Page 1593 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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ANIMAL WELFARE BILL 1992
Detail Stage
Clause 7 and the proposed amendments thereto
Debate resumed.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.30): I intend to speak only to that part of Mr Westende's amendments that relates to the penalties. We need to think very carefully about these penalties because you cannot take the penalties in this Bill in isolation from penalties in all other Acts. There has to be some consistency across our legislation in terms of penalty. Not all that long ago we debated a Bill that had to do with the protection of plant life. In my view then, the penalties that were being proposed for picking a protected flower were so far out of kilter with penalties for other kinds of offences that it was ludicrous. We debated this matter at some length, and it is my recollection that in many cases we reduced the severity of the penalties in that Bill. It was pretty obvious that the person who drafted the Bill and who set about determining the level of penalty had not looked at it in the context of penalties for other offences under other Acts.
I submit that the same thing is happening here. When you look through this Bill, somebody has determined that a $10,000 fine plus a year in gaol is an okay penalty for a whole range of offences.
Mr Connolly: No, the maximum penalty for the most serious offence.
MR KAINE: I do understand, Mr Attorney-General, that they are maximums. We were told this morning that we do not listen. I am saying to you, and I hope you are listening, that in my view, and I suppose I am entitled to one, this level of penalty is too harsh for the crime that we are talking about, and it is common most of the way through the Bill. There are some cases where we are not proposing that the penalties be changed because we think that the penalty does fit the crime; but in most cases we think that the penalties proposed here are unduly harsh. I refer to clause 9, which says:
A person in charge of a confined animal shall not, without reasonable excuse, fail to provide the animal with adequate exercise.
The penalty is $10,000 or one year in gaol, or both. That is because somebody perhaps keeps an animal confined and, in the opinion of an inspector, does not provide adequate exercise. Adequate exercise is a very subjective thing. Subclause (2) of that clause relates to inflicting undue distress on the animal. That is very subjective. How does one judge what is undue distress on an animal? Yet somebody is going to make a judgment about that. A person is subject to a $10,000 fine and a year in gaol because in somebody's subjective view he or she has inflicted undue distress on an animal.
Madam Speaker, this is one of my problems with this Bill; it is so imprecise in determining the nature of an offence, yet the penalties are very precise and - and I use the word advisedly - in some cases draconian.
Mr Lamont: Never.
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