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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1866 ..

This bill proposes to give a more realistic range of penalties for cruelty to animals. Where the current maximum penalty is a fine of 100 penalty units, imprisonment for one year or both, the bill will amend the act and raise it to 500 penalty units, imprisonment for five years or both. That will apply to both section 7—cruelty—and section 8, where someone deliberately causes an animal unnecessary pain. That includes a wide number of things, including failure to provide proper food, water and shelter, abandoning or killing the animal and a number of other things.

Where injury or pain to confined animals is involved, where a person fails to provide an animal with adequate exercise I have also increased the basic offence from 10 penalty units to 50 penalty units. For battery hens, the penalty has gone up from one year to five years. Similarly, for administering poison to animals and laying poison with the intention of killing or injuring an animal the penalties go up from one year to five years. There is a reckless indifferent offence in causing death or injury, which is the lower offence. It used to be 50 penalty units or six months but has gone up to 200 penalty units or imprisonment for two years.

Also, in the case of a person laying poison, without reasonable excuse, where there is a likelihood that it could injure or kill animals, 10 penalty units go up to 50. In section 13, where people use electrical devices to administer shocks to animals, except in a manner authorised by law, the penalty goes up again from one year to five years and 500 penalty units. For using spurs and sharpened or fixed rowels on an animal—section 14—the penalty goes up from one year to five years. For the possession of some items, there has been an increase from five penalty units to 20.

Section 15, for conveying or containing an animal where the animal is subjected to unnecessary injury or pain and suffering there is a penalty of up to five years. In section 16, the penalty for working, riding and driving unfit animals is five years. For matches, competitions and baiting animals the penalty in section 17 has gone up from one year to five years. There are several areas where the penalties go up in section 18 because there are a number of offences within that section.

In section 19, where people other than veterinary surgeons, without reasonable excuse, carry out medical procedures on animals the penalty goes up to five years. I point out to members that there are a number of exemptions in section 19 (2) which are quite sensible and necessary. The Animal Diseases Act has been amended as part of this. There is a penalty for spreading disease of 50 units or six months. Section 54 (1) states:

(1) A person shall not, without reasonable excuse, knowingly communicate a disease or disease agent to any animal.

The penalty in this case goes up to 200 penalty units or two years. I commend the bill to the Assembly. I think the Chief Minister made some strange comment that the RSPCA or some board had not mentioned it to him. Be that as it may, the RSPCA are certainly very keen to see this occur. I invite members to talk to the RSPCA about why this needs to happen, if they do not realise why it should happen already. This is far overdue. It is something that will be very much welcomed by legislators. This is a much more realistic penalty structure than we have at present. We talk about vulnerable people in here quite a lot, but there is nothing more vulnerable than a poor defenceless animal that cannot look

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