Page 1064 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2012
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jurisdictions around the world have now banned battery cage egg production. Most recently, at the beginning of this year the European Union finally phased out all battery cage eggs. I believe that in the European Union, though, there are still what is called furnished cages, or enriched cages, which are bigger cages which have perches for hens to sit on and more space. That would obviously be a step forward compared to the current cages we have in Australia. The Greens, however, would like to see us go further than that and ideally go to free range production.
The government has committed in the past as far as possible to all of its agencies using non-battery cage eggs by May 2009. This also should be noted in the motion. There is something else that I think we should note while we are talking about the economic contribution of Pace being $3 million a year to the ACT economy. We should note that its economic contribution to the ACT government’s economy is very little. It is in fact $486 per annum for the lease of its 40 hectares of Parkwood property. It is not exactly paying a lot of money. Most of us would like to have a rent along those lines. I guess that is one of the reasons why I suspect it may be that residential forces will overtake the hens as residents of the Parkwood facility.
We are suggesting that we replace part 2(b) with a new and improved part 2(b) that firstly advocates for Western Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland to support the 1997 legislation which prohibits the sale of battery cage eggs in the ACT. Those are the jurisdictions that still have problems from a mutual recognition point of view. If we could get them on board, we would be able to fulfil the will of the Assembly back in 1997 and prohibit the sale of battery cage eggs in the ACT, which would be a wonderful achievement.
Next my amendment asks the government to table details of all inspections of Parkwood facilities in the last two years, including details of whether Parkwood complies with all applicable laws and codes of practice for animal welfare, and whether any cages or other infrastructure have been upgraded to improve conditions. This would be really useful.
I have on various occasions asked questions on notice and without notice about the situation in Parkwood. For the benefit of the wider Canberra public, I think it would be good if we could have all of this together in one place so that people know the hens are being looked after properly at least within the existing ruling as far as cage eggs are concerned, because that is a concern. Are the existing regulations being adhered to? It would be really great to have that information from the government.
Our part 2(d) proposes to table details of current ACT government egg procurement. This would be very useful to see how the government is going insofar as its previous commitment to use free range eggs. Again, I have asked questions about this in the past, but it would be very useful to get up-to-date information on it and, again, as Ms Porter requested in her motion, report back to the Assembly in the May sittings.
Basically, I would say that I was really stunned when I saw this motion on the notice paper—and really pleased. I had been feeling for a while that we are fighting a bit of an uphill battle here and that while it would be great to do something more about cage eggs, it is sort of not going to happen. But this has given me renewed hope. Maybe
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