Page 1595 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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a lot of mining in the ACT because there are mostly national parks - the existing penalty for the offence of removing a mining peg that pegs out a claim, under the law in 1992, is 10 pounds. Although it sounds a silly offence, it is a thing for which murders have been committed in mining communities.
So there is a need to carefully review offences. We have done that. We have gone away from the two-year penalty for aggravated cruelty; we have the general offence of cruelty. As all members must understand, and indeed do understand, when it says "$10,000 or imprisonment for one year, or both", that is the absolute maximum penalty. I would challenge any member to say that $10,000 or a year's imprisonment, or indeed both, is outrageous for some of the more appalling acts of cruelty that, from time to time, happen in Australia. It has been not uncommon in recent years to see media reports of some quite appalling incidents where animals have been mistreated by persons whose motives one can only speculate upon and be appalled at.
Magistrates have said, in relation to some of these older Acts, that the penalties are woefully inadequate. This is the maximum penalty for the most horrendous example of cruelty, and it is in fact a retreat from a potential two-year imprisonment under the old law. How can you possibly say that we are draconian? As I say, it was a great speech, flawed only by the fact that the proposed legislation has a lower maximum penalty for the most extreme act than the existing law has. It was a good piece of rhetoric, unfortunately marred by reality.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.39): Madam Speaker, the Attorney-General, when he makes his comments about cruelty, conveniently overlooks the fact that what happens in this Bill is twofold. There is a general catch-all provision, clause 7, that deals with cruelty to animals. That is a fairly blanket provision; the sort of provision which I would have thought was sufficient to cover acts of cruelty with the simplicity that we talked about yesterday when we spoke about simplicity in legislation. Then there are specific provisions throughout the Bill which define particular acts of cruelty, saying that these are cruel, this is cruel, that is cruel, et cetera.
The question is not to look at clause 7 and see whether that is an appropriate penalty for that particular offence. The real question is to look at other provisions, the black letter law, as the Canberra Times described it the other day, and see whether the sorts of penalties being provided for there are appropriate. This is why the Opposition will be going through each of these provisions and arguing for consideration of the particular penalty in the case of each of these offences, because there you see very clearly a complete inappropriateness of level of offence to level of fine being imposed. I take you, for example, to subclause 11(2), which says:
A person shall not, without reasonable excuse, fail to take adequate precautions to prevent the release of an animal from custody or control.
The penalty for that is $10,000 or one year's imprisonment, or both. Let us take Mr Connolly's worst case scenario. Let us conceive of the worst case of carelessness - somebody who lets an animal out of custody; not deliberately lets it out, as that is dealt with in subclause 11(1). Subclause 11(2) is failing to take reasonable or "adequate precautions to prevent the release of an animal".
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