Page 3952 - Week 11 - Thursday, 26 September 2019
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animals in the ACT are treated with the care and respect that they deserve, no matter whether they are pets or wildlife. This legislation will better equip inspectors to respond to instances of abuse or neglect when they occur, and it will help to deter and prevent animal cruelty in all of its forms. I commend this bill to the Assembly.
MR STEEL (Murrumbidgee—Minister for City Services, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Recycling and Waste Reduction, Minister for Roads and Active Travel and Minister for Transport) (11.28), in reply: Our changes to the Animal Welfare Act are significant and well overdue. The Animal Welfare Act 1992 is now 26 years old, and a comprehensive review undertaken last year revealed the need to update it to reflect modern expectations. We have heard from many animal welfare stakeholder groups ranging from foster organisations to assistance animal organisations to the RSPCA of the need to make changes to the law, and our government has listened. We have sadly seen recent incidents across our city of animal welfare abuses and we need laws that allow us to take appropriate and balanced action against people doing the wrong thing.
The Animal Welfare Legislation Amendment Bill 2019 is an Australian first and positions the ACT as a leader in animal welfare management. It strengthens our legislation and provides an effective tool to address and deter animal welfare abuses. The majority of the Canberra community do the right thing by our animals. However, this bill is designed hold accountable people who choose to neglect, abandon or mistreat our animals.
The bill makes the ACT the first jurisdiction in Australia to recognise the sentience of animals. This means that our legislation can account for the proven fact that animals are not objects but instead beings capable of feeling emotion and pain. Just spending a few minutes with a dog makes this very obvious. It is a critical step forward in our understanding and application of animal welfare. Other jurisdictions in the world have already taken this step, including New Zealand, Canada, and countries in Europe. I am pleased that the ACT government can lead the way in Australia in recognising sentience as well as leading in other areas of animal welfare and management.
Canberrans should be able to expect a strong, enforceable and reliable framework for protecting animals from cruelty. Under the bill the ACT will have a fair and best-practice legislative framework that protects and acknowledges the intrinsic value of animals and prevents cruelty. The bill will empower our animal welfare authorities to take effective action in the unfortunate situation where animals are abused, mistreated, neglected or abandoned.
In 2017 the government released the animal welfare and management strategy which recognised the need to update our animal welfare laws by committing to a review of the act as an immediate action. This bill delivers on that outcome under the strategy. The community has made it very clear to us that they value the protection of animals and are looking to government to set the highest standards. Numerous engagements with the community have occurred since the strategy and the exposure draft of the bill were released last year. That community feedback has informed the bill and changes have been made as a result.
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