2016-06-08
Adjournment in parliament: My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Housing, Disability and Ageing. I rise to speak about an issue that has failed to be addressed not only by the Victorian government but by the federal government as well. The issue is that people with assistance dogs are not provided with the same rights as people with guide dogs.
Assistance dogs provide a range of services to people with a disability. They can provide assistance with retrieving items for those who have mobility impairments, and for those with autism they can provide anxiety relief. These services are as essential to these people as guide dogs are to people who are vision or hearing impaired. Yet these dogs are not properly recognised under Victorian legislation. They are not exempt from the Domestic Animals Act 1994, as guide dogs are. This means they are subject to council registration fees.
Federal and state laws provide protection from discrimination for people using assistance animals. However, the protection is patchy. In addition, there are no legal frameworks for regulating the quality of assistance animals working in Victoria. In 2009 the Victorian Law Reform Commission recommended a reform to establish a simple regulatory scheme for the training, registration and identification of assistance animals. That was six years ago. Victoria could create a Victorian scheme, as recommended by the Victorian Law Reform Commission, or it could at least advocate nationally via the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) for reform. As far as I can tell it is doing neither.
In this day and age, this lax approach is totally unacceptable. A proper training and registration scheme would not only address this discrimination within the system, it would ensure quality control for assistance animals and better ensure the safety and wellbeing of the community. The action I am seeking from the minister is that he work to create a proper training, registration and identification scheme for assistance dogs in Victoria, act as a role model for this scheme to be rolled out to all states via COAG and amend the Domestic Animals Act 1994 to include assistance dogs in the exemption.