The ACT Labor government has proposed a new law requiring dog owners to spend a minimum of three hours per day with their pets. The proposal is part of the draft Code of Practice for the Welfare of Dogs in the ACT, which is currently open for public consultation.
The stated goal of the law is to improve dog welfare by mandating that owners spend a government-dictated minimum amount of time each day providing exercise, stimulation, and companionship for their pets.
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts raised an obvious question about the legislation, asking in a post on social media, “What about babies, toddlers? And primary school children, high school children?” It’s a fair point. If the government feels entitled to regulate our personal lives and dictate how we should spend our “free time,” why are they prioritising dogs over people?
The legislation becomes even more absurd when we consider how it would be enforced. How exactly will the government track whether dog owners are meeting the three-hour requirement? And who will monitor this?
This is not a genuine effort to improve animal welfare. It’s a further state intrusion into everyday life. That’s how statism often works. Nobody votes to have their rights and freedoms removed all at once. They’re taken gradually, one by one, and all in the name of “health and safety.”
It is, C.S. Lewis warned, the worst kind of tyranny. “Of all tyrannies,” he said, “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelties may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The draft plan is on public exhibition until August 22.
