Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d like to thank my colleague, Mr. Ramsay, for bringing this forward. It’s been a disappointment that we haven’t got to this. Early indications from the Ministers involved were that this would be coming forward. They later backed off on that. Apparently we have some limitations in our ability to draft legislation quickly and we certainly do have a lot of legislative needs. I can understand that, but I was, and I know many of our public were, disappointed that those early indications of commitments were not able to be met.
I think this does capture the comments we heard during our public consultations. We were not seeking consultations on the animal protection legislation but in my experience the majority of people speaking did mention that the Dog Act improvements were a good start but they definitely wanted to see comprehensive animal protection legislation. This is a step towards that and I think we want to be sure and follow up with this and make sure it’s profiled to the 17
th
Assembly as
called for in this motion. Thank you.