On Saturday October 17, Hobart will join with every capital city in the country to demand a ban on the live animal export trade. The Hobart rally will be at Parliament Lawns between 3.00p.m. and 4.00p.m., with speakers Andrew Wilkie, Cassy O’Connor and Suzanne Cass, together with a powerful recorded message from Animals Australia’s Chief Investigator Lyn White.
This follows the airing last Monday night’s 7.30 program of atrocious cruelty to Australian sheep across the Middle East during the Festival of Sacrifice. Hobart organiser Suzanne Cass said: ‘Animals Australia has been investigating and filming this cruelty and violence inflicted on Australian animals in overseas markets since 2003, yet still it continues. In 2011, after the expose of appalling cruelty to cattle in Indonesia, the Australian people were promised that new regulations would put a stop to it, yet month after month, year after year, Animals Australia has been able to prove that nothing has changed’.
Animals Australia says that it has lodged 40 extensive legal complaints of breaches of the ESCAS regulations, which have impacted upon thousands and thousands of Australian animals, yet not a single penalty of any meaning or substance has been imposed on any of the delinquent exporters. And it says they are repeat offenders. Animals Australia says that no other industry is above the law, yet exporters get away with breaking the law over and over, with no action ever taken. And these are multi-million dollar companies.
‘The Department of Agriculture and Water has received 84 complaints of ESCAS violations, yet has investigated less than half of them, with one from Kuwait dating as far back as 2014’, said Ms Cass. ‘In the case of those it has completed, it has simply left the exporters investigate themselves, and the most serious “action” has been a ‘notice of non compliance’ – which is absolutely meaningless, and it’s just business as usual’.
Ms Cass is urging Tasmanians who were shocked and disgusted by yet another expose of horrific cruelty to come along to the rally.
‘We need to send a powerful message to the Turnbull government that enough is enough. Barnaby Joyce has been a disgraceful failure, and he should be sacked from his portfolio. Placards will be available, as well as information about how people can help end this atrocity’.
