In this final chapter we examine the relationship between animal welfare and protection policy and the political and policy elites in Australia. We have established in preceding chapters that animal protection and welfare issues tend not to be ‘driven’ centrally by the state. Unlike policy areas such as education and human welfare, in the animal protection domain governments are not the central determinants of what happens ‘on the ground’, nor of the formulation of the key regulations that guide private behaviour. This is not to say that the state is insignificant. Its significance lies in a number of areas: the ‘choice’ policy-makers make to leave many animal issues to the world of private governance reflects an ongoing satisfaction with the status quo, but also non-decision-making: the active choice not to act. The government still provides the context in which private governance occurs, by authorising private regulation or by developing general regulatory instruments. And finally, in some cases the state make direct interventions in this policy area.

Understanding the decision-making processes behind non-decisions, delegation and action is therefore critical if we are to understand the role of the state in animal welfare and protection policy in Australia. These issues are explored here from three perspectives: from the view of political elites in government charged with overseeing these areas of policy (especially the relevant minister); from the perspective of non-government or backbench politicians who are active in protection and welfare debates; and, finally, from the perspective of public servants who work in the areas of policy development and service delivery most closely associated with welfare and protection.

​The view from the minister’s desk

As animal welfare and protection policy is essentially a form of political choice, we need to ask what this choice looks like for authoritative decision-makers in Australia. Is it a form of executive management, where discrete executive decisions are guided by well-established criteria and norms (Davis 1995)? Or is it a less structured area where problems are unpredictable and decision-making situational? The answer is both, but, compared with many policy areas, disproportionately the latter.

Animal welfare and protection policy is a problematic area of policy-making because it lacks the unification of an overarching policy paradigm to provide policy-makers with a point of reference when choice is required. Policy paradigms are sets of coherent and well-established policy ideas that guide the development of specific policy (Daigneault 2014). They have a number of functions: they provide a decision heuristic, a means of justifying decision-making, and a way to calibrate decisions across and between policy domains (Hall 1993). The power of paradigms can be seen in areas such as illicit drug policy, where competing paradigms (such as law enforcement and public heath) present very different policy responses to the same social phenomena. Shifts between different paradigms are fundamental discontinuities and ‘punctuations’; change within a paradigm tends to be incremental and to involve more slight adjustments to policy ‘settings’.

The lack of a paradigm for animal welfare and protection stems from two causes. Political decision-makers are like most Australians in this area: they lack a unified and coherent political philosophy regarding human–animal relations. The relationship between humans and animals remains a significantly neglected area of public ethics, which means there is less guidance available for political elites than in other policy areas. The lack of a shared discourse with the public also means that when elites talk about the issue, their capacity to communicate effectively with the community is limited. Thus the paradigm problem affects both policy decision-making and political conversation.

At a more structural level, animal welfare and protection policy lacks a neat institutional home in the policy space. Different regulations and laws governing welfare and protection policy fall under the responsibility of a range of departments. Perhaps the clearest division of labour is the split between production animals (generally the responsibility of departments of agriculture) and companion animals (local governments). But the number of relevant state agencies involved in the development of animal protection policy can be broad, particularly where marginal cases are concerned or when more than one jurisdiction is involved. Even within a single state or territory, animal welfare and protection are dispersed: wild and pest animals are also considered by environmental departments; research and teaching draws in the education and health departments; commercial issues may necessitate consideration by the departments for business; treasury and finance will want to consider regulatory impacts; and the attorney-general will have an interest in legal implications.

As we can see in Appendix F, this is reflected in the large number of legislative instruments that govern animal treatment in Australia. While this could be seen as the source of the paradigmatic gap – and atomisation is significant in retarding unification to some degree – the existence of a unified policy model is one way that even dispersed policy development can be harmonised and made consistent. Overall, this quantum of legislation has developed largely without any single apex of oversight, allowing idiosyncratic variations (intentional and otherwise) to be retained in law and regulation.

As a result, policy co-ordination is often absent when animals are involved, with drivers for policy change and development coming from a range of sources. As the former NSW minister for primary industries observed:

Because of this, the personal and party priorities of individual ministers are significant in driving issues along. Each of the ministers interviewed for this volume reported particular issues that attracted their attention in office, often stemming from personal interests (interview: B. Green MP, 22 September 2014), party programs or priorities (interview: S. Rattenbury MLA, 23 July 2013), or the sense that long-running processes needed to be ‘forced’ along (interview: S. Whan MLC, 19 March 2014). None reported a strong interest in rationalising this area of policy-making given the effort this would require compared with the low salience of the issue.

Even for ministers with animal welfare as a core part of their portfolios, these issues tended to be less significant than other activities, and were often left to be driven by departmental or other (i.e. intergovernmental) processes. Each of the major legislative reviews of animal cruelty legislation discussed with interviewees was triggered by regular legislative-review processes, so the introduction of new legislative requirements or practices tended to reflect longer-term concerns about the ‘pent-up’ need for modernisation, clarification or harmonisation (interview: I. Cowie, 27 August 2014): that is, incremental and settings-oriented policy-making. (This also makes it difficult at times to associate particular legislative changes with specific governments.)

When soliciting input or advice, ministers generally prefer to work with those organisations they perceive as authoritative, such as industry peak bodies and national APOs (interview: B. Green MP, 22 September 2014). Decision-making is largely based on cost–benefit calculations, but policy modifications may also be made in response to particular circumstances or to the needs of particular constituencies; political considerations are highly important and have not been replaced by a purely technocratic decision-making. In general, the default response of policy-makers is that of ‘a hard-headed appreciation of economic realities’ (Beilharz 1988). This favours those stakeholders who are able to articulate their concerns in the language of economic costs and benefits.

As an example, the Victorian director of the Bureau of Animal Welfare outlined a policy development process involving the modification of traps for dogs and foxes (such traps are used to reduce predatory attacks on sheep). As this was a comparatively minor agenda matter affecting a ‘pest’ species, the bureau acted as both advisor and protector of animal welfare concerns. The two primary stakeholders considered politically were hunters and farmers. The farmers’ interest was to ensure no reduction in the eradication of pest animals, and this concern formed a minimum requirement in the development of any policy change in the bureau’s policy calculus. While the bureau’s recommendation for optimal welfare was that traps should be cleared daily to prevent undue suffering by reducing the time each animal spent in the trap, the practical realities of a small trapping industry necessitated a three-day standard. This was based on advice from the trappers about their capacity to survey remote areas. A back-and-forth policy development process resulted in changes to the standards, with the addition of a poison-delivery mechanism to the traps, as the bureau judged a three-day timeframe between capture and death to be a cruelty. Each modification increased the regulatory impact, leading to a secondary policy development and the development of a scheme to negate the cost of implementation (involving trap buyback and replacement by the state) (interview: 21 August 2013). In this case the entire cost of welfare improvement was borne by the state.

​Issue salience and agenda setting

Even in (or particularly in, as they may have multiple portfolios to oversee) the smallest Australian jurisdictions, a minister for the Crown faces an arduous task. Ministers, directly and through their various bureaucratic and political gatekeepers, ruthlessly ration time to tasks they feel are important either personally or politically (Tiernan and Weller 2010). While some ministers display an almost active lack of interest in animal welfare issues because of a low concern for animal welfare (interview: M. Parke MP, 4 September 2014), their perception of the significance of the issue in their constituencies is important in determining the level of engagement they have with issues that arise in their portfolio.

The unstructured and volatile nature of popular opinion makes it difficult for policy-makers to gauge what the public’s response to any given issue will look like. Australians have a strong interest in the wellbeing of animals, but this interest is moderated by long periods of complacence due to the social and physical distance between humans and most animals. As discussed in Chapter 4, prior to 2011, regular media reporting of animal-welfare policy problems highlighted individual cruelty cases. This explains why policy change most commonly focuses on the actions of individuals, such as increased penalties for and policing of individual cruelty acts,1 and the regulation of companion-animal owners (Instone 2011). Media ‘outrages’ are therefore important in opening windows of opportunity into areas marked by policy network closure, and the willingness of the public to actively petition government for action on a wide range of issues associated with animals is important in driving elite action in the short term.

In focusing on the role of media shocks in altering the political agenda, we implicitly accept a non-partisan view of the policy domain: that is, that systematic policy change does not generally occur with changes in government. In considering differences between different political parties, it is important to note that popular attitudes to animal welfare are not significantly skewed towards a particular partisan position. Building on the data presented in Chapter 3, Table 8.1 shows that both Coalition and Australian Labor Party voters share the same fundamental beliefs about animal ethics, while Australian Greens voters are more likely to endorse a strong rights perspective, but only moderately more so than the average elector. Fundamental attitudes towards animals, particularly when compared with clearly partisan policy issues (illustrated here using fundamental beliefs about climate science), are not predictable based on the tendency of the individual to vote for one major party or another. The exception to this may be the smaller constituency of National Party voters, which I discuss below.2

The length of the window for change opened by media shocks largely depends how long the issue ‘runs’ in the press. Political elites are aware that popular interest in welfare issues tends to be cyclical; the benefits of action are generally short term (e.g. increased popular support, the mitigation of public concerns, and a public perception that their politicians are responsive), while the costs are long term (e.g. impacts on stakeholders, and the costs of implementation and/or regulation). Issues may appear and disappear from the public stage in successive peaks. A good example is the treatment of greyhounds by the racing industry in Australia. The cruelty and corruption in this industry were highlighted by successive reports throughout the 2000s (McEwan and Skandakumar 2011), only for a scandal to erupt in 2014–2015.3 This cycling can lead to a variety of outcomes, including simple reaction:

This can also lead elites to adopt a strategy of ‘waiting out’ a temporary spike in popular concern or undertaking symbolic actions. In this way animal protection and welfare issues are seen by many policy-makers in terms of ‘issue-attention cycle’. Following Downs (1972), this reflects a political paradox whereby the concentrated costs of addressing public concern are not ‘remunerated’ by ongoing public support for elite action.

Outside of comparatively simple and pain-free policy choices – for example, the ban on importing exotic animal trophies introduced by the Commonwealth minister for the environment in 2015 (Cox 2015) – a perception that there is not sustained support for change leads to a degree of non-decision-making – that is, to actively avoiding making decisions and attempting to stop issues from coming onto the political agenda (Bachrach and Baratz 1970). To some extent, this is a natural result of policy in areas such as animal agriculture being contained largely in the closed policy networks of administrative politics. If a potential change in policy will have a negative impact on an enduring stakeholder group, the costs of implementing it are magnified. This also explains why some areas of animal welfare regulation, such as the regulation of companion animals in public spaces, or in reviews of strata legislation (Thomson 2013), are not subject to agenda closure: the policy space is not institutionally and historically closed, and the costs of action are socially diffused.

This non-decision-making approach can appear as a reluctance to take the first move on policy issues, and encourages excessive indexing of the minister’s preferences against the policy positions of other jurisdictions. Where a collective norm exists, elites are far more willing to express and reaffirm it. Where no such norm exists, governments often run dead, which can be frustrating to advocates for change as well as defenders of the status quo. This is not the result of a lack of technical capacity, but rather a lack of legitimacy for more dramatic changes to existing policy settings:

This would be more problematic for industrial animal use if acceptable farm practice was defined against social, as opposed to industrial, norms.

​Managing the electorate

While Table 8.1 indicated a low variation in attitudes towards animals by supporters of the four largest political parties, there are considerable differences between the parties’ formal policy positions on animal protection, and the parties have different approaches to dealing with animal welfare and protection issues.

As we can see in Table 8.2, the scope and comprehensiveness of formal, publicised policy from the major Australian political parties varies considerably. This variation exists both in the willingness of each party to develop and promote a policy at all, and the extensiveness of those policies that do exist. Of these parties, the Greens (at both national and state level) have the most extensive explicit policies for animal welfare and protection, with a national animal welfare spokesperson (Senator Lee Rhiannon) and, in some states, an animal welfare portfolio (although the latter appears to be more driven by personal interest; interview: T. Franks MLC, 26 September 2014). The next most extensive policy is that of the ALP, which has a national policy and some specific jurisdictional statements. The Coalition parties rarely include these issues in their policy programs and when they do, their policies tend to be generalised statements rather than comprehensive policies, or focused on very specific issues.

Although the depth of a party’s policy has implications for policy-making, it may not be significant at an electoral level. This is because animal issues do not tend to feature in election campaigns or debates. While elections are ‘focusing events’ that are conceived of as activating popular interest in policy and politics, mediatisation and low public attention tends to narrow the range of issues covered considerably (Maisel and Brewer 2012, 318). All but a small set of key issues and themes are squeezed out. And as we recall from Table 3.14, only 4 percent of Australians rank animal welfare as a top-priority issue.

State support for welfare APOs does sometimes feature in election campaigns (interview: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013), in part because they are well-known organisations with positive associations in the general community. A party may promise increased funding for the RSPCA, for example, or support for a specific welfare facility. Unsurprisingly, major parties tend to avoid association with ‘radical’ organisations or positions during elections. If more specific policy issues do arise, they tend to be ‘narrowcasted’ (that is, directed at small specific groups of voters, increasingly using social media), and treated as second- and third-order issues seen to be significant to particular populations or demographic groups but not to the electorate as a whole.

Some APOs have attempted to run both electoral and public-awareness campaigns in marginal seats in an attempt to wring concessions from the candidates. Marginal seat campaigns are perceived as effective only in very close electoral contests given the comparatively low level of significance of animal protection issues to most voters (interview: L. Levy, 30 August 2013), but smaller APOs do find that they get greater access to policy-makers during election campaigns, as candidates attempt to target specific groups in the community who may be electorally useful. Oscar’s Law, for example, has found the Victorian ALP receptive to concerns about intensive pet breeding in the lead-up to elections (interview: D. Tranter, 22 September 2014). During campaigns, normally closed policy-making networks can be circumvented by reaching future decision-makers through their party machines, as opposed to formalised, bureaucratic consultative structures.

Finally, animal welfare and protection policy is actively promoted as the primary agenda of the Animal Justice Party (AJP). This party, modelled on the Dutch Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals, established in 2002 and with 23 MPs as of 2015)4 was formed in 2009 and registered by the Australian Electoral Commission in 2011.5 In 2015 it elected its first member of parliament, Mark Pearson MLC, to the upper house of the NSW state parliament. Pearson was formerly the executive director of Animal Liberation NSW, reflecting the party’s closeness to this particular APO, as well as the fact that social movement organisations may hold on to some tactics and strategies over long periods of time (Animal Liberation first engaged in electoral politics in the 1980s). As of mid-2015, the AJP had 4,500 members nationally (Elliott 2015), making its membership approximately one-tenth the size of major parties like the ALP.

The origins of the party are complex, but involve a number of factors:

• the successful electoral model of the Partij voor de Dieren communicated through transnational activist networks
• perceptions of increased issue salience and therefore a greater likelihood of electoral success (particularly after 2011)
• conflict between Animal Liberation NSW and ACT and the ACT Greens over a kangaroo cull in that jurisdiction (interview: S. Rattenbury MLA, 23 July 2013).

Regardless of the first two points, the party faced scepticism from some APOs who thought the strategy unlikely to succeed, a distraction from local campaigning, and likely to run the risk of alienating those existing parties that had ‘good’ animal policies (interview: M. Pearson, 5 June 2013). While animal protection issues have a strong catchment in the community that could be a valuable source of votes, major welfare-providing APOs with large mailing lists generally avoid direct electoral politics for fear of reprisals from political elites and a loss of popular support. Further, the historical distance between Animal Liberation and other APOs limited the ability of the party to mobilise this base.

To some extent the AJP reflects tensions over the ‘ownership’ of animal protection politics. The Australian Greens actively compete with APOs over the issue of animal welfare for supporters and donors. The AJP therefore reflects a serious tension between political and social movement organisations:

The decision by the AJP to preference the Greens last in the 2013 federal election in the ACT, although seemingly odd given the comparative closeness of the two organisations’ likely base of support, reflects the intensity of the conflict between Animal Liberation and the ACT Greens over the issue of culling (both in the ACT specifically and in general) and a basic tension between Animal Liberation and the Greens on the issue of individual animal protection versus habitat conservation. The specific decision to cull Canberra kangaroos, made by a Greens minister on advice from his department, was extremely significant in the formation of the AJP, causing as it did frustrations within Animal Liberation over their inability to shift Greens policy on the issue.

To date, the AJP has not bled support from the Australian Greens. The 2013 federal election saw the AJP attract less than 1 percent of the primary vote in the senate in the ACT, a jurisdiction in which the Greens have limited likelihood of winning a quota because of the small number of senators afforded each territory.6 Overall, the party’s impact remains small (Table 8.3), with its biggest success to date the winning of a NSW upper-house seat with 1.73 percent of the primary vote, thanks to the preference-harvesting system promoted by ‘preference whisperer’ Glenn Druery and his alliance of minor parties (Aston 2014a). The best individual result to date was in the seat of Swansea in the same election, where Joshua Agland received 2.91 percent of the primary vote.7 The party, however, considers these results significant enough to influence the policies of other parties, particularly in close electoral contests.

​Left or right? Town or country?

Following the analysis of voter attitudes to animal welfare and protection, and the analysis of formal party policy on this issue, it is possible to conclude that animal protection and welfare policy sits on a continuum across the standard ideological spectrum: that increased interest in these issues, and a willingness to make positive policy (as opposed to non-decision-making), are aligned with the political ‘left’, while non-decision-making and an oppositional stance towards APO activism comes from the political ‘right’. This assessment would align with the ideological dominance research discussed in Chapter 3.

Interviewees offered mixed opinions on this question, but most felt that policies on animal welfare and protection by the major parties did generally follow this left–right spectrum (interviews: M. Parke MP, 4 September 2014; R. Brown MLC, 18 March 2014; L. Levy, 30 August 2013; a South Australian MP, 25 September 2014; an animal welfare advocate, 5 September 2014). This is often matched by corresponding levels of APO access to political elites on the left of the political spectrum (interview: D. Campbell, 30 January 2014). This view was shared by representatives of Oscar’s Law, who see policy responses as precisely indexed to the ideological spectrum:

Some respondents expressed a view that elite attitudes to animal protection reflect a lack of interest or an ignorance about the issues and organisations involved; others observed hostility from parties or individuals who see themselves as conservative or as occupying the middle ground:

The extent to which comparatively disengaged political elites share this view is unclear, but it highlights one of the risks of the excessive closeness of some APOs discussed in Chapter 6.

Some industry actors, particularly those engaged in regularised relationships with policy-makers, reject simple delineations along party lines, citing their capacity and willingness to work with any party of government (interview: general manager [policy], NFF, 14 November 2014). For some, this reflects a belief that standard policy-making processes will apply regardless of who is in office, while for others it reflects the quite different competencies of different parties:

A knowledgeable minister can be an impediment for industry, if he or she is able to challenge the views of advisors and industry representatives. National Party MPs are often seen as having high technical competency in this area (interview: a senior public servant, Primary Industries, 29 July 2013), making them sometimes more amenable to the views of agricultural producers, but also sometimes unpredictable and unwilling to uncritically wave through departmental and other advice.

Perceived higher levels of partisan support does not automatically mean that that this reflects organisational closeness. One APO observed that a former ALP health minister was ‘trouble’ and:

There is also some scepticism among the animal protection community about the ALP’s commitment to protection issues; there is a perception that the ALP is willing to take these issues on strongly from opposition, but is likely to weaken its views when in government (see below). This reflects an electoral calculus that parties can gain electoral benefits by supporting selected parts of the animal welfare agenda without having to work with APOs themselves. In 2013, the ALP campaigned to younger people on the basis of its animal-testing policy (Image 10).

While ideology – a tendency to resist social change through conservatism, a belief in the primacy of humans over non-human animals, or one’s place on the social dominance scale – can explain much of this spread of opinion, important variations exist. Members of a political party may have different positions based on their personal backgrounds and philosophies. One key source of this variation is rural background, and particularly rural background with a family history in animal agriculture (interview: S. Whan MLC, 19 March 2014).9 These political elites are more likely to support the status quo and to resist changes to animal welfare, particularly radical changes that would alter industrial norms. These individuals are found in all political parties, but disproportionately in the National Party, where issues of animal welfare and protection have both economic and cultural significance.

The fact that so many liberation, strong-rights and abolitionist animal protectionists are urban-based sits badly with National Party MPs. This plays into a sensitivity amongst these politicians, who are alert to the tendency for rural interests to be overlooked by the city-based media and political system (Chapman 2013, 69). For some, welfare campaigns are simply an example of urban know-nothings interfering in rural life. This interference affects rural people directly, through the economic impacts of regulation, and indirectly, through the regulation and cultural dismissal of traditional country sporting pursuits such as hunting, racing and rodeos. In this area National Party MPs have played a role in supporting and/or expanding hunting across Australia, and are quick to point out that duck hunting bans have been successfully introduced only under Labor administrations (in WA, NSW and Queensland; interview: L. Levy, 30 August 2013).

APOs who attempt to engage with these MPs directly may find themselves denied access to the policy debate. The CEO of the RSPCA Victoria recounts a conversation with the former National Party minister for agriculture (2010–2014):

Symbolically, politics in this area can become discursively angry, as seen in the characterisation of some APOs and activists as terrorists in the previous chapter. This can reflect other tropes of the political right in Australia. For example, the use of nationalist rhetoric to refute animal protectionists, a strategy that has tended to focus on PETA (USA) rather than local APOs (Marohasy 2005). Significantly, the strength of feeling of these MPs often leads to them holding key ministries (including agriculture) when in government. They also have opportunities to shape the policy approach of the Liberal Party, thanks to formal coalition agreements and a tendency by the Liberal Party to defer to its junior partners on issues affecting rural Australia.

​A national policy approach?

Our discussion to this point has focused on the role of the states and territories. We have, however, noted the tendency for policy to be pushed upwards towards national bodies (both government and non-government). The significance of the Commonwealth in animal protection and welfare policy is traditionally limited constitutionally to issues of border control (the original and dominant zone of biosecurity policy for most of Australia’s history), the expenditure of money, and issues associated with the use of general powers, such as the regulation of corporations and inter-state trade. Previously we observed that centripetal and centrifugal policy drivers were important in recasting the role of the Commonwealth government in this area of policy-making. This is particularly evident in two long-term policy processes, the first being the dramatic change in overarching industry policy affecting agricultural producers from the 1970s onwards, and the second being attempts after the 1980s to harmonise animal welfare standards through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) intergovernmental policy process. Each has important implications for policy and political opportunity structures, and tells us something about incrementalism and punctuated incrementalism.

Australia, remarkably for a nation famed for its historical dependence on agriculture, has spent the last half a century making policy to reduce state intervention in agricultural practice. While, as discussed in Chapter 1, farming was heavily promoted as a nation-building activity in the colonial and post-war periods, the role of the state in agricultural regulation significantly declined with the wholesale adoption of neo-liberal economic policies from the 1970s onwards: namely, a preference for free markets and the deregulation of industry to promote flexibility and reduce regulatory costs. Unlike their US counterparts, Australian farmers lack the complex and enduring network of subsidies and subventions, a network that in the USA both supports the sector and provides policy levers with which governments can attempt to regulate farmers’ behaviour.

As Smith and Pritchard (2014) argue, the move towards a global free-trade environment followed the abrupt external shock of the UK entering the European common market in 1973. Following this event Australia experienced a revolution in policy thinking, which saw the Commonwealth government reduce state intervention in industry policy and move towards a greater focus on economic growth via free- and bilateral trade negotiations. In the agricultural sector, farmers were conceptually re-classified from yeomen to business-people, with the state adopting the meta-objective of microeconomic reform aimed at overall agricultural efficiency to allow farm enterprises to compete globally.

Agricultural policy in Australia, therefore, tends to be characterised by the following:

• It is focused at the Commonwealth level, partially due to path-dependency (a legacy of pre-1970s nation-building) and partially due to its association with the Commonwealth’s monopolisation of external affairs and the role of international treaty-making in promoting free markets and economic deregulation.
• The Commonwealth government, regardless of which party is governing, continues to pursue free-trade opportunities for Australian agricultural products, institutionalising this objective into the diplomatic service.
• National, non-industry-specific regulatory bodies have become more significant as other forms of regulation have declined. The use of mechanisms such as competition law (as embodied in institutions like the ACCC; see Chapter 6), for example, have become increasingly important as neo-liberalism values trustworthy regulatory environments that support this ideology of ‘free contracting’ (Martin and Ritchie 1999, 120).
• Where state intervention is required to meet the meta-objective, it often takes the form of indirect support of the industry aimed at improving productivity and competitiveness relative to rivals (such as subsidies of rural industry research schemes; Price 2014), or the periodic restructuring of non-competitive industries through adjustment schemes, usually based on the principle of ‘get big or get out’ (such as incentive payments for farmers to leave their industry) (Wheller 2014). The extent to which industrial concentration has occurred reflects a range of factors, but the role of large investment in plant and equipment has played a role. Thus egg production, for example, saw dramatic concentration post-deregulation (that is, from the 1980s onwards) because of the dominance of intensive and expensive production systems (Hunton 1997).
• The use of other policy mechanisms outside of economic policy and direct intervention to adjust for the negative impacts of economic restructuring on rural communities through a wide range of general and specific policies (the former may include general welfare policies; the second environmental assistance, emergency funding and subsidised services) at both the Commonwealth and state levels.

This general orientation towards agricultural policy-making is supported by the NFF, born of a commitment to free trade, which it continues to promote. As Marangos observes, ‘The NFF family of agricultural interest groups has played a central role in facilitating the free-market approach to Australian agricultural policy and co-generating the discourses that support it’ (2009, 46). It is this orientation that puts some distance between the NFF and those more traditional parts of the National Party of Australia that retain their agrarian-socialist roots.

This wholesale change in agricultural policy, slowly implemented over decades, has implications for the rise of the second wave of animal protectionist concerns that has coincided with it. The major impact was reducing the significance of the Commonwealth as a potential direct regulator outside of its direct sphere of constitutional power. However, as the significance of the micro-economic reform agenda has played out over 40 years, new institutional actors have become powerful meta-regulators of commercial actors. The greater interest in the role of labelling schemes, for example, fits within this approach to welfare issues, because it is seen to empower consumers and allows conflict to be pushed outside of the ‘political’ sphere and into the world of jurisprudence (consumer law), and also because government regulation to increase consumer information is acceptable under the free-contracting model of neo-liberal policy-making (Bruce 2012c). However, the growth of unofficial standards presents new regulatory compliance issues if and when government decides to harmonise regulation to protect consumers and ensure that they are accurately informed. Government’s lack of a policy response in this area has created a policy vacuum that has been filled by a range of ad hoc industry standards and practices, both domestic and international.

The Commonwealth government of Australia has sustained a limited interest in animal welfare policy-making over decades and has focused most of its policy-making efforts on the reactive management of crises such as the live-export scandal (which I will discuss further below). However, the most significant structural developments in national policy-making over the last 30 years are interlinked processes: the establishment of the Senate Inquiry into Animal Welfare (1983–1991), largely driven by political outsiders (the Australian Democrats), the resultant formation of a National Consultative Committee on Animal Welfare (NCCAW) in 1989, and the conversion of this process into a formal, if voluntary, standards-making process through the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy (AAWS) in 2004 (Bartlett 2009). In the establishment of the AAWS, the Commonwealth reached agreement with the states and territories to oversee the development of optional national welfare codes, effectively taking the determination of what could be considered appropriate commercial conduct into the COAG system of intergovernmental working and consultative groups. It also demonstrated how policy outsiders can be important in pushing for initial changes to policy-making structures that develop incrementally over time.

This transition is significant in the way it moved the development of advisory standards from the CSIRO into an arena with wider representation and oversight provided though the Advisory Committee to AAWS (Dale and White 2013). This reflected a recognition of the essentially political nature of decisions about welfare settings, and the problem that the preceding NCCAW used a comparatively closed process (Neumann 2005). Significantly, while the CSIRO enjoys high levels of public trust, its closeness to animal-using industry and its focus on industry development have some similarities to the ‘capture’ of departments of agriculture discussed above. Thus for proponents of a national model with greater representative input (APOs), this was a positive development, even if major contributors to the standards process were still aligned with industry (through the organisation that contributed technical expertise to the standards process, Animal Health Australia).10

Botterill (2007, 195) argues that the restructuring of the intergovernmental consultation and co-ordination structures around ministerial agricultural councils has not led to increased influence for the states over national policy-making (either via the Commonwealth, or through harmonisation), but has instead permitted greater top-down influence by the Commonwealth over the states. This was aided by the comparatively voluntary nature of the standards-development process, its slowness, and the quick depoliticisation of welfare and protection issues into AAWS and out of sight (indeed, as both the ALP and Coalition were involved in the evolution from senate inquiry into AAWS, this also served to depoliticise the body). In Botterill’s analysis of ten years of agenda items from ministerial councils (190), animal welfare issues overall make up a small part of the intergovernmental agenda (about 5 percent).

This example of national structural change, however, demonstrates the difficulties of attempts to institutionalise APOs into standards development. In a review of the AAWS processes undertaken for the Commonwealth before the 2013 change of government, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) (2013) concluded that the process of standards development was overly long and did not produce standards specific enough for simple implementation. In recommending the AAWS model continue in a revised form, however, the consultants observed that the inclusiveness of the process was its core strength, that stakeholder consultation should be expanded (particularly to directly represent public opinion in standards-making through social-science research of the type discussed in Chapter 3), and that conflict resolution be improved to speed decision-making and expedite the mediation of stakeholders’ views.

Importantly, PwC noted the lack of an overarching paradigm or meta-policy for animal welfare as problematic in resolving disputes. While this may reflect a solid technical assessment, the reporters clearly overestimated the willingness of key stakeholders to see a fundamentally political process be bureaucratised or subject to greater public involvement. To have an overarching meta-policy would be to resolve the inherent conflict between participants in some way (Dale 2009, 187). Governments of all stripes have consistently lacked the willingness and capacity to achieve this, and so have used the AAWS process to contain conflict.

The containment largely worked for eight years, as codes were developed and slowly and unevenly adopted (or not) into state legislative regimes as the measure of ‘acceptable industry practice’ (the standard defence against cruelty charges). The best example of this is in the area of stock transport, a longstanding welfare issue that predates federation. At times, jurisdictions would pre-empt the stock code and the industry’s voluntary standards for domestic political reasons (for example in the ACT, as discussed, there was a strong local drive against caged-egg production), and/or to seize commercial advantages by ‘branding’ their own state production systems as meeting higher welfare standards than others.

Tasmania, for example, in pre-empting other jurisdictions in the phasing out of battery-hen and sow stalls (a policy announced in 2012 for implementation by 2017), was willing to ‘annoy’ other agricultural ministers and to cop, in the words of Primary Industries Minister Bryan Green:

This reflected the desire for the state to secure a strategic advantage, as well as a response to the need of the minority ALP government to sustain the support of the Tasmanian Greens, who were sitting as cabinet members under an ‘alliance’ agreement (rather than a formal coalition) between 2010 and 2014.

The AAWS was abolished following the 2013 election of the Abbott Coalition government, marking an end to the process of national consultative standards development (interview: D. Kelly, 25 August 2014). While the abolition of the AAWS can be seen in the context of attempts to reduce the significance of Animals Australia – both by curtailing Animal Australia’s participation in standards-making, and by removing the funding it received as a participant in AAWS – in response to their role in the live-export ban of 2011, the AAWS was just one of a large number of bodies abolished by the incoming government, a decision justified on the grounds of cost-reduction. While the minister for agriculture observed that ‘In my discussions with people who have a stake in the process, they’re quite at ease with this’ (Vidot 2013a), he was mistaken. Animals Australia was very critical of the loss of access to this national forum, and some industrial actors had found the AAWS to be useful because of the involvement of APOs (particularly the RSPCA) and because of the project funding it provided to programs other than standards-making, such as education and training (interview: J. Toohey, 4 July 2014).11 Overall, the decision to abolish the AAWS reflected the weakness of support for animal welfare policy to some extent, but it must also be viewed in the context of a government that was notable for its use of high-handed executive decisions without input from either external or backbench stakeholders (the so-called captain’s picks that eventually undermined Abbott’s leadership).12

The NFF’s stated position was that the abolition of the AAWS was a positive outcome aligned with the minister’s messaging about regulatory reduction, but this is problematic in that the AAWS had the potential to significantly reduce regulatory complexity for industries that operate across state and territory borders. At the time of writing, however, it is unclear if national harmonisation will be taken up from the bottom, or if another AAWS-like structure will be reinstated by a future government.

The abolition of AAWS and its advisory committee, therefore, is an example of externally imposed network closure: the AAWS advisory structure provided a point of access to the bureaucratised and closed policy-making environment of agricultural standards-development. It developed out of a perceived need to incorporate industrial critics and increase the legitimacy of standards processes by using APOs as proxies for popular opinion. Over time, however, this exchange of resources (that is, of access for legitimacy) did not sustain these ties, in part because of the willingness of governments in 2013–2015 to take strong actions to constrain APOs, a willingness related to an increase in conflict in the policy domain driven by APO campaigns. This conflict, in turn, slowed standards-making, but can also be attributed to some degree to the slowness of standards-development. For APOs, the susceptibility of the AAWS to closure demonstrates that animal welfare issues have failed to generate strong network ties at the national level that would sustain and defend this small institutional foot-hold against arbitrary executive action, whether driven by a specific desire to reduce APOs’ access to the policy space, or by a more general policy of purging bureaucratic structures.

This has a number of implications. The first is that we are likely to see a shift in APO advocacy away from the Commonwealth and back to the state governments (off a comparatively low base: survey data showed that less than 20 percent of advocacy focus was directed towards the Commonwealth). Over time, this may motivate state governments to replace the AAWS, or to call for the reincorporation of the AAWS Advisory Committee model at the federal level, both to reduce conflict in their jurisdictions and to cost-shift policy development back to the Commonwealth.13

Second, the dismantling of the AAWS process has significantly reduced the capacity of state agencies to engage in complex policy-making around welfare and protection issues. This is due to the small size (both in absolute terms, and relative to regulated industry) of the technical capacity in Australian state governments in this area, particularly in the interface between welfare settings and regulatory costs (particularly the cost of developing regulatory impact statements; interview: a director of a bureau of animal welfare, 21 August 2013). The upshot of this is that, in addition to the loss of co-ordination and harmonisation, states are more likely to defer to regulated industries due to a lack of capacity.

Third, there are industrial implications. An example is the regulation of dog breeding. For the Pet Industry Association of Australia (PIAA), dog breeding represents a significant risk because the majority of its activities fall outside of organisations regulated by their members’ code:

For the PIAA, national companion animal regulations would be useful for its members. Accredited PIAA members would strengthen the peak organisation’s brand, but would also regulate out of the market casual un- and under-regulated traders (a similar concern was expressed by the Australian Professional Rodeo Association about under-regulated competitions in remote areas; interview: S. Bradshaw, 5 May 2014). The current debate in jurisdictions including NSW and Victoria has the potential to further undermine the role and influence of the PIAA, by regulating industrial breeders and pet shops out of the supply of puppies and kittens.

​The view from the benches

As we have seen with the politics of accommodation within the Liberal–National Coalition, lobbying and agitation for policy change also comes from inside the political class. In animal welfare and protection this includes interactions between individuals and minor parties, as well as the work of interest groups within parties of government to change government and party policy.

​The Greens

The most significant example is that of the Australian Greens. Poised on the bridge between a minor party continually locked out of government and one able to form coalitions (formally and informally) with other major parties (realistically limited to the ALP), the Greens influence policy both from ‘permanent opposition’ and as members of government (the role of the Greens in governments in the ACT and Tasmania has been noted above). The Greens’ interest in animal protectionism is to a degree unsurprising, given the slightly higher level of ethical concern for animals expressed by its membership, but other factors also play a role in the Greens’ more extensive policy positions on these issues:

• Ideology: In keeping with the left–right conceptualisation of animal protection, the Greens are widely considered ‘of the left’ and so are likely to be associated with animal protectionism. Concern for animal wellbeing fits within the party’s core desire to ‘cultivate a global, ecological consciousness and long-range perspective in order to safeguard the interests of both existing and future generations and non-human species’ (Australian Greens 2014).
• Origins: Born from a social movement, the Australian Greens still retain some movement characteristics, in both attitudes and behaviours (an example of the latter is members’ engagement in traditional movement activities such as rallies), and many of its members remain active participants in other social movement organisations and campaigns (Jackson 2011). Unlike the increasingly careerist path of MPs from other major parties, many Greens in government and party roles come from an activist background and have been active in social movement organisations (interview: I. Esguerra, senior advisor to Shane Rattenbury MLA, 23 July 2013).
• Rational choice: The comparative scarcity of formal engagement with APOs and animal issues by other political parties since the disappearance of the Australian Democrats has been identified by Greens activists as an opportunity to raise the party’s profile and impact (O’Sullivan 2015e).
• Inheritance: Significantly, the Greens are the inheritors of an interest in animal protection policy following the decline of the Australian Democrats at the end of the 20th century. Some key figures from the Democrats (notably former senator Andrew Bartlett, who was the president of Animal Liberation Queensland before being elected to the Senate and discussed his vegetarianism in his maiden speech in 1997) joined the Greens, and other active Greens MPs were directly influenced by Bartlett’s work (interview: T. Franks MLC, 26 September 2014).

However, Miragliotta (2006) observes that the Greens’ embrace of electoral professionalism is a significant counter-balance to previous radicalism, and this may make for more human-centric and materialist policies. Specific to the issue of animal protection, the Greens face internal tensions over the position of animals in their ideological schema. As Jackson (2016) notes, this has led to disputes within the party as to how to frame their policy, and how to handle trade-offs between animal protectionism and concern for preservation of wider ecological systems (bioregionality) associated with both conventional and radical environmentalism. The former discounts the value of individual non-human animals to the health of the wider ecosystem, while the latter discounts all animals (including collective human interests) to this meta-objective.

This can lead to MPs occasionally being blindsided by ‘people whose values I care about’. As Shane Rattenbury MLA observed about tensions between conservationism and animal protectionism in the ACT:

Ultimately, the Greens position nationally has been to incorporate the type of language many APOs object to in the construction of animal welfare and protection laws: an explicit acceptance of a degree of ‘necessary animal cruelty’ to achieve other human and ecological ends by focusing on the elimination of cruelty that is ‘unnecessary’ (Australian Greens n.d.). This puts the national policy at odds with that of some of its state branches (particularly NSW, the home state of its animal welfare spokesperson).

​The anti-Greens: the Shooters and Fishers Party

An exemplar for the AJP in influencing policy as a minor party is the Shooters and Fishers Party (SFP). This party was formed in response to increased regulation of firearms in NSW in the early 1990s, and was energised following the introduction of increased national regulation of guns after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania (Singleton et al. 2012, 359). The SFP has, under a variety of party names, held one or two seats in the NSW upper house since 1995 and, where it has been able to affect the passage of government legislation, won concessions from the government of the day. These windows of opportunity are small, but the SFP’s presence in parliament has given the party resources and visibility, sustaining the NSW arm relative to other states, where their electoral success is considerably more limited.14

The policy focus of the SFP in NSW is broad, but its core interests remain the liberalisation of gun laws, the expansion of hunting rights, the promotion of hunting, and opposition to ideological opponents such as conservationists and the Australian Greens (one member of the SFP described this as a ‘counter-punching policy’; interview: R. Brown MLC, 18 March 2014). Major achievements relevant to animal protection and welfare debates have occurred when the party has held the balance of power (Flannery 2012; Sartor 2011), such as the establishment of the NSW Game Council (see below) in 2002, expanded hunting into NSW national parks in 2012 (McKee 2013), and the promotion of the concept of ‘conservation hunting’ through the elimination of pest animals by recreational hunters.

​The ALP: live export’s near miss

Labor’s relationship with APOs, at both the state and national levels, is less expansive and less explicit. While the Greens are publicly willing to engage with small APOs in the development of their policy, the ALP’s major interface with welfare is large commercial interests and their representative bodies, and only the largest APOs. Smaller APOs are less likely to gain access to ALP ministers (although shadow ministers are often more approachable), but do have interactions with the party via some backbenchers. Voiceless summarises this degree of access well:

While this might suggest that APOs have only a marginal influence on the ALP, recent history indicates this is not the case. Labor backbenchers have been active when policy windows open that allow them to disrupt the normal pattern of closed, incremental policy development.

The case of live exports over the last 30 years demonstrates this. For the vast majority of Australians, the live export of sheep, cattle, and (to a very small extent) camels and horses is an invisible part of the agricultural export sector. Only really apparent to people in the industry, and the few city-dwellers located near major live export port facilities, live export has been a small but growing part of the agricultural sector in Australia. The industry has expanded considerably in response to increased living standards in surrounding regions, especially where distance previously made agricultural production for domestic consumption less economic (for instance in the Northern Territory).

The live-export trade, like all exports, is constitutionally regulated by the state governments while the animals are within Australia, but responsibility shifts to the Commonwealth once they are selected for export. Historically, the national government has been happy for the peak industry body (currently LiveCorp) to grant export licenses based on industry self-regulation and standards-making. Since 2000, however, live exports have burst onto the national stage on two occasions: first, following the 2003 death of 5,500 sheep aboard the MV Cormo Express after Saudi officials refused to land the shipment due to suspected infection in the flock; and second, in 2011, when the ABC broadcast the Four Corners episode ‘A bloody business’.

In each case, the government of the day responded to popular concern rapidly, ratcheting up regulation with new requirements aimed at increasing existing welfare oversight and standards, but focused on other issues of immediate concern. Thus, in legislating new standards in 2004, the Howard Coalition government focused on aligning welfare tests to the standards of destination countries, and improving veterinarian access to animals en route (Caulfield 2009). This was intended to prevent the kind of situation that had caused the deaths, where animals were cleared for export but then denied approval to land at their destination. Following the temporary suspension of trade to Indonesia in June and July 2011, the Commonwealth introduced another focused response: the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS). ESCAS built on existing export licensing arguments to produce a regulatory system for most live-exported animals. This required that exporters (Poppi 2014):

• prove compliance with World Organisation for Animal Health welfare standards
• introduce systems to trace individual animals through the supply chain
• demonstrate control of the animals’ treatment through the supply chain (post-export) against the standard; and
• report and audit processes and compliance.

Importantly, ESCAS suited the political mood of Australians not opposed to live export per se but looking to export Australian ideas about appropriate welfare standards (see Table 8.4). The temporary suspension of trade and the introduction of this expanded welfare model, incorporating a radical expansion of responsibility over exported animals, appears to have quieted public concerns, and the popular outrage expressed in 2011 was not repeated when investigations showed that the new system had not prevented further welfare problems. The inability of ESCAS to meet public expectations was anticipated by observers, given the difficulties of extraterritorial regulation and the new system’s reliance on industry oversight (Hastreiter 2013). Significantly, ESCAS has created a new opportunity for APO activism, in overseeing the system and measuring its performance against its stated goals. As Lyn White observes:

ESCAS has been the subject of criticism and there have been proposals from government and industry to wind back the system (Cawood 2014) where destination nations refuse to permit the operation of Australian regulation (Bettles 2015).

The development and implementation of ESCAS, while consistent with the incremental and reactive nature of much animal welfare policy-making, also highlighted a serious policy debate within the ALP that led to the development of its current national policy platform at the 2011 national conference. This move, driven by Western Australian MP Melissa Parke and a group of individual backbenchers, aimed to adopt a policy to phase out live exports in Australia (Willingham 2011). This was not a unique position. New Zealand had made a similar decision (since reversed) to ban live sheep exports in the 1980s. Importantly, the ad hoc interest group16 brought together members of the left faction with individuals from the right of the party, gaining strong support from elements of the union movement who would prefer to see local slaughter and chilled meat export replace the live trade (interviews: M. Parke MP, 4 September 2014; K. Thomson MP, 26 June 2014).

The motion to phase out the trade was lost at the conference (215 votes to 175 in favour) (Beef Central 2011). Importantly, this move reflected frustrations among these MPs with the way the response to the live-export crisis had been developed within the caucus process: they felt that the process had been controlled too closely by the minister for agriculture’s staff, who had used delays to wait out popular concerns about the crisis. In the end, this strategy proved effective and the moment in which a complete ban might have been achieved passed. Overall, the ESCAS story is unusual in the degree of public engagement with the issue, but the tendency towards incremental reform (and later re-deregulation) follows a quite traditional policy arc whereby a rapid decline in public attention puts the policy back under control of agricultural interests within the public sector.

​Institutional solutions

The 2011 ALP national conference did provide those with an interest in animal protection in the ALP with some policy wins. Labor policy was changed to commit to the AAWS process, resist ‘ag-gag’, and – importantly – establish an independent office of animal welfare. These last two items demonstrate the influence of major APOs including the RSPCA Australia, Voiceless and Animals Australia (some ALP policy-writers have a background in these organisations; interview: M. Parke MP, 4 September 2014). The concept of an independent office of animal welfare is promoted by many APOs as a means of resolving the essential conflict of interest in line departments engaged in both industry promotion and welfare oversight. This view has been embraced by the Australian Greens, and its inclusion in ALP policy initially filled APOs with confidence that this model could be implemented within years (Animals Australia 2012).

This confidence has been short-lived. The Australian Greens have included the independent office model in private members’ bills,17 but the ALP backed away from its implementation when in government. During the peak of concern about live exports, the minister for agriculture proposed the alternative model of an inspector-general of animal welfare and live animal exports based within his department, but this was not realised before the change of government in 2013 (Vidot 2013b). There have been moves to have the commitment removed from the national policy altogether. This demonstrates the weakness of attempts to establish policy advocacy bodies within the existing structure of the public service: regardless of discussions about the ‘politicisation’ of the public service during the past 50 years, such organisations often have difficulties finding purchase; even if they are established, they may face hostility and resistance from within the public sector. Strong external stakeholders and elite protection is needed to sustain such bodies.

Another example of such a structural advocate-cum-regulator is the NSW Game Council. The council was established in 2002 under the Carr Labor government. The inability of the government to control the upper house of parliament following the 1999 election (Bennett 1999) led to negotiations with a number of small minor parties and the provision of concessions in exchange for supporting major elements of the government’s legislative agenda. The Shooters and Fishers Party, aware of the opportunity this presented, developed the idea of the council as a statutory authority regulating and promoting hunting. As with the proposed independent office, this model served both to institutionalise regulation of hunting in an autonomous agency away from direct departmental control, and to incorporate an advocate for the general policy orientation of the SFP within government.

The council served as an alternative source of policy advice to relevant ministers dealing with hunting regulation and environmental management. This led to clashes with other agencies over technical advice promoted by the council, for example, over the efficacy of conservation hunting in limiting the impact of invasive species (Booth and Low 2009). Over its lifetime, however, the council met its designers’ intentions: favourable regulation and the active promotion of hunting. Its impact, however, tended to be limited by its small size and limited funding, as anticipated in an agency with no advocate in cabinet.

The abolition of the NSW Game Council came about, ironically, thanks in part to its effectiveness. This occurred in 2013, following increased scrutiny of hunting regulation and regulators with the expansion of hunting into NSW national parks. In December 2012 the acting chief executive of the council participated in an illegal goat hunt on private lands; he was later convicted, as was another council volunteer (Aston 2014b). A review of the council by government found serious limitations in the governance of the organisation, and the council was abolished shortly after. This had significant implications for the then premier, Barry O’Farrell, to whom the SFP personally attributed this decision (interview: R. Brown MLC, 18 March 2014).

The implications of this example are significant. The capacity for minor parties or pressure groups within parties to institutionalise advocates for their concerns exists, and – as with the case of the Game Council in NSW – can have a considerably long lifespan. These bodies, however, can be orphans of the political process, with little resistance to abolition if the political tide turns against them. For the NSW Game Council, its advocacy role led it to engage in practices not normally associated with the public sector, and it became ‘further and further isolated from mainstream government administration’ (Dunn et al. 2012).

This type of problem is predictable, with Shapiro (1997) noting the tendency for such bodies to experience problems of co-ordination with cognate arms of government, as well as challenges to their political legitimacy. ‘Unloved’ agencies involved in the regulation of conduct are common, however, and include many ombudsmen and bodies responsible for freedom of information. These agencies tend to persist where they have a combination of demonstrated effectiveness, strong support from influential stakeholders, bipartisan approval from within the political elite, and co-operation with other agencies. There are serious doubts that an independent office of animal welfare would meet all or most of these criteria.​

The view from the public service office

Given the comparatively low significance of animal protection and welfare policy in the wider political agenda of many policy elites, the role of public servants in the policy process is extremely important. Portfolio management, stakeholder relations, regular policy reviews and legislative changes tend to be driven at the junior and mid-levels of the public service within a context of routine public-sector management (interviews: M. Hyman, 22 July 2013; I. Cowie, 2 August 2014). In large jurisdictions, many of the key public officials in the development and management of policy are insulated from their ministers by levels of intervening management (interview: D. Kelly, 25 August 2014).

This creates a degree of autonomy at both levels of the executive-administrative structure: bureaucrats largely manage their work within the processes of the public sector, and ministers are necessarily constrained by having direct intervention in their policy decisions by expert staff. It also has implications for trust between these two policy-making partners: the lack of interaction does not build trust, which is important when political elites have to respond to crises or make dramatic policy changes. Overall, the conduct of public servants in this process is informed by two ‘positions’: their information base and their structural location.

​The knowledge position

Public servants’ capacity to manage policy and to provide policy advice is contained by their level of knowledge. Knowledge in this case can be divided into two types:

• Technical knowledge, including an understanding of animals and animal welfare, husbandry, industry, economics and policy; and
• Political knowledge, including an understanding of external stakeholders, their influence, and their likely reactions and responses to policy changes and how to manage them, as well as an awareness of the views of key decision-makers within government, including but not limited to the minister and cabinet. Political knowledge also includes an understanding of public opinion.

For the management of animal welfare policy this presents some difficulties, for a number of reasons. As we have seen, the policy orientation of many elites can be ambiguous: non-decision-making and politically expedient ambiguity provide limited guides for action by public servants. This encourages conservatism and risk avoidance. Conservatism in this context means a default towards existing ‘meta-policy’: those grand narratives about general policy instruments that are employed by governments as general principles of policy development and administration. Even this presents some problems for public servants. If we consider agricultural animals, the meta-policy orientation of agricultural policy has been towards efficiency and reduced direct public financial support for farming. In moving away from direct capture by rural interests following the neo-liberal paradigm shift of the 1970s, Zhou has argued, agriculture bureaucrats have widened their sense of responsibility from ‘farmers’ to ‘taxpayers’ (2013, 44). This might suggest that public servants would be increasingly interested in public opinion. However, while this major change to agricultural policy represented a complete change in the policy paradigm for rural communities, the impact on welfare regulation by public servants remains extremely narrow.

This is the case for two reasons. First, the shift in focus towards more efficient production has not significantly changed the role of departments of agriculture in regulating animal welfare. While the state now intrudes less frequently than it once did into production systems, the basic tendency of departments to support industrial activity has not changed. Where high welfare coincides with improved productivity, departments are likely to regulate for high welfare standards. Where productivity and welfare clash, productivity is usually prioritised (Goodfellow 2012).

Second, the capacity for public servants in this area to understand the expectations of the general public is limited. Welfare policy and administrative units, in particular, tend to be focused on technical capacity rather than social science, and have limited resources to engage in environmental scanning. As a result, they report a limited understanding of public preferences (interview: a senior public servant, Primary Industries, 29 July 2013). This is reinforced by a tendency to favour AIO sources of information over APOs. Animals Australia and Voiceless report better relationships with individual MPs than with government departments, which has implications for the flow of information from these groups and their constituencies (interviews: L. White, 24 September 2014; D. Campbell, 30 January 2014).

The reasons for this are diverse, but include a limited capacity to engage in stakeholder management, the greater capacity of AIOs to be available than smaller APOs, and issues of legitimacy and credibility. For some public servants focused on sustaining their reputation as evidence experts, public participation in regulatory discussions is counter-productive, generating large amounts of ‘spam’ and little content of technical use given the high cost of administrating consultations (interview: director of a bureau of animal welfare, 21 August 2013), and, it must be observed, the lack of political elite support for funding this type of extensive and expensive community engagement. As a result, the agencies’ potential role as a trusted conduit between the community and either primary producers or their ministers is limited.

Culturally and professionally, this group is more engaged with other technical experts, as well as with individuals and organisations within industry. This is reinforced by the movement of staff between industry and the public sector, a tendency that reduces the willingness for dialogue between departments and APOs (interview: D. Campbell, 30 January 2014). Prior to the abolition of the AAWS process, horizontal exchange of policy expertise and innovation (through the jurisdiction reporting process in this model) was supported, something that will become more ad hoc and limited with the removal of the AAWS ‘bridge’. Overall, these public servants are in a weak position to speak authoritatively on animal protection outside of their technical foci.

​The structural position

Debates about the creation of bodies such as an independent office of animal welfare highlight a second key influence on the role of public servants: the primary source of animal welfare policy development pertaining to agricultural animals is commonly contained within departments of primary industries, and these departments have an inherent conflict of interest in setting welfare standards.

This view, the so-called Miles’ Law or ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’ perspective (Berman et al. 1985), is commonly held by both APOs and AIOs (Flint 2015a). For the former, an independent office would offer a solution to this problem; for the latter, there are strategic reasons for preferring that policy-making take place in the context of such structures. This can been illustrated in the decision by the state of Western Australia to shift animal welfare out of the department of local government and into the department of agriculture (following this, only the Northern Territory retained agricultural animal welfare in local government, but it too has since moved responsibility for welfare to the primary industries portfolio). This resulted from active lobbying from the SFO and other industry groups (interview: I. Randles, 30 September 2013) over a considerable period of time (the local government department resisted a similar proposal during the redevelopment of key welfare legislation in 2002; interview; I. Cowie, 27 August 2014), based on a range of concerns, including that welfare regulators had been overly influenced by APOs and were being excessively vigorous in their activities. With the shift, a better ‘fit’ between regulators and industry was achieved:

This illustrates the prioritisation of one type of knowledge over another, but also an interest in finding an empathetic fit between industry and those who oversee it.

A debate continues about the role of non-state regulation in this area of law. As we can see in Table 8.5, while departments of primary production are key welfare policy-makers, a mixed pattern of enforcement exists around production animals. A majority of jurisdictions retain quasi-private enforcement, with RSPCA inspectors being appointed as special constables under various acts. In this way the societies retain a link to their 19th-century origins as institutional agitators for enforcement of cruelty laws, but the enforcement model can be ambiguous and changeable. In Western Australia, RSPCA decisions to prosecute have changed, from prosecuting only in extremis, in line with departmental policy (Flint 2015b), to a more autonomous approach to prosecution; this shift followed the decision to move responsibility for animal welfare from the department of local government to the department of agriculture discussed above. In 2015 this became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry into the RSPCA, exploring the appropriateness of its enforcement activities. Similar concerns have been raised in South Australia, where there is some pressure to remove responsibility for agricultural enforcement from the RSPCA (interview: a South Australian MP, 25 September 2014). In both cases critics have questioned the vigour and accuracy of the societies’ enforcement, and have raised concerns that the organisations are opposed to contemporary industrial farming practices or that they are inherently ‘anti-farming’ (Flint 2015c).

The regulation of regulators, both state and non-state, is complex. While RSCPA inspectors may be viewed suspiciously by those they regulate (both in primary production, but also in commercial non-agricultural animal contexts), moves against them tend to be comparatively rare because of their high level of popular support.

Governments also have both direct and indirect means to ‘rein in’ the societies when they elect to do so. The most direct way involves funding: the financing of local welfare and inspection organisations by state and territory governments is variable, and welfare organisations are sensitive to maintaining good relations with government (Fidler 2015), both because of the financial support the state provides and in order to ensure that situations such as the Western Australian inquiry do not arise. (Some organisations, however, receive enough private revenue not to require a state subvention.) The periodic public ‘blow-ups’ experienced by the various RSPCA organisations over the years (often involving disputes within their boards and/or between staff and management) can be either a headache for governments, who find themselves without a key service provider (interview: B. Green MP, 22 September 2014), or an opportunity to clip the organisations’ wings. Which party is in government often determines which response occurs. When RSPCAs do lose investigative powers over production animals, they are unlikely to regain them, pointing to a slow shift towards a policy norm that no longer tolerates autonomous policing.

Less directly, the dependence on co-operation with state departments of agriculture in the enforcement of anti-cruelty provisions shapes the conduct of RSPCAs. While the distribution of powers and responsibilities is governed by formal agreements with government, these are subject to informal influences at the ‘street level’, as departmental staff work closely with external enforcement officers. Like all complex relationships, the memoranda of understandings employed to regulate these practices are not exhaustive, and informal agreements and understandings, as well as in-field ad hoc negotiation, determine how they are applied in practice (interview: M. Beatty, 16 April 2013).

At times this can lead to maladministration. Enforcement officers have been accused of tipping off the targets of their investigations before planned site inspections. For instance, during an investigation into the systematic use of live baiting by greyhound trainers in NSW in 2015, internal documents obtained by the ABC suggested that trainers subject to inspection were provided prior notification by Greyhounds NSW regulators, giving them an opportunity to conceal criminal conduct (Meldrum-Hanna and Clark 2015). This appears an important determinant in the 2016 decision, released after the finalisation of this manuscript, for the state of NSW to phase out greyhound racing. Former RSPCA inspectors have claimed that industrial producers subject to cruelty investigations have been informed in advance by their state-government counterparts (Fidler 2015). Furthermore, individual regulators and enforcement units who are seen as too vigorous may be the subject of direct complaints to the relevant ministry by industry, which commonly results in them being encouraged to moderate their conduct in future. This results from an unequal level of access to regulators, and from the direct access to government enjoyed by many AIOs. Thus, industry relationships exist up and down the administrative-political structure, and allow for intervention by commercial actors and peak bodies on a routine basis to shape policy formation (and non-decision-making) as well as policy implementation and the administration of public administration.