Page 1479 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 11 August 1992
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those where the people do the acts. What some of these people can do is very clever. I have just come back from London and more and more circuses overseas are banning animals and are using more people. One of the most exciting circuses I ever attended was our Flying Fruit Fly Circus, because everything is done by young people. It is incredible what they can do. Obviously they are training for a much larger circus later on.
I think Mr Humphries was talking about unions earlier and I told him that as a lawyer he belonged to one. He denied that and said that it is an association; but it looks after lawyers, so I would say that it is a union. Animals do not have any union or any association that they can complain to if they have not been looked after. If you have a person doing acts in a circus, the better they do the acts, the more money they demand; therefore they cost a lot more money. An animal cannot ask for extra pay and it cannot ask for better conditions. I am not saying that the circus that was here recently treated its animals badly. I cannot say that because I was not there. I did not go and see the circus. I was overseas.
Mr De Domenico: Well then, why ban them?
MRS GRASSBY: That is not the point.
Mr De Domenico: It is. That is what you are doing.
MRS GRASSBY: Mr De Domenico, my father used to say to people when they came to work for him, "Do you belong to a union?". When they said no, he said, "Well, go away and join one". They could not understand why. "You are a good boss," they said. He said, "Yes, I am; but the next one might not be".
I cannot speak about the circus because I did not go and look at it. The circus here might have been careful with its animals but I have seen circuses that are not careful with animals. I have seen animals standing out at Woden in the boiling hot sun in the summertime, chained to a block and walking round and round it. I have seen tigers and lions in tiny cages. They cannot do anything but sit down because there is no room for them to move around. To me this is cruel. We are even getting away from that in zoos now. We make large parks where they can roam around and you can sit or drive in your car and see them.
Why do we need to have animals doing acts? We have enough people, particularly in here, doing acts without going to a circus. I look across there and I can see quite a few circus animals.
Mr Kaine: You are doing your share, Ellnor, I must say. You are very entertaining.
MRS GRASSBY: I am quite sure, and I am quite sure other people think so; but I would be a long way behind being as good as you lot across the other side. I do not think we need to see animals being used and being chained up. You cannot get an animal to do something without prodding it. They prod the animal to get it to do the act all the time.
Mr De Domenico: Is that a racehorse as well?
MRS GRASSBY: I tell you right now that I would not like to see anybody whip a horse in a race. I am not sorry to see a horse racing - - -
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