Page 110 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 25 February 2014
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I pay tribute to the many animal welfare activists who have raised their voices over the years and campaigned hard to help our community come to understand the inhumane conditions that battery hens and sows in stalls were forced to endure, those individuals who argued and kept arguing that there was a better way. I commend the many individuals, animal rights lawyers and organisations along the way that have persevered over the years to help shift the animal welfare debate, including the RSPCA, Animal Liberation, Free-Range Canberra, Animals Australia, and Voiceless, to name but a few.
I would like to thank the staff at the Parliamentary Counsel’s Office and also Adam Roach in my directorate for the work that they have done on this bill to ensure that it is technically correct, that it meets the expectations that we set out when we went to draft this bill and that it will stand the test of time. I would particularly like to acknowledge my fellow Greens MLAs, who have tabled six other related bills during the Third, Sixth and Seventh Assemblies, culminating in this issue becoming an item in the Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement for this Eighth Assembly.
It has been a long and frustrating road, given that the very first of these bills—to ban the sale and production of battery cage eggs—was passed in the Third Assembly in 1997. However, it was never able to commence due to commonwealth Mutual Recognition Act regulations.
I am proud to follow the many former Greens MLAs who have all fought for animal welfare improvements in their time in the Assembly to ensure that the voiceless received a voice in our parliament. To Lucy Horodny, Deb Foskey and Caroline Le Couteur in particular, I thank you for your work and momentum. It is a pleasure to finally bring these laws to fruition.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Detail stage
Bill, by leave, taken as a whole.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Housing, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for Ageing) (5.22): I thank members for their support of the bill today. As I outlined when I presented this bill, the Animal Welfare (Factory Farming) Amendment Bill 2013 amends the Animal Welfare Act to outlaw two forms of factory farm in the ACT: battery cage farming for egg production and sows stalls and gestation crates used in pork production, or just stationary crates in fact.
The bill also creates a new offence of trimming or removing a fowl’s beak. That is one of the key focuses of these amendments, which is a common but cruel practice in the factory farming industry. Today I am moving amendments. I seek leave to move amendments Nos 1 to 7 together.
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