Animal Welfare Act to be reviewed
As the custodians of millions of animals, livestock producers will be interested in the recent announcement by the Minister for Agriculture Alannah MacTiernan about plans to review Western Australia’s animal welfare laws.
The review will provide a new legal framework for modernising the administration of animal welfare laws in Western Australia, in line with community standards. This will apply to all animals both domestic pets and commercial livestock.
The independent review panel will be chaired by WA barrister and regulatory law specialist, Linda Black who has professional experience in animal welfare. Other panel members will provide senior veterinary, animal welfare and livestock industry experience.
RSPCA WA supports the review of the Act, which we believe is no longer fit for purpose because it is largely a reactive offence-based regime. This limits the ability of inspectors to proactively intervene to prevent animal suffering before it occurs. It also doesn’t provide inspectors with basic powers that are in place in most other States and Territories around the country. For example,
Inspectors can’t enter a place to check compliance with animal welfare directions that might have been issued previously to a person in charge of an animal/s. Instead, inspectors must rely on other powers of entry, which generally require a suspicion that an offence in relation to an animal has occurred. This severely hampers ability to prevent a situation escalating from, for example neglect, into outright cruelty.
At times, courts prohibit people found guilty of an animal cruelty offence from owning animals or having control of them for a period of time. But, under the current Act, inspectors have no power to check that the orders are being observed or to remove animals from a person who is contravening an order of the court.
Education of people in charge of animals is often the first option if there is a welfare issue. But there are times when people in charge of animal/s refuse to follow advice. In such cases, animal welfare inspectors in WA are not empowered to issue infringement notices. Infringement notices are a key enforcement tool in other States and Territories for efficiently dealing with those matters where the legislation has been breached but the breach is not of the level of seriousness that would warrant full prosecution.
Overall, we believe that an updated, contemporary Animal Welfare Act would prevent many cases of animal cruelty. This, in turn, could reduce the number of criminal prosecutions for animal cruelty leading to better outcomes for both the community and our animals.
The review is expected to take a year from now and it will include a community consultation period.
Posted on in Animal welfare