Inaction on roaming cats is disappointing

IT is highly disappointing that the State Government has decided to not legislate for compulsory confinement of pet cats. Instead, the Government intends leaving it to each council to implement local by-laws (which is the case now) if they want to have powers to confine pet cats. When the draft Tasmanian Cat Management Plan was released in April 2016 the Minister for Primary Industries, Jeremy Rockliff, supported a phase-in of legislation to require pet cats to be confined to their property.

In response to a relatively low level of criticism from cat owners, the Minister has now done a complete turnaround and wants no role for the State Government. The Minister’s plan to leave it to councils to create by-laws is a guarantee of inaction. Even councils who are keen to control cats will probably not want to go down the lengthy and costly by-law process. The most disappointing thing about the Minister’s approach is that he has gone from a policy last year, where he wanted to bulldoze through a ban without considering cats owners, to a policy, now, that changes nothing, without considering a middle way.

The TCT supported the proposal for compulsory confinement if the Government phased in the ban, could provide low-income cat owners with assistance to construct enclosures, ensured that penalties were fair and that councils were not forced to police containment laws. Under our proposal, those councils wanting to regulate cat confinement would have appropriate and consistent powers and penalties available to them as soon as the legislation passed, without having to go through the one- to twoyear process of creating a by-law. But councils would only opt in where local communities supported cat control.

The State Government has ignored our recommendations and has instead given up taking any responsibility for cat confinement. This is extremely disappointing given that, in response to a survey run by the TCT at the end of last year, 92.1 per cent of non-cat owners and 46.2 per cent of cat owners in Tasmania supported compulsory confinement of pet cats.

We believe that the Government could increase the support of cat owners if it adopted our recommendations.