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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Wednesday, 4 August 2004) . . Page.. 3463 ..

to having a go at this and brings in his own bill, we might see some increased penalties that are probably even more deserving than this section. Twice as high a penalty as what exists at present is not as good as what I had, but I am quite happy to support it.

Amendment negatived.

MS TUCKER (5.31): I will oppose clause 5.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (5.31): The government opposes the clause.

Clause 5 negatived.

Clauses 6 to 20, by leave, taken together.

MS TUCKER (5.31): I will be opposing these clauses.

MR STEFANIAK (5.31): Obviously I am not going to repeat what I said but, in discussions on this, I was advised that certain members of the government were initially keen to support this bill. I wonder what happened. That was a point I neglected to make. That was passed on to me by persons in the area, and probably just reinforces the earlier points I made in principle as to why the government is opposing it.

MR STANHOPE (Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Community Affairs) (5.32): The government will be opposing these clauses.

Clauses 6 to 20 negatived.

Proposed new clause 20A.

MS DUNDAS (5.32): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name, which will insert a new clause 20A [see schedule 3 at page 3471].

As I indicated at the in-principle stage, this amendment goes to the question of why people commit crimes of violence against animals. It will cause courts, before sentencing a person found to be treating animals badly or violently, to issue a court order that the person submit to a psychological assessment, and that assessment and any recommendation for counselling or treatment arising from that assessment be taken into account when the court is handing down the sentence.

This goes to the heart of the problem that we have been debating today. It is looking at those root causes of crime and what we can do to prevent those root causes. We know that in some cases locking up people is a deterrent, but in other cases it is not. We have to understand why a crime has been committed in the first place and help those people deal with the issues leading them to commit crimes of violence against animals.

This was a specific amendment that the RSPCA asked be given consideration by this Assembly. It put forward the case that many studies have been conducted that verify a link between animal cruelty and violence against humans and that we should be looking at how we can be more proactive to break the cycle of violence that is

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