Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I was waiting for some more information, but I have plenty of things to say about this. I want to thank the member for Clark, Kristie Johnston, for bringing it on today. It is really important unfinished business for this state of Tasmania and we welcome voices like Ms Johnston’s and people in the community, the majority of Tasmanians, who want to have animal welfare laws that reflect the truth about animals. It is a well‑established fact that animals are sentient beings. It is not something that needs to be proven, although there are a lot more studies happening in this area because more research is coming through all the time about the fact that animals can feel feelings like fear. They can obviously feel pain and suffering, joy, excitement and pleasure. It is a huge range of emotions that we are seeing from people’s personal experiences.
Animals like birds – corvids are particularly clever birds that we know and love, but also the raven family and pigeons – have a cerebral structure that is strikingly similar to the cerebral structure for mammals. They can learn things; they are smart. Birds have been taught to speak. Birds are being taught to have existential conversations, as has been described by scientists.
A very old African grey parrot, Alex, was picked out as an everyday shop bird and specifically trained by scientists to prove the point that it was not a special bird, but an everyday bird. One scientist worked with Alex for years before he died. His ability to understand and pose his own questions was groundbreaking in itself. He was apparently the first non-human to ask a question.
We recognise how far Tasmania is lagging behind other states and territories and other countries in our animal welfare law. The Australian Capital Territory legislation has recognised sentience since 2019. The Victorian reform process acknowledges that animals are sentient beings with the ability to feel, perceive and experience what happens to them in a negative or positive way, including physical pain and emotions such as happiness, fear and distress.
New Zealand also recognised in 2015 that animals are sentient, and in the United Kingdom four years ago, the House of Lords introduce the Animal Welfare Sentience Bill into that House. That legislation reflects the majority of people’s views in those countries, and that is exactly why we should be listening to the community in Tasmania because, overwhelmingly, the community in Tasmania want to provide true wellbeing and protection for animals.
People, when surveyed, overwhelmingly love animals and are deeply concerned when they see images of suffering and distress. The images that were released by the Farm Transparency Project of video footage from inside a number of Tasmania’s largest abattoirs show images of cows who had obvious fear in their eyes as they were in pain and aware of what was happening to them because they could see the pain and suffering that was occurring to animals further down the line.
It is very well established that pigs are very special animals. Pigs can recognise pigs; they can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar pigs. They do not like being with unfamiliar pigs and they find that very stressful, just like most humans actually. It is challenging to be around people that you do not know when you are in a stressful situation and cooped up.
The question of animal sentience is not a question, and it is not something which we need to debate anymore. The only reason that we are having the conversation about debating is because it is put up as a straw horse, as an argument this government and previous governments have made for not changing the law. The reason that we do not change the law is not because the evidence is not there that animals have feelings – feelings of joy, pleasure, pain and fear – but because the industry is winning, and industry stakeholders see it as a threat. The big food agricultural industries see it as a threat. The racing industry sees it as a threat.
Rather than doing what other countries and other jurisdictions have done in recognising that if you really want to look after animals and give them true welfare, you must recognise their sentience. In Tasmania there is seemingly a fear and push back on this, as though certain industries would stop altogether. But there are ways of doing business. It is no surprise that the Greens do not, for example, support the racing industry, and we do not support the public subsidies of $30 million-odd a year that goes to the racing industry.
We do not support the secrecy and the cruelty of the practices and trainers – greyhound and horse trainers – that has been found on a number of occasions in their treatment of the animals in their care. That does not mean that there are not different ways that businesses can practise that reflect the reality of animals being sentient beings; it does not mean that businesses cannot change their operations accordingly to have treatment that is more respectful and less stressful.
There are things that can and have been done in other jurisdictions to provide true animal welfare for animals who are going to an abattoir. There are ways for animals to be killed that do not involve the pain and distress that we have seen happening in too many Tasmanian abattoirs. We do not have the evidence that that is no longer occurring, because we have not had the monitoring work and we have not seen an increase in money for enforcement. We do not have the information that anything has substantially changed in our abattoirs from the conditions that we saw there before Christmas time when that Farm Transparency Project information was released.
Honourable Speaker, how much more time do I have to speak?
The SPEAKER – You have 21 minutes and 20‑odd seconds, and the debate concludes at 3.20 p.m.
Dr WOODRUFF – Thank you.
Mr O’Byrne – Other people want to have a say as well, I am sure.
Dr WOODRUFF – Yes, I was not planning to speak for that long. I recognise the minister wants to say something. There have been horrific animal rights abuses in Tasmania in recent years that could have been avoided if the animal welfare reforms that have been campaigned on for years by hundreds of community members and organisations had been listened to and enacted.
I wanted to recognise Companion Animal Network Australia, RSPCA Tasmania, Dogs Home Tasmania, Tasmanian Dog Walking Club, Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary, Brightside Farm Sanctuary and Coalition for Protection of Greyhounds, Animal Liberation Tasmania, Farm Transparency Project, members of the veterinary profession and all the greyhound lovers that regularly contact us and work with us. These are the champions of animal welfare and animal rights in Tasmania.
It is the RSPCA and the Tasmanian community who have had to shoulder the financial and emotional burden about the recent closure of Tasmanian Labradoodles. It is RSPCA Tasmania that has had to undergo the lengthy battle and rely on huge donations from incredibly generous Tasmanians who have reached their arms out, put their hand in their pocket, and spoken up to foster and eventually rehome the 250 puppies Dr WOODRUFF – (cont) not just using them as objects to make money out of and treat with a lack of the attention we would expect to give another sentient being.
I will conclude by talking about the other things that are overdue in Tasmania, and it is part of a package. If we accept that animals are sentient beings, as the Greens do, then we have to establish an independent animal welfare commission with strong powers. That should have been done in the racing regulation bill. It should still be done. We also have to fully fund the RSPCA so that they are not relying on the good will of Tasmanians to do their important work. People can fund the costs of caring for labradoodles and put their hands up to foster them, but they are not empowered to go onto farms or racing trainers’ properties to do the enforcement work of the RSPCA. Unless that is properly funded, we can never get any justice and assurance that animals are being properly cared for by greyhound and horse-racing trainers, and by people who run abattoirs.
We also have to finish the work that then minister Jo Palmer promised to do last year, which was to introduce strong regulatory requirements for slaughterhouses. There needs to be mandatory, independently monitored CCTV and incident-reporting frameworks that hold the footage for a long period, and to have independent enforcement authorities assessing the footage. It cannot be self‑monitoring, which is what is happening at the moment in the slaughterhouse industry.
There is so much more that we can and should do for the animals in our lives. We do not need evidence to know that when you put your boots on and start to walk out the door, and you are not taking the dog on a walk, that they give you a look of pure dejection and unhappiness. That is a feeling. When you look into the eyes of the cat sitting on your lap and you can feel their contentment, it is not the same feeling they are expressing when they are lying by themselves on the couch. When you see your pet in pain going to the vet, you understand it is not just the pain; there is fear there as well.
If we have these emotions with our own animals – and we do, those of us who love and care for pets – then we know, by extension, that all the other animals we see in the world have those emotions and feelings. I do not understand, on behalf of the people who spend their lives working to protect animals, why this parliament will not commit today to bring sentience into an act in Tasmania so that animals can be treated with the justice and compassion they deserve.
