VICTORIAN LEGISLATIVE APPROACH TO CAT MANAGEMENT
The Victorian state legislation emphasises a regulatory
approach to cat management issues. This account is based on a
paper presented soon after the Act was introduced. The
paper was by Peter Penson, Director of Victoriaís Bureau of
Animal Welfare. 1
Prior to the proclamation of the Domestic (Feral and
Nuisance) Animals Act 1994, cats had no specific legal
identity in Victoria and cat owners had no legal protection under
law. There was no legal way to separate owned from unowned cats.
This meant that council officers and welfare workers were forced
to operate in a grey area. Although they were required to
euthanase thousands of cats, they could never be quite sure that
they wouldnít one day be sued for destroying someoneís owned
cat. Pressure was building and some local councils were
introducing their own local laws to protect their position. The
new Act was designed to introduce uniformity throughout
Victoria. (See: Pet cats need
protection)
The Act has two main objectives: first,
to stimulate promotion of responsible cat ownership, and second,
to enable local councils to mount an effective response to
nuisance, straying, unowned and feral cats. (For more information
on the Act, see:
Anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be a
number of problems with the
legislation.
This is not to say that the Victorian legislation is
unworkable. Some councils will find ways to work around the
problems. The goal of greater cat owner responsibility is
laudable, and the legislation has performed a valuable community
education role.
In any case, it must be remembered that Victoria was the first
state to have a go at dealing with the cat issue; to a large
extent, they were starting from scratch. Also, they undertook
their legislative reform at a time when the current trends towards
deregulation and community education were still gathering steam.
The Victorian efforts to make a legal distinction between owned
and unowned cats will be the foundation upon which all later
legislation in other jurisdictions will be based. Perhaps this
legal distinction does not need to be implemented through council
registration systems, but it does need to be done in some way.
Identifying owned cats is essential if the problem of unowned cats
is to be tackled while still protecting the rights of pet owners.
1.
Penson P. 1995. Victorian cat legislation. In: Paxton DW, Boland P, editors. Urban Animal Management: proceedings of the Fourth National Conference on Urban Animal Management in Australia (Melbourne, 1995). Sydney: AVA: 129-132.
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