Page 922 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 30 March 1993
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We are toughening our own approach. As part of that approach I will, on Monday, increase the number of people in the dog patrol unit by one. I freely concede that we do not have enough people there. At the moment we have four officers on patrol. That will become five. There are other support staff in the office. The telephones run pretty hot and they are kept very busy, but the number of staff will go up. I hope that we will be able to do more than that in the near future because that is an important part of our thrust.
MR DE DOMENICO (5.01): Madam Speaker, as Mr Wood and other speakers have said, this issue is non-party political, as it should be. I stand briefly to mention some of the things I have heard from some dog lovers I have spoken to over past months, and also from some of the people who have been affected by dog bites. I am one of many people, I dare say, who walk early in the morning through my suburb. There are times when life is frightened out of you when all of a sudden you hear a great big Rottweiler barking. There is one close to my place. I sometimes wonder what would happen if that dog got out from behind the gate. They are obviously untrained.
Perhaps some drastic measures ought to be taken. Some people might tend to think that drastic measures are not needed, but after what happened in Kambah the other day we need to think about whether there is an oversupply of both pedigree and crossbred dogs. Assuming that there is an oversupply of dogs, what are we doing to control the breeding? Is there a requirement to control breeding? I believe that there is. Perhaps we ought to be thinking of things like licensing the breeder; making sure that the Government licenses the breeder and not the Kennel Association. Perhaps part of that licensing agreement must include follow-up action by the breeder with regard to a suitable purchaser, and perhaps the breeder must make sure that the property is suitable for an animal to be living in.
Obviously, a Great Dane is not the type of dog you would leave in a flat. There are other types of dogs that we should be looking at, such as the Afghan hounds, the German shepherds that Mr Wood mentioned, the Rottweilers and the Dobermans. Whether a suburban backyard in Canberra is a suitable place in which to hold a Rottweiler, a Doberman or a German shepherd is something that we need to look at. Perhaps another thing we should be looking at is having a strict quota of licensed breeders. Once again, do we have too many people out there that have a Great Dane in the backyard that might cross-pollinate, for want of a better word, with the German shepherd next door? All of a sudden you have 18 little dogs, call them what you will, that you have to get rid of on a Saturday afternoon, and in goes the ad to the Canberra Times. All of a sudden you have this flurry of four-legged canines all over the place. Perhaps the best way to stop four-legged canines is to surround them by four trees and then they would not have a leg to stand on. Anyway, a strict quota of licensed breeders is something that perhaps - - -
Ms Ellis: That is an old one.
MR DE DOMENICO: I tried to put a bit of mirth into a very serious debate. Perhaps we ought to consider registering the breeding stocks and keeping a register of the sales. Pedigree could be departmentally issued to a breeder as part of a licence fee. There may be a requirement for non-licensed breeding stocks to be desexed. Purchase from pet shops is something we need to look at.
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