There have been a number of horrific attacks by Pit Bull Terriers in Australia. Recently, an elderly Queensland woman was severely mauled. I was asked yesterday if the QLD Government would consider taking action in relation to Pit Bull Terriers on a state wide basis. My answer to that is yes. We will look at what, if anything, can be done to curb these vicious attacks.
As members know this is normally the responsibility of local government. Over the centuries these dogs were breed to kill. 

A number? What number, and where are the details with confirmation that the dogs were APBTs? Even if there were a few serious attacks by this breed, restricting a whole breed is an inappropriate response discredited by all animal management and dog behaviour experts in Australia and overseas. At the least, it would have to be shown by objective data that this breed commits the majority of serious attacks on people, and that the breeds typical character is one of aggression towards people. The recorded data show the opposite. Of a known 11 human deaths, caused by dogs in Australia in recent decades, at least 4 breeds were involved but most were crossbreeds. Not one was caused by an APBT, unless Barbara Stringer is counted and that dog is known by experts involved in the case to have NOT been an APBT. Furthermore, bite data from 19 Queensland councils show that of 750 dog bites to people only 8 were by APBTs)

Many dogs of many breeds had vastly different uses than they have today. These breeds were bred to fight other dogs. One thing has been left out here, that is any human aggressive dogs were killed, regardless of the reason. They were too dangerous to handle in this situation. Bull Terrier type dogs are not born human aggressive. However certain types of people are drawn to own them. Also if these dogs were not available undesirable people would soon train another dog to be human aggressive.

They were breed specifically for their strength and fierceness. However, it is clear from the internet that American Pit Bull Terriers are still specifically being breed to kill. There are Internet sites in the United States containing graphic reports detailing how one pit bull killed another bite by bite.

 APBT were bred originally for dog fighting, and while their long history has seen most dogs used as farm and stock dogs or pets, some people in America and elsewhere illegally fight dogs, though these are a tiny fraction of the total breed population. Yes, these criminals have internet sites with horrific details. The internet is difficult to regulate and crime is hard to prevent, but it is not customary for democratic governments to penalise innocent people because other people commit crimes.

These dogs have not been bred for fierceness, but for a drive to fight other dogs. Even dog fighters have families and don't want their children mauled by their dogs. Fighting dogs are known for their friendly temperament towards people, as selection for this trait has been as strong as selection for dog aggression. Even the breed's enemies concede that.

 In any case, dogs cannot be bred to be vicious. Behaviour of complex animals is an end product of several interacting influences of which is the actions of genes. Though the breed was developed to fight, at least as many individuals are not dog aggressive as are dog aggressive. This is because genes cannot produce an effect without appropriate environmental and other input. APBTs can have any character and behaviour depending upon their overall environment, and it is folly to attempt to end a certain type of dog behaviour by trying to eliminate a small segment of the dog gene pool. This is not possible anyway, as dog breeds have no reality in discrete units within overall species genetic variability.

 Mr. Beattie's dog, Rusty, has a certain engaging character and behaviour pattern, yet he could be
anything had he been raised in different hands. He could be madly aggressive; a fear biter; a compulsive barker; an out-going confident dog or a cowering, nervous psycho; an attacker of other dogs; a cat killer or a cat lover; a poultry killer or a poultry guard. He could be anything a dog
can be. 

This is true for every APBT, and for every other dog. What relevance do American criminals have with our dogs? If they can not be imported do they magically influence our dog? Also your time would be better spent focusing on these criminals, as they seem more deserving. These people are also the very minority of owners and a criminal element. This sounds like we are all being labelled as fighting our dogs. Every owner of this breed I have met ABHOR this practice. We are not criminals and do not like the accusation. The government has no argument to our dogs here.
 Our dogs are not fighting dogs.

 Proud breeders advertise how they have deliberately bred their dogs from the fiercest and strongest lines. They are breed to kill other American Pit Bull Terriers of a similar weight over and over again. They are killing machines nothing morethan killing machines. It is plain there is no place in our suburbs for killing machines such as these.

When you say fiercest, you mean gamest. It may be true to see such dogs after careful socialisation and training as machines for killing other dogs in pits. However it's silly to see them as killing machines in general. They don't kill their owners or handlers, and their aggression is target species specific, as is that of terriers or hunting dogs that were developed to kill a wide range of animals.

This once again has nothing to do with owners of these type dogs here. You are not describing our breeding practices! If I were aware of anyone committing crimes like this I would be reporting it. These fanatical people will continue their """SPORT""" regardless of the breed or crossbreed they
are forced to use. If this practise has indeed invaded Queensland, the people involved have nothing to do with our clubs/members/owners. This would be for fear of being reported. However if they are, we do not breed with their dogs!!! Once again you have no argument here.

Also on the Internet is a site owned by the Australian Dog Breeders Registry. The sight says, "We are the only registry for the American Pit Bull Terrier in Australia". It has a direct link under the title of interesting reading to the Pit Bull Reporter in the United States. In the Pit Bull Reporter one can read how a "perfect" southern gentleman named Boudreaux has breed fighting dogs for more than 35 years and can read bite-by-bite account of an hour long dog fight involving one of his champions, or so called champions. As I say there should be no place in our society for these fighting dogs.

We don't have Boudreaux's fighting dogs here. His dogs are the product of his actions. Boudreaux also fights fowls, but we don't talk about them as killing machines, yet they, like his dogs, kill each other but not people. Indeed, the cocks are much more likely to attack people than the dogs are.

I have been to this site and been unable to find this link. However if it was there, does it mean the ADBA supports dog fighting? The material could be intended to inform people about what is happening. They are a kennel open to the public in Western Australia, so it is unlikely that they engage in illegal activities. Their home page shows their children hugging an APBT with the title
"HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR PIT BULL TODAY" Even if they were condoning dog fighting this would put them in to the tiniest minority of APBT owners.

According to the Internet, other governments have found it difficult to define a Pit Bull.
One answer used in the United States is defining dangerous dogs as including American Pit Bulls and any dog exhibiting the appearance and characteristics of the breed.

This has been tried and repealed as ineffective many times. This law is seldomly kept for more than a couple of years when it is realised that many other breeds, when not responsibly owned are dangerous. This is only the very minority of some municipalities. NO State in the USA has any breeds banned. Indeed, the largest state, California, has a statute prohibiting local authorities regulating dogs by breed. The approach using appearance as a criterion for restriction has caused nothing but grief to individuals and trouble and expense to authorities, and it is thoroughly discredited. It makes no logical sense. Even if APBTs were inherently savage dogs, a dog can look substantially like one but share none of its behavioural characteristics and have no APBT genes, if there are such things. 
Another dog could exhibit APBT behavioural characteristics but look nothing like one. When not even genotype, but one aspect of phenotype is used to declare a dog dangerous, the authorities have descended to a level of absurdity and ignorance seldom seen in democratic government.

 Since June: France has required all attack dogs including Pit Bulls to be sterilised. The law is aimed at eliminating dangerous dogs from the country within 10 years.

 This is misleading. Is the Labor party in favour of this? They actually banned every large dog breed, including Rottweilers, Dobermans, German Shepherds, Mastiffs, all Bull and Terriers and many, many more. They now have a new dangerous animal problem caused by irresponsible people.

France is very ill-advised in this. Individual dogs are dangerous, not breeds of dogs. If dogs were dangerous because they carried certain genes (the implication of this measure) removing some breeds from the country will not remove the offending genes, which will occur at a certain frequency throughout the entire dog population. If irresponsible owners make dogs dangerous, there is no reason to assume they won't make individual dogs of remaining breeds dangerous.

 Countries which have banned the Pit Bull, are Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Holland.

The context here is to try to convince the parliament that these countries have also banned the APBT so we need to also. This is misleading parliament. 

Sweden: Has no dogs banned from import or BSL on any domesticated dogs. Wolf hybrids are forbidden in accordance with Cities regulations.

Holland: has restricted the APBT in 1993. However a decision was made on the 13 March this year that this Breed is not responsible for many of the dog bites. 

Denmark: Pit Bull Terrier and Tosa are prescribed.

Netherlands: 1993 Prohibited to import APBT into the country.

 In the USA there is a variety of laws aimed at dealing with Pit Bull Terriers. In one ordinance, dangerous dogs must be leashed and muzzled when not confined to the owner's property and owners must carry $100000 of liability insurance.

 Again this is misleading and would suggest the Pit Bull is the cause of all dog attacks and widely banned in the USA.

There are 10 municipalities that have banned Pit Bulls
10 municipalities that have banned Rottweilers
 3 municipalities that have banned Dobermans
 2 municipalities that have banned Chows
 1 municipality that has banned Shar Peis

 These Municipalities change policies regularly, and rarely keep their bans in place. They also report that even after the bans are implemented dog attacks continue. This approach is taken by a very tiny proportion of the country's local jurisdictions. The above statement tries to mislead one to think large areas of the USA have BSL. Also, some areas have bans on, for example, Rottweilers and Dobermans but not PIT BULLS.

Another dog law bans Pit Bull Dogs. This includes but is not limited to American Pit Bull Terriers, Staffordshire Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers and any mixed breed of dogs that includes these dogs.

How can anybody determine that a crossbred dog has one of the targeted breeds as an ancestor? Does it have to be a parent, or is a grandparent sufficient? The Nazis considered a person 1/8 Jewish to be Jewish and to exhibit the unwanted characteristics of that people. Is this the model being followed?

When this bill is implemented and fails to reduce dog attacks, will ALP policy be to keep banning dog breeds? Or is the ALP going to realise people are the cause of dog attacks?

 Another Jurisdiction insists on Pit Bull being spayed or neutered. They are specifically licensed with an accompanying photograph and cannot be owned by anyone under 21 years of age.

There is merit in having secure registration measures for all dogs. The desexing makes no sense.

This approach has failed to reduce dog attacks in frequency or severity in, for example, the UK. The APBT is responsible for a tiny minority of even serious attacks both overseas and in Australia. Also, when you hear that Pit Bulls are supposedly responsible for in the vicinity of 40% of
fatalities in the USA in a certain decade this is misleading and false. In this context "Pit Bull" means ALL of the more than 5 BULL BREEDS AND ANY CROSS OF THEM. How can all these attacks be attributed to the American Pit Bull Terrier? Certainly APBTs were involved in some of these deaths, but the USA over the decades has maintained a steady rate of about 20 human
deaths per year caused by dogs. The breeds most heavily implicated have changed through time, however, as new breeds become popular, especially with irresponsible people. Since the early 1990s the proportion of APBTs involved in fatal attacks in America has dropped dramatically. The
important point is that dog aggression is the result of complex dog and human interaction, and the actions of the people are enmeshed in the sociological factors of their communities, which differ greatly from Australian sociology. WE have had NO human deaths caused by APBTs.
 

In response to a dog attack on a child, GERMANY recently passed legislation banning three breeds of dogs: American Staffordshire Terrier, Staffordshire Terrier and Pit Bulls.

This is total misinformation designed to mislead and biased in a way to reveal only parts of the story. Let's blame the breed, as it must be the breed and could not be the person! They actually banned 47 breeds NOT 3! Because the full truth is not told here I will tell It!

The list of banned breeds is wide ranging but there is one omission. The German Shepherd Dog (GSD). No one from the EDBA is suggesting that the GSD is more prone to aggression than other breeds. However in 1998 a survey was conducted in Germany to log the number of bites per breed
compared to population. List as follows.

 GSD cross 2379
 GSD 1956
 Rottweiler 542
 Doberman 223
 All Bull And Terriers 169
 Rhodesian Ridge Backs 6

In Hamburg, Germany, on June 26, an APBT and an American Staffordshire Terrier mulled to death six year old Volkan Kaja. These dogs were unrelenting in their attack. Their owners were unable to stop them. The police finally arrived and shot both dogs dead.

This is all that was reported in Australia and it was reported in the context of the ban being justified and sensible. It was reported only that they banned the APBT and other attack dogs.

The real truth was hidden, as usual. The owner, Ibrahim Kulunc, 24, was a known to the police as a drug dealing gangster. He had been convicted 17 times for robbery, grievous bodily harm and dog fighting. When the attack happened, the dog, Zeus, was already subject to a control order requiring him to be muzzled in public. This after he had bitten another person. An autopsy on Zeus revealed he had been used many times in fights and had large amount of STEROIDS and SPEED in his body and had not been fed for at least three days. Neighbours said that Ibrahim had trained Zeus to attack people and trained all of his dogs to do so.

At the time of the attack Zeus was unmuzzled and off lead, even though he was subject to a control order. What followed was predictable. The government banned American Pit Bull Terriers, all of the Bull and Terriers, Bandogs, all Mastiffs, Rottweilers and 40 more breeds. The strange thing is they did not ban the German Shepherd Dog, which causes the most human deaths from dog attack in Germany.

Had this been, for example, a Labrador would you consider a ban appropriate? Incidentally, there has been at least one death of an owner caused by a Labrador in Australia. Since this attack there have been at least two more fatal attacks by the dogs in Germany. The stated reason to ban the listed breeds was to eliminate fighting dogs, as they were characterised as devil dogs, loaded guns, and dogs that attack the throat etc. One year after this terrible incident dog attacks have not reduced from the levels of the previous year, even though the Government killed an unknown but substantial number of dogs in the fashion of the Jewish Holocaust, and those left are kept under strict regulations muzzling etc. The reason dog attacks continue is that the bad owners are still in control of dogs, and any type of dog can be made dangerous. 

Despite repeated requests from the European commissioner, David Bryne, for clear scientific evidence that these breeds are a danger to man, the German Government has failed to provide such evidence, thus making the law illegal under the terms of EU law. Meanwhile the law is being challenged in the European court, while one of the state laws has been ruled illegal and unconstitutional by German courts. Does the ALP suggest such a laws are suitable for Australia?

In the European countries that followed Germany's lead there has been no reduction in dog attacks either in severity or number. This alone is enough to suggest that we should be looking at what type of laws have actually reduced dog attacks in other countries.

We will investigate the success of these laws. Like many people in this house, I am a proud dog owner and I love my dog.

Well! We are proud dog owners too, we love our dogs and are also responsible dog owners. We have researched these laws and can find no documented evidence to support them. They do not reduce dog attacks, which is the claimed justification for their implementation. They do not stop severe dog attacks because severe dog attacks are caused by severely negligent, irresponsible dog owners. These laws have not been successful. There have been at least 2 FATAL attacks in Germany in the last 12 months. So what research and evidence does the ALP have to support this approach? We have the right to know!!!

 Mr. Bredhauer: Rusty 

Mr. Beattie: He is a great dog, a bit fat, but a wonderful dog. I do not think any sensible dog owner would support Pit Bull Dogs. I table print outs of some Pit Bull sites on the internet, together with reference to some of the anti Pit Bull Laws introduced in various Jurisdictions.

He is a great dog because he has had positive experiences and handling. Sensible owners of Pit Bulls will have dogs just as "great" as Rusty. There is an attempt here to denigrate Pit Bull owners as well as the dogs themselves. After all, if the dogs were as bad as claimed, the implication is that only a fool or scoundrel would harbour one. . Well this is totally offensive and designed to be slanderous and derogatory to myself and all Bull & Terrier owners. It is also offensive to most responsible pure breed owners. Many of my friends are registered breeders and they have all taken offence to this. This is very far from the case. The excellent safety record of the breed in Australia demonstrates the responsible care of the owners. Mr. Beattie YOU have called most registered dog owners not sensible. Registered Breeders and most Pit Bull Type dog owners are the most responsible of dog owners in this state and country. This remark deserves an apology publicly. It is most offensive, derogatory and unfounded. What evidence does the ALP have to back this claim? As most ALP members seem unable or unwilling to answer or reply with a generic letter THIS WOULD SUGGEST AN OBVIOUS LACK OF RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE.