Help change our laws

The RSPCA is involved in several campaigns to improve the welfare of animals nationally. Campaigns include lobbying local councils to ban circuses which use performing animals, an end to battery farming, and the live sheep and cattle trade. The RSPCA also lobbies the State Government on issues such as stronger penalties for cruelty offenders and increased powers for inspectors. You can become involved in these campaigns by collecting signatures for RSPCA petitions, or contacting the RSPCA for information for letter-writing campaigns.  The RSPCA recently collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for tougher sentences for animal cruelty.

You can make a difference

From time to time terrible cases of animal cruelty provoke an enormous response from the public – for example Shelley and William. These two kittens were tortured in two separate acts of shocking cruelty. Shelley was kicked, run over by a bike and thrown on the railway tracks to die at a Sydney railway station. William was torched and subsequently died at the RSPCA of his injuries.

The response from the community was enormous. Images released by police of Shelley’s attackers, captured on CCTV and showing their repeated torture of the defenceless kitten, had a profound affect on the community. They ultimately led to major amendments to the State’s animal cruelty laws.

Under what became known as Shelley’s Law, NSW Police Minister, Carl Scully set up an Animal Cruelty Taskforce.

The taskforce considered options including: fingerprinting of cruelty offenders, better exchange of intelligence and other information between police and the RSPCA, providing criminal history information to the RSPCA and the courts to assist in sentencing and a review of existing penalties and offences.  

It also considered diversion schemes for juvenile offenders to ensure anti-social patterns of behaviour in young people are brought to the attention of parents, schools and other authorities.