Page 1770 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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have repeatedly said that there are aspects of it that they do support—that they demonstrate this by voting for it in principle and then adjourning the detail stage. We would have been very happy to see that as a way of letting everybody express their concern about the problems of animal welfare at present, while enabling the processes which Mr Stanhope has talked about. If he feels they need more time, that would have been a way to do it. However, that does not appear to be the case.
I wrote to Mr Stanhope about the legislation in March. He did reply in March. Unfortunately, his reply was to say that he would not engage constructively in the process. He said:
I deplore the lack of process followed by you, your politicisation of the issue and the lack of integrity shown by the ACT Greens.
My response is that I deplore the lack of interest by the Assembly in real animal welfare issues. The fact is that we need some action on this sooner rather than later. I am very disappointed that we cannot have even in-principle support for actions to improve the welfare of animals in the ACT. We cannot have in-principle support to ban sow stalls in the ACT, and we cannot even have in-principle support for more effective cruelty provisions.
Without passing this aspect of the bill, the ACT will continue to have the lowest cruelty fines in Australia, and these need modernising. Not only does my bill address this issue, but it actually makes amendments that clarify the language to remove impediments to prosecution. As the Animal Welfare Advisory Committee wrote to me, it is currently difficult for authorities to know when an abuse is a contravention of the act, except in some very extreme cases. My bill, if passed, would address that. So I really regret this.
There have been a few issues which have been dealt with. Mr Coe seemed to feel that my bill was in some way an attack upon responsible pet owners. It is not in any way an attack upon responsible pet owners. You can buy a pet from a pet store, own it, love it and live with it responsibly. We have never said anything that would suggest for one minute that that was not possible or even, in many cases, desirable. What we are saying is that there are other ways of doing it and it is important that we stop impulse sales.
Every time I walk past a pet store and I see the kittens and puppies, it tugs at my heartstrings. That is what it is there for—the cute little doggie in the window. I will not sing it to everyone. That is what they are there for—to tug at our heartstrings. What we want is responsible pet ownership so that people who acquire a pet do it with the full knowledge of what is going to happen and what their responsibilities are. I do not want pet owners to be like I was as a very young child. I had absolutely no idea, when this cat turned up, about what we were doing with it. People should not be repeating some of the things that have happened in the past.
As Ms Bresnan mentioned, PETstock, who do not sell pets in their stores, is one of the fastest growing franchises. We do not need to sell pets in stores. PETstock are not the only people who operate totally successful pet stores that I have visited and who do
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