Page 1635 - Week 06 - Thursday, 13 August 1992
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committee to explore a wide range of possible scenarios in relation to the Bill - for example, from the point of view of the horseracing industry, which has raised a number of queries about how it would be affected by the legislation, and the point of view of many other groups and organisations connected and concerned with the welfare of animals.
Although extensive community consultation has already occurred, a slightly longer period of community consultation, now that the Bill has been tabled before the Assembly, will certainly not do any harm. Most importantly, if the select committee reports to the Legislative Assembly in November, it will enable feedback from the Ministers meeting in October to be taken into account in the committee's deliberations and will allow time for work to commence on the codes of practice that are so necessary for this legislation to become meaningful.
Mr Westende has proposed that the select committee comprise three members of this Assembly. While I would not volunteer for the select committee, I believe that it would be entirely reasonable for the Government to provide a member, for a member of the Opposition to be a member - most appropriately Mr Westende - and for Mr Stevenson to be the third member. It seems rather ironic to me that Mr Stevenson has chosen not to participate in any of the standing or select committees to date and yet has had much to say during the detail stage of this Bill. I support Mr Westende's motion to establish a select committee to examine the Animal Welfare Bill, and I urge fellow members to support it also.
MR MOORE (11.19): I thought I would say a couple of words. It is interesting to me that the Liberals stand up and say that it is absolutely critical that we have this select committee because this Bill is so terrible. If we go back and look at the Hansard of the in-principle debate, we will see exactly the opposite sort of thing. What we have now is a reaction which is pure political opportunism. We have seen that the Liberals can finally get together on something. They can actually act almost together on something. Having acted together on something, they actually realise that they can get some media coverage. They happen to have got it. Therefore, they think that they can now look back to the situation and say, "Forget what we said in the in-principle stage about this being a wonderful Bill".
Instead of dealing with the anomalies in the same way that we dealt with them in the planning and land management Bill - the Bill that Trevor Kaine and Gary Humphries supported going to an urgent Bill stage - they want to delay this even further. They want to delay it mainly because of political opportunism, because they can get a little more media attention through delaying it instead of trying to resolve these questions on the floor of the house. Why was there not a suggestion for a select committee five or six weeks ago? That was the opportunity to do it. At that stage that may well have been considered a very sensible solution. Now people's positions are polarised in such a way that I think a select committee on this issue would be just about unworkable.
MR CORNWELL (11.21): I reject Mr Moore's comments on this matter. He argues that the matter should not have been carried this far following agreement in principle. Madam Speaker, that was before the amendments started to come in. For the information of members of the Assembly, including Mr Moore, there are 19 government amendments being moved by the Minister. There were five corrections to the legislation put forward. There are seven amendments moved by Mr Lamont in addition to the 34 moved by Mr Westende.
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