Page 1153 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 10 April 2018
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anomaly contained in the original version of the statement does not lead to any change, and I apologise for the confusion. I now table the revised explanatory statement, to correct the record.
As members have outlined, the objective of this bill is to bring consistency and best practice to the Domestic Animals Act 2000 following legislative changes that the government introduced last year to protect the community from dangerous dogs and to act on its commitment to end greyhound racing in the ACT.
Greyhound racing will end in our nation’s capital from 30 April this year. This bill will ensure that anyone who keeps a racing greyhound in the ACT after this time for racing in another jurisdiction complies with the high standards of public safety and animal welfare that were introduced with the dangerous dog legislative amendments late last year.
This means that racing greyhound owners are treated equally to other dog owners when it comes to considering public safety and responsible dog management, care and control. For example, the registrar for domestic animals must consider if an owner is a responsible owner before allowing them to register a racing greyhound. I thank Mr Parton for his comments in relation to combining these two. I thank him for defending my honour. He is indeed correct, and I will reflect on how we can perhaps avoid that in future.
As I have said many times, the government is committed to best practice in how we manage pets in our community, and that also includes raising our expectations for responsible pet ownership. I have commissioned an independent expert review into dog management in the ACT and how domestic animal services exercises its functions, to make sure that Canberra is on track to be an Australian and world leader in dog management. I look forward to making the results of this work available shortly.
As part of being best practice, it is important to continuously review and improve our laws around dogs and make changes where they are needed. With respect to the important work last year between the government and the opposition, again, like my colleagues, I note the work of the late Steve Doszpot. It is important that we follow on from this work on dangerous dogs and also the greyhound work of last year. We have identified some small areas of change that are reflected in this bill.
These include, as members have noted, defining “breeding” in our legislation so that we can crack down on illegal breeders and backyard breeding in the territory, giving domestic animal services the ability to use animal rescue facilities for impounding dogs in a more suitable environment, for example, puppies seized as part of backyard breeding, and making sure carers of dogs as well as owners of dogs can have conditions and responsibilities placed on them where this is appropriate.
As I outlined in introducing this bill, there are circumstances when it is appropriate for a carer to look after a dog. For example, where a dog continuously escapes from its keeper’s yard but can be appropriately housed with a carer, there should be an ability
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