Page 3742 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 September 2018
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to seriously address what was becoming a major public safety issue, a major animal welfare issue and a major community concern.
He implored Labor and the Greens in this place to support a series of recommendations which included, for example, the following: (a) allocate more resources to investigate serious attacks by dogs; (b) allocate more resources for education about the responsibilities of dog ownership; (c) provide better feedback to victims about the progress of complaints about attacks by dogs; (d) review the law that allows dogs that have been found responsible for vicious attacks to be returned to owners; (e) review the law that allows dogs that have been found responsible for vicious attacks resulting in the death of other dogs to be returned to owners; (f) increase penalties imposed on owners where their dog has been found to have been responsible for vicious attacks resulting in serious injury to people and/or the death of other animals.
In case those present cannot remember what happened with Mr Doszpot’s motion in March 2017, let me refresh your memories. What happened with Mr Doszpot’s motion in March 2017? Nothing. Labor and the Greens removed all the words in Steve’s motion—all of them—and inserted a watered-down version in their own words that did not require the government to do very much at all.
At that time Ms Le Couteur said in her support of the government:
I am not convinced that even higher penalties will work, and I am reluctant to commit to even higher penalties without substantial community consultation.
Of all the reasons why we hear the Greens support the government over and over again, I found this very curious: consultation on increasing fines? When does that happen? Speeding fines, parking fines—when has there ever been community consultation about increasing these fines? I found it astonishing. Does Ms Le Couteur think that the owners of vicious dogs are a special group that deserve to be consulted, unlike owners of cars, for example, with regard to speeding or parking fines? It was yet another of the disingenuous excuses given to support the government.
Again, in support of the government’s do-nothing words in that motion, Ms Le Couteur said:
Do we really think that if a dog is mauling another dog it is going to stop because its owner might end up in jail? Clearly, that is nonsense … We are also concerned that increasing penalties may potentially have a disproportionate impact on low income families … What is the actual impact?
So this do-nothing motion was passed by Labor and the Greens and we soon saw the real-world impact. We soon saw what happened. In his summing up of that motion, Mr Doszpot said:
We were very hopeful that the motion I moved today would be accepted. We accepted the changes in good faith in discussions with your office. We were very happy that we could do something together. I was hopeful that for once we were
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