Proposed Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines – Exhibited Animals Consultation Regulation Impact Statement March 2014

A3.1 – Incremental cost of training proficient keepers/trainers – S1.4

Under proposed standard S1.4 of the standards, an operator of an animal exhibit facility must ensure that the husbandry of each animal is supervised by a proficient keeper. The incremental cost of this proposed standard of the standards is estimated using the following assumptions:

• 
  The proportion of keepers requiring proficiency training to generate the sufficient number for compliance with the standards is minimal at 5%¹²⁸ as it is assumed that all large and medium facilities would have one or more proficient keepers;
  
• 
  1%¹²⁹ of small facilities would have to hire a proficient keeper;
  
• 
  The keepers affected are in all jurisdictions (See Table A2.4 for estimates of keeper numbers) except for NSW as this requirement is already covered under clauses 4(c) and 5 of the NSW General Standards and SA for exotics this is already covered under the SA exotic policy p.24, 25, 27;
  
• 
  The course fee is an average $6,698 per person (see Part A2.8 in Appendix 2);
  
• 
  The course is part-time on the job and self-paced¹³⁰; and
  
• 
  The annual cost of a keeper is estimated to be $48,246.12
  

As shown in Table A3.1, the one-off estimated cost of proficiency training under proposed standard S1.4 would be $0.34m.

Furthermore, as shown in Table A3.2, the cost of employing a proficient keeper for 1% of small facilities would be $0.06m per annum.

As shown in Table A3.3, the estimated 10-year cost of training and hiring proficient keepers under proposed standard S1.4 would equal $0.74m in present value 2012-13 dollars. Approximately, 80.5% of the cost would be borne by small facilities with VIC, QLD and WA affected in particular.