Page 2171 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 August 2014
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unleased land without approval. The bill also corrects an incorrect reference to section 101 in section 98 of the act, substituting the correct reference to section 99. Again, these amendments do not change the intention of the act. Rather, the amendments only clarify the existing intention of the legislation.
In summary, the bill brings the ACT in line with a nationally agreed foot and mouth disease action plan and makes minor changes to clarify the intention of the Domestic Animals Act and the Public Unleased Land Act. I reaffirm that the Canberra Liberals will be supporting this legislation.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Corrective Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for Sport and Recreation) (11.05), in reply: I rise to close debate on the Territory and Municipal Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2014, an omnibus bill that makes minor and technical amendments to several pieces of legislation within the TAMS portfolio. Specifically, this bill amends the Animal Diseases Act 2005, Domestic Animals Act 2000, Magistrates Court (Domestic Animals Infringement Notices) Regulation 2005 and the Public Unleased Land Act 2013.
The changes proposed in this bill in relation to animal disease will ensure that the territory remains consistent and harmonised with the legislation of other Australian jurisdictions when it comes to managing potential threats related to animal disease outbreaks. One of the purposes of these amendments is to ensure regulation that prevents poor management of animal feed, to protect animals against the spread of disease. These regulatory provisions, however, do more than just protect animals. The legislation protects the community from potential outbreaks of disease, diseases which can have a devastating impact on the territory and Australia more generally.
The outbreak of certain diseases can impact on our health and the economy. In the event of a disease outbreak, the appropriate biosecurity response is to limit the movement of people and animals, which will obviously have a flow-on effect by impacting on the movement of goods such as food and fuel. In more recent memory, the impact of an outbreak of equine influenza, for example, stopped the movement of horses and the movement of people who worked with horses and closed industries and activities that involved horses.
The bill before us today makes changes to the Animal Diseases Act by removing the term “swill” from the act. It brings the act into line with nationally agreed terminology which now defines prohibited pig feed and controls the feeding of prohibited pig feed to controlled stock. Swill is the traditional name give to the feeding of food scraps containing animal matter and other waste material to pigs, chickens and ruminants. The unregulated practice of swill feeding has been the source of foot and mouth disease outbreaks overseas including, as I mentioned when I introduced this legislation, the catastrophic foot and mouth disease epidemic in the United Kingdom in 2001.
Swill feeding is well recognised as a significant risk factor for the introduction of several animal diseases, with a potential for devastating impacts on Australia’s
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