Page 1466 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 11 August 1992
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The proposal I have put forward could not, therefore, be used to argue the same for domestic animals, which can be relieved of stress. I repeat: The proposal is not the thin end of the wedge only if those with responsibility for animals do not want to make it so. They can ensure that it does not become the thin end of the wedge only by making sure that they conform to the codes and standards required for the keeping of domestic animals. If the circuses want to tie the two issues together, they need not be worried that we will not be watching how they treat their domestic animals.
What about the ground swell of popular support? I have, in all honesty, been surprised by the feebleness of public opposition to the proposal. When the circus lobby first mobilised their campaign I received probably 15 calls opposing the ban, less than half-a-dozen of which came from within the ACT. I received innumerable local calls in support. The last count of letters opposing it was one. This solitary one is certainly greatly outnumbered by the opinions in support.
The circuses know that they are in trouble, with attendances way down from the halcyon days of the circus. This is probably why we had the unedifying spectacle of Lorraine Ashton joining Robert Perry in resorting to simple abuse, referring to government members, and presumably me in particular, as "loud-mouthed, ill-informed, bigoted individuals telling me what to do". I have unfortunate news for both Mrs Ashton and Mr Perry: "I, as a so-called loud-mouthed, ill-informed, bigoted individual, am telling you, in no uncertain terms, that we are responsible to the electors of the ACT". That is the role that is vested in me as an MLA. We will be responsible to the electors and not to self-interested, self-opinionated arbiters of public taste such as them.
Unless one makes a career of public plebiscites, like the fictional politician Michael Rimmer, or Mr Stevenson, popular opinion cannot be the only criterion on which our decisions are based. As Edmund Burke said:
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
If the electors are unhappy with my judgment, they have a remedy at hand at the ballot-box. The claims of the circus lobby to mass support are illusory, and this will be proved to Mr Perry and Mrs Ashton, and to all the other fly-ins from outside Canberra, at the next ACT poll.
I now turn to the specific issue of primates, which has been addressed by Mr Moore. Mr Moore's opposition to the ban on primates is a little curious. He has told us that the affinity of monkeys and chimps, for example, with humans is such that they find the life of humans relatively compatible - more compatible than, say, elephants or tigers do. He also says that this affinity and their size make them, as a species, amenable to improved codes of practice. All we need to do is pass this new code and circuses would be required to travel around with huge zoo-like cages for their monkeys and chimps, and presumably their gorillas and any baboons they might like to bring along with them.
Well, maybe they would; but, frankly, this is about as feasible as Mr Westende's 10-year moratorium. It simply will not work and, more importantly, it is based on a couple of fundamentally unsound premises. The first of these is the so-called propinquity of the apes with human society. True, they almost certainly
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