Page 2965 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 September 2014
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In summary, the bill makes amendments which should encourage sensible and vigilant dog ownership in the ACT. Hopefully the passing of this bill will lead to a reduction of dog attacks in the territory.
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) (4.22), in reply: I thank members for their support of this important bill today. Dog attacks are a serious problem in Australia. I was horrified to discover that the Australian Companion Animal Committee estimates that each year more than 100,000 Australians are attacked by dogs, causing injuries of various degrees of severity. Further, an estimated 12,000 to 14,000 people are treated in our public hospitals for dog bite injuries each year, costing the nation’s health budget millions of dollars.
There have been more than 25 deaths attributable to dog attacks in Australia since 2000. Unfortunately the ACT has had its share of these shocking statistics, with 284 reported dog attacks or incidents of harassment in 2013.
As I outlined when I presented this bill, the Domestic Animals Amendment Bill 2014 amends the Domestic Animals Act 2000 to promote responsible dog ownership and to provide suitable penalties to act as a deterrent to dog attacks in the territory. The bill seeks to achieve this through creating new offences of a dog attacking a person or animal causing serious injury and of a declared dangerous dog attacking a person or animal causing them serious injury.
The bill also redrafts certain offences currently in the Domestic Animals Act to better reflect current drafting style and to ensure that they are compliant with both the Human Rights Act and the criminal code. The amendments in this bill create a hierarchy of dog attack offences with appropriate penalties attached. This hierarchy stretches from harassment from a dog or a minor attack, through to an attack causing serious injury, to attack by a declared dangerous dog causing serious injury. Serious penalties, including a maximum of imprisonment for five years, will apply to the latter offence. This bill aims to encourage the keepers and carers of dogs to responsibly care for their animals by increasing from $200 to $350 the infringement notice penalty for the current offence of a dog harassing or conducting a minor attack.
On the whole, most dogs in Canberra are well behaved and most Canberrans look after their dogs really well. But unfortunately a small minority of dog owners do not act responsibly when it comes to their pets. This bill makes it very clear, through imposing significant new penalties, that people must take responsibility for their animals. The keepers of dogs must not allow them to be in situations where they may attack people or other animals.
As I have indicated, the bill that we are considering this afternoon rewords three current offences to ensure that they are human rights and criminal code compliant. It also creates three new offences. The reworded offences from the Domestic Animals Act are an offence for the carer of a dog that attacks or harasses a person or animal, in new section 49A(1) which was previously section 50(1). The second is an offence for
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