Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:38): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Agriculture. Last week the government announced its intention to introduce a new animal welfare act to replace the existing legislation. In the directions paper the minister states:

Victoria’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986 (the POCTA Act) has served Victoria well in this regard, but it no longer meets the needs of animal industries, the community or government.

Minister, one of the key findings from the Economy and Infrastructure Committee’s inquiry into the impact of animal rights activism on Victorian agriculture was that Victoria has extremely high animal welfare standards—in fact some of the highest in the world. There is an extremely relevant adage to this announcement: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. The current legislation appropriately balances the needs and rights of farmers with the importance of preventing cruelty to animals.

In the directions paper’s summary of proposals for the new legislation it explains that we need a new act so that we can properly recognise animal sentience. Sentience in the context of animal welfare generally refers to the ability to feel pain and pleasure. The current legislation prohibits any act that causes unreasonable pain or suffering to an animal. How much further will this new legislation have to go to satisfy the ideologues to whom this government seems beholden? In the animal activist inquiry two government members produced a final report that made outrageous recommendations that suggested animal activists should be allowed to trespass on farms to secretly install surveillance equipment by way of a public interest exemption and that CCTV cameras should be mandatory in abattoirs.

But this was not radical enough for some in the Labor Party, with Ms Terpstra dissenting from her own party and the government by rejecting their recommendations that there should be on-the-spot fines for trespassers and that data should be collected that distinguishes between theft of livestock by animal activists and non-activists. The Labor Party cannot make up its mind on whether it supports activists who invade farmers’ homes or the agriculture industry. The action I seek is for the minister to outline precisely what the Labor government does not agree with in the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986.