Page 1771 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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not have dogs and cats in their windows. It is an outdated mode. We simply do not need it.
I am very disappointed that there has been such a clear gulf between the government’s rhetoric on this subject and its actions. If it seriously cared about animal welfare, it would agree with this bill in principle. As Ms Bresnan and Mr Rattenbury have pointed out, unfortunately, what we are seeing here is the government refusing to engage with the Greens. The government is trying to believe that it is in the previous Assembly when there was majority government. Mr Stanhope, this is no longer a majority government. There are three parties in this Assembly. We all have a role to play in this Assembly.
One of the roles of the crossbench, of the Greens, is to introduce legislation, and hopefully to have that legislation passed—at the very least, to have that legislation considered by the other two parties in this Assembly. It takes all of us to make this Assembly work. Between the three parties, we represent, hopefully, the views of the citizens of the ACT. All of us have a right to be heard and a right to have our legislation considered.
Apart from the impact on animal welfare, that is the other very depressing point about this debate. It does not seem to be acknowledged by the government that we, the crossbench, do have a real legislative role in the Assembly. That is what we have been elected to be—legislators. My partner says to me in the morning, “Go off and pass some good legislation.” That is our job here. I would like to see us all take that seriously as part of our job.
I would like to quote from another very positive letter that I received in my consultation. Ms Bresnan has quoted from one person, and I will quote from another ACT resident:
As a retail business owner, I can well understand the need for any business in this hard economic market to want to sell as much and as often as is physically possible. This is where the problem lays with the sale of pets in shops. It is a clash of cultures. You want to buy your product for as little as possible and turn over your stock as fast as possible. To do this, you need to source puppies cheaply and to sell them to the first person who wants them. Otherwise, your costs eat into very important profit margins. To suggest that this is not the case is a fallacy. No retail enterprise sells something unless it is profitable. To do otherwise would be to go out of business. And that is the impasse. You cannot ethically sell an animal and make a profit at the same time. Something has to give, and it always is and always will be the health and welfare of the animals involved.
I remind you that this is a letter from a pet store owner who has been in the animal industry for a long time, and it succinctly covers some of the issues in the debate.
I commend this legislation to the Assembly. I fear that it will not be voted for, but I do commend it to the Assembly.
Question put:
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