A System Designed to Fail
When a family pet is killed in their own backyard and the people in that home are placed in direct danger, you would expect the law to respond with clarity and force. My own recent experience has taught me that the opposite is true. The legal framework for dealing with dog attacks in Victoria is a fractured, confusing, and ultimately ineffective system that systematically fails to deliver justice or ensure public safety.
To understand why, we need to look at the two main pieces of legislation that are supposed to protect us, and how they conflict with each other.
The Domestic Animals Act 1994: The Council's Rulebook
This is the primary law that local councils use to manage pets. When a dog attack occurs, the council's powers come almost entirely from this Act. The most relevant part for serious attacks is Section 29.
- You can find the full Act on the official legislation website here: Domestic Animals Act 1994.
This section creates a series of minor, non-criminal offences for dog attacks, with penalties that are shockingly low. For example, under Section 29(3), if a dog that has not previously been declared "dangerous" attacks and kills a person, the owner is liable for a fine of just 40 penalty units. This is what allows serious incidents to be treated as minor regulatory breaches, handled by council officers who lack the powers of a police investigation.
The Crimes Act 1958: The Law That Should Apply
For serious acts of endangerment, we have the state's primary criminal law, the Crimes Act 1958. The relevant section for dog attacks is Division 9AA, which begins at Section 319.
- You can find the full Act on the official legislation website here: Crimes Act 1958.
This Division should be the law that empowers Victoria Police to step in and conduct a full criminal investigation when a person's life is put at risk. However, it is neutered by a critical precondition: it can only be used if the attacking dog has already been officially declared "dangerous" or is a legally identified "restricted breed."
The Result: The "One Free Attack" Loophole
The conflict between these two Acts creates a massive loophole that every irresponsible owner can exploit.
Because the powerful Crimes Act only applies to dogs with a prior record, the owner of any undeclared dog gets a "one free attack." They can allow their dog to maim or kill, and as long as they flee the scene to prevent the dog from being identified or declared, they will never face a serious criminal charge.
The system forces police to treat these incidents as a "council matter." The council, in turn, is left trying to conduct a complex investigation with no police powers, against uncooperative offenders who know that the law has no real teeth.
This is not a system that is accidentally failing; it is a system that is designed to fail. The first step to fixing it is understanding how broken it truly is.
To learn more about the specific systemic failures and our proposed solutions, please read our detailed report, "Governing in the Dark: Victoria's Unseen Dog Attack Crisis," available on the home page.