked very hard to complete the Bill, but political processes slowed it down. So it is not lack of consultation that is the problem.
Ms Szuty made a key point when she said that owners of pets - and I think she would extend her comments to owners of animals in circuses, who must soon have to get rid of their animals, I would hope, as these measures may become universal around Australia - have to accept responsibility for their pets. Putting circuses aside, in all the other measures that this legislation covers responsibility
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