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Hobart's Mr Alan Churchill has been an anti-Noise activist for nearly a decade having been perennially provoked by local anti-social behaviour characteristically left uncontrolled by the Clarence City Council At every opportunity he sends quality Submissions to the Tasmanian government about Noise and barking He writes here ABOUT DOGS and COUNCILS Much of the fear of dogs is to do with self preservation. Preservation of life, especially one's own, is the deepest instinct of not only mankind, but of all living things. Alsatians for example, have been selectively bred, but still have the appearance of a wolf that is a large part of their ancestry and thus they appear so frightening to us and especially to small children. It's difficult to imagine the terror that a small child must feel, unable to simply get up and run or to attempt some means of defence when being suddenly attacked by a larger than life, snarling, slavering heap of overwhelming muscular fury that is intent on ripping that small, tender body apart. Yet so many dogs, large and small, are kept in situations where contact with small kids is as inevitable as the sun rising each morning and consequently attacks will occur. It will happen and it happens regularly. It follows that, even though we don't recognise it, there is some vestige of residual primeval fear that still sounds alarm bells just at the sound of dog barking. Even though the threat of death cannot be associated with small breeds, that fear remains. Even small dogs can cause fearful injuries to small children and their rights must be protected, equally or more stringently than those who are more capable of escape or self defence. And because dogs, large and small, bark for reasons of neglect, boredom, alarm or excitement, dog barking noise can transmit varying messages into our minds, and that is apart from the most obvious one of irritation - a proven stressor, and we know that stress can lead to many unhealthy effects in humans. But most dog owners, responsible or otherwise, choose to ignore this or simply don't want to know, preferring to hide it all behind a veil of obsession about various reasons for owning a dog. And most of those reasons, if looked into closely, reflect a need to "keep up with the Jones's" or to boost their own inferiority complexes. Many citizens have justifiable reasons for dog ownership, for example as companion animals for the elderly or living-alone people, and of course there are the working dogs and seeing-eye and rescue dogs that play a vital part in every community. But who has ever heard of a seeing-eye dog barking all night? And why don't they? It's because they are closely bonded with the owner who would realise the possibility of the dog being taken from them if it created a nuisance. I have never known a seeing-eye dog that has attacked another person. It's a matter of training, and those who see no mileage in properly training a dog, or simply can't be bothered, are making jobs for people such as council officers. It is in the interests of maintaining their jobs that these employees perpetuate a system whereby endless public complaints are followed by mostly indecisive and always oppressive actions that principally serve to prop up their jobs. It's these employees of councils, rather than providing a service to that section of the community which wants to have a choice over whether or not it has to endure the racket of other peoples' dogs barking, who are denying such people that right of choice. This is not public service. Indeed it is open dis-service and it exists because of some unfathomable idea of councils which collectively believe (mostly because their employees are often dog owners who would rather ignore complaints about barking for no other reason than that they themselves simply would not go to the trouble of spending time to train a dog) that they can forever get away with ignoring wholly legitimate barking complaints. I firmly believe that the pressures we activists are bringing to bear will change all that, and that this time of financial upheaval is a good time to exert that pressure. Questions must be asked, for example: what can justify payment of a large salary from ratepayers' revenue to a person whose function is questionable if not downright unnecessary? And can the ongoing pandering to the dog-owning community, while ignoring the needs of another section of the community, continue to justify the huge number of complaints that are already consuming larger that desired amounts of council funding while not meeting the needs of that section of the community just mentioned? Much of this negativity is fuelled by the attitude of the Local Government Association of Tasmania which we know takes what it sees as the easy way out by denying people exercising an indisputabe human right such as when, at an official high-level formal meeting, its senior officer moved to raise formal barking complaint fees fivefold, thereafter implemented by gullible councils accepting the reason for this as "minimising complaints". What level of acceptance would the people accept if formal fees were imposed, and then manipulated in cases of reported shoplifting, or assault, or contamination of our drinking water? It's no different when those too uncaring, or stupid or arrogant, impose general noise or the noise of their dogs, on the lives of their neighbours, and this is the message that the LGAT, councils and government must know and respect if they are to have any right to make decisions that are not supportive of the whole population. |