Page 865 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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through either lack of resourcing or some other issue, the government has lost control of dog management in the ACT.
For example, fines for offences under the dog act, the Domestic Animals Act, have trended down over the past five years. Revenue from infringements has been trending down over the past five years. Fines under the act have halved in a decade. We know from the government’s own figures that there are not enough resources to handle calls adequately when people try to call in to report a dog incident.
A constituent from Tuggeranong who observed a stray dog harassing an elderly pedestrian wrote to me that they could not get through on the phone to report the incident. The government statistics and responses to questions on notice will show this. For example, 11 per cent of urgent calls about dog attacks to domestic animal services drop out. That is 11 per cent of urgent calls. Sixty-two per cent of general calls to domestic animal services drop out. It would appear that either there are not enough resources in the domestic animal services area or that the resources that are there are so busy out in the field that they are unable to adequately manage the work in the office.
Over the past decade or so the government has given up on properly enforcing dog regulations, pretty much by stealth, by not adequately resourcing the area. In 2000 government figures put the Canberra dog population at around 26,000. In the Canberra Times of 14 December 2018 it was estimated that the dog population is now 120,000. In 18 years it has gone from about 26,000 to about 120,000. Yet the resources in this area have completely failed to keep pace with the growth. They have completely failed. It is an increase of dogs in Canberra—a dog-loving, pet-loving city—of about 100,000 dogs in a decade.
I understand that accurate figures are difficult to get, but, whatever the number is, there has been a massive increase in the Canberra dog population. In the face of huge increases in dog numbers and an annual rate of increase in dog attacks of 30 per cent year on year for the past five years, the government’s response is to do less. For example, in 2007 Mr Hargreaves, an MLA at the time, said that there were eight dog rangers. In March 2018 the then minister, Ms Fitzharris, informed the Assembly in an answer to a question on notice that there were eight dog rangers. So in 11 years there remained the same number of dog rangers. For completely understandable operational reasons—I am not arguing with the reasons—the requirement now is for rangers to operate in pairs, when required, for safety reasons. That has been in place for approximately two years.
In effect, what that means is that there are then potentially only four teams of field rangers able to go out to respond to an incident. I am not quibbling in any way with the requirement to attend in pairs. Managing dangerous dogs is a difficult and unenviable task. It is difficult, it can be dangerous and it can be heartbreaking. But we must manage this problem for the good of the Canberra community.
We know that after the death of a woman in a dog attack in Canberra, the then minister, Ms Fitzharris, committed to providing resources to double the number of field rangers working in dog management. She announced in the Assembly in May
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