Page 1063 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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realise they can make more money selling the land for residential purposes and they will quit anyway. I certainly hope they will quit. I would like to see this Assembly show some moral leadership and actually say, “No, we do not think this is an appropriate way to treat animals,” and to say, “No, this is not what we want to have happen in the ACT.”
As Ms Porter says in part (f), in 1997 the Legislative Assembly passed legislation prohibiting the sale of cage eggs in the territory on animal welfare grounds. This was very good legislation. It has not come into force due to other jurisdictions not agreeing. About half the other jurisdictions have not been prepared to agree to its implementation under Mutual Recognition Act.
I am happy to note that the government has offered incentives for Parkwood to convert its operations to barn-laid facilities. I am very pleased with her part (2), which calls upon the government to undertake further negotiations with Parkwood farm to convert to a barn laid facility, or possibly not even a barn laid facility. It could possibly be a free range facility or possibly, as I said, get out of the business altogether.
I am very hopeful, because the government is going to report back on this, that what this is telling us is that the government has some reasonable belief it will be a positive report back. I really hope that that is what this is signalling to the Assembly and the wider Canberra community.
Having gone through Ms Porter’s motion, I had better go through my quite extensive amendments. The first parts largely improve the factual information. As I said, Pace employs 60 people only very occasionally. It reported to the national pollutant inventory in 2007 that it only in fact had 14 employees at its facility. There is no reason to believe that it has increased since then, because the size of the facility has not increased since then.
Part 2(a) looks at negotiations to convert to a barn laid facility. I propose substituting the words “adopt alternative egg production methods”. This does not rule out barn production, but it does not rule out free range as well. We are just saying, “Let us talk to Pace about what is a better way forward for the future.” I am hopeful that the government will be happy with that as it just gives more scope rather than less.
The item in my amendments which may possibly be most controversial is in part 1(h), that battery cage egg production is a cruel, inhumane practice. This has been the belief of the Greens forever. The Greens, from an animal welfare perspective, look at animals—certainly animals of the status of hens—as being sentient beings and deserving a degree of respect and protection from the dominant species, human beings.
As I said earlier, if you think about how hens are reared in those sorts of facilities, it is hard to see how you could not describe it as cruel and inhumane. They do not have space to move. They literally cannot spread their wings, let alone fly or anything like that. They cannot live the life that nature intended them to live as hens.
In relation to part 1(i), as I mentioned, legislation has been tabled in this place three times to ban the production of battery cage eggs. Turning to part 1(j), various
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