Page 2573 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 1994
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The Authority may grant a permit subject to such other specified conditions as he or she considers, on reasonable grounds, to be desirable in the interests of animal welfare, including conditions in relation to the following matters:
(a) the welfare of animals used by the circus;
(b) the provision of facilities and equipment for those animals;
(c) compliance with an approved code of practice.
An approved code of practice, no doubt, would be drawn up by the Minister. Those provisions would remain. Those provisions would provide safeguards in relation to any concerns any reasonable people might have.
Madam Speaker, the circus operators were quite happy with the provisions of the original Bill as they stood. They are used to being regulated, as each State and local council has inspectional regulations relating to their operations. We are talking here of some 900 government instrumentalities and authorities watching their every move, not to mention such organisations as the RSPCA. With all this, the members of the National Circus Association have only ever been charged with two offences of cruelty - and we are talking about circuses and animals that go back for many generations.
The circus owners engaged the services of a veterinarian, Dr Karl H.C. Texler of the Bright Veterinary Clinic, to prepare their own code of ethics for management of animals in circuses. That was a very comprehensive code of ethics and demonstrated the high level of responsibility of the circuses to be, in fact, self-regulating, let alone to meet all the other obligations that they compulsorily have to conform to. Exhaustive studies carried out on circus animals gave rise to no condemnation of using them. Circus animals, such as budgies in cages, are bred over many generations for the life they lead. They have not been captured from the wild and brought immediately into circuses. Ashton's Circus has felines that go back seven generations.
Many learned people - including Dr Marthe Kiley-Worthington, one of the first ethologists to go and actually live and study wild animals in Africa and to recognise the behavioural problems of the captive and domestic animals - have included in their work studies of large mammals, animal welfare and training. Since 1971 she has been an animal behavioural consultant. After 3,000 hours of scientific observations of animals during training, travel and performance and after many visits to circuses and zoos, Dr Kiley-Worthington concluded that, whilst there are improvements that must be made, circuses do not by their nature cause suffering and distress to animals. She stated in her book Animals in Circuses and Zoos:
On balance, I do not think that the animals' best interests are necessarily served by money and activities diverted to try and ban circuses and zoos either locally or nationally. What is much more important is to continue to encourage the zoos and circuses to improve their animal welfare.
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