Page 1020 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 May 2006
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Good ideas tend to be attached to the government of the day anyway, so you are probably going to get the credit for someone else’s work.
That being said, I think this is better than nothing. It is a good start, and I hope the government will see it as a good start. You need a reasonable deterrent to stop people being cruel to animals. Only one person has been jailed in the ACT, for three months, as a result of cruelty to animals. But you need sufficient reins within offences of cruelty to animals to enable the court to give a person the sentence that is most appropriate. Where nearly all of the offences, bar this one, still carry only a one-year maximum imprisonment or a fine of $10,000, and/or both, that is simply not enough. I have seen cases in our courts over about a 20-year period where some horrible pain has been inflicted on animals, and some horrible examples of confining animals. Why should sections 8 and 9 still be only one year’s imprisonment?
There are a number of other sections. I would strongly urge this government, given that it would not take the opportunity offered to it twice in the past, to at least have a look at this. It is a worrying statistic that the ACT is one of the few jurisdictions where the number of cruelty complaints increased.
The RSPCA do a wonderful job looking after animals abandoned by the community. They do it on a shoestring. There are people there who are probably working 70 hours a week for $24,000 or so a year. They depend on donations and government funding. It is all very well for this government to talk about Mr Howard’s workplace relations, but perhaps this is somewhere where we can assist people, largely volunteers—in some instances, some very low-paid, dedicated people doing a great job in assisting neglected animals, animals who have been often horrendously treated by their owners or by others in our community—who deserve our support. Particularly, they deserve our support in terms of proper, effective legislation. To have proper, effective legislation for things like penalties to animals, you need a reasonable range of penalties.
This is a start. You could have done this two years ago. You would not because of your pigheadedness or whatever. You have an opportunity now to have a further look at perhaps increasing the very minimal penalties still available in most of this act for cruelty to animals. I think most of you appreciate it is one of the nastiest offences you can have on the statute books.
The opposition will be supporting this bill. I would certainly appreciate the government taking on board some of those comments, and indeed that legal point I raised, and perhaps having another look at that.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (11.35): Mr Speaker, increasing the penalties for animal cruelty has been the topic of annual debate in this house. This is now the third version of the bill that is before us. It has been improved each time and now is at a stage where I will support it. The opposition should certainly take the guernsey for first putting this matter before the Assembly but it would be nice if it could acknowledge the work that went into creating legislation which addresses the problems in its earlier bills. That work has meant that all members are able to support this bill.
This bill significantly improves past amendments on animal cruelty by distinguishing between neglect and aggravated cruelty. While neglect can certainly be very detrimental
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