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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3328 ..

MS TUCKER: The dog is presumed guilty and sentenced to immediate death rather than presumed innocent until proven guilty. This provision is contrary to other parts of the bill regarding dangerous animals. In clause 59 an authorising officer can seize a dog only if they suspect the dog has attacked a person or animal. They cannot kill it. Then begins the legal process of seeking out the owner, examining the dog's registration and possibly prosecuting the owner, et cetera.

However, in this clause an ordinary person can immediately kill a dog if they suspect that it killed an animal in a field. This is quite unfair to the dog and its owner. There is also the chance that a person may kill the wrong dog if there are a number of dogs in the field at the time. I am therefore moving that these subclauses be deleted.

MR CORBELL (5.01): The Labor Party cannot support this proposal. Whilst I appreciate the philosophical issues surrounding how we view our relationship with animals and how we should approach the rights of animals, we also have to appreciate the situation in which rural leaseholders find themselves. If a rural leaseholder sees that a sheep has just been killed in one of their paddocks and they see a dog roaming about the paddock, what does Ms Tucker propose? That the dog be questioned? That seems to be the proposition.

Quite clearly, a rural leaseholder is not going to say, "I am not going to touch that animal, because I cannot be sure that it killed the sheep." Again Ms Tucker raises the proposition of an animal being detained and trying to establish whether there is a legal owner. I think you would have to say that in most instances-not all, but most-where an animal is found in a paddock and is presumed to have killed a sheep or some other animal on a farm there is not a registered owner. It would be a wild animal. We all know packs of dogs roaming around various rural areas in the territory do not have any registered owner. What does Ms Tucker propose that we do in that circumstance? I think that is something that has not been considered in this amendment.

I think it is quite reasonable for a rural leaseholder to take action to prevent a recurrence of an incident which they can reasonably suspect has just occurred. It is quite clear that this clause is meant to deal with that circumstance. It is unfortunate. It does run us into the barrier of the philosophical view about how we treat animals, but as part of our decision-making we also need to take account of the practical issues that confront rural leaseholders in trying to protect their stock from animal attack. We will support this clause and not the amendment proposed by Ms Tucker.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (5.04): The government stands by its clause. Mr Corbell has been quite eloquent on the subject. Subclause (5) says that a field includes a paddock, yard or other place. It is to protect rural lessees' stock and property.

MS TUCKER (5.05): I will respond to Mr Corbell's arguments. From living in the country and finding dead sheep and dealing with dogs, I know that it is not necessarily the dog that you find on the scene that killed the sheep. In our experience on the land, we have taken dogs, put them in a cage, found the owner and dealt with the matter in that way. It is not necessarily the case that the animal found has blood dripping from its mouth.

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