Page 1220 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video

---

In question time yesterday we referred to the Toscan situation and the fact that the dogs were returned to the owner and not declared dangerous and that the owner received no penalty but the walkers did. The minister herself admitted that, yes, the penalties are not tough enough.

Minister, we have called on you to do this in response to a request. Originally, my motion stated that “we demand”. We demand on behalf of the community that you—the government—acts to lessen the pain inflicted by dangerous dogs and some irresponsible dog owners across Canberra. I am demanding now—seeing as how you did not accept the motion that we in good faith changed—that this government listen to the growing body of evidence on this issue.

I do not want to sit in this chamber and hear the minister give platitudes and sympathy to the hundreds of Canberrans who have had to endure the pain like that experienced by the Toscans and our other friends in the chamber today. They do not want your sympathy; they want your action. This is why we will not accept your amendments about “considering”. We are asking you, on behalf of the community—this is reflected in community wishes and by the Canberra Times editorial, which is on behalf of the whole community—to actually allocate more resources. As Mr Coe said, we are not necessarily asking you to put more money into it; we are asking you to use money from other areas within that section and to prioritise this need.

It is certainly within our right to ask that this allocation be made. How you allocate that is your responsibility and your call. The number of changes you have made in this amendment waters down my original motion. I cannot in all fairness to the people I am representing here today accept your amendment.

We were very hopeful that the motion I moved today would be accepted. We accepted the changes in good faith in discussions with your office. We were very happy that we could do something together. I was hopeful that for once we were looking at something not as a partisan issue. We are not trying to make politics out of this; we are simply trying to focus the attention of this government on the needs in the community at the moment. On that basis, we cannot accept your amendment.

Question put:

That the amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

---

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video