Take Action for Animals in NSW

In 2018, the NSW State Government released its 'Animal Welfare Action Plan' with a promise to modernise the forty-year-old framework underpinning the protection of animals in NSW, under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1979. In the process, it committed to improving compliance and enforcement, applying contemporary scientific evidence to ensure positive animal welfare outcomes, and listening to feedback from the community. 

After two stages of community consultation, the Animal Welfare Bill 2022, has been prepared to replace the existing animal welfare and protection legislation in NSW. Despite government rhetoric and promises, nothing has changed and the draft Bill offers almost no meaningful change to ensure stronger animal protection. Animals will remain defenceless in the face of the law. And they need us now more than ever.  

In homes, exploitative industries, and from the farm to the forest, all animals are facing growing threats. NSW has the highest number of chicken farms in Australia and the number of animals crammed in food production and commercial sheds continues to increase. The number of pigs confined in NSW has increased by 45% in the past decade. The majority of commercial duck farms are located in NSW. In vast sheds, ducks are confined to large, dry sheds and refused access to open water. 

NSW has pushed around 1,000 species and ecological communities to the brink of extinction. Despite this damning figure, their habitat is bulldozed to make way for intensive farms and expanding human developments. Our homes are where theirs once were. 

Meanwhile, others face increasing risk from bushfires and floods caused by the climate change our actions and diets produce. Those that survive are seen through shotgun sights. Iconic kangaroos are still hunted for their meat and skins or are gunned down as “pests”. 

In NSW, puppy factories continue to thrive, and our inadequate and antiquated pound and shelter system continues to fail thousands of healthy companion animals every year. Other species continue to suffer abhorrent cruelty and harm from experimentation or commercial exploitation by entertainment industries in racing, circuses, and zoos.

Our state is hell on earth for animals. 

When the NSW Government announced a series of reforms that implicitly recognised the failures and shortcomings in the current animal welfare framework and acknowledged that there is an urgent need for modernisation, we provided some basic recommendations to improve the fate of all animals across the State. 

We recommended:

• any emerging law must contain explicit recognition of animal sentience - failing to do so reflects a structural flaw that disregards modern science 

• the proposed law must prevent the differential treatment of animals based on their species or their intended purpose - the law must apply equally without prejudice or discrimination

• the animal welfare framework must be appropriately and transparently enforced - conflicts of interest must be abolished so that the government department responsible for overseeing animal protection isn't influenced by interests that rely on their commercial production 

• legislation must be consistent and adhere to contemporary and emerging community expectations - Australians expect and deserve stronger legal protections for all animals 

• an Independent Office of Animal Welfare must be established in order to ensure consistency and accountability.                 

The basic requirements to make the framework functional and ensure meaningful protections for animals are neither encoded under law or included. Unlike other recent reforms in other Australian states, NSW has refused to listen to the community. 

• the new law fails to recognise sentience - instead, it claims that merely acknowledging animals experience pain is sufficient to meet scientific evidence, international standards or community expectations

• the new framework continues to permit inadequate and weak codes of practice - this reliance legalises acts and practices that would otherwise constitute cruelty, including routine husbandry procedures without pain relief and the intensive confinement of animals in crates and cages

• the regulation and enforcement of animal protection remains under the control of a charity - no other public interest law is overseen by an underfunded charitable organisation

The NSW Government has simply rewritten and compressed an outdated law so that the people inflicting cruelty remain protected, instead of the animals they harm. It isn't worth the paper it was written on. 

Help us help animals by signing the petition.

If you’d prefer to, you can lodge a personal submission to the State Development Committee's Inquiry 'Animal welfare policy in New South Wales', incorporating the review of the draft Animal Welfare bill 2022, either by uploading on the government website or sending a direct emailing.