Page 867 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 March 2019
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loss, compounds their trauma. We must do better to address this issue. I urge all members here to support my motion today and I look forward to it passing.
MR STEEL (Murrumbidgee—Minister for City Services, Minister for Community Services and Facilities, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Roads) (4.18): I would like to start by acknowledging the terrible attack on Mimosa, the therapy alpaca, in Giralang last week. Our thoughts continue to be with Nils Lantzke, Alpaca Therapy and Hercules. The community can be assured that this matter is being investigated as a priority by domestic animal services. I have every confidence that DAS will thoroughly investigate this attack and will take compliance action as appropriate, supported by our robust domestic animals laws. I call on everyone in the Canberra community that may have any information about this attack to contact domestic animal services to assist in their ongoing investigation.
I am happy to support the core of Ms Lawder’s motion today. Who would not agree that the government should provide the necessary resources to ensure that our laws are enforced and that dog attacks are investigated? I want to assure the community that our government is providing and will continue to provide the resources that we need and is continuing to take action. The ACT now has strong and robust laws to manage dangerous dogs and irresponsible dog owners. The renewed education and awareness campaign which we are implementing this year will complement the strong compliance action for a comprehensive and best practice approach to reducing dog attacks and improving community safety.
In early 2019 DAS commenced the implementation of a new structural design that will enable more DAS rangers to be on the ground more often. DAS rangers will use these changes to conduct additional education and awareness functions in the community and will have a greater presence in public places, particularly dog parks and other off-leash and on-leash areas. This will see a greater capacity for compliance activities, to effectively address irresponsible dog owners and keep the community safe. This will not only assist in the enforcement of the new legislative improvements that were made in December 2017 but also help to prevent dog attacks through encouraging responsible dog ownership. In just over a year since the legislative reform we have commissioned independent expert advice on dog management and on the operation of domestic animal services and have doubled the available staff for the management of domestic animals.
While agreeing with the core of Ms Lawder’s motion, I will be amending her motion today to clear up the facts about dog attacks in Canberra. It is important to compare apples with apples. Ms Lawder’s current motion, as it is written, uses financial year figures for confirmed incidents and compares them with calendar year figures for all reports made to DAS, to create a number of false comparisons.
Let us be clear about the statistics. There were 360 confirmed dog attacks in 2017. In 2018 there were 392 confirmed attacks. The rate in 2017 and in 2018 in the ACT represents less than one attack on a person or another animal per 1,000 people, which is, I understand, about half the rate in other jurisdictions for attacks on people alone. Our approach to dog management must be based on the evidence.
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