RSPCA Tasmania loses benefactor
RSPCA Tasmania has been rocked by revelations by philanthropist Jan Cameron that she withdrew millions of dollars of funding from the organization because of lies by CEO Dr Rick Butler. Ms Cameron was interviewed on the ABC's Stateline Tasmania program (see transcipt).
This follows revelations last year that three Board members quit in disgust over the same issue. They were President Michael Kent, and long-standing Board Members Angela Ayling and Julie Williamson.
Amidst calls for the resignations of Dr Butler and the current Board, the best defence given is that the Board accepted Dr Butler's apologies for the lies, and that Ms Cameron's donations came with "strings attached". Among those strings was that Ms Cameron wanted a representative of her own on the Board, which in the circumstances seems entirely reasonable. However, StopTAC's Suzanne Cass also attempted to stand for the Board last year, and was effectively blocked by Dr Butler and current President Scott Whitters.
RSPCA Tasmania, the statutory body for the enfocement of Tasmania's Animal Welfare Act, has proven itself to be hopelessly compromised by its relationship with the Department of Primary Industries and Water. DPIW has a conflict of interest through its responsibility for the carriage of animal welfare in the state and its role as the regulator of intensive farming industries and organizations including Pitts Poultry.
In 2004, the ABC's Four Corners program ran a story of the conflicts of interest with RSPCA branches in NSW (where the RSPCA endorses eggs from Pace Farms, a huge battery egg producer which also reportedly has some barn-laid production), South Australia, the leading state for intensive pig farming, and Western Australia, where there are two (at the time of writing this, 26.06.2009) farmers involved with the live export trade on the State Council (one of whom reportedly has an old conviction for animal cruelty).
Read the transcript here:
Links 'A Blind Eye' Transcript
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