MEG GOOD
Meg Good is the Director of Education at the Animal Law Institute and the Tasmanian Co-ordinator of the Barristers Animal Welfare Panel. She holds a first class honours degree in law, and is currently finalising her PhD thesis in environmental law and working as a sessional lecturer at the University of Tasmania.
Meg is also a member of the Voiceless Legal Advisory Council, and has recently taken on the role of Chief Editor of the Australian Animal Protection Law Journal. She created and co-ordinated Tasmania’s first animal law conference in 2013 with the assistance of a significant grant from Voiceless, and in 2016 created and co-ordinated a national panel series exploring the lessons animal law can learn from environmental law.
Meg will be presenting at the SA lecture.
Abstract
Various proposals have been put forward for the establishment of an Independent Office of Animal Welfare at the national level in Australia. Although these proposals have not yet been successful in the Commonwealth Parliament, they hold significant merit.
This presentation discusses the arguments for/against the introduction of a national Independent Office of Animal Welfare, and advocates for the introduction of such an institution. Inadequacies in the current regulatory regime at the federal level are highlighted, including discussion of the concept of ‘regulatory capture’.
Regulatory capture refers to a situation where regulators are insufficiently independent from those they are charged with regulating. A comparison between regulatory capture in the animal welfare and forestry regulation contexts is conducted in order to demonstrate how regulatory capture can frustrate the goals of animal and environmental protection. It also seeks to demonstrate how the establishment of sufficiently independent institutions can help to provide superior protection frameworks for animals and the environment.