STATE Agriculture and Food Minister Alannah MacTiernan has acknowledged the need for improvements to the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill 2017 after a committee report rejected most of her changes to the current act.
The Standing Committee on Legislation report was tabled at the end of June, after it had extended its time frame by two weeks, with 10 findings and 10 recommendations.
The report basically rejected the need for a new general inspector, and cited that the Animal Welfare Act 2002 was sufficient for searching private property to assess the welfare, safety and health of animals under threat.
It was highlighted that a warrant to search a property had never been denied under the current act, and to increase the powers of inspectors was unnecessary.
The report supported the bill proceeding to the point where it received parliamentary support to adopt the national standards and guidelines for animal welfare, but then the recommended that the rest be deleted.
The report quotes the RSPCA as supporting the adoption of national standards to bring WA in line with the rest of the country.
Ms MacTiernan responded to Farm Weekly questions saying that WA remained the only State that hadn’t given legal effect to endorsed national standards and guidelines on animal welfare.
“There is no point having national standards if they cannot be enforced – and this is inconsistent with the position taken by Liberal and National members of the Parliamentary committee,” Ms MacTiernan said.
“We acknowledge that the bill could be improved and we will look at amendments to address some of the issues raised by the committee.
“We would hope that these amendments will see the bill supported in parliament to bring our State into line with the rest of the country and to provide more certainty to industry.”
In March the minister said the main purpose of the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill 2017 Bill was to provide the statutory architecture for the adoption in WA of nationally agreed animal welfare standards and guidelines, via amendments to the Animal Welfare Act 2002, and to provide the means to regulate and monitor compliance with them.
The policy objective of the bill was to shift the focus of the third part of the act from being simply about preventing and punishing animal cruelty, to establishing and policing nationally agreed standards and guidelines for animals’ health, safety and welfare.
Enactment of the bill in its current form would also lead to the creation of a new class of animal welfare inspector, the ‘designated general inspector’, appointed by the relevant minister and with enhanced powers to enter premises and vehicles without consent, notice or warrant.
A number of new heads of power to make regulations would be created by the enactment of the bill, including a power to prescribe circumstances when defences to a charge of animal cruelty, as set out in the act, would not apply.
