Serial parliamentary petitioner Tony Magrathea appears to have hit a rich vein of support with his latest campaign – to ban cats.
His petition closed with 1049 signatures, much more than the 788 who supported his call, reported in Gympie Today last May, for rents to be limited to 25 per cent of a renter’s income.
That was more than the 561 who backed his petition to have all freestanding houses compulsorily fitted with solar panels and batteries and the 516 who supported including fossil fuel exports in any calculation of Queensland greenhouse gas emissions, even if the fuels were burned elsewhere.
In his latest petition, Mr Magrathea said cats should be treated the same as rabbits, which were “listed under the Biosecurity Act as a restricted animal that cannot be kept, moved, fed, given away, sold or released into the environment.”
“They threaten the survival of many rare and endangered species,” he said.
“Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to include cats in the Biosecurity Act 2014 with the same ratings as rabbits, that is category 3, 4, 5 and 6 restricted invasive animal, because they are a danger to many rare and endangered species,” he said.
Parliamentary records show he has also called for voluntary euthanasia laws, binding citizen initiated referenda for local government and name changes for Queensland localities named after people claimed to be associated with slavery.
In 2019, he sought a ban on circumcision, which he called “male genital mutilation.”
