Former RSPCA Board Member and Acting President reveals despair

Animal advocate Suzanne Cass claims that RSPCA Tasmania has lost the plot.

‘When I became involved with the RSPCA Board after the last AGM, we made a number of promises, including that we would cut the costs of an expensive bureaucracy, and differentiate from that model followed in other states and territories, and that we would spend any available funds on Tasmanian animals and their welfare’, Ms Cass said. ‘We also promised that it would no longer be a ‘secret society’, yet this Board has re-introduced confidentiality agreements’.

Top-heavy, unnecessarily secretive, and expensive with little improvement in animals' lives

‘Far from carrying out these promises, it is my understanding that the Tasmanian branch, through the current Board, has advertised no less than five administration positions, in addition to the two long-standing staff, making seven in total.

Moreover, the Society has been, or is, paying, the CEO of the ACT branch, Michael Linke, thousands of dollars to run the Society while the newly appointed CEO is on very extended sick leave and will be for a lengthy period. This Board has spent far, far more on administration than the previous Board, and that was the main reason for it being deposed. I have seen little or no real improvements in the lives of the animals.

Promises of additional funding for the Inspectorate and for Prosecutions have gone absolutely nowhere; in fact, two Inspectors have quit’.

Ms Cass is especially concerned about the Linke appointment, which she feels was done with no proper process, and she is unsure of his suitability to run the Tasmanian society. Mr Linke supported large scale kangaroo culls in the ACT, and when community outrage saw donations fall away, the ACT branch was promised a $100,000 donation from the Stanhope government if it was re-elected.

‘I am especially concerned about Mr Linke having influence on the Tasmanian inspectorate’, Ms Cass continued.

‘In the year 2008-2009, RSPCA national statistics indicate that of 912 complaints in the ACT, there were just 6 prosecutions and just one conviction. According to those statistics, the ACT inspectorate carried out no ‘routine inspections’ of intensive farms or indeed anything else we would have expected’.

‘The current administration of the RSPCA is looking like heading for disaster when this board will be held to account for all the broken promises by its members and supporters at the Annual General Meeting, only a couple of months away. I am terribly sad for those few board members who really did have the welfare of Tasmanian animals as their first priority, but now the administration seems wholly ego-driven and clearly out of control.

'The animals are being used as nothing more than a vehicle for bringing back the bureaucratic model and secret society mentality’, Ms Cass concluded.

Source: Newsflash,
26.07.2010

For further information, please contact Suzanne Cass 0420 988221
PO Box 252 Email: [email protected]
BRIDGEWATER TAS 7030 www.stoptac,org
Phone 0420 988 221