Written By : Dave Blount

There’s more to soft totalitarianism than forbidding things. That which is not forbidden must be made mandatory. Take walking your dog, for example. Bureaucrats can’t find a reason to forbid it. Therefore, in Australia they are pushing a law to make it illegal not to walk your dog:

PET owners could be punished for not walking their dogs, under radical new laws being proposed by the RSPCA [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals]. …

If the proposal becomes law, dog and cat owners across Australia would face prosecution, fines of up to $12,000 fines for animal cruelty and magistrates could consider jail in extreme circumstances.

An extreme circumstance must be when you don’t walk your dog for so long that it lets loose in the backyard. The option of jail time for a first offense has been kept open.

Dr Hugh Wirth, head of RSPCA Victoria, is one of four experts the Federal Department of Agriculture’s welfare division has appointed to draft national animal welfare guidelines.

“The draft will tell people what they have to do rather than what they want to do,” Dr Wirth said.

That’s Big Government’s job, for which it pays itself lavishly with our money.

No doubt future legislation will cover precisely how many fire hydrants must be visited on each walk. But first new government agencies must be established to track the dog-walking habits of all pet owners.

On a tip from Dean and Judy. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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