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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3270 ..

MR RUGENDYKE (continuing):

The bill also will bring into line people who that claim to be dog breeders. There will be a regime to make sure they are registered and so on. I worry about the impact on some people such as pensioners, whose only joy in life is their pets. It might be quite onerous for some people to keep up with the things they have to do to make sure they are acting legally. They have to write to this person, they have to write to that person and they have to register their animals annually. I therefore worry that some of the pensioners in our town will be severely disadvantaged by this legislation.

Maybe when we go through the detail stage some of these problems will be sorted out by the various amendments that have been tabled this morning. I will support this bill in principle and listen closely to the debate on the various amendments.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (12.05), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank the Assembly for their in-principle agreement to the legislation. The intention of this important set of bills and codes is to hopefully make better the position of the people of the ACT as well as the animal population.

Mr Corbell said that we all get complaints. This legislation will address the current weaknesses. I believe it will improve the way that we handle complaints, without fuelling neighbourhood disputes. What I do not want to put in place are systems that allow people to escalate neighbourhood disputes and use an animal as a weapon against a neighbour. I think we have a balance in the bill which will ensure that people are not caused additional grief. Mr Corbell indicated his support for the codes, the charter for responsible dog ownership and the charter for responsible cat ownership, and I welcome Labor's support on that.

This government has always said that it believes education is far better than regulation and enforcement. What we always endeavour to do is make sure that we educate and alert people as to what is the best way to be a law abiding citizen and what is the best way to benefit from where they live. These codes as well as the cat management strategy form a very important part of our efforts to make sure that this does work.

Ms Tucker spoke about de-sexing. It would be true to say that Domestic Animal Services and the RSPCA between them euthanase thousands and thousands of dogs and cats each year because people do not want to care for them any longer. We are making sure that those who wish to breed and those who wish to have an animal that is entire have those rights. What we are doing is relieving animals of agony and suffering. We are also taking away a burden from the community and that is very important.

Ms Tucker spoke about identification, and that is also important. What we want to do is find out who owns these animals and get them back to them as quickly as we can. This will alleviate the stress and the worry for everyone and it will make for a better city. Animals should not be roaming the streets.

Mr Rugendyke raised concerns about having to keep your dog on a lead all the time. There are 1,156 gazetted places you can go to in the ACT to exercise your dog off lead. I think there is ample space for us to live in harmony. There are ample opportunities for people to exercise their dogs off lead. We constantly review those places and we will add to them as the suburbs expand.

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