It is clear that the ACT government has little control when it comes to dangerous dogs in the territory.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
It took until the death of a Canberra woman last month for any action to be taken on the issue, and even then, measures proposed are clearly not going to go far enough or ban problematic breeds.
![<i></i> <i></i>](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/eb3e4827-8b66-4a35-9b4b-3704deafc6c0/r0_0_320_214_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
It now comes to light that data collection around dog registration is so poor that the government does not even know how many dogs are alive and what breeds of dogs are in the territory.
An analysis of data provided by the Transport Canberra and City Services directorate shows the government does not collect any further detailed breed information other than "crossbreed".
Consequently crossbreed dogs are the most popular breed of dog in almost every Canberra suburb.
There is no way to drill down into this information to find out how many of these dogs are designer crossbreeds or the "pit bull type dogs" responsible for so many attacks in recent times.
Without knowledge of how many of these dogs are in the territory the government can have no idea of the scale of the problem.
It becomes clear how the territory has lost control of the problem when it does not have the right information.
Reactively making drastic changes to laws after such an horrific death is understandable but it should not have taken such an incident to finally prompt action by our leaders.
A raft of changes to dangerous dog laws have been suggested this week and these are welcome changes that should go some way to keeping people and their dogs safer.
But improving the dog registration data is also a necessary step to take.
The ACT government says it is considering annual registration because lifetime registration is "inadequate" as well as other measures to get more information.
A simple change that would give a proper reading on how many dangerous dogs there actually are in the territory would be a start.
Then keeping track of the ones reported to have attacked would be the next step.