As discussed in Chapter 5, policy actors in the animal welfare domain tend to be clustered into three broad types: political activists and welfare organisations, industry organisations and related actors, and political and policy elites. These general classifications draw on the ‘interest group’ model of political analysis, which classifies politically active organisations distinct from the state using various competing typologies. As we will see, this follows a tradition in political science of making stronger distinctions between civil-society actors and the state than may be warranted in practice. In this approach, non-government actors are generally conceptualised as either:

• public interest groups, promoting issues seen to be of general public concern
• ideological groups, at the vanguard of more radical causes
• business groups, promoting or protecting economic interests, or
• professional groups, representing specific professions (Rinfret and Pautz 2014, 109).1

In this chapter I examine the work of animal protection organisations (APOs), which generally fall into either the first or second of these categories. In Chapter 7 I will consider industrial organisations and other groups involved in the use of animals for economic gain, from primary producers to retailers (groups 3 and 4 in the list above). In Chapter 8, I will look at the role played by the state through its policy processes, legislation, regulation and enforcement.

As we will come to see, this is an imperfect method of classification: policy processes in animal protection debates are extremely diverse and fragmented, subject to siloisation as we have noted, and resistant to homogenisation. For the purposes of effective generalisation, this structure has been adopted as the least-worst way of talking about a complex domain. The tendency to divide organisations into strict ‘camps’, however, will be resisted as much as possible, and the limits of this analysis are highlighted where appropriate; animal protection politics in Australia vary in interesting ways from the ‘textbook’ models of political action.

With these caveats in mind, I will begin this chapter by looking at Australia’s APOs. By way of practical definition, APOs are defined as non-government organisations that work in whole or significant part to promote the wellbeing of animals, either individually or collectively.2 We begin by asking: Who is who? How many groups can be called APOs, and what do they look like as a collective? This leads to a consideration of the structure of the organisations discussed. Following this exploration is a more detailed examination of the strategies and tactics of these groups, considering examples of both continuity and change. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the effectiveness of these groups in advancing their causes.

​Organisations

Australia is home to a large number of APOs. It is likely that the average citizen would be startled to know the number of organisations that commit significant time and effort to the care of animals. Based on a thorough search and an analysis of state-based association registration data, it can be estimated that there were over 200 APOs operating in Australia in 2015, or about one per 100,000 citizens. APOs range from the nationally recognised federated RSPCAs, with annual budgets in the tens of millions of dollars each, to tiny and purely online organisations with no formal income or expenditure. Survey data from these organisations shows that, based on annual organisational income, they include a very small number of large and medium-sized organisations; the vast majority (over 90 percent) are small organisations that measure their annual budgets in the thousands of dollars. This seems in line with wider trends in the charities and not-for-profit sector, where larger charities have had greater success in dominating donor income (Backus and Clifford 2013). Overall, however, animal protectionism in Australia is not a well-financed area of activity, and relies on resources with low fungibility: volunteers and expertise.

As foreshadowed, generalisations about these organisations risk concealing important differences between them. They can, however, usefully be classified by asking three questions: (1) What is the primary activity of the organisation? Is it an organisation that provides welfare services directly to animals, or political advocacy or campaigning on behalf of animals? (2) What is the ideological or philosophical position of the organisation regarding human–animal relations? and (3) Where is the organisation active, and/or where does it focus its activity in the Australian geographical and political landscape?

The classification of organisations along these lines is unpacked in Tables 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 below (n = 50). Summarising these tables, APOs are diverse:

• They tend to focus on either service provision (to animals and/or their owners) or public or political advocacy, with few APOs committing equal time to both tasks.
• The majority of them are – consistent with the discussion in Chapter 2 – philosophically welfarist organisations, taking a weak animal-rights perspective.
• They tend to focus their activities primarily on the local level (either state or sub-state).

These variations necessitate a number of observations and explanations. The first observation is that, while the largest and best-funded APOs in Australia remain the registered charity organisations born of the first wave of animal protection politics discussed in Chapter 1, the ongoing dominance of a welfarist approach does not fit neatly into the two-wave history presented in that chapter (as well as by other authors; see, for example, Garner 1993). The established history of animal protectionism might lead us to expect that organisations founded after the publication of Singer’s Animal liberation (1975) and other major new animal ethics texts by thinker-activists such as Regan and Francione would reflect the new intellectual direction, with a focus on liberation, a strong animal-rights agenda, and abolitionism respectively (for brevity’s sake, I will refer to this more radical agenda as LSRA: liberation, strong rights, abolition). Contrary to this, however, a weak-rights or welfarist approach continues to drive the establishment of new APOs in Australia even today. Importantly, as illustrated in the table above, LSRA organisations tend to focus predominantly on advocacy, rather than on directly improving animal welfare (although there are some welfare providers in Australia with an LSRA ethos, as indicated in the table).3

Thus, although some industry observers and others express concern about the radicalism of animal welfare organisations (see later in this chapter, and Chapter 7), the majority of Australian APOs, and all of the largest organisations, take an incrementalist position and either accept, or are pragmatically tolerant of, the continued dominion of humans over animals. Most engage in a combination of direct welfare services and advocacy for incremental change (interview: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013). In the language of our interest-group typology, only a minority are ‘ideological interest groups’ seeking a radical departure from the status quo.

Given the variety of activities undertaken by APOs in Australia, however, it is clear that conceiving of them all simply as ‘interest groups’ – organisations co-operatively promoting a particular cause or concern in the political sphere (Yoho 1998) – is potentially misleading. Although the interest group model recognises that groups may undertake activities other than political activism, it privileges the latter (Loomis and Cigler 2015). The tables above indicate that fewer than half of Australian APOs are interest groups in this classical sense. The rest more closely resemble charitable organisations, in that they (1) have a strong primary mission of providing welfare and protection to animals as individuals, rather than at the ecosystem of species level, (2) expend the majority of their financial resources in providing services or treatment to specific animals, (3) undertake public education and awareness campaigns in the service of the first two activities, and (4) engage with the state as only a small proportion of their overall activities, and then often with a focus on attracting greater public resources or co-ordination, rather than of effecting wider political change. O’Sullivan (2011, 2) attributes this to the fact that many of the older welfare organisations have their origins in the great benevolent traditions of the 19th century.

A second observation is that there has been a rapid expansion in APOs during the last two decades (see Appendix C). A search of state-based incorporated associations data, in combination with survey evidence, shows that the most active APOs in Australia today were formed since 1990, and the majority after 2001.4 While this in part reflects the changing public attitudes to animals discussed in Chapter 3, the phenomenon is not confined to the animal welfare domain. Berry (1997), among other writers, has described the advocacy ‘explosion’ that accompanied post-war political liberalism, when a proliferation of public and ideological groups (as opposed to established groups representing private interests) emerged as a result of increased education, individualism, optimism about the political system as a site for social change, and a ‘more is better’ view that coalition politics are superior to single-interest negotiations (Skocpol 1999). Recently, the internet has made it easier to form groups and to take collective action (Chen 2013). Thus, industry representatives are correct when they report an increase in animal advocacy, but they are not alone in this: private interests of all kinds have faced an expansion in activities by organised public interests and a loss of dominance over their respective policy domains.

The third observation of note is that the scholarship of animal ethics appears to be largely disconnected from animal protection practice. From interviews, it is clear that many organisational leaders do not identify strongly with formal ethical texts, either in explaining their original interest in animal protection or as practical references from which to draw theories of social change.5 (There are exceptions. Both the NSW and Victorian Animal Liberation organisations resulted, separately, from readings of Singer’s book; Munro 2001a, 59; Townend 1981; interview: P. Mark, 3 June 2013). More radical ideas about human–animal relations tend to enter the activist arena through popularisations (activist documentary films, for example, appear to play an important role currently; previously, generalist books and speaking events played a similar role in popularising scholarly ideas).6 These popular ‘translations’ of academic concepts often break them down into numbered lists or focus on their practical application.

This makes individuals, as popularisers and promoters of ideas, significant in a way that a focus on interest groups fails to recognise (Louw 2010, 135–6). My discussions with members of APOs demonstrate this: organisational leaders were more likely to cite their interactions with individuals as influences than to refer to specific reference works. Peter Singer, for example, was active in personally promoting his ideas in Australia during the 1980s and 1990s, and was important not just in inspiring the formation of groups such as Animal Liberation and Animals Australia, but through his influence on individuals, including his students, at the time (interview: S. Watson, 25 June 2014). For other activists, personal interactions with philosophers were significant in shaping their early interests (O’Sullivan 2015a).

More recently, individual activists such as Andrew Knight have been important in revitalising the movement – in Knight’s case, with his critique, from within the scientific paradigm, of the use of animals in veterinary education and medical science and his attacks on the efficacy of animals as models of human systems. The significant role of such individuals in addressing weaknesses within the scientific community has been acknowledged by activist groups (interview: H. Marston, 23 September 2013). As discussed in Chapter 4, dietary abstention is a particularly active locus for entrepreneurial individuals (interview: G. McFarlane, 17 May 2013), from those promoting cooking skills and selling the ‘diet’ to a range of other professional specialists such as communicators, business development consultants, nutritionists and psychologists.

The fourth observation, the tendency for APOs to focus their activities on their local area, is more easily explained. The small size of the majority of APOs makes localism a practical necessity, and many serve specific localities, ecosystems or species. Even for the largest organisations, localism still dominates, despite the federal structure of the RSPCA and AWLs. This is explained by organisational path-dependency: having been established as state or colony-based organisations, they have retained these local identities; although they have since come together to form federal organisations, this has not resulted in complete national integration in practice.7 Further, the strong relationship between these two organisations and the local government sector – through interactions with local politicians, project funding, co-ordination with local law officers, and in the provision of animal pound services – further reinforces connections at the local level for what, on paper, are ‘national’ organisations.8

For advocacy organisations, localism can also be partly attributed to the structure of the Australian political system. Constitutional arrangements will have a stronger influence on the position of political actors than more transient phenomena (Tarrow 1994). With government policy concerning animals still made mostly by state governments (see Chapter 8), this encourages organisations to focus on the state level when advocating for change or seeking resources. With the rise of more national issues (including standards-making, live export, and the establishment of national and international commercial organisations with regulatory power), there has been an increase in the number of organisations with a national focus. However, this has also meant a shift in the distribution of power towards those national organisations already in existence. This process is indicative of the dual nature of social and political organisations; as Giddens (1986) observed with his theory of ‘structuration’, social and political life are influenced both by underlying structures and by individual actors exercising political agency. The shape and distribution of APOs are thus influenced by systemic factors, but also by human agency.

Illustrating the latter, the formation of first state and the then national representative structures was encouraged by federal politicians, who offered APOs access to policy-makers if the APOs could organise themselves into a few representative peak structures. The achievement of this (first at the state level, with animal-welfare consultative bodies, and later at the national level, with the Senate Select Committee of Inquiry into Animal Welfare in Australia, which concluded in 1985) saw the emergence and stabilisation of what would become the RSPCA Australia and Animals Australia (Oogjes 2005, 2; interview: P. Mark, Founder, Animal Liberation Victoria, 3 June 2013; O’Sullivan 2015b). This is an example of how external agents can reshape political structures by means of a formalised exchange. Since the 1980s, APOs have increasingly established peak bodies to represent them at the national level; today, only the LSRA organisations do not have such a body. The formation of Animals Australia in 1980 also saw the emergence of a national membership-based organisation comprising both individual and organisational members.9

This practice to some extent reflects a wider trend towards corporatism among the political elite in Australia during the 1980s and 1990s. Corporatism is a model of government–group interaction that envisages the state not as autonomous from, or subservient to, interest group action, but as able to ‘pick winners’ and to discipline groups into representative structures that regularise the process of government–group negotiation (Hampson 1997). While this model is clear in the peaking strategy of APOs at the time, its failure to deliver significantly beyond the senate inquiry and subsequent national codes of practice (see Chapter 8) limited nationalisation as these processes provided few opportunities to achieve change. This can be seen in the relative growth of the number of local APOs since the 1980s, and in the smaller expansion of Animals Australia during this period (it was established in 1980 with 24 members, and had 37 in 2015). Overall, this reflects Giddens’ view about how structures may be influenced by the will of actors, but how resilient they are over time without concerted attempts to remodel them.

The past two decades have been a particularly fruitful time for new APOs in Australia, and they have filled ecological niches in the opportunity structure. During the same period, there has also been a rise in species-specific organisations, some of them campaign-oriented, such as those aimed at horse racing, duck hunting and the puppy-breeding industry (interview: D. Tranter, 22 September 2014). Other new organisations have focused on areas otherwise neglected by mainstream APOs. The Medical Advances Without Animals (MAWA) Trust (2000), for example, subsidises research and scholarship aimed at producing technologies that will reduce the use of animal models in research (interview: S. Watson, 25 June 2014),10 while Voiceless supports developments in domestic legal theory and practice in animal welfare law.

As these niches become occupied, the rate of new group formation is likely to plateau. The comparatively rapid expansion of organisations may now be slowing, particularly when it comes to formal organisations with physical offices and paid staff.

​Movement of ideas

The last example mentioned above, Voiceless, is an interesting case and worth expanding on because of its rapid rise in importance as a key node in the policy network. Founded in 2004, Voiceless was established self-consciously as an organisation aimed at a gap in the existing range of APOs. It has explicitly chosen not to expand beyond its self-imposed remit into wider activism, and has thereby avoided ‘competing’ with existing organisations directly. Voiceless’ establishment also illustrates the transnational nature of the animal activist community (interview: D. Campbell, 30 January 2014). Participation in these types of organisations by high-profile legal practitioners and scholars (former High Court Justice Michael Kirby, for example, is a patron; Dwyer 2011) is also important in increasing the profile and credibility of animal protectionism overall (interview: T. Geysen, Brisbane Lawyers Educating and Advocating for Tougher Sentences, 19 April 2013).

The potential of these organisations to act as vehicles of transmission is seen not just in the movement of ideas between jurisdictions, but also in the direct transfer of staff between them (including the CEO of Voiceless, Dana Campbell, who came from the United States with experience in animal law in APOs in that country). Similarly, recent Animals Australia staff have both professional and voluntary experience in the USA with APOs such as PETA (USA). This also reveals a change in the nature of career progression in these organisations, as the larger APOs have become more professionalised and bureaucratised. Where once they were staffed by foundational members or by staff with a long-term commitment to the particular organisation, increasingly careers in the animal protection sector are the result of deliberate CV-building activities over time.

This type of vertical transfer of staff and political strategy is mirrored by the horizontal transfer of organisational models between social movements. This can be seen in the 2013 establishment of the Animal Defenders Office in the ACT: a non-profit legal centre specialising in animal law that is modelled on the structure of well-established and successful examples from the environmental movement (Marshall 2010). Members of existing APOs, in particular Animal Liberation ACT, adopted organisational and strategic concepts from other movements in order to address a niche or deficit in the existing network of APOs.

New organisational forms can come about in a number of ways. They may emerge spontaneously within a jurisdiction and without connection to existing APOs, as was the case with Lawyers for Animals (Melbourne) and BLEATS (Brisbane Lawyers Educating and Advocating for Tougher Sentences), both organisations that fulfil a similar function to the Animal Defenders Office, but through network and legal-clinic models (interviews: T. Geysen, 19 April 2013; M. Beatty, 16 April 2013). They may spread between jurisdictions, as in the various animal-law groups within the state-based law societies, which continue the long-established tradition of pro-bono legal work (interview: a lawyer involved in animal law, 13 May 2014; Glasgow 2008). In federal systems, knowledge and ideas are often transferred across borders; the combination of constitutional similarity and local variation promotes both comparison and experimentation, more so than in unitary political systems (what Spahn calls ‘laboratory federalism’; Spahn 2006, 196).

​Neither fish nor fowl

Any analysis of APO typology raises questions about the nature of APOs: do they reflect the dominance of a politics of organised interests, or do they collectively comprise a more amorphous social movement? This distinction is not simply abstruseness; it is closely connected to the relationship between APOs and the wider community. Conventionally, the interest-group model of politics expresses a modernist conception of social organisation, in which specialisation rules. In this view, formal groups tend to supplant wide-scale political participation: citizens may be mobilised, but where their interests or concerns are being addressed effectively, they are happy to concede the political ground to ‘the experts’ (Van Biezen et al. 2012, 39–40). The political sociology of social movements, on the other hand, sees interest groups or ‘social  movement organisations’ (SMOs) as semi-formalised concentrations of activity within in a wider group of active, mobilised citizens. The aim of social movement organisations is to advance the goals of the wider movement (Staggenborg 2016, 8). Compared with interest groups, movements see individual action as more common and significant in the process of attempting change because of the emphasis on collectivity and networked activity.

Animal protectionism is often included in a wide set of ‘progressive’ policy areas (including the environment, LGBTI rights and global justice) that represent a second wave of ‘new social movement’ (NSM) politics (Guither 1998; Stallwood 2012).11 This ‘new’ type of social movement is distinguished from older ones (such as labour movements) by authors such as Diani who emphasise the role of culture and personal identity in binding together participants over older, Marxist-inspired explanations of class conflict (2000, 155). The former tend to see identity as a more fluid concept, while the latter see it as predetermined by one’s family origins and comparatively fixed. NSMs are characterised by the participation of large numbers of networked individuals through self-identification with the cause, the location of movement knowledge (both motivational and practical) in relations between individuals, rather than just in institutional reservoirs, and the construction of ideological opponents as ‘enemies’ to be overcome. Within such movements, social-movement organisations serve as points of co-ordination and resource pooling, formal interfaces with authoritative elites and state institutions, and potential future ‘insider’ groups following the bureaucratisation of the movement’s concerns into the formal political agenda (Gamson, 1990).

Given the observations made above about the organisational elements of animal protectionism, it is clear that this simple classification of animal protection concerns with movement politics, at least in Australia, is an over-simplification. Despite the limits of movement analysis, however, it can aid our understanding of the collective of individuals and organisations that is the focus of this chapter.

​Size of the animal protection ‘movement’

The first technical characteristic of a social movement is that its organisations are embedded in a networked, collective group of individuals who perceive themselves as part of a struggle for, or aligned with others active in, social change. This identity comes from within (self-identification) and through association with social movement organisations. The latter is most testable: do APOs have large ‘catchments’ of people who feel the organisation reflects their concern for social and/or political change, regulate the groups’ conduct (formally or informally), and – significantly – are active? These catchments are more than simply counts of formal organisational members, but include individuals with variable degrees of interaction with organisations and their activities. Interest groups are likely to have comparatively passive supporters when compared with social movement organisations.

For the purposes of this analysis, three types of relationship between individuals and APOs are discussed below: members, supporters and contacts. They are defined as:

• members: including paid individual members and/or those members with a right to participate in organisational decision-making (e.g. by voting)
• supporters: including those individual who participate in organisational activities on a regular basis (members may be counted as supporters if they are active participants)
• contacts: those individuals included in regular communications (such as mailing lists). Contacts may include both members and supporters.

Drawing on our survey data (Table 6.4) we can get a sense of the catchment we are considering. This table in informative in a number of ways. First, the mean, median and standard deviation figures for each of the three categories of individuals and the organisational base of APOs in Australia indicate that the distribution of members, supporters and contacts is considerably negatively (or ‘right’) skewed. Most organisations have small catchments, with a very small number having large catchments in the public. Second, attrition ‘up’ the ladder of participation applies to APOs. That is, as the intensity of commitment to an organisation increases (from passive/occasional support to active support, to commitment via participative/formal membership), rates of participation decline (Chen 2015). Overall, it appears that each ‘step’ up the commitment curve sheds over 80 percent of individuals. Finally, among the estimated 200 or so APOs in Australia, we can see the size of the national public base of support across the three types.

These final figures are quite large, and need validation and explanation. By way of validation a number of sources can be employed. The first is Franklin’s (Table 6.5) estimate that 2 percent of the Australian adult population are ‘members’ of the RSPCA (supporters in the parlance of my analysis),12 equivalent to 375,000 people.13 This helps to inform the estimate of formal members or active supporters of APOs in Table 6.4. However, as we move away from more formal participation to an estimation of the total number of less-active ‘contacts’, we must accept that these figures are likely to be far less accurate, with a high probability that some individuals will be counted twice, given the numbers come largely from mailing lists and online interactions such as Facebook likes. As a point of reference, the combined number of online supporters (likes) for all of Australia’s RSPCAs and Animal Welfare Leagues on Facebook was approximately 722,508 as of October 2015, making an estimate of one million contacts a reasonable upper limit (in comparison, automobile associations claim seven million members).14

There are considerable differences in patterns of membership, support and contact between organisations predominately focused on the provision of welfare services and those engaged in more overt political work advocacy. Only half of the total number of the most active members of the public are engaged in advocacy-focused APOs, and these organisations have contact with less than 8 percent of total contacts. This means that those organisations most focused on political and policy advocacy have a relatively small catchment into the wider community (circa 80,000 individuals nationally), membership being 40 percent of their total catchment. Welfarist/charitable organisations, meanwhile, have the largest share of popular support in the Australian community, membership being 3 percent of their wider catchment. However, supporters and members of advocacy organisations are more motivated and active in general, something which distinguishes social movements from interest groups.

​Relations with the public

With an average of 343 members each, APOs are lean structures, regardless of their focus on activism or welfare services. While it is difficult to compare these figures effectively to organisations in other policy domains, the last national survey of ‘interest group’ membership15 undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics was in the late 1990s, and reported an average membership of 3,292 (1997, 7). During the intervening two decades, the national rate of participation in volunteering, measured both per capita and in total hours given, has increased (DFHCSIA 2007; this is particularly relevant given half of these organisations are conceived as ‘charity-like’), while McAllister (2011, 63) identifies a comparatively static level of political interest over the same period. Thus, this figure appears to remain a robust comparator, making APO memberships about 10 percent that of the average interest group in Australia.

The smallness of many APOs appears to be due in part to the relative newness of many of them. Looking at survey data we can see that groups formed in the last 15 years tend to have the fewest members and supporters, and organisational age is positively correlated with catchment and budget, as illustrated in Table 6.6. This may be attributable to the natural advantage of established organisations in acquiring and retaining members.16

The comparatively low membership rates of APOs also appears to reflect a deliberate decision by organisations to prioritise other types of participation (such as donation and mobilisation) over traditional mass-membership. The survey data suggests that the recruitment of members remains a very low priority for these organisations, regardless of whether they are focused on service provision or political work. The large catchment of those interested in the former points towards their status as professional interest groups: the recruitment of non-member supporters whose donations support the employment of professionals with technical expertise in service delivery. For the larger welfare organisations, staff include a mix of technical professionals engaged in direct welfare work, as well as an administrative structure to support fundraising and its related activities, and the administration of skilled volunteers (such as veterinary students, for example) (interviews: M. Beatty, 16 June 2013; CEO, RSPCA Australia, 24 June 2014).

​‘For the animals’

Social movements, as networks of individuals, groups and organisations, rely on ‘soft’ cultural regulators (such as social pressure and group norms) and a sense of shared identity to ensure cohesion and effective collective action (as opposed to interest groups, which tend towards more formal regulation of membership benefits through stricter governance; Leach 2005). This shared identity or self-image includes an awareness of the group’s behavioural and other cultural norms, as well as an understanding of the boundaries between the in-group and the out-group (Stryker et al. 2000, 21–4). When identity is conceived as not just a marker, but also a means to understanding the dynamics of social movements, it can be akin to what political scientists call ‘bonding’ social capital: when members feel they have a shared identity and/or a shared identification with the movement’s cause, they are more likely to co-ordinate their activities and share resources (Tindall et al. 2011, 149–50).

Can such a shared identity be found in the diverse collection of Australian animal protectionists? Drawing on data collected using the Animal Attitude Scale (AAS) introduced in Chapter 3, we can see that individuals who identify as animal protectionists tend to have – as would be expected – a higher than average AAS: their participation is motivated by a greater than average concern for animal welfare.17 This is illustrated in Table 6.7. If we consider that about two-thirds (68.26 percent) of animal protectionists fall within one standard deviation of the mean, we see there is a small crossover between the majority of animal protectionists and the general public: most animal protectionists sit outside the anticipated spread of popular opinion. Where they are aware of this, we might expect to see the emergence of a group identity among animal protectionists, as distinct from the wider community.

The distinction between the general public and animal protections is not straightforward, however, and protectionists do not necessarily represent a single social movement bound by a shared identity. Using a breakdown of animal protectionists by their ideological orientation in regards to human–animal relations (see Table 6.8) we can see that animal protectionists who have a welfarist or weak animal rights perspective are far more closely aligned with the general population and have a higher level of crossover when considering the mean and standard deviation. On the other hand, those individuals who report a strong animal rights orientation have higher AAS scores (unsurprisingly), and have a very low level of overlap with those with a welfarist or weak rights orientation (assuming the normal distribution).18 The upshot is that welfarists or weak animal rights protectionists have more in common attitudinally with the wider public than with protectionists who hold an LSRA perspective.

This points to a sharp division between these two positions, one which may work against a sense of shared identity.

A range of components can contribute to a sense of shared identity. Cultural signifiers (Flesher Fominaya 2010, 396) that are taken to be representative of an individual’s attitudes may be used to signify membership of the group. These might include:

• The use of different organisational memberships as a means of expressing one’s political identity (self-identification with named political groups)
• Fashion, including clothing styles (but also, in the context of abstainer groups, specific materials) and tattooing. Tattoos of animals and as signifiers of veg*nism are frequently seen among strong rights and abolitionist communities (interview: individuals associated with the Sydney veg*n community, 8 May 2014), and their prominence and permanence are important indicators of status and commitment (Haenfler, 2004).19
• Direct involvement with animals; for instance, companion animals are present in some APO workplaces (personal observation; see also Clark 2013), and some activists are careful to choose venues that permit companion animals when organising events (Oceania Collective ICAS 2015).
• Diet, which is sometimes seen to signify an individual’s position in the wider network. In the Australian context, veganism, for example, is often associated with an abolitionist perspective, and several interview subjects used this designator (whether they identified as vegan, or specifically as not vegan)20 to signal their position in the wider community (Munro 2001a, 100).21

An individual’s perception of their own position along the ‘spectrum’ of animal ethical positions (which may involve a well-developed and explicit identification with a particular ethical tradition, or be more vaguely expressed), their level of commitment to the issue, and their beliefs about what strategic and tactical actions are appropriate to promote the cause also play a role in their sense of group identity.

This final point reflects two aspects of how individuals perceive the political context. The first is that, in developing an ethical position regarding the nature of animals (in particular towards their capacity and their moral worth), human–animal relations, the relative importance of human and animal interests, and the subsequent source of social problems, individuals develop a political identity that incorporates a conceptual schema – a schema with which they can evaluate political actors and institutions and which provides the actor with a personal theory of how to achieve political and social change. The second aspect is captured in the last two columns of Table 6.8: identity also shapes the individual’s willingness to engage in different types of political action in the pursuit of change (Jasper 1997). An individual’s approval and disapproval of various political tactics can be both a measure of their personal commitment to the issues, and a reflection of their assessment of the capacity of existing political structures to produce the desired change. Again we see a distinction between individuals who take a welfarist or weak animal rights position and those with a strong rights perspective, with the former more willing to employ conventional strategies and the latter more willing to pursue more radical change by tactics such as direct action.

Identity does not only divide participants in the policy domain, however; it can also unite them, by bonding members together over shared aspects of identity and concealing differences. In her study of the views and practices of personnel and volunteers in animal sanctuaries, Taylor (2004) identifies the importance of perceived shared motivations in uniting these individuals. Shared motivation and group identity can be seen in the oft-cited claim by active animal protectionists that they are ‘in it for the animals’ (333; and interview: individuals of the Sydney veg*n community, 8 May 2014). In Taylor’s observation of the conduct of protectionists, this somewhat elusive term was also identified as a personal motivator, a bonding agent, a guide for decision-making, and a means of assessing members of the public’s orientation to the work of the sanctuary. In the latter case, potential animal adopters were assessed by volunteers against their standards of appropriate concern and commitment to the animals they sought to adopt.

This type of language is also employed to minimise ideological differences within groups. The most obvious example of this is in the public self-representation of Animals Australia. As a peak body for APOs, representing member organisations with a range of positions on the appropriateness of animal use by humans (Munro 2001a, 78; Clark 2013), Animals Australia explicitly positions itself as a more moderate organisation than its political adversaries often claim. Thus, it strongly rejects association with veganism and abolitionism, even though some member organisations are motivated by abolitionist objectives and see welfare tactics as only worthwhile if they are the first steps towards abolitionism (interview: C. Neal, 16 April 2013).22 In dismissing claims that it has a radical ‘hidden agenda’,23 Animals Australia employs the basic ‘for the animals’ formulation identified by Taylor: the organisation does not promote particular groups or ideologies, but states that ‘Animals Australia exists first and foremost to represent animals.’ Such rhetoric can also be used to assert the political legitimacy of animal welfare organisations, particularly those that lack a representative membership structure or a large membership base. A representative structure is often seen as essential to political legitimacy in human-centric social movements; non-anthropocentric organisations may lack such a structure, and so must find other ways to demonstrate their political legitimacy (Tilly 1999, 270).

Overall, APOs in Australia lack a common overarching political and cultural identity, although attempts are made to conceal this for pragmatic reasons. The existence of readily identifiable subcultures marks out adherents of more radical activists from the weak rights or welfarist majority. These are cultural expressions of fundamentally different worldviews, including views about the relative ethical position of humans to animals, but also about the nature of social change and what types of strategies and tactics are appropriate to achieve it. While some are apt to see the welfarist and abolitionist subgroups as sharply distinct, this is not the case. In fact, these different organisational and cultural identities are intertwined. This occurs through crossovers in organisational memberships, where group publics are not strictly differentiated due to a lack of ideological clarity in the public, as well as among active participants in the movement. It is also seen in relations between different groups in the policy network, who may co-operate in tactical actions when it suits their wider, if unaligned, strategic aims. Finally, it is visible within the emerging federated bodies of once-autonomous state- or issue-based organisations, where significant differences in worldview are suppressed through the promotion of a unified protectionist identity.

​A transposition of two movements

Between social movement and interest group politics there exists a third category, a hybrid that results from what can be called the ‘lifecycle’ model of political challenge and incorporation: the tendency for some successful social movements to transition into stable institutions once they have won popular or elite support for either all or parts of their critique (della Porta and Diani 2006).

In making this transition, social movement organisations become increasingly bureaucratised through their cultural interactions with, and the need to provide services to, state institutions. In effect, they become interest groups representing stakeholders, stakeholders with whom their relationship becomes attenuated as their primary ties shift increasingly to organisations outside the movement. This process, of course, is neither immediate nor automatic. Some social movement organisations may not desire institutionalisation (Fitzgerald and Rodgers 2000), either because of the focus of their advocacy, because of the trade-offs institutionalisation would require, or because cultural characteristics would make institutionalisation unacceptable to their membership (for instance, in movements based on an anti-system critique or on anarchism; such groups are ‘ideological outsiders’ and unlikely to accept institutionalisation; Maloney et al. 1994). These social movements may continue with their established strategies and tactics, running parallel to, or in friction with, social movements that have transitioned into interest groups. In some cases, the formalisation of a movement into an interest group marks the extinguishment of radicalism within the organisation.

This is true of many animal protection organisations. The majority of APOs engaged in policy debates and advocacy are the bureaucratised and professionalised successors of a radical movement of the late 19th century. For many founders of such organisations, the RPSCAs provided a successful template for organisational practice, even though newer organisations may be in tension with these pre-existing ones (as rivals, or because they began as dissenting defectors from the RSPCAs). For others, institutionalisation comes from an acceptance of the politics of accommodation and negotiation, but also reflects the success of the first wave of welfare-focused organisations in establishing some of their core values as public norms. As such, the base of support in the community for these types of APOs is heterogeneous and large, but as professional organisations, their active core is considerably smaller than their wider public catchment.

In transforming from radical challengers into partners of government and industry, these organisations have achieved a measure of insider status in the policy process. Their political legitimacy depends on their presenting themselves as the ‘sensible centre’ of popular opinion. This is also important to their financial survival. As the national CEO of the RSPCA observed:

The transition from social movement to interest group also tends to alter the ideology and tactics of an organisation. As Munro (2005a) argues, in the early 20th century the RSPCAs moved from being presented (and presenting themselves) as ‘moralising reformers’ to ‘societies of pet lovers’. Popular acceptance can tie the hands of the newly institutionalised, as they become cautious not to be seen to move beyond their popular remit. It also changes their support base in the community and is often at the root of organisational fragmentation and multiplication. The transition can make them adopt a pragmatic approach to change, and to focus on developing long-term relations with other stakeholder organisations, with whom they have increasingly synergistic relationships.

We can observe this bureaucratisation in the way these organisations have been able to access state resources to undertake welfare services. Their expanding service role involves higher running costs and requires a larger asset base and more staff; this in turn necessitates a focus on stability and steady growth. Partnerships with government and other major institutions further encourage professionalisation. Senior organisational managers are increasingly selected for their professional competencies rather than (as in the early 20th century) their group affiliation (interviews: M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013; CEO, RSPCA Australia, 24 June 2014).

A cluster of LSRA groups is still politically radical relative to mainstream opinion and retains classic social movement characteristics. The behaviour of individuals is important in understanding the conduct of groups, and the relationships between organisations cannot be understood without some insight into the interpersonal histories of key organisational members. Because these organisations operate primarily in a social context, rather than in official policy networks, interpersonal ‘cliques’ remain significant within them and are important to an understanding of (the lack of) co-operation between them (interviews: T. Geysen, 19 April 2013; E. Hill, president, University of Melbourne Animal Protection Society, 20 August 2013; a lawyer involved in animal law, 13 May 2014; L. Drew, 23 June 2013). Some of these relationships are short, while some reach back into the dawn of the second wave of the animal protection movement (interview: L. Levy, 30 August 2013).

The proliferation of social movement organisations is the result of the work of individual ‘entrepreneurs’ (Munro 2001a, 59) and of the fragmentation of existing social movements into new bodies and subgroups. Some jurisdictions contain a large number of loosely clustered specialised campaigning groups, many of which emerged from larger ‘catch-all’ organisations (interview: D. Tranter, 22 September 2014), while other jurisdictions are more homogenous in nature. Fragmentation and multiplication are common in social movements owing to low barriers to exit, and divisions can be due as much to interpersonal conflict as to differences of opinion about strategy. The outcome of fragmentation can lead to balkanisation, particularly where personal animus exists, but specialised campaigning groups have the ability to form productive coalitions in a dynamic way when necessary if this fragmentation is overcome (interviews: P. Mark, 3 June 2013; D. Tranter, 22 September 2014; L. Levy, 30 August 2013). Commitment can be more important than technical competence in determining a person’s level of participation in an organisation (interview: M. Pearson, 5 June 2013), a tendency exacerbated by dependence on small numbers of volunteers, many of whom are members (either formally or informally) of multiple groups.

Ideological differences within the LSRA community are important, but tend to be concealed by homogenising language. New entrants into the arena may form an association with a local organisation before they fully understand its ideology and the implications of their choice of group. Further, social movement organisations are not as static in the strong-rights or abolitionist community as they might be in other social movements. A number of Animal Liberation organisations have been moving from the position advocated by Singer (liberationism) towards a strong rights or abolitionist perspective, making the nomenclature within the community confusing to outsiders (interviews: P. Mark, 3 June 2013; C. Neil, 16 April 2013; L. Drew, 23 June 2013).

​Gendered politics?

As has been observed in previous chapters, animal protection politics has historically been, and remains, dominated by women. Surveys of participants, as well as my own observations of events connected with animal protectionism, confirm the dominance of women. In October 2014, 61.2 percent of RSPCA board members were women (n = 60). By way of comparison, the average number of women on the boards of Australian charities is 39.9 percent (n = 600; Dale and Waterhouse 2015), and 16.2 percent for private companies (Australian Institute of Company Directors 2015).

This sometimes leads to a view that women’s prominence in protectionism can be explained by some essential female characteristic. This notion is seen in arguments linking concern for animal rights to a feminist ethics of care (see Chapter 2), in observations about the crossover between animal protectionism and ecofeminism, and in more negative associations between protectionism and excessive emotion or sentimentalism. However, attitudinal data (Table 6.9) shows that the attitudes of men and women, while different on average, overlap considerably (recall Table 3.4). This confirms Munro’s (2001a) observation that the attitudes of female and male animal protectionists on a variety of issues within protectionism do not significantly differ.

The gendered nature of animal protectionism has remained fairly static over the medium and long term. As discussed in Chapter 1, middle- and upper-class urban women were particularly important in the formation of APOs in the 19th century, and remain important in the movement today. The support base for Animals Australia, for example, has not significantly changed over the past 15 years: the average participant at a live-export protest organised by the group in 2015 was female (72 percent), older (with a mean age of 52) and professional. This is consistent with a circa 2000 survey of individual Animals Australia members: 74 percent were women and the mean age was 51; Munro 2001b). The same profile is reflected in the leadership of APOs, but not necessarily in their core active membership, who, while still overwhelmingly female, tend to be much younger. This was clear in observations of the Animal Activists Forum 2015, where speakers were generally older and audiences younger.

Without relying on essentialism, there are three explanations for this enduring trend. First, history is important in this story. Organisations with strong female participation when they were established maintain structures of recruitment and management that are more resistant to ‘patriarchal closure’ (the usurpation of an organisation by men following its growth or success) than are traditionally male-dominated organisations, even if the latter have been desegregated. Thus, just as we see enduring under-representation of women in traditionally male-dominated sectors, we see enduring openness in APOs. Second, following Luke’s (2007) analysis of Western culture’s construction of masculinity as predatory, and Dunayer’s (1995) analysis of the connection between speciesism and sexist language, there are enduring cultural deterrents to male participation in animal protectionism. The lasting connection between maleness, muscles and meat is only the most obvious expression of a wider cultural norm that tells men that animal protectionism is ‘a bit soft’. This has implications for advocacy. Munro (2001b) observed that the early dominance of APOs by women led to them being painted as ‘emotional’ rather than rational actors. Finally, and possibly more provocatively, APOs remain dominated by women because they are marginal. Those APOs with larger budgets and greater influence are more likely to have male management and senior staff. Women have at times been marginalised in these larger organisations. The periodic creation and abandonment of women’s committees and auxiliaries in Australian RSPCAs reflects this (Budd 1988, 201–4). While this last point may be controversial, it is in fact the unsurprising corollary of the first.

​Relations across the network

As we saw in Chapter 5, there are patterns of interaction within the network, both between individual APOs and within clusters of groups with historical ties and ideological similarities. Given their ideological differences, we might expect collaboration between welfarist and more radical members of the network to be characterised by conflict. Conflict is present, but there is also an underlying pragmatism in the Australian animal protection community, perhaps more so than in some other countries (Munro 2001a, 76–7). To illustrate this, let us explore these various connections in more detail.

​Co-operation, co-ordination and adjustment

For organisations focused on the provision of services, other similar organisations may represent the competition. In some cases organisations may take a zero-sum view and see any success by other groups (especially in fundraising) as a direct loss to themselves. In other cases, such competition is avoided, either through direct negotiation or simply by a unilateral decision not to compete in particular areas. When the RSPCA Queensland lost access to the council land on which it had run an animal shelter in the Gold Coast, for example, it decided not to re-establish the facility elsewhere, as the local Animal Welfare League was deemed to provide a sufficient alternative service (interview: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013). In yet other areas competition serves to highlight policy differences, as in the spread of no-kill animal shelters (such as the Save-a-Dog Scheme in Victoria, founded in 1985), created as rivals to established welfare organisations that euthanise unwanted companion animals (as distinct from mercy killings for medical reasons).

Organisations with different ideological orientations may collaborate at the tactical level, even if they have different longer-term strategic objectives, different worldviews and/or different conceptions of how social change occurs (interview: L. Drew, 23 July 2013). This reflects Australian political culture, but also the size of the community: with a small catchment of activist members, there is more overlap between interest groups and social movements than in other policy domains. The need to mobilise resources often creates a bond between small APOs, and can be a motivation for larger actors to co-ordinate activities across the sector. For example, the Queensland 1300 ANIMAL hotline, which allows people to report injured animals, co-ordinates calls to participating individuals and groups in areas where the RPSCA Queensland lacks reach. Establishing this service took persuasion, as some smaller groups were cautious about being absorbed into the RSPCA (interview: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013).

The largest organisations sometimes come together for tactical collaborations, operating more like interest groups. A recent example is the 2014–2015 undercover investigation of greyhound training and racing practices, particularly the use of live animals as bait. This investigation involved the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (a Four Corners episode, ‘Making a killing’, was broadcast in February 2015), Animal Liberation, Animals Australia, and state-based RSPCAs. Combining resources was one reason for forming this coalition, but the aforementioned resource exchange model also helps to explain how these collaborations overcome organisational boundaries, historical suspicions and ideological differences. Local APOs maintained connections to activists who were willing to undertake direct action and able to obtain access to the facilities of greyhound trainers (Guppy 2015). Animals Australia had considerable expertise in running public media campaigns focusing on consumer boycotts, while the RSPCAs had mainstream legitimacy and, if necessary, the ability to prosecute. The integration of investigation with prosecution is particularly important since the proliferation of anti-activist and ‘ag-gag’ legislation prohibiting the unauthorised filming or broadcasting of footage from commercial farms. In the ‘post-ag-gag’ environment, activist investigations have been criticised for undermining prosecutions (see Chapter 7 for a further discussion of legal restraints on activism).

The greyhound investigation built on previous successes that had helped to overcome scepticism about such collaborations. As the CEO of the RSPCA Victoria observed of the live exports campaign of 2011:

Such collaborations, therefore, continue as long as mutual benefits can be identified in advance, and as long as the outcomes are beneficial to participants. This also reflects the networked nature of these organisations: they maintain enduring and regular relations to the extent that campaigns can be developed and implemented in useful timeframes to achieve their tactical objectives and without the risk of the targets of campaigns becoming aware of them (either through poor implementation, or through the types of leaks experienced by government regulators; see Chapter 8).

​Conflict, risk and creative tension

Collaborations are not without risk, and the management of this risk is part of the careful ‘boundary maintenance’ conducted by institutionalised and bureaucratised APOs. This has shaped relations between the RSCPAs and other organisations since at least the late 1940s. Tensions between the RSPCAs and other organisations occasionally flare into open conflict, such as the rift between Animals Australia and the RSPCA NSW over animal experiments undertaken at RSPCA facilities in the early 1980s (Townend 1981). In 2004 activists from Animal Liberation Victoria threw red paint at the president of the Victorian RSPCA to protest against the RSPCA’s relative conservatism (Butler 2005); Animal Liberation Victoria also maintains the ‘RSPCA Watch Dog’ website, which is critical of both the national and state branches of the organisation.24 Of such conflicts, the CEO of the RSPCA Victoria observed: ‘We don’t spend a lot of time worrying about that. We have to pay attention to it because sometimes it’s a little barometer as to what’s going on in the broader community’ (interview: M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013). These types of conflict were significant in the RSPCAs’ decision not to join the Australian Federation of Animal Societies in the 1980s, and in the departure of some organisations from Animals Australia.

Even where conflict is not open, a low level of tension exists. In the case of the RSPCA and Animal Liberation ACT, the latter observed:

While Animals Australia and the RSPCAs work together in some of their larger campaigns, they both also go out of their way to ensure that they are still seen as distinct. When lobbying politicians, for example, they do not undertake joint meetings, even on issues where they largely share the same view (interview: M. Parke MP, 4 September 2014). Some political elites see this as simply indicative of underlying tensions that must be bridged, while others see it as an opportunity to play the groups off against each other. For the RSPCA, the rationale for such measures is to maintain its brand as mainstream, and to avoid being perceived as too close to an organisation that is seen to harbour more radical objectives. This reflects the internal politics of the RSPCA, some branches of which are more conservative than others. As a spokesperson for the RSPCA Victoria put it, ‘There are other RSPCAs who are much more conservative . . . who were worried very much about the live-export campaign, [and] who were almost panicky about the relationship with Animals Australia’ (interview: M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013). Some branches also have a history of conflict with Animals Australia itself, and/or with some of its current and former member organisations. The RSPCA’s efforts to maintain some distance from Animals Australia and other groups is to some extent a response to these internal sensitivities. Animals Australia must also manage its boundaries with the RSPCA: the RSPCA’s involvement in recent activist campaigns means it has crossed over into Animal Australia’s core area of competence.

Smaller collaborators in joint campaigns also share this perceived risk, and try to ensure that their contribution to high-profile events is not subsumed into the work of national bodies. Chay Neal of Animal Liberation Queensland observed that Animals Australia is becoming an ‘organisation of its own’ and less a purely peak body. Thus Animal Australia’s objectives and those of its member organisations need careful management as ‘an ongoing – not issue, but something that you’re always aware of . . . when we collaborate [it’s] sort of important to be clear on what the end result is, and we’ve got to [get] credit for it’ (interview: 16 April 2013). The resulting level of media coverage highlighting Animal Liberation Queensland’s role in the greyhound investigation shows that the organisation continues to maintain this boundary; it still managed to ensure it was recognised for its contribution to the wider campaign (Guppy 2015).

Such tensions over the boundaries between organisations continue to develop and change. Recently the formation of the various state-based Animal Welfare League organisations under a single umbrella means that the RSPCA has a nationalised competitor that works directly in its areas of key competency and public focus: the provision of welfare services and, in some states, law enforcement involving companion animals. A degree of convergence among the largest organisations in Australia also explains the rise of Voiceless in recent years (combined with its large private financial base). As the three largest APOs in Australia, the RSPCA, Animals Australia and Voiceless increasingly share common interests and tactics, and engage in active co-operation.

The existence of more radical and conservative APOs can serve to calibrate mainstream organisations in an era of shifting public opinion. Radical organisations play an important role in introducing new campaign techniques and identifying new causes. Once an issue attracts more mainstream interest, their efforts may then be colonised by more established organisations. Sheep exports, for example, was the foundational issue of Animal Liberation NSW; since the 1980s, the live-export debate has moved from the periphery to the centre.

In extremis, risk avoidance is associated with stagnation. In the mid-20th century, the comparative absence of this type of horizontal calibration was reflected in decades of organisational conservatism, as identified by authors such as Smith and Townend. Using the Victorian RSPCA as an example, Smith (2007) argues that the organisation became overly cautious in its activities through a combination of alignment with political elites, reaction to the perceived radicalism of other smaller welfare organisations, and disconnection with activities in other jurisdictions. Smith also argues that, in line with the spirit of the time, the organisation’s status as a royal society contributed to a conservative tendency to defer to social and political elites. Townend (1981), meanwhile, posits that internal disputes in the RSPCA NSW from the 1950s through the 1970s meant that the organisation’s energies were focused on perceptions of poor governance and the associated mismanagement of the organisation’s facilities, rather than on law reform (although the society did manage to get coursing banned in 1947).

In both cases, a push for reform from within served to highlight gaps in the organisations’ performance as well as governance problems.25 These disputes led to the creation or expansion of other welfare organisations in Victoria, NSW and SA, and to belated reforms to the original societies over time (interview: M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013).26 If we compare the RSPCAs of the mid-20th century with the APOs of today, we can clearly see a reduction in outright conflict and the emergence of a more competitive and organic process of change at the start of the 21st century.

The older tendencies, however, still exist to some degree. Animal Liberation NSW attempted to gain RSPCA board positions in the 1990s in response to similar moves by farmers’ groups, with short-term success (some board members achieved election and then expulsion; interview: M. Pearson, 5 June 2013). More recently, internal conflict within the RSPCAs in the ACT, Tasmania and WA have involved concerns about management of the organisation and/or interpersonal conflicts (interview: B. Green MP, 22 September 14; Raggatt et al. 2013) that are reminiscent of the disputes of the mid-20th century. While the involvement of the national body in an attempt to resolve conflict is new (Rosemary 2012), and to some extent demonstrates the changing power relations, other aspects of the conflict are familiar: the intervention of the state government as the RSPCA’s significant funder and source of statutory power (Dawtrey 2012); criticisms from activists from social movement organisations, conflict over the use of ‘entryism’ (a tactic whereby members of one organisation infiltrate another to access its resources, to hobble it, or to change its positions); and a strengthening of critics of, and alternatives to, the RSPCA. As we shall see below, conflict within the RSCPfA enabled competing organisations to gain considerable visibility as spokespersons on animal protection issues in Tasmania.

​Informality and endurance

Nearly all APOs, even those in the process of becoming bureaucratised, retain the more informal structures usually associated with social movements. They share members and volunteers, and deliberately use their social networks to exchange ideas. An example can be seen in the annual Animal Activists Forum, held since 2009 in a different capital city each year. The forum provides a space for the exchange of information about issues, strategies and tactics, and opportunities for social networking. It attracted about 220 participants to Melbourne in 2015; the two-day meeting included local and international speakers and representatives from a range of organisations. The event is presently supported by, but not run by, Animals Australia, illustrating how even this more formalised body remains something of a hybrid between social movement and interest group. This type of hybrid informal structure is discussed by Haug (2013) as a significant part of social movements; it reifies network ties, produces movements of information and cultural material, and permits more formal co-ordination than results spontaneously from shared interests and culture.

Some LSRA activists, meanwhile, have tactics and beliefs in common with the first wave of animal protectionists. There has been a resurgence of anti-vivisectionism over the last two decades in Australia, prompted partly by a ‘rediscovery’ of the issue, but also by the work of small, enduring organisations that remained active, albeit on a small scale, throughout the 20th century. These groups would largely fit Taylor’s (1989, 765–70) concept of social movement ‘abeyance structures’: enduring organisations that remain active during periods of limited political opportunity, sustaining the ideas and culture of a social movement. We can see direct connections between the two waves of animal protectionism, both between welfarists and strong-rights/abolitionists, and between the more radical new social movement and abeyance structures descended from late 19th-century abolitionism. For example, the Australian branch of the World League for the Protection of Animals (WLPAA; whereas the RSPCAs are descended from British organisations, the WLPA originated in Germany and traditionally took a stronger interest in anti-vivisectionism) existed for a long time as a small rump organisation, then saw a dramatic rise in membership in the mid-1970s (Townend 1981). The Anti-Vivisection Union of South Australia, founded in the early 20th century, has more recently supported a new generation of activists, while organisations such as Humane Research Australia and Choose Cruelty Free (Victoria) have emerged as new organisations in the second wave.

​(Dis-)continuities across policy domains

In addition to the links between APOs, connections between organisations and activists operating in other policy arenas are also important. Although conventional thinking holds that social movements commonly attempt to expand their popular support by broadening the ‘frame’ or narrative of their interests (Beamish and Luebbers 2009), in this case, APOs appear to operate relatively independently of other, possibly relevant, social movements and policy domains.

​Environmentalism

The limited interaction between animal protectionists and environmentalists in Australia is interesting. Activists and members of APOs often report an interest in conservation or the environment (interviews: M. Collier, 17 April 2013; G. McFarlane, 17 May 2013; M. Beatty, 16 April 2013; individuals associated with the Sydney veg*n community, 8 May 2014; S. Watson, 25 June 2014; L. Levy, 30 August 2013),27 and a strong environmental theme runs throughout the members of the APO community more strongly associated with social movement practices, with core movement concerns often expressed in environmental terms. Further, the transfer of organisational structures between environmental and animal protection movements reflects an enduring closeness that dates back to the first and early second wave: Animal Liberation NSW’s first meetings, for example, were facilitated by the Total Environment Centre (Sydney), and Townend reports that her interest in liberation stemmed from her environmentalism (Townend 1981). So, exchanges and collaborations do occur – but the domains are clearly delineated, and this separation appears to be enduring.

This delineation can be explained in part by differences in the fundamental worldviews of the two groups. At the surface level, animal protectionists and environmentalists share certain political values, including a lower tolerance for authoritarianism/social dominance and an interest in the preservation of animals. This might lead us to expect a greater intersection between the memberships and values of the two movements than research has found (Jackson et al. 2013). However, as Perry and Perry’s (2008) case analyses have pointed out, animal protectionists and conservationists often have difficulties collaborating over basic differences in their focus of care: the maximisation of the wellbeing of individual animals on the one hand, and an emphasis on larger populations and habitats on the other. These tensions persist despite a recognition that both groups have areas of shared interest, a capacity to collaborate effectively, and similar cultural norms. The weak links between the two movements can also be partly explained as another example of boundary maintenance. (My discussion here has been informed by the evidence of informants from APOs, for whom collaborations with environmental organisations and interest groups was rarely considered a tactical option. A number of environmental organisations declined my interview requests, either because they felt issues of animal protection were outside of their remit, or because the questions could be more comprehensively addressed by APOs.)

Where there has been crossover between environmental and animal protection organisations in recent years, it has tended to involve one of three things. The first involves shared tactics. One of the most high-profile environmental organisations to receive considerable support from animal protectionists in Australia is the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS). The organisation, an offshoot group from Greenpeace and inheritor of its more radical tactics from the 1970s and 1980s, has become the most well-known direct-action organisation in Australia because of its annual campaign to physically disrupt the taking of whales from the Southern Ocean by Japanese hunters operating under the guise of scientific whaling, and to direct sustained popular attention to this issue (Morell 2014). Animal protectionists have supported and participated in the SSCS’s activities, and SSCS Australia has participated in animal protectionist events and conferences; the movements share information about their tactics, particularly direct action and the use of media attention to affect popular opinion. The association of SSCS with veganism (Shapiro 2010; all crew on Sea Shepard vessels follow a vegan diet while aboard, and the organisation puts out calls for donations of vegan food when Sea Shepard vessels are at port) also creates a sense of solidarity between the two movements, while reinforcing the sacrifices that SSCS crew make in taking their high-risk direct actions.28 This shared commitment creates a further source of solidarity between SSCS volunteers and members of the LSRA activist community.

The second type of crossover involves an interest in what Thiriet (2010, 163–5) calls ‘unpopular species’: animal species with a long history of being antagonised or denigrated in human culture (either in Australia or more generally). In recent years, flying foxes have been subject to considerable attention (interview: C. Neal, 16 April 2013), particularly around attempts by state and local governments to deal with large colonies in inner-city areas. In the ACT, the culling of kangaroos has energised APOs in that jurisdiction. Proposed and/or implemented measures against sharks in WA and NSW have been subject to considerable popular mobilisation, with protesters focusing particularly on the perceived cruelty of the use of baited drum-lines to catch and kill the animals. This has seen joint action by environmental groups and APOs (some environmentalists, however, prefer this approach because of its reduced tendency to harm other sea-life, compared with netting; Shiffman 2014). Outside of the live-exports issue, shark culling has provided the animal protection movement with some of the largest public protest events in recent years, particularly in Western Australia, which traditionally has had a smaller number of APOs.29

The involvement of animal protectionists in these environmental issues is perhaps not surprising. Animal protectionists are less likely to accept the negative social construction of ‘unpopular species’ than the wider public. The examples above also tend to be of greater interest to urban-dwellers, involving as they do the management of wild animals either in cities themselves or off the beaches near them. On issues largely affecting rural and remote areas, such as dingo conservation and protection, activists have had less success in rallying public support (Probyn-Rapsey 2015). When mainstream APOs move into debates about environmental protection, their emphasis tends to be on wildlife protection, a focus sometimes described as ‘light green’ conservationism. This can be seen in the types of animals treated by Australian RSPCAs over the last decade. Using a comparison of animals received and processed by RSPCAs between two periods, 2004–2005 to 2008–2009 and 2009–2010 to 2013–2014, we can see in Table 6.10 that there has been a considerable increase in the number of animals classed as wildlife handled by the organisation. This reflects both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors (e.g. the decision by the associations to define themselves as more than groups of ‘pet lovers’, and increased public reporting of, and action on, injured wildlife).

The final area of crossover is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 8, but must be noted here: the relationship between animal protectionists and the Australian Greens. As we will see, there is an unresolved uncertainty for the Greens as to whether they want to be seen primarily as a party of social justice or one of environmentalism. The tension between these two priorities reflects the ongoing tension between the two movements more generally.

There are several barriers to greater collaboration between the two movements. As foreshadowed above, there may be a conflict between concerns for the welfare of individual animals and environmental arguments for culling, where a basic difference in ethical worldviews inhibits collaboration (interview: S. Rattenbury MLA, 23 July 2013). Perry and Perry (2008, 31–2) argue, however, that these tensions can be resolved by reframing the issue around a consensus position that maximises animal welfare. Certainly in Australia some such bridging work is being undertaken within the animal protectionist movement. A good example is Crossman’s 2011 book The animal code: giving animals respect and rights. In this slim and accessible volume, Crossman clearly links environmentalism and animal welfare, arguing that human civilisation and technology have developed in such a way that they subordinate animals and degrade the environment. In this view, environmental conservation and the protection of non-human animals are both aspects of a strong rights position.

A second barrier to collaboration is the emergence of new strategic alliances among environmentalists that are antithetical to many animal protectionists. An example is the rise of the ‘Lock the gate’ movement in response to coal-seam gas exploitation. This movement has created new relationships between conservationists, farm communities and agricultural producers. These relationships have been productive for the environmental movement in winning support in rural areas of Australia, but have been pursued by those parts of the environmental movement that are most ideologically distant from animal protectionists (as well as from those parts of the environmental movement that have historically clashed with farmers over issues such as the clearing of native vegetation). In addition, in supporting farmers against intrusion from mining companies and the state, this movement has, perhaps inadvertently, reinforced the privacy and sovereignty arguments often used by farmers in calls for anti-activist legislation.

Unions

A second limited link between animal protectionists and other policy domains involves organised labour. As with the environmental movement, we can find examples of partial and contingent collaborations (unions and animal protectionists worked together on the live-export campaign, for example), as well as some fragile connections with the ALP, which I will discuss in Chapter 8.

The ‘unholy alliance’ (Gulbin 2015) between meat workers and animal protectionists is completely understandable from both a pragmatic and a weak-rights perspective: sending meat processing offshore significantly undermines local employment, as well as the capacity of animal protectionists to influence the regulation of welfare standards. Co-operation between animal protectionists and meat workers is not new; in the early to mid-20th century, for example, farmers worked with the protection movement to promote ‘rural slaughter’. This served the interests of reformers concerned about the cruelty of stock transport (Budd 1988), while saving producers the cost of moving animals to regional towns or cities for butchering. Rural politicians from both Labor and the conservative parties supported these reforms.

However, these relationships are fragile and tend to pull apart. Historically, 19th-century reformers saw slaughter and stock-transport workers as just the type of working-class men whom they considered central to the problem of animal cruelty because of their perceived ignorance; some of these underlying attitudes and suspicions persist today (O’Sullivan 2015c). In addition, contemporary investigations into animal mistreatment tend not to delineate between the acts of individual production workers (especially those captured in undercover or whistle-blower footage)30 and the larger systems that foster animal abuse. This suits employers, who tend to shift responsibility for mistreatment back to individual employees. This presents a strategic and tactical problem for parts of the animal protectionist community who have become focused on an underlying analysis of animal abuse through the lens of a critique of capitalism and/or ‘intersectionality’. In diversifying the study of social categorisation and power to include non-human animals and the greater complexities of privilege and oppression (Twine 2010, 9–11), they attempt to focus popular concerns on systems, but the use of media imagery and the generation of ‘crisis’ events like live-export tend to be framed in episodic and individualised terms.

The potential for future collaboration in this area has been demonstrated in some recent successful tactical campaigns, and in significant moves in the United States to identify an overlap between the interests and welfare of workers and animals (Pachirat 2013). This has led to a consideration of the welfare of agricultural producers themselves; some APOs have attributed poor animal welfare not to owner-operators, but to the supply-chain systems of major meat wholesalers. This type of bridging work, however, is yet to be seen in the Australian context.

​Strategic direction and organisational tactics

In their day-to-day work, APOs in Australia are guided by a long-term strategic view. In this context, strategy refers to long-term planning and decision-making processes that incorporate a particular theory of social change31 and an analysis of the policy environment to identify potential opportunities, resources, allies, barriers and foes (Rubin and Rubin 2008). Strategies include the use of specific tactics or actions that are aligned with the larger goals of the group. While some APOs undertake extensive strategic planning processes akin to corporate or public-sector practice, others tend to take a less formalised approach, or to opportunistically follow actions generally aligned to the realisation of larger movement objectives (interviews: a lawyer involved in animal law, 13 May 2014; M. Pearson, 5 June 2013).

In describing their organisational decision-making processes, interviewees revealed a wide range of strategic approaches, including: regularised, formalised strategic planning and evaluation processes designed to satisfy a range of internal and external stakeholders (interview: CEO, RSPCA Australia, 24 June 2014; M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013); utilitarian calculations to select campaigns and allocate resources (interview: L. White, 24 September 2014); referring to the organisational founders’ interests as their major guide to action (in this case in the context of a newer organisation; interview: D. Campbell, 30 January 2014); and short-term planning matching volunteers’ capacity and interest to undertake tactical campaigns, where these can be found to align with issues that might gain support and legitimacy from the wider community (interview: C. Neal, 16 April 2013; L. Drew, 23 June 2013). This model assumes a small working-party type structure, with strategic alignment ensured by the shared cultural and ethical norms of the active members.

Importantly, while APOs employ a range of strategic planning processes, these organisations tend to have less developed performance-assessment processes. Those organisations focused on providing welfare services are the most performance-oriented, both when it comes to generating resources (particularly money and volunteers), and to providing services (interview: M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013). The abstract nature of many organisational goals (such as ‘ending cruelty’) presents a considerable difficulty for all APOs, and so those smaller and medium-sized organisations that produce performance measures have a tendency to use proxies (the use of social media data to measure the effectiveness of a campaign, for example; interview: L. Drew, 2 June 2013), and/or to rely on opinion data produced by market-research organisations (interview: L. White, 24 September 2014).

Given the largest and best-funded organisations tend to have the more formalised and comprehensive strategic planning processes, it may be tempting to attribute quality strategic practices directly to organisational capacity. However, there is more than simply a ‘capacity’ connection between an organisation’s resources and its commitment to strategic management. Yaziji and Doh (2013, 771–2) identify how the relatively homogeneous supporter base of smaller and more radical organisations allows for greater flexibility and capacity for innovation, where established and more mainstream organisations have reduced flexibility as a result of needing to serve a heterogeneous stakeholder base.

In examining the strategic and tactical behaviour of APOs in Australia, four broad trends can be identified. I will now consider each strategic trend and its component tactical practices in turn.

​A focus beyond the state

That the emphasis of most APOs in Australia is on social change beyond the state is evident in the number of organisations that focus on providing charity-like welfare services rather than advocacy, and in the dominance of these groups in securing public resources. In this area of volunteering, these professional staff and volunteers provide the majority of animal protection services in Australia today. This primarily involves processing animals (including receiving them, treating and/or euthanasing them, and sheltering and rehoming them), with the RSPCA alone processing 133,495 animals in the 2014–2015 financial year (RSPCA Australia 2015). As we saw in Table 6.10, there has recently been a shift in this intake towards a greater diversity of species, especially wildlife. As illustrated in Figure 6.1, however, the total demand for direct services has declined in the last four years. This reflects a longer-term trend of increased care for domestic pets by Australians, as measured using a number of key criteria (Headey 2006). However, the presence of a ‘hump’ circa 2007 demonstrates that companion animals are still susceptible to significant downturns in the Australian economy (Munro 2008). This type of graph, therefore, illustrates some of the difficulties in using ‘headline’ figures to measure performance in this area, given broader social and economic factors determine many of the demands on these organisations’ services.

Possibly a better measure of the success of APOs in promoting greater public interest in the wellbeing of animals is illustrated in the other ‘service’ role of a small number of APOs with prosecutorial powers. In Table 6.11 we can see that complaints to Australian RSPCAs have increased 156 percent over the decade from 2005–2006 to 2014–2015. This is a dramatic increase and there is ambiguity as to whether it reflects an increase in animal abuse, or greater popular sensitivity to it (Tiplady 2013, 14).32 Given the tendencies identified in Chapter 3, the latter seems more likely. However, the trend is very significant and the societies have only partially managed to deal with the increased volume of complaints, with only a much smaller increase in prosecutions.33 This increase in complaints is a significant indicator of an increase in general public concern; it also reflects a greater awareness of the suffering of animals in situations such as domestic violence (where animals can be significant both as co-victims, and as barriers to victims leaving abusive relationships; Stark et al. 2006; Tiplady et al. 2013, 93–96).

It is interesting to consider, however, whether the number of prosecutions will increase to match this increase in reporting. The development of legal expertise through the teaching of animal law, and the growth of a cache of legal experts interested in prosecutions and willing to work with APOs that have relevant statutory powers, points to an up-tick in prosecutions, and also possibly to an improved rate of success in these cases. The pro bono work of the legal sector is not simply an extremely valuable resource; it also serves to ‘professionalise prosecutions’ when they occur (interview: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013), increasing the likelihood of success and of more severe punishment by the courts (interview: T. Geysen, 19 April 2013). The latter can help to motivate APOs, who have traditionally been under-motivated by the possibility of undertaking costly and time-consuming prosecutions likely to attract only comparatively token punishments (Markham 2009, 194–7; Taylor and Signal 2009b, 35–6). An increase in the severity of punishments is seen as a means of broadcasting the moral harm of animal abuse.

On the other hand, the chance of a significant increase in prosecutions is constrained by a variety of factors, including:

• Culture: The small number of prosecutions documented in Table 6.11 is demonstrative of a long-standing tendency to avoid ‘the whip’ where possible in favour of education and ‘reproof’ (Budd 1988, 19).
• Cost: Even with free legal expertise, prosecutions still cost money and evidence must be collected. In many cases the latter is not forthcoming, especially when perpetrators cannot be found.
• Constraint: APOs are aware that they may risk losing powers if they exercise them too energetically, and that as technically private organisations with police-like functions, they are encouraged to act very conservatively in the use of their coercive powers (interview: a lawyer involved in animal law, 13 May 2014). Animal Liberation NSW had members appointed as special constables in the 1990s and began a strategy of prosecuting the state government over the treatment of animals in zoos and environmental culling (interview: M. Pearson, 5 June 2013). This short-lived provocation saw their status revoked. Irrespective of the legal merit of their actions, this served as an object lesson to other organisations that aggressive prosecution is a risky strategy that may lead to the loss of enforcement powers by APOs.

The changing number and mixture of pets entering the care of APOs also reflect another feature of these organisations: the cultivation of consumers through direct advocacy and education. APOs have long worked directly with the owners and overseers of animals to increase the level of care the latter provide, and have more recently expanded this activity to focus on the increasingly consolidated Australian pet industry to use its marketing channels to promote ‘responsible’ (or high-welfare) pet ownership (Zambrano 2013). This type of work has expanded to include involvement in policy debates about the presence of pets in rental and strata accommodation, with the aim of expanding access to accommodation for pet owners but also encouraging tenancy managers to consider the welfare of pets in rented accommodation.34

As discussed in Chapter 5, partnerships between APOs, producers and retailers have been used to create high-welfare branded foods, involving APOs both as regulators and in actively building a base of concerned consumers to ensure that uptake matches supply. This work on supply chains also reflects a simple tactical logic. As the CEO of the RSPCA Australia observed: ‘Talking to two retailers is a hell of a lot easier than talking to eight governments or however many cattle producers or pig producers’ (interview: M. Mercurio, 24 June 2014). In the governance environment of private supply chains, this can lead to a shift to an ‘insider’ strategy. Having criticised production practices from outside, a shift to the enforcement of RSPCA-branded welfare standards allows the organisation to shift its campaigning energy to other issues. Thus, in the case of pigs, the combination of a high-welfare standard (RSPCA-approved pork) and the voluntary phase-out of sow stalls has led the RSPCA to cease public criticism of the industry. (The degree to which this reduces conflict, however, is considered in Chapter 7.) This is not a one-sided relationship, but an exchange that creates a degree of mutual capture. The RSPCA has recognised that, in adopting a concrete set of standards for animal production, their brand is on the line: ‘We lend people our most valuable asset, which is our logo and our name’ (interview: CEO, RSPCA Australia, 24 June 2014). The APO’s industrial partners, in turn, take on additional compliance and oversight responsibilities. This sort of relationship can create problems, particularly if enforcement capacity is limited. At the turn of the millennium Animal Liberation Victoria endorsed a production facility for eggs that was subject to criticism from other high-welfare producers over the presence of de-beaked animals (correspondence: D. Moore, 18 December 2001). Attempts to influence other areas of private governance – such as attacking claims made through the Advertising Standards Bureau on the basis of misleading communication or offence – have been far less successful (Law 2014).

As much as they might appear to exist in a Randian world of private governance, however, industrial supply chains are not completely outside the sphere of state action. In creating and advertising these private welfare standards, APOs have been able (both deliberately and incidentally) to draw into animal protection debates areas of law that have greater sophistication and a higher capacity for enforcement, in particular as regards consumer protection. A good example is the pursuit of producers in recent years by the national consumer protection and competition regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC has tended to focus on misleading conduct about welfare claims made by particular companies (Pepe’s Ducks 2012; Luv-a-Duck 2013; Baiada Poultry 2013) and peak bodies (the Australian Chicken Meat Federation). The enforcement of these standards and claims under generic commercial law principles is also significant because it allows APOs to draw on an area of legal practice with more experienced practitioners than are currently involved in animal law in Australia (interview: a lawyer involved in animal law, 13 May 2014). These actions have been helped by the emergence of a more coherent national framework for consumer law (Bruce 2012b), a tactical and strategic decision to overcome the limited opportunities presented by Australian animal law, and a lack of skilled practitioners in the emerging field.

This approach to consumer protection law has also facilitated new connections. These include co-operation between APOs and general consumer protection NGOs. CHOICE, for example, has become very active in consumer protection around the marketing of free-range eggs,35 while Animals Australia and free-range egg producers have worked together to attempt to formalise free-range standards at the high-welfare end of the spectrum (Clark 2013). Significantly, when dealing with comparatively disengaged legislators and political elites, APOs can point to litigation by the ACCC as an argument for the state becoming more involved in the issue. Ultimately, the success of this type of work, observes Kurland and McCaffrey (2014), is strategically useful in the process of delivering change over time through the mobilisation of ‘bystanders’ (such as the ACCC and CHOICE), but also in legitimising the APO, particularly to established elites and economic actors.

This process can create tensions between the interest group and social movement ends of the APO community. As discussed, the conceptualisation of a social movement as ‘first’ or ‘second’ generation can be significant in determining whether organisational actors perceive their model of social change as incremental or revolutionary. Interest-group APOs tend to be more comfortable cultivating an expansive set of weak ties between themselves and the wider public they are attempting to influence. Through these ties, they may encourage members of the public to make small adjustments to their personal behaviour. Social movement organisations, meanwhile, see themselves as networks of individuals who have acquired politically acceptable self-identities, and this points to a practice of social change that can be driven by ‘conversion’: through the popularisation of the movement’s ideas, but also through the promotion of those identities that automatically incorporate individuals into the cause.

Ultimately, the strategic decision to focus on state, quasi-state or non-state activities is determined by a number of factors. History and continuity play a role. The establishment of the RSPCAs and some AWLs as auxiliaries to the police on matters of animal welfare, supported by incomplete state funding, became a standard model for these organisations across Australia during the first part of the 20th century. This model of governance provides benefits to the state (the provision of public goods at low cost via ‘voluntary taxation’) and to the APOs (autonomy from the state; freedom of action), which provided the model with longevity. While other approaches involving delegated legislative enforcement exist, this model has only been challenged by the state’s takeover of the enforcement of welfare standards in production settings, largely at the behest of industry. Enforcement for non-production animals and the provision of general welfare services remain costs that the state is unwilling to bear. However, the risk of losing enforcement powers and state funding is something that hangs over these organisations as a threat to their social position.

Past success or failure in achieving political access can also contribute to an organisation’s decisions about where to focus its efforts. Many advocacy-oriented APOs began with a strong emphasis on lobbying for legislative change and administrative action, but over time have focused increasingly on community engagement and non-state activity. One explanation for this is that it reflects a relative failure to access the state to achieve social change. Following the rational political opportunity model of group behaviour, engaging in activities where success seems more assured represents a logical choice. As ‘outsider’ interest groups, advocacy APOs are forced to choose from a smaller range of options (Maloney et al. 1994).

But this explanation is only partial, as it overstates failure and underplays success. The political reality of policy change is that successes are fleeting moments between long interstitial periods during which it may appear that nothing is happening. A good example of this is the movement to ban duck hunting across Australia. This campaign has classic APO characteristics: formed through the work of a core issue entrepreneur, a focused campaign group (Coalition Against Duck Shooting, or CADS) emerged out of a generalist APO (Animal Liberation Victoria). While maintaining ongoing ties to that group and its catchment, CADS developed a specific and distinctive set of tactics (the rescue and recovery of birds during shooting season, an action that maximises media-friendly drama) and expanded interstate, where similar policy issues existed. That this campaign began in Victoria is unsurprising, given the size and visibility of the hunt in that state (interview: L. Levy; 30 August 2013). There is therefore some irony in the fact that subsidiary campaigns in WA, NSW and Queensland have demonstrated greater and faster success in achieving outright bans on duck hunting, while in 30 years CADS has won only incremental improvements in its home state. The quick wins are significant and disrupt the simple analysis that ‘outsider’ interest groups are limited in their effectiveness in legislative change.

Time is significant in measuring success. Quick victories are preferable to protracted campaigns when measuring policy impact. An incremental policy process is of mixed benefit for campaigners: it may provide reportable wins and sustain participation in the movement over time, but also permits time for counter-mobilisation, and for industry or others to ameliorate the most serious protection issues involved, which are often the most powerful in terms of campaigning. In Victoria, for example, the introduction of recognition training for hunters, designed to reduce the inadvertent shooting of protected species, has undermined one of the core ‘rituals’ of the early campaign, in which activists highlighted the environmental impact of hunt bycatch. Such loss of momentum can be problematic, not only because it provides an opportunity for oppositional forces to counter-mobilise, but also because it may move the campaign towards the ‘insider’ politics of negotiation and adjustment, where APOs often lack relationships, influence, or even a seat at the table.

​Mediatisation

The second broad strategic trend among APOs is mediatisation. In our use of this term, mediatisation refers not simply to an intensification of the quantum or pervasiveness of media, but an institutional process whereby – in response to this increase and to the correspondingly greater impact on public opinion of media attention – organisations of all kinds adapt their structures and goals with a view to producing and being responsive to media coverage. Mediatisation is not unique to this policy area; like the neoliberalism discussed in Chapter 8, it is a metaprocess of change that affects the whole of society (Lundby 2009).

Looking at the first aspect of mediatisation – uptake and intensification – we see the increasing significance of mainstream media, particularly news reporting, for APOs. All interviewees observed that formal reporting is important to APOs. Regardless of what their ‘core business’ may be, APOs tended to see media engagement as an essential channel for their message:

Several interviewees also highlighted the capacity for a good media campaign to break through a longstanding deadlock. In discussing the issue of mulesing, the CEO of the RSPCA Victoria observed that the PETA campaign on the topic put the issue back onto the public agenda, where for decades the RSPCA had made limited progress (interview: M. Mercurio, 4 June 2013). Overall, the view that media coverage is essential to any successful campaign has become a heuristic in major APOs (G. Oogjes in Munro 2005b, 79; interview: L. White, 24 September 2014), a view shared and reinforced by the journalists they work with (interview with Sarah Ferguson of ABC Television in Tiplady 2013).

The accuracy of this heuristic is difficult to determine, but data about which activist tactics the public will accept, and which are most likely to attract media attention, can shed some light. The degree to which the public sees various activist tactics as legitimate is illustrated in Figure 6.2. According to these figures, using the media is the most positively viewed protectionist tactic, and communicative strategies in general are favoured over tactics seen as ‘disruptive’.

If the media are the communicative bridge between activists and the public, it is telling to consider the amount of media coverage received by APOs involved in animal policy issues in Australia. Analysis of media coverage demonstrates that established APOs tend to receive the lion’s share of print media reporting. This stems from their popular legitimacy, high public awareness of their brand, and their larger professional media staff. It also reflects the tendency for established and known NGOs be provided automatic comment on public issues by journalists. Those smaller organisations that have invested heavily in developing their media profile also have a strong presence here, but largely around ‘breakthrough’ campaigns (for example Animals Australia in 2011–2012). That PETA (both its Australian and US branches) attracts strong media coverage reflects the group’s willingness to engage in creative media tactics to gain attention, as well as the high-profile work of the American parent organisation. Interestingly, the problems associated with the RSPCA in Tasmania (which was more commonly in the media for the ‘wrong’ reasons during this period of study due to internal conflict over management of the organisation) provided an opportunity for a very small APO (Animals Tasmania, operating as Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania, to be listed in the top 15 APOs most commonly included in media coverage of animal welfare issues nationally during that decade. Animals Tasmania was able to use the internal conflict within the local RSPCA as an opportunity to speak authoritatively to the media on animal welfare issues. Thus, while creative media tactics can help smaller APOs to get media coverage, the major organisations appear still to have an advantage thanks to greater perceived legitimacy, presence and capacity.

The prevalence of animal advocacy appears to have had an impact, not just on news agendas, but on shaping what Australians talk about. In 2014, the Humane Research Council’s survey reported three-quarters of the population had discussed, or heard discussion of (Table 6.12), animal advocacy in the preceding three-month period. While only one person in ten discussed the topic on a regular basis, the reported rate of discussion appears quite high for an issue of low salience to most people.

The opponents and interlocutors of APOs are also very aware of the critical role of media in activist campaigns. Thus, APOs need not run a media campaign on every occasion; simply demonstrating that they have the capacity to do so has an impact. Mark Pearson recounts a meeting with a major retailer:

This attention to media strategy shows a number of things. First, the importance of comparatively simple, easily communicated ideas,37 often making animal protectionists think ‘like advertisers’ (see below). Second, some tactics can have long shelf-lives, but others need to be reviewed creatively more frequently to continue to attract media attention (interviews: P. Mark, 3 June 2013). Third, the way the media (or the threat of media attention) can be used is significant in overcoming the outsider status of some APOs. They may make demands and claims by talking to political elites ‘through the media’ (interview: L. Levy, 30 August 2013). This can be a means of gaining more direct access for lobbying. Before publishing and promoting a series of reports on welfare standards in production facilities, Voiceless warned producers in advance, and so generated meetings with pork and egg producers. Although the meetings did not produce an agreement to change production practices, they provided a point of interaction that could be built on in the future (interview: D. Campbell, 30 January 2014).

Looking at the second element of mediatisation – the way the adoption of, and focus on, media practice reshape organisations – there is also considerable evidence. First, using the survey of APOs, we can see that these organisations are significantly up-to-date in their use of media to communicate with their key stakeholders. Low-cost internet communication dominates their interactions with members, supporters and contacts, reflecting the comparative youthfulness of many volunteers and the relative newness of some organisations, but even established APOs have been prioritising new media in recent years (interviews: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013; executive officer of an animal welfare organisation, 9 October 2014). As Heckscher and McCarthy (2014) note, the usefulness of social media lies in drawing in those extended members of a movement who have weak ties with core social movement organisations.

A second indicator of mediatisation is the treatment of media interest as an important measure of performance. Particularly early in the life of an organisation, a campaign or a new tactic, media interest can be critical in shaping the tactical practices of the organisation (interviews: L. Levy, 30 August 2013; M. Pearson, 5 June 2013). Animal Liberation Victoria, for example, has long engaged in ‘open rescue’, in part because of its power to get media attention, especially when the organisation was young (interview: P. Mark, 3 June 2013). Open rescue involves the seizure, treatment and re-homing of animals from industrial production facilities without permission, in a manner that makes participants available to public scrutiny (as opposed to more clandestine rescue methods) (Milligan 2013, 117–21). The power of media coverage has been evident to the organisation since Animal Liberation Victoria’s beginnings, when Patty Mark’s first call to hold a meeting was reported in the Herald-Sun. More recently, the initial media response when Debra Tranter, founder of the APO Oscar’s Law, tentatively began promoting her organisation’s concerns about puppy breeders encouraged her to believe that the issue would attract public and media interest (interview: 22 September 2014). Oscar’s Law has also been remarkable in its ability to attract celebrity endorsements, given its comparatively small size.

Mediatised APOs think carefully about events that can mobilise participation and gain media attention. For some, like CADS, the annual hunting season provides a regular window for media coverage, with some journalists covering the hunt and protests each year (interview: L. Levy, 30 August 2013). Other organisations create annual events as showcases, designed to maximise media interest: What will appeal to the media? What story ‘hooks’ should be provided? Does the event provide opportunities for good imagery? Will it allow participants to create their own social media content? Significantly, the process of mediatisation can see the repurposing of established movement tactics. Physical protests are a good example of this. While protest marches are still a mainstay of activist APOs, the RSPCA has repurposed the political march into its national Million Paws Walk (‘Walk to fight animal cruelty!’), which mobilises up to 10,000 individuals annually and generates much social media activity, chiefly involving photographs of dogs and their owners at the event. Many of these participants would likely not see the walk as a political activity.

The institutional aspect of mediatisation also points to the impact of media thinking on how organisations are configured and envisaged. As a spokesperson for CADS explained:

This strategy is sound. In her detailed analysis of animal visibility and enforceable regulation in NSW, O’Sullivan (2011, 45–51) establishes a clear correlation between higher levels of animal welfare protection and the visibility of the animal in the jurisdiction. For O’Sullivan, out of sight is out of mind.

This has led to the widespread acceptance among APOs of a model of social change predicated on the concept of ‘sousveillance’: observation of the powerful from below as a means to moderate their conduct and detect the misuse of power (in this case, power over animals) (Mann et al. 2003). The push to open industrial production to public observation is based on a belief that the average member of the public is inherently concerned with the wellbeing of animals, and would be distressed to see the reality of production systems (M. Pearson in Sacre 2013). This view is reinforced when the ‘enemy’ (i.e. animal agriculture) is seen to prevent transparency, such as by using laws to limit the filming of farm practices. However, the extent to which ‘glass walls’ would solve welfare problems may be overstated. As we saw in Chapter 3, Australians have a complex relationship with animal welfare, involving complex psychological techniques that allow us to combine high levels of empathy with wilful ignorance.

Some animal protectionists attempt to force transparency through direct action. Direct action is a contested term, but generally entails legal disruption, civil disobedience, and/or criminal activities to force change within the existing political, economic and legal framework of a society. By nature it is a controversial strategy, particularly where it prompts debates about non-violent direct action, violence against property and violence against persons (Carter 2012). One particularly high-profile case of direct action took place on the evening of 13 March 2013. An activist known as ‘The Blackbird’ broke into the Parkwood egg farm in the ACT. The facility, then the only caged-egg production farm in the ACT, had been subject to protests and vigils by Animal Liberation ACT in preceding years (Animal Liberation ACT 2012). It exemplified the type of intensive production that animal protectionists had been attempting to shut down for years amid debates about the capacity of a territory to regulate trade that may cross borders. On gaining entry, he, she or they proceeded to film inside the facility38 before damaging conveyor belts, egg processing equipment, forklifts and office equipment. This raid was significant in that considerable property damage was inflicted and stopped production for a time. Management described the incident as ‘one of the worst examples of industrial sabotage in Australia’ (Knaus 2013). In September the same year, Woolworths in the ACT announced it would not stock cage-produced eggs. In the following year, the ACT government paid Parkwood’s parent company $7 million to transition to cage-free production as the territory introduced legislation outlawing cage-egg production (Raggatt 2015).

As we will discuss in the next chapter, this example is often cited to promote concern about an increasingly radical animal activism associated with threats and violence against property (ABC News 2013a). But how significant is this type of criminality in the Australian context? This is somewhat difficult to quantify, given many crimes go unreported, and political motivations for crime are unevenly captured in the police and justice systems. However, indicative and comparative figures can be gleaned using self-reported incidents of illegal direct action reported to Bite Back (www.directaction.info), an online magazine that catalogues and encourages the type of illegal direct action that inspired The Blackbird.39 Using an analysis of its annual list of reported direct-action events, we can see in Table 6.13 that over a ten-year period, Australia is the 19th highest-ranked nation for self-reported direct action events in the world. That might sound impressive; however, the number of direct actions involved was small, and there was a stark difference between the top five nations listed and Australia. In the ten-year period illustrated in Table 6.13, Australia’s reported number of direct actions was 4.4 percent that of the United Kingdom, the jurisdiction most commonly associated with the image of ski-mask-wearing Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activist/terrorists, an image associated with violence against people as well as property. Using Flükiger’s (2008) distinction, the actions of individuals like The Blackbird are more isolated ‘lone wolf’ attacks than representative of a culture of leaderless resistance, the hallmark of the ALF – although the distinction is hard to determine. Australia’s experience of illegal direct action is overwhelmingly associated with illegal entry into farming facilities for the purposes of filming and evidence gathering (the so-called caring sleuth model; Munro 2005b), and/or open rescue.40 These practices may involve property damage to gain access, but they differ significantly in scale from the sabotage and destruction of property seen in some parts of Europe and North America. The Blackbird’s type of radicalism appears extremely rare and outside of the cultural norm of most Australian animal protectionists.41

This is partially explained by the small size of the more radical LSRA animal protection community in Australia. Going back to the ideological distinctions between the welfarist or weak-rights animal protectionists and the strong-rights or abolitionist perspective, we can see that the higher AAS scores of the latter (column b in Table 6.8) correlated to a greater willingness to engage in radical or direct action. However, this may be overstated. The association of more radical parts of the animal protection movement with illegal or legally dubious practices is not necessarily accurate. In her detailed ethnographic study of animal shelters and re-homing services in the UK, for example, Taylor (2004, 326) talks about the theft of companion animals from ‘bad’ homes by welfare personnel from mainstream charity-like organisations. The difference here is one of focus (companion animals from private homes, as opposed to production animals in industrial settings), and emphasis (the latter incidents go unreported to groups like Bite Back).

Direct action does, however, play an important tactical role for animal protectionists in Australia. During the last decades, direct action has become one of the most effective ways that animal protectionists have achieved media coverage of their concerns (Park 2006). Much of this is focused on the obtaining of covert footage, and the polarising open rescue method developed largely by Animal Liberation Victoria.

The symbolism and meanings of direct action in Australia having been de-radicalised, over time it has become integral to the media strategies of some APOs. While direct action in the UK has been employed to attack the commercial viability of animal agriculture (Donovan and Coupe 2013), access to animal production facilities and laboratories in Australia is primarily for the purposes of producing media content for the movement. This is illustrated in the use of the crossed bolt cutter and camera in materials produced by Animal Liberation NSW.

A good example of this direct action–media nexus is the 2013 60 Minutes story on the production of free-range chicken meat. 60 Minutes is a popular mainstream news program, a sort of commercial equivalent to Four Corners. While the episode provided a comparison of the ethics and costs of four chicken-meat production systems (conventional intensive, RSPCA-provided, small-flock free-range, and backyard), most of the episode focused on an open rescue by members of Animal Liberation NSW. In openly breaking the law, the activists showed their commitment to the issue, while highlighting their narrative that treatment standards reflect a failure of state regulation. This type of drama makes for good television, and the close working relationship between the APO and journalists saw an exchange of frame, with the reporter picking up the activists’ language to describe production systems as ‘factory farms’ (Sacre 2013). The use of the point-of-view camera shots from inside the facility made the journalist and audience appear to be ‘embedded’ with the rescue team.

Direct action’s symbolic importance also has significance at the social movement end of the protectionist community. This has four elements. First, the ‘muscular activism’ of direct action, even in its less violent form in Australia, has been seen as attractive to parts of the Australian community, as demonstrated in the rapid rise in popular support for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which has combined aggressive confrontations with whalers from a nation that is both ethnically ‘alien’ and historically an opponent, with the preservation of species held in high regard by Australians (Jabour and Iliff 2009). Second, following a long period of negotiation, the shift towards direct action has been useful in demonstrating action and activity by protectionists and APOs – it can be proof that ‘something is happening’. Third, closer association with direct action has been useful for some groups in delineating themselves in an increasingly crowded and competitive space; it can be used to ‘brand’ APOs relative to others, and as a fundraising vehicle. Finally, knowledge of, or participation in, direct action is a mark of ‘insider’ standing and personal commitment.The small size of the animal protection social movement means that direct actionists are often open secrets among core actors in the social movement.

For all the talk of ‘open rescue’ and ‘caring sleuthing’, direct action does, however, create real concern and fear. One group with a heightened sense of risk is animal researchers. From the 2014 survey of university animal-welfare officers, we can see that perceptions of physical risk to staff and property at their universities is quite high, particularly among university management and researchers working with animals (Table 6.14). While animal researchers were directly subject to intimidating campaigns in the 1980s and early 1990s, the development of research ethics processes during this period (see Chapter 7) significantly reduced these campaigns. Welfare officers, however, continue to report high levels of risk perception (interview: M. France, 19 May 2014), which is likely in part residual, but also a result of the international nature of the research community and the high degree of attention paid to violent direct action in the USA and the UK (Posłuszna 2015). Nevertheless, fear is fear.

​Collaboration and creative tensions

A third strategic tendency is towards collaboration between organisations and individuals. Major campaigns in recent years have all involved collaborations at their core, often with groups not traditionally allied. While both the interest group/network governance model (resource exchange and dependency) and the social movement (resource mobilisation) models anticipate this, the sharp up-tick in these collaborations in recent years forms part of a wider strategic orientation that recognises the political landscape in ‘ecosystem’ terms.

The PETA (USA) campaign against mulesing (2004–2010) is a useful example. The core of this campaign focused on PETA (USA) attacking the use of Australian merino wool in the United States and Europe through advertisements targeting the product as unethical and cruel (Wells et al. 2011). This campaign was undertaken at the suggestion of, and with local input from, Animal Liberation groups in Australia (interview: M. Pearson, 5 June 2013). Domestically, the rationale for this shift to an international campaign was the failure of Australian organisations to make headway on mulesing over several decades, and the strong, closed policy-making relationship between producers and a marketing-focused industry body (Australian Wool Innovation). For PETA (USA) this campaign also permitted the development of a greater level of visibility in Australia, which led to the establishment of PETA (Australia) in 2009. Attacking the brand value of the product at the end of the supply chain is a useful example of strategic ‘arena-switching’ (Holyoke et al. 2012), shifting the debate into a different jurisdiction (the USA) and using a tactical model (a media-driven campaign) best suited to APOs. Significantly, it caught the industry off-guard, which delayed their response to the new challenger (Bowmar 2009). This delay allowed the campaign to grow, with more retailers opting out of merino products.

What is interesting in the PETA (USA) campaign is how the RSPCA benefited from a campaign by an organisation very different, ideologically, from itself, and from a type of media campaign that it could not or would not run itself (because of its use of images of women’s bottoms, and because of its confrontational tone against commercial interests with whom the RSPCA had, or hoped to have, long-term relationships). The CEO of the RSPCA Victoria recognised this, observing:

Confrontation, however, is rejected by those animal protectionists who see it as either counter-productive, or against the general ethic of care:

Mark Pearson, then with Animal Liberation NSW, recognises that the end-stage of the campaign led to a process of negotiation and compromise that was beyond his organisation’s capacity. Following the maxim of Martin Luther King Jr42 (and showing the ongoing influence of Singer’s liberation message of the 1960s), he observed: ‘I’m more interested in creating embarrassments and international crises, which force the government to instigate a change’ (interview: 5 June 2013).

But this crisis model is not without problems, particularly as it leads to incremental reforms that – as discussed above – may blunt the campaign. This was clearly the case with mulesing. Following litigation (see Chapter 7) and a negotiated agreement to phase out the practice by 2010, the industry has declared it cannot and will not meet the timeframe, and the progress of replacement has slowed. Even when working (whether formally or opportunistically) in concert, APOs have a limited capacity to advance their concerns significantly once campaigns have become more incremental processes of negotiated reform. In addition, once incrementalism begins, this often limits the ability of APOs to successfully reactivate more forceful campaigns: industry and elites are able to respond to the issue and talk about developments in welfare to the public, and APOs significantly lose the initiative to control the agenda once industry actors are primed that they are active on the topic. This was evident in PETA’s 2011 campaign against mulesing, and in the issue of live exports after the suspension.

In addition, cross-organisational collaborations are limited by differences in ideology and outlook. As Lara Drew of Animal Liberation ACT, an abolitionist organisation that works with non-abolitionist organisations, observes, she feels highly ambivalent about working across the network. This reflects incompatibilities at the strategic level, where collaborating groups may ascribe to different models of social change:

But it can also reflect a clash at the tactical level:

This reflects both an underlying concern about the strategic direction of some organisations and campaigns, but also the power of mediatisation. The radical anti-consumerist ideas that exist in the LSRA community (Munro 2005b) are awkwardly placed in a movement that is increasingly focused on cultivating alternative consumption practices using marketing techniques and rhetoric reminiscent of commercial advertising (Mann 2015).

​Capacity building

The final strategic tendency among APOs is an increasingly active focus on capacity building across the community. This can be seen in the goals of ‘growing the movement’ by expanding the range and spread of APOs. Additionally, it is visible in moves to increase the resources and technical base of organisations.

The former pertains to the ecosystem model presented above, in which some organisations identify issue or tactical gaps and, rather than expanding their own operations to address them, seed others operating in or around that space. This specialisation is useful given the fragmented political structure in which animal welfare policy-making takes place: despite the corporatist drive of the 1980s, catch-all APOs run the risk of being spread too thinly. Voiceless grants have been mentioned elsewhere, and are a significant example of how these conditions increase the number and professionalism of small APOs in Australia, while strategically building the prestige of the organisation offering the grants. Seed funding also comes out of identified abeyance structures, like the Anti-Vivisection Union of South Australia, which financially supports and encourages ‘successor’ organisations (interview: H. Marston, 23 September 2013).

The second aspect of capacity building, resourcing, can be seen in the expansion and professionalisation of simple and long-established recruitment and fundraising activities. For instance, the continued use of campaigning tactics that have limited direct effect, but which allow the creation of extensive databases of supporters and contacts who can be tapped for donations or mobilised into action (interview: CEO, RSPCA Australia, 24 June 2014). Capacity building can also be seen in the way some APOs are attempting to become integrated with, or auxiliary to, established public institutions. This can include an exchange of ‘hard’ resources (i.e. money), but also builds the legitimacy that comes from cultivating such long-term relationships. The Medical Advances Without Animals (MAWA) Trust, for example, has been working for a decade to develop a more formal institutional home for work on alternative methods and tools for animal research. This has focused on negotiations with universities for the establishment of an institute-type structure located within a major university (interview: S. Watson, 25 June 2014). This type of integration is significant because it allows access to resources such as federal research funding (via the Australian Research Council), and a legitimate place within institutions that use large numbers of animals in invasive research.

Similarly, Voiceless has the long-term objective of significantly increasing the teaching of animal law in Australian universities (interview: D. Campbell, 30 January 2014), as a means of creating a new generation of interested and effective practitioners. In addition, law students are more likely than other groups, on average, to go on to become political and economic elites (O’Sullivan 2015d). In this case the APO’s objective fits with the strategic objective of the university sector, which may look to increase student recruitment by introducing new and appealing specialties (White 2012), just as the growth of human rights teaching in universities expanded dramatically during the past three decades, breaking out of a narrowly specific discipline to inform other areas of instruction (Castles and Farrell 1983).

While changes to educational practice have external drivers, this is also being responded to from within the academy. The distinction between formal ethical scholarship on human–animal relations and animal protection practice in Australia was established at the outset of this chapter. This has been changing in recent years, with greater engagement with practitioners by academics and other scholars. From within the conventional university structure, the University of Queensland established the Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics in 2005, the University of Sydney established the Human-Animal Research Network in 2011 and the University of Melbourne established the Human Rights and Animal Ethics Research Network in 2013. These networks connect academics from a range of disciplines working on various aspects of animal protection. More directly embedded academics-as-activists have also established organisations in Australia, such as the Oceania Collective branch of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS). An explicitly liberationist organisation, ICAS Oceania was established circa 2012 and holds annual conferences that explicitly mix the arts, activism and scholarship.

​Conclusion

APOs are made up of a variety of individuals, interest groups, social movement organisations, hybrid organisations and abeyance structures. Using the analysis in this chapter, an example of the diversity of APOs is provided in Appendix C. A large number of actors and organisations makes this a complex community that has greater diversity than is often acknowledged (either externally or internally). The overlapping ‘waves’ of the protection movement have produced two distinct types of organisations – those focused on welfare-service provision and those on policy advocacy – but within these two categories exist a range of philosophical positions on human–animal relations. Differences between these groups do not prevent effective collaboration, even if the network of organisations is attenuated. Using an exhausted metaphor, this community is like an iceberg: considerable attention is paid to a highly visible cap of organisations and campaigns that rest above the waterline, while concealed below is much more activity dominated by charitable services for animals but also including an array of localised campaigns.

Because of this, popular awareness of APOs is quite low, beyond a few ‘category-killer’ brands. This makes understanding the diversity of actors and their motivations difficult for those not actively engaged in the issues. While the last decade has led to some talk of ‘breakthrough’ campaigns that have changed the power dynamic between actors in the policy domain, change is relatively slow, with the same topics subject to APO campaigns over many decades. The majority of these groups are policy outsiders. But outsider status has not prevented them from having some successes, particularly in shifting popular opinion and in the world of private governance. Their outsider status is, however, a factor of the power of industry and professional groups to maintain close relationships, the topic we turn to in Chapter 7.