Page 4082 - Week 12 - Thursday, 20 October 2005
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(3) Prior to construction, it is necessary to finalise the service model for the Boarding House, including its size and target groups, and identify an appropriate site on which to build the facility. The Department continues to consult with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community about the Boarding House and it is expected the service model will be finalised by the end of December 2005.
Animals—pet registration
(Question No 675)
Mrs Burke asked the Minister for Urban Services, upon notice, on 22 September 2005:
(1) Further to the reply to question on notice No 480, why is the Domestic Animal Services database not able to provide information on the number of de-sexed domestic pets registered in the ACT if a pet owner must hold a permit under the Domestic Animals Act 2000 to keep a dog or cat that is not desexed;
(2) Why is it not considered important to maintain information on any evidence of an increase in the number of pets registered in the ACT that are de-sexed;
(3) Is the ACT Government considering a requirement to register cats in the ACT; if not, why not.
Mr Hargreaves: The answer to the member’s question is as follows:
(1) The Domestic Animals Services Database is limited in its search capacity
No general purpose searching capability is provided on the current dogs database system. Candidate data is retrieved by setting filters which is an outdated approach that is limited in its application.
Domestic Animal Services are fully aware of the limitations of the dogs database and are investigating a replacement. The requirements of a new Domestic Animal Registration and Management System (DARMS)was developed in 2004. The system would provide a flexible search functionality across all data items including searching within filed textual data.
(2) It is important to record this information. The dogs database holds information on the sex status of dogs resident in the Territory. However, that information cannot be easily retrieved or filtered from the current database.
(3) The Domestic Animals (Cat Containment) Amendment Bill 2005 currently before this Assembly will require cat owners to identify their cats by microchip. The primary reason for cat identification is to allow cat owners to be rapidly re-united with their domestic cats when they stray or are lost. The Government intends that the cost of micro-chipping will be borne primarily by cat owners and the sellers of cats, not by Government. Given that nation-wide data bases already exist to record the particulars of micro-chipped cats as required by legislation, the Government does not intend to duplicate these databases with its own cat register.
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