Deputy Leader for The Nationals and Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Mr Peter Walsh, read our response to the Bill and raised it in Parliament yesterday. The transcript in Hansard reads:
The goodfordogs.org website also gave some feedback on this legislation. It said:
Fines for failing to register or renew registration for a dog should be in proportion to the offence. Owners of impounded dogs should be given the opportunity to register their dog as a condition of its return but should not face steep fines that would result in more dogs remaining unclaimed.
I found that an interesting scenario. If you took that logic to the nth degree, most people would not bother to apply for a drivers licence until they were caught. There need to be some reasonably strong punitive measures for those who do not do the right thing and register their dog.
Mr Walsh disagreed with our suggestion that owners of impounded dogs “should not face steep fines that would result in more dogs remaining unclaimed”. Mr Walsh incorrectly read this to mean owners of impounded dogs should not be fined at all.
Goodfordogs.org went on to say that:
Breed-specific legislation (BSL) has been tried around the world —
as I mentioned —
and has not been shown to reduce the incidence of dog bites. Experts here and abroad are calling for a rethink on dangerous dogs with a focus on ‘deed not the breed’.
But, as I said earlier, once the deed is done it is too late.
Mr Walsh doesn’t dispute the fact that BSL fails to make us safer. Yet he still supports it. Why would a rational person decide the answer to correcting something that isn’t working is to do more of what isn’t working?
It doesn’t take a dog attack to know a dog is obviously dangerous. Perhaps our choice of words is misleading. ‘Behaviour not breed’ isn’t nearly as catchy as ‘Breed not Deed’ but it better describes what the experts are calling for.
A qualified dog behaviourist is much better placed to assess whether a dog is dangerous than a council worker with a ‘pit bull cross identification checklist’. So why don’t we ask these trained professionals to assess the temperament of suspected dangerous dogs?
