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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3325 ..

Debate resumed.

Clause 51.

MS TUCKER (4.49): I move:

This clause raises a major philosophical issue for animal liberationists. It establishes an offence that a person must not knowingly encourage a dog to attack or harass someone else or an animal. That is quite reasonable. I do not think anyone would want people going around encouraging their dogs to attack other people or other dogs.

However, the clause goes on to provide the exclusion that it is not an offence if the defendant reasonably believed the animal being attacked was vermin and the defendant was on land with the lessee's consent. The exposure draft of this bill used the term "feral animal", and it was fairly clear that this exclusion was primarily to allow farmers to use dogs to hunt feral animals on their properties. This bill has changed "feral animal" to "vermin" but provides no definition of what vermin is.

The Oxford and Macquarie dictionaries define vermin simply as animals of a noxious, troublesome, undesirable or objectionable kind, which could easily include many different types of animals, depending on who is deciding what is a desirable animal or not.

While the Greens accept the need to actively manage populations of non-native animals in order to stop them damaging our natural environment, we also believe that all animals have a right to be treated humanely. If feral animals need to be killed, then this should be done as quickly and painlessly as possible. However, we do not think that allowing a feral animal to be bitten and ripped apart by a dog or pack of dogs is very humane or very efficient, if we are talking about managing a whole population of feral animals in a particular area.

The Animal Welfare Act prohibits the killing of any animal in a manner which causes it unnecessary pain. This provision which allows people to encourage dogs to kill other animals is contrary to the Animal Welfare Act. Obviously, some dogs will naturally want to hunt other animals that stray, and we do not blame them for that.

While we accept that dog owners should not be liable if their dogs attack such animals as rats and mice of their own volition, this is quite different to actively encouraging dogs to hunt other animals. Dogs cannot distinguish between an animal that is vermin and one that is protected. If we let people train their dogs to be animal killers, there is every chance that they will go after other animals and, possibly, people if given the chance.

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