Townsville City Council pushes for faster appeals on dangerous animals at stat conference

The council is set to put speeding up dealing with dangerous dogs on the state agenda with cases taking more than a year to go through the courts. Here’s what they want to change.

Councillor Kurt Rehbein put forward a resolution for council to take a motion to the LGAQ conference to speed up the appeals process for dangerous animals. Picture: Shae Beplate.

Townsville City Council will be taking a motion to the Local Government Queensland Association Conference in a bid to speed up the appeals process for dangerous animals through Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Councillor Kurt Rehbein put forward a resolution, which was passed unanimously at last’s weeks meeting, for the council to take the motion to the conference in September.

Cr Rehbein said it’s important to take motions to the conference that are pertinent to the broader local government sector in Queensland.

If a motion is put forward to the LGAQ conference, change can be enacted across the state.

“After having a chat and seeing the last few years of issues that have been coming up, dangerous dogs and the way that they’re handled through the QCAT process is a particular issue,” he said.

Cr Rehbein said the appeals process can take up to 400 and 500 days, meaning that there was a wait of over a year for a resolution.

Cr Rehbein said the appeals process can take up to 400 or 500 days to get a resolution.

“We think that’s not really in line with community expectations, it puts a certain burden on, of course council and the rate payer and the council staff because these dogs are housed at our animal centre,” Cr Rehbein said.

“Also you’ve got the people who may be a victim of the attack and you’ve also got the owners of the dog, they’re all chasing resolutions on this and we feel that expediency should be the name of the game.”

Cr Rehbein has spoken with other local governments throughout the state about the issue.

“One elected member told me they had a pretty traumatic case, but it was in QCAT between two and three years,” he said.

“So we’ve asked the association to lobby on the local government’s behalf, for the QCAT process to be shortened down to a maximum of six months of a process of an outcome.”

Cr Rehbein added that a previous motion was passed at a LGAQ conference in 2020, but that was more of a total review on QCAT and not specifically about dangerous dogs and the processes or outcomes sorted in time frames.

“I will note that the government has committed to a review on QCAT which is wonderful and I applaud them for that,” Cr Rehbein said.

“We just want to take this motion down so we can specify about how the time frames of dangerous dogs are handled.”

Originally published as Townsville City Council pushes for faster appeals on dangerous animals at stat conference