Thursday, 16 November 2023

Animal welfare

Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (17:53): (600) I rise this evening in a bit of disbelief, to be honest. The action that I seek is for the Minister for Agriculture to urgently overturn her recent decision to introduce a commercial dog breeder logo. As someone involved in the anti-puppy-farming campaign here in Victoria, including passing the Domestic Animals Amendment (Puppy Farms and Pet Shops) Bill 2016 in my capacity as president of Oscar’s Law, imagine my shock when I opened a government media release late on Friday night proudly giving a literal stamp of approval to puppy farmers. In my role as president I worked closely with the then Minister for Agriculture on consultation for Victoria’s landmark anti-puppy-farming laws. The original bill only allowed for 10 breeding dogs per breeder. The intention was to regulate puppy farms out of existence and make the model commercially and economically unviable in this state, given that most puppy farmers had between 50 and 300 breeding dogs. But when the bill went to a parliamentary inquiry, and without the numbers on the crossbench at the time, a concession was made to allow for a ministerial exemption where breeders could apply for up to 50 breeding dogs if they met certain criteria.

It was never the government’s intention for this to be in the bill, but it was the only way for it to pass. Now, years later, the government has designed and stamped a logo on these very breeders we had the intention of closing. I have two dogs from Barlow Kennels, who will now use this logo and are proudly promoted on the departmental website. They lived on concrete for three and eight years. They slept in plastic tubs, and they were scared of everything, including grass, when they came to me. They had skin and ear infections and even had a blown eardrum from not receiving basic veterinary treatment. One of these dogs, Aggie, still cannot be touched five years after her rescue and recently had every last tooth removed because she was never given dental care while at Barlow Kennels. I live with and help Aggie’s and Greta’s trauma every single day, and now this government is rewarding the very people who caused it.

This decision is promoting the government’s own concession on a bill that was never meant to exist in the first place. It is giving the handful of existing puppy farmers left in Victoria a monopoly on the market, fooling consumers that it is the right choice. ‘Commercial’ does not mean ‘ethical’, not to mention that there are many smaller registered breeders in this state who do not qualify for this logo because they are not large-scale commercial breeders under the legislation. This is a decision that will infuriate not only the animal welfare and rescue community but the registered dog breeding community too. We were proudly the first state to stamp out puppy farms in this country, and this half-baked decision that was not consulted on sets us backwards. I am pleading with the minister to reverse it immediately.