EXCLUSIVE The dark side of Australia's cost-of-living crisis exposed
RSPCA NSW CEO Steve Coleman told Daily Mail Australia that financial pressures facing millions of Aussies were partly responsible for pets being abused or neglected by their stressed owners.
It comes as RSPCA NSW announced it would be temporarily closing its online cruelty reporting portal due to the high volume of complaints.
'Whenever things are tough on the economic front it generally results in an increase in cruelty complaints,' Mr Coleman said.
'In the last couple of years it (animal cruelty complaints) has definitely been related to tight budgets on the home front and people not being able to afford their vet bills.'
Mr Coleman, who joined the RSPCA in 1991, said the organisation also had to help victims of domestic violence by taking their pets and looking after them while they found safe accommodation.
'The number of people with pets who have become homeless has also increased. A lot of people with pets haven't been able to afford their mortgages,' Mr Coleman said.
'At the core of it, the economy definitely hasn't helped. There are a lot of social challenges at the moment. It's a tough economy.'
The Covid pandemic resulted in a huge demand for animal adoptions which left the RSPCA in NSW with empty shelters.
Now, close to 70 per cent of households have a pet and many are struggling to look after them.
Animal cruelty isn't limited to physical abuse, it also includes failing to take pets in need of medical assistance to a vet, often because of the costs involved.
Mr Coleman said there was currently around 800 animals sitting on a 'surrender' wait list, but the RSPCA doesn't have the capacity to take care of them.
'What we say to them is we can't take the animal right now, but what we can do is try and help you maintain your connection with your animal so you don't have to surrender it,' he said.
'That may be that we fund a vet bill for a couple of hundred dollars that they can't afford.'
Mr Coleman also said weather also played a role in the amount of animal cruelty cases reported to the RSPCA.
'Typically, if we go back a few years before the economy started to crunch we got more complaints during the summer months,' he said.
'In summer months when feedstocks dry out we'll get more livestock-related complaints around drought-related issues as well.'
The RSPCA NSW recently released a statement saying it was temporarily closing its online cruelty reporting portal.
'Like many organisations, we face significant challenges when supporting animals and their guardians, and while enforcing animal welfare laws with limited resources,' it said.
'Due to the high volume of cruelty complaints we are currently receiving, we have made the difficult decision to temporarily close our online cruelty reporting portal.
'This change will help us manage case intake more efficiently by ensuring that our team can effectively triage the animals who need us the most, through reducing lower-priority and duplicate reports.
'Animal cruelty reports can still be made, as they always have been, via our phone hotline, which remains operational and staffed.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
23 minutes ago
- BBC News
How the mystery of Winston Churchill's dead platypus was finally solved
In 1943, a camouflaged ship set off from Australia to England carrying top secret cargo - a single young after his would-be owner, UK prime minister Winston Churchill, the rare monotreme was an unprecedented gift from a country desperately trying to curry favour as World War Two expanded into the Pacific and arrived on its days out from Winston's arrival, as war raged in the seas around him, the puggle was found dead in the water of his specially made "platypusary".Fearing a potential diplomatic incident, Winston's death – along with his very existence – was swept under the was preserved, stuffed and quietly shelved inside his name-sake's office, with rumours that he died of Nazi-submarine-induced shell-shock gently whispered into the mystery of who, or what, really killed him has eluded the world since - until now. Two Winstons and a war The world has always been fascinated by the platypus. An egg-laying mammal with the face and feet of a duck, an otter-shaped body and a beaver-inspired tail, many thought the creature was an elaborate hoax; a taxidermy Churchill, an avid collector of rare and exotic animals, the platypus's intrigue only made him more desperate to have one – or six – for his in 1943 he said as much to the Australian foreign minister, H.V. 'Doc' the eyes of Evatt, the fact that his country had banned the export of the creatures - or that they were notoriously difficult to transport and none had ever survived a journey that long - were merely challenges to had increasingly felt abandoned by the motherland as the Japanese drew closer and closer – and if a posse of platypuses would help Churchill respond more favourably to Canberra's requests for support, then so be David Fleay – who was asked to help with the mission – was less amenable."Imagine any man carrying the responsibilities Churchill did, with humanity on the rack in Europe and Asia, finding time to even think about, let alone want, half-a-dozen duckbilled platypuses," he wrote in his 1980 book Paradoxical Platypus. On Mr Fleay's account, he managed to talk the politicians down from six platypuses to one, and young Winston was captured from a river near Melbourne shortly elaborate platypusary – complete with hay-lined burrows and fresh Australian creek water – was constructed for him; a menu of 50,000 worms – and duck egg custard as a treat – was prepared; and an attendant was hired to wait on his every need throughout the 45-day the Pacific, through Panama Canal and into the Atlantic Ocean Winston went - before tragedy a letter to Evatt, Churchill said he was "grieved" to report that the platypus "kindly" sent to him had died in the final stretch of the journey."Its loss is a great disappointment to me," he mission's failure was kept secret for years, to avoid any public outcry. But eventually, reports about Winston's demise would begin popping up in newspapers. The ship had encountered a German U-boat, they claimed, and the platypus had been shaken to death amid a barrage of blasts. "A small animal equipped with a nerve-packed, super sensitive bill, able to detect even the delicate movements of a mosquito wriggler on stream bottoms in the dark of night, cannot hope to cope with man-made enormities such as violent explosions," Mr Fleay wrote, decades later."It was so obvious that, but for the misfortunes of war, a fine, thriving, healthy little platypus would have created history in being number one of its kind to take up residence in England." Mystery unravelled "It is a tempting story, isn't it?" PhD student Harrison Croft tells the it's one that has long raised so last year, Mr Croft embarked on his own journey: a search for archives in both Canberra and London, the Monash University student found a bunch of records from the ship's crew, including an interview with the platypus attendant charged with keeping Winston alive."They did a sort of post-mortem, and he was very particular. He was very certain that there was no explosion, that it was all very calm and quiet on board," Mr Croft says. A state away, another team in Sydney was looking into Winston's life too. David Fleay's personal collection had been donated to the Australian Museum, and staff all over the building were desperate to know if it held answers."You'd ride in the lifts and some doctor from mammalogy… [would ask] 'what archival evidence is there that Winston died from depth charge detonations?'" the museum's archive manager Robert Dooley tells the BBC."This is something that had intrigued people for a long time."With the help of a team of interns from the University of Sydney, they set about digitising all of Fleay's records in a bid to find out. Even as far back as the 1940s, people knew that platypuses were voracious eaters. Legend of the species' appetite was so great that the UK authorities drafted an announcement offering to pay young boys to catch worms and deliver them to feed Winston upon his the platypus attendant's logbook, the interns found evidence that his rations en route were being decreased as some of the worms began to it was water and air temperatures, which had been noted down at 8am and 6pm every day, that held the key to solving the readings were taken at two of the cooler points of the day, and still, as the ship crossed the equator over about a week, the recorded temperatures climbed well beyond 27C - what we now know is the safe threshold for platypus the benefit of hindsight - and an extra 80 years of scientific research into the species - the University of Sydney team determined Winston was essentially cooked they can't definitively rule out the submarine shell-shock story, they say the impact of those prolonged high temperatures alone would have been enough to kill Winston. "It's way easier to just shift the blame on the Germans, rather than say we weren't feeding it enough, or we weren't regulating its temperature correctly," Ewan Cowan tells the BBC."History is totally dependent on who's telling the story," Paul Zaki adds. Platypus diplomacy goes extinct Not to be dissuaded by its initial attempt at platypus diplomacy, Australia would try again in off the achievement of successfully breeding a platypus in captivity for the first time – a feat that wouldn't be replicated for another 50 years – Mr Fleay convinced the Australian government to let the Bronx Zoo have three of the creatures in a bid to deepen ties with the Winston's secret journey across the Pacific, this voyage garnered huge attention. Betty, Penelope and Cecil docked in Boston to much fanfare, before the trio was reportedly escorted via limousine to New York City, where Australia's ambassador was waiting to feed them the ceremonial first would die soon after she arrived, but Penelope and Cecil quickly became celebrities. Crowds clamoured for a glimpse of the animals. A wedding was planned. The tabloids obsessed over their every move. Platypus are solitary creatures, but New York had been promised lovers. And while Cecil was lovesick, Penelope was apparently sick of love. In the media, she was painted as a "brazen hussy", "one of those saucy females who like to keep a male on a string".Until 1953 that is, when the pair had a four-day fling - rather upsettingly described as "all-night orgies of love" - fuelled by "copious quantities of crayfish and worms".Alas, Penelope soon began nesting, and the world excitedly awaited her platypups, which were to be a massive scientific milestone – only the second bred in captivity, and the first outside four months of princess treatment and double rations for Penelope, zookeepers checked on her nest in front of a throng of excited reporters. But they found no babies - just a disgruntled-looking Penelope, who was summarily accused of faking her pregnancy to secure more worms and less Cecil."It was a whole scandal," Mr Cowan says - one from which Penelope's reputation never later, in 1957, she would vanish from her enclosure, sparking a weeks-long search and rescue mission which culminated in the zoo declaring her "presumed lost and probably dead".A day after the hunt for Penelope was called off, Cecil died of what the media diagnosed as a "broken heart".Laid to rest with the pair was any real future for platypus the Bronx Zoo would try to replicate the exchange with more platypuses in 1958, the finnicky beasts lasted under a year, and Australia soon tightened laws banning their export. The only two which have left the country since have lived at the San Diego Zoo since 2019.
The Guardian
7 hours ago
- The Guardian
In a new light: an infrared perspective of Australia's capital
Photographer Mick Tsikas has turned his camera capable of capturing hidden infrared light on Canberra. The result underscores how lush the national capital is Main image: Canberra's John Gorton Building, which houses the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, captured using an infrared camera. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP Mon 14 Jul 2025 08.51 CEST
The Independent
12 hours ago
- The Independent
122-year-old message in bottle found hidden in wall of Tasmanian lighthouse
A 122-year-old message in a bottle hidden inside a wall has been uncovered from one of Australia 's oldest lighthouses in Tasmania, sparking interest from historians. The rare find was made earlier this week at Cape Bruny Lighthouse in Tasmania by a specialist painter, Brian Burford, during routine conservation work on the lantern room of the heritage-listed lighthouse on Bruny Island. Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service (PWS) said the painter noticed 'something unusual' while treating a badly rusted section of the wall and, on closer inspection, realised it was a glass bottle containing a letter. The bottle was brought to Hobart, where conservators from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) carefully opened it, cutting through a cork coated in bitumen before extracting the fragile contents. Inside was an envelope with a two-page handwritten letter dated 29 January 1903, written by James Robert Meech, then Inspector of Lighthouses for the Hobart Marine Board. The letter details significant upgrades carried out at the lighthouse, including the installation of a new iron spiral staircase to replace a wooden one, a new concrete floor, and a replacement lantern room. It also records changes to the light's flash sequence, 'three seconds of light followed by nineteen and a half seconds of darkness', replacing a 50-second cycle, and lists the names of the keepers and workers involved in the project. According to PWS, the works cost the Marine Board £2,200, equivalent to around $474,000 AUD today. PWS Manager for Historic Heritage Annita Waghorn said the condition of the message was remarkable. 'You could feel the excitement in the room when the letter came out in one piece,' she said. 'This letter gives us an insight into the works that happened at the lighthouse and the people who undertook this work. This information adds to the rich history of Bruny Island and the Cape Bruny Lighthouse.' TMAG conservators used a humidification process to relax and flatten the old paper for preservation. The letter will eventually go on public display, but the location is yet to be confirmed. The Cape Bruny Lighthouse, first lit in 1838, guided ships through some of Australia 's most treacherous waters for over 150 years before being decommissioned in 1996 and replaced by a nearby solar-powered light. The find has surprised historians, with PWS officials, as no one had accessed the sealed wall space since the lantern room was installed in 1903. Local media described it as 'one of the most significant lighthouse-related discoveries in years', offering a rare time capsule from the state's maritime past.
