Animal protection
13 August 2026
Motion
Hon Amanda Dorn (10:08 am) without notice: I move:
That this house:
(a) notes the two tabled petitions calling for an Independent Office of Animal Protection and a Chief Animal Protection Officer for Western Australia;
(b) recognises that Western Australia lags behind other jurisdictions in failing to provide independent oversight of animal welfare;
(c) acknowledges widespread and growing community concern that the current system is compromised by conflicts of interest, lack of transparency, and weak enforcement;
(d) notes that Labor’s 2025 election platform promised an independent Office of Animal Welfare to oversee legislation, deliver a strategic plan, and report to Parliament;
(e) condemns the Cook government for breaking this clear election policy and failing to deliver meaningful animal welfare reform; and,
(f) calls on the Cook government to urgently establish an Independent Office of Animal Protection, including any necessary legislation and budget measures, and report back to Parliament with a clear implementation timeline.
Hon Amanda Dorn:
Crucially, I want to be precise about why the current system is failing, because this is not just a case of underfunding alone. In WA, the same government department charged with growing the economic value, productivity and profitability of industries that use animals is also responsible for investigating and enforcing animal welfare breaches from within those very industries. Essentially, the system asks the same department to champion industries built on the commercial use of animals, and at the same time be the animals' protector when they are treated cruelly or while they are being exploited for money.
Let me pause while that resonates. The system asks one institution to advance the interests of those who profit from animals, while also supposedly safeguarding the animals whose welfare can come into direct conflict with that profit. This is akin to putting the fox in charge of the hen house. The regulator and the industries it regulates sit within the same policy environment, answerable to the same minister, and subject to the same economic, budgetary and political pressures.
Hon Jackie Jarvis : You could have asked these questions during estimates if you'd bothered to turn up.
Hon Amanda Dorn : Thank you, minister.
We would recognise the conflict immediately in almost any other area of government, yet when it comes to animals, we have allowed it to become business as usual. When these competing interests collide, the animals are the only ones in the equation that have no power and no voice. They are the innocent—indeed, the voiceless—because essentially we have put the interests of the exploiter and the protection of the exploited into the same hands. This is what has been coined "regulatory capture"—a well-documented pattern where the decisions of an agency are shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by its ongoing relationships with the industries it polices, and by the political sensitivities of the government it serves. It does not require any officer to act in bad faith.
Hon Dr Steve Thomas (11:11 am) : I probably consider myself somewhat of the expert in the room on animal welfare because not only am I still a registered veterinarian, but also I have been debating this for 20 years in this place. I started 20 years ago in the other house, the Legislative Assembly, and there was an interesting point when the Labor Party sought to attack the then Leader of the Opposition, Hon Paul Omodei, and it did so on his questioning of the RSPCA's intent on a couple of animal welfare cases. I stood up to defend Hon Paul Omodei by giving my experience of the somewhat political and highly biased activities that I had seen the RSPCA undertake. It is not perfect. It occasionally takes on cases that it should leave alone or work with producers to cover. As I stood up to explain that the RSPCA did, in fact, take on cases purely to try to punish somebody, I was threatened with being named by the then Speaker of the Legislative Assembly because the Labor Party did not like the fact that there was a dose of reality coming its way. The Speaker tried to explain how me talking about the functions of the RSPCA was not relevant to a debate about the RSPCA. It was one of the most biased and disgraceful episodes that I have ever been a part of in that place.
The RSPCA generally does a very good job, but it is not perfect. Where it falls down is where it becomes biased and political in its agenda. The problem with the motion before the house today is that it comes with an even greater bias and political agenda.
I have a lot of respect for Hon Amanda Dorn. I think she is passionate about her issues, but I took note today of her description of the farming community as exploiters and I found that deeply offensive. To describe the farming community as exploiters is a disgraceful comment to make. I think that was disgusting.
Her problem is that the farming community, like the RSPCA frequently, is doing its best in a difficult set of circumstances. Animal welfare is a very difficult thing to deliver and I think government members have found that out because they probably made some commitments that sounded good in an election campaign but were largely undeliverable, and now we see them back-pedalling, as they frequently do. It is not the only dud policy it has announced, but that is okay; we will get there eventually.
In my view, we cannot debate the bill proposed by Hon Amanda Dorn in this place because of the Constitution Acts Amendment Act 1899, which says in section 46:
Bills appropriating revenue or moneys, or imposing taxation, shall not originate in the Legislative Council;
I have actually fallen foul of that before with bills that are much more simple and simply ask the government to do things differently, where the government will use that to make sure that you do not get your bid in. In this case, though, reading the bill, it seems incredibly plain to me that it calls for a new position and a new department and staff, all of which require an appropriation. For the bill to progress, we need a message from the Governor to say that an appropriation is approved, and I do not see that happening anytime soon.
It is not necessarily accurate to say we could have debated the bill. I do not think we could because it would have to originate in the other house, so we are stuck with this position. I understand the passion of Hon Amanda Dorn in trying to present animal welfare issues, but the reality is that it is not so simple and I think an agenda that anthropomorphises the animal community to the point that it puts it on an equal footing is disturbing to the vast majority of Western Australians.
The vast majority of Western Australians do not want to see unnecessary cruelty, but they do not want to see this process of the radicalisation and demonisation of those people who are engaged in animal industries. They do not want to see that. I understand that the majority of Western Australians still eat meat. I know I certainly do. I think I should have more meat in the parliamentary dining room, if we could help that—barbecue lunches would be useful. I am happy to say I am carnivorous.
The majority of Western Australians join me in that. They do not want to see unnecessary cruelty, but they do not put animal awareness on the same platform as they do for human beings. That means this is entirely about compromise. We have debated this. I looked back. The last time I remember debating it fully was back in 2018. I did it for the Veterinary Practice Act more recently. Members will be surprised to learn that in 2018 I spoke for nearly an hour in the second reading debate on the last animal welfare bill—because I am normally so quick!
The reality is that this has been an area of passion for my entire career and, from growing up on a farm, throughout my entire life. Animals are important, but they are not equivalent to humans despite their level of sentience. When the member introduces legislation that puts forward an ideology that changes that, it is almost impossible to deliver. I think the government has worked that out. This was what happened, of course. It goes into an election and it makes stuff up, and things get said. Its entire energy policy is out the window. I imagine its entire animal welfare policy will be out the window sometime soon. Going into an election means we will be back to Yes Minister. These election commitments are not made under oath, so what happens is we see a few backflips and a little bit of Olympic-standard gymnastics going on. It is not unusual.
The government has worked out that this agenda is probably undeliverable and what it needs to do to improve animal welfare is work with the people who are involved with animals to get the best possible outcomes. The demonisation of people who work with animals and produce animals is the biggest enemy to a cooperative approach. If you tell farmers that they are bad people, why would they work with you? I suspect that the Minister for Agriculture and Food has had to figure this out. To sit here and listen to someone describing the farming community as exploiters in this debate has set this debate back years, because the only way to improve outcomes in this argument is to actually work with those people.
Don't worry; the government is good at demonising people. It demonised firearm owners. It is good at demonising people, but it cannot do that to the farming community and we cannot maintain an industry under those circumstances, so it has to be cooperative.
We currently have an animal welfare system and there were enormous fights over it 20 years ago. The farming community was up in arms. The opposition was vehemently opposed at that point to the RSPCA taking over prosecution of farmers because, bear in mind, there were some dud leaders of the RSPCA. The current ones are pretty good. I give them their due. There was a veterinarian, Dr Hugh Wirth, who was the enemy of anybody in the farming community. He was there for a long time. He was an enemy of the farming community who led the RSPCA down a path of demonisation and opposition. He did enormous damage to the RSPCA. He did enormous damage to the relationship between government, the farming community and the RSPCA. It was disastrous, and we are now proposing to go down an even more disastrous path.
As far as I understand, the RSPCA still wants to maintain prosecutions. I understand that it wants to keep doing that, but this motion seeks to put another bureaucracy in place to compete with the RSPCA for that process, which would ultimately split the inspectorate even further. The reason the inspectorate for production animals was left with the department of agriculture 20 years ago—it has a funny name now, but it was the department of agriculture—was the conflict that was being encouraged between the farming community and the RSPCA as regulators. That is why governments had to compromise and do what is currently done. There was a compromise to stop the proposed demonisation and warfare.
Today, we will not get to the bill because, in my view, the bill cannot originate in this house, and I have no doubt that the clerks will be consulted in the fullness of time and will offer that advice, but if we go back down the path of demonisation of those who manage animals, we are back to 20 years ago. We would destroy the relationship the government should have with the farming sector, and the farming sector would rightly walk away.
I cannot explain the level of my disappointment and disgust at the description of the farming community as exploiters. That to me has destroyed the debate today. This debate should recede and hopefully will never rise again.
