AAWS – where the bloody hell are you?

The Australian Animal Welfare Strategy or AAWS (pronounced ‘aws’) is an initiative of the Australian Government’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, with input from state and territory governments, industry and community. The AAWS and has the goal for producing a national strategy for animal welfare in Australia.


Today was the first day of their first ever conference, put together to give the opportunity for all stakeholders to have input into the way they will shape new national legislation in regards to animal welfare.


Disappointingly, although well represented by the RSPCA and the AWL (the latter using the opportunity to present to these influential parties their new national strategy which includes the Lort Smith), noticeably absent were – well, pretty much all the other rescue groups bar a couple.


Sure, a function like this can seem beyond the reach of independent rescuers, but if you’re part of an industry about to get a facelift with new government imposed legislation, you should probably be having input.


I’ll blog about the content of the conference over the next few days, but lets hope there’s enough people speaking on behalf of rescue that we get the result we need to be able to continue to do the work we do.


Sadly though, it looks like we’ve left these very, very vital decisions in the hands of the rest of the animal industry. And rest assured change is in the air.