Monday, 26 February 2024
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari Gamarruwa

Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to the Elders of all parts of our State from which you have travelled.

Minister[1]; Parliamentarians[2]; President[3] and Members[4] of the Veterinary Practitioners Board of NSW, past[5] and present; distinguished guests all,

When members of a profession gather for a significant occasion, there is a tendency to seek out a collective noun for the group. In the interests of diplomacy, I won’t try to do that tonight. But, as I have discovered from your history, you were once – unfairly – a somewhat maligned bunch. 

In 1874, at a meeting of the British Veterinary Medical Association[6] in London, the veterinarian George Fleming complained of contemporary perceptions of the profession, despite the formation of the Royal Veterinary College 80 years earlier:

[We] are [still]… too often … looked down upon as little, if at all, removed from the illiterate farrier or cow-leech, … and not unfrequently … confounded with horse-copers, general jobbers, frequenters of racecourses and the associates of betting men and bookmakers on racing events.[7]

Here in colonial Australia, it was even worse.

In an 1881 letter published in the London journal The Veterinarian, seven Australian vets complained that not only were they being confused with “such occupations as horse-breaking, shoeing, and the vending of quack nostrums”[8], but also that there few qualified vets in the colonies – in 1880, there were less than 50[9] – and no institutions in which to train them.

This was surprising, particularly as there had been several disastrous instances where veterinarian advice or warnings had been ignored. The bovine pleuro-pneumonia outbreak of the 1860s, which ended up costing many millions of dollars in lost livestock, restricted export opportunities, and disease control measures is probably the most notorious.[10]  

Change began when William Kendall founded a private college in the late 1880s in Fitzroy and the passage of the Veterinary Surgeons Act by the Victorian Parliament in 1887[11].

They were interesting times.

A member of the first cohort of graduates of Kendall’s college, Jerome Burns, failed his first examinations for being “too well dressed … no one with gloves and cane could possibly examine horses and cattle”.[12] All turned out well, however; Burns passed the rest of his exams, and later became the Chief Government Vet in Western Australia.

However, NSW was somewhat dilatory in establishing local training. The first formal school of Veterinary Science wasn’t established until 1910, with the founding of the University of Sydney Veterinary School.[13]

No overview of your history here in NSW would be complete without reference to James Douglas Stewart. His grandfather, who arrived in Sydney in 1841, is said to have been the first qualified veterinarian in Australia[14], he was a chief instigator in the foundation of the University of Sydney Veterinary School and its first Professor. He oversaw its elevation to Faculty in 1919 and became its first Dean.[15] Described by Rhyll Vallis, as the ‘expert badgerer’[16], he also led the decade-long battle[17] to get the Veterinary Surgeon’s Bill through the NSW Parliament, which eventually occurred in November 1923.[18]

And so, we come, finally, to the august body whose centenary we celebrate tonight. To implement “the regulation of the practice of veterinary science”[19] – as the new Act required – the Board of Veterinary Surgeons of New South Wales was established and held its first meeting in February 1924.[20]

Much, in the century since that meeting has, of course, changed.

Today, there are some four-and-a-half thousand veterinarians in New South Wales.[21] The principal work undertaken has developed from primarily treating horses and agricultural production animals to increasingly working with small companion animals and wildlife[22].

The first female veterinary graduate at the University of Sydney was Patricia Littlejohn in 1935. By the late 1980s, half the student population was consistently female and now, according to 2023 data, 75% of new graduate registrations, and 63% of all veterinarians in New South Wales are female.[23]

Over the century of its existence, the Board has actively pursued the interest of the members of your profession, ensuring exemplary standards and advocating for support and change where needed. I commend the Board for its contribution to the recent Inquiry into Veterinary Workforce Shortages.[24]

In celebrating this centenary, we celebrate the essential contribution veterinarians make to our State, from animal health and welfare to public health, societal well-being, and biosecurity, amongst others.

Your work is demanding and challenging[25] but it is utterly vital, as you put at the centre of everything you do the welfare of the animals that come into your care.  

Importantly, we celebrate you, the veterinarians of New South Wales, who inherit and carry forward the rich traditions of and the contribution made by veterinary science to our State.

For your dedication and expertise, can I say: “thank you”.

And now; to the next hundred years and beyond!

[1] The Hon. Tara Moriarty MLC, Minister for Agriculture

[2] The Hon. (Bronnie) Bronwyn Taylor MLC, Shadow Minister for Regional Health, Shadow Minister for Trade, and Shadow Minister for Seniors (formerly a member of the Veterinary Practitioners Board); the Hon. Mark Banasiak MLC, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, chair of the 2023 inquiry into veterinary workforce shortage in New South Wales; the Hon. Emma Hurst MLC, Animal Justice Party, deputy chair of the 2023 inquiry into veterinary workforce shortage in New South Wales; Ms Abigail Boyd MLC, NSW Greens, participating member of the 2023 inquiry into veterinary workforce shortage in New South Wales; Mr Justin Paul Clancy MP, Member for Albury, former vet.

[3] Dr Steven Ferguson, President, Veterinary Practitioners Board of NSW (Ministerial selection).

[4] Dr Peter Alexander (representing veterinarians in rural areas), Dr Magdoline Awad (representing veterinarians in urban areas), Dr Georgina Child (representing specialist veterinarians), Ms Sarah Hunter (consumer and Ministerial selection), Professor Paul McGreevy (veterinarian and Ministerial selection), Dr Kate Mills (representing veterinarians in academia), Mrs Lisa Minogue (consumer and Ministerial selection)

[5] Dr Garth McGilvray AM (former President); Dr Mark Simpson (former President)

[6] Founded in 1836: history-of-the-veterinary-profession/british-veterinary-medicine-timeline

[7] George Fleming, Address to Central Veterinary Medical Association, 1874, cited in Abigail Woods and Stephen Matthews,‘“Little, if at all, Removed from the Illiterate Farrier or Cow-leech”: The English Veterinary Surgeon, c.1860–1885, and the Campaign for Veterinary Reform’, Medical History, 2010, no. 54, p. 46; available here. Complete quote is: “Veterinary surgeons are only too often, in some respects, looked down upon as little, if at all, removed from the illiterate farrier or cow-leech, and their sphere of utility is generally supposed to be limited to administering a drench to a cow, a dose of physic to a horse, or some such trifling operation as castration, or firing the limb of a broken-down animal; and not unfrequently they are confounded with horse-copers, general jobbers, frequenters of race courses and the associates of betting men and bookmakers on racing events; in fact, anything but educated scientific men, who respect themselves and their profession”.

[8] Mitchell, Kendall, Stewart et al, op. cit. pp. 610-611. The full quote is: “A large proportion of the stockowners and farmers [in Australia] have had no previous experience of the management of stock in countries or parts where veterinary surgeons were available, consequently they have had but a very imperfect knowledge of the utility of the profession and those who have endeavoured to obtain the services of veterinary surgeons have been so frequently imposed upon by men practicing under assumed titles that they have been led to form very unjust opinions of it…[This] has exerted a very depressing influence on the societal status of the profession, and has led many good men leaving its ranks for more lucrative and less harassing occupations, and the field has thus been left open to quackery, which prevails to a greater extent than perhaps any other country. The assumed title of veterinary surgeon and the term veterinary are so frequently associated with such occupations as horse-breaking, shoeing, and the vending of quack nostrums, that there is little wonder that the public look with suspicion on veterinary surgeons. The present state of veterinary progress in these colonies is therefore similar to what it was in England fifty years ago, but it is not the intention of the colonial veterinary surgeons to allow it to remain so.

[9] Rhyll Vallis, A Veterinary Awakening: The History of Government Veterinarians in Australia, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, 2011, p. 14, available here. At the time, Australia’s population was around 2.5 million: statista.com/statistics/1066666/population-australia-since-1800

[10] Rhyll Vallis, A Veterinary Awakening: The History of Government Veterinarians in Australia, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, 2011, p. 15, available here. By the close of the nineteenth century, all the colonies had disease control legislation and government stock branches with either full-time or consulting government vets: ibid p. 25.

[11] Catherine Pugsley, ‘The Veterinary College’, in Brunswick Street Lost and Found, Fitzroy Historical Society, p. 59, available here. Kendall had promised the Victorian MP Mr Bossito he would found the college if the Victorian Parliament passed a Veterinary Surgeons Act. Buildings were purchased in 1886, the bill passed in 1887, and the new college began accepting students in 1888: ‘Early History of the Veterinary Profession in Australia’, Australian Veterinary History Record, no. 41 (November 2004), pp. 2-10, available here.

[12] William Apperley Norton Robertson, unpublished manuscript notes (1936?), reprinted as ‘Graduates of the Melbourne Veterinary College’, in Australian Veterinary History Society Newsletter, no 17, November 1996, p.9, available here.

[13] Although certificates and diplomas in various branches of veterinary science had been offered in NSW since as early as 1885, they were mostly restricted to training stock inspectors: Dr Paul John Canfield, ‘A Centenary of Veterinary Education at the University of Sydney, with a Review of Early Veterinary Education in New South Wales’, Australian Veterinary History Record, November 2012, no. 63, pp. 3-6, available here

[14] Vallis op. cit., p. 15. He was also one of the co-authors of the letter quoted from earlier: Mitchell, Kendall, Stewart et al, op. cit. James Douglas Stewart’s father and brother, both confusingly named John, were also noted veterinarians:; Mark Lyons, ‘John Stewart’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, available here; C. Beardwood and D. F. Stewart, ‘John junior Stewart’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, available here

[15] Canfield, op. cit., p. 8.

[16] Vallis, op. cit., p. 29.

[17] “During the past 10 years it has been repeatedly asked for not only by the veterinary profession itself, but by stockowners generally through their different organisations, such as the Graziers' Association, the Pastures Protection Boards, and the Royal Agricultural Society, in order to protect them from exploitation by unqualified and, in cases, incompetent practitioners. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has also given us full support to the proposed measure to put down the by no means inconsiderable amount of cruelty that is inflicted upon sick and injured animals in their treatment by Ignorant persons. At the present time similar legislation is in force in Great Britain, Victoria, Western Australia, and Tasmania, in most of the United States, and in many other countries where the subject has received the attention it deserves”: ‘On the Land: Veterinary Surgeons, Impending Legislation’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 1922, p. 7.

[18] ‘Veterinary Surgeons Bill 1923’, Parliament of New South Wales website, available here. W. S. Mowle, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, dated the passage through the Legislative Council as 29 November 1924: Act No. 25, 1923, available here. It was Assented to on 5 December, 1923: Veterinary Surgeons Act (no. 25, 1923), preamble; available here. Assent was given by the Lieutenant Governor, the Hon. Sir William Cullen KCMG KC as, although Sir Dudley de Chair had been appointed Governor in October 1923 following the death of Sir Walter Davidson in September 1923, he would not arrive in New South Wales until 28 February 1924: Anne Twomey, ‘Sir Dudley Rawson Stratford de Chair’, in David Clune and Ken Turner, The Governors of New South Wales, Federation Press, 2009, p.462. De Chair was apparently pleased to accept the appointment because his uncle Sir Harry Rawson had been Governor there: ibid.

[19] Veterinary Surgeons Act (no. 25, 1923), preamble; available here

[20] Daily Telegraph, 7 February 1924, p. 4, available here

[21] Provided by Mr John Baguley, Registrar, Veterinary Practitioners Board of NSW.

[22] Today, less than 15% of professional services income is derived from work with horses and production animals: Provided by Mr John Baguley, Registrar, Veterinary Practitioners Board of NSW.

[23] Provided by Mr John Baguley, Registrar, Veterinary Practitioners Board of NSW.

[24] Available here

[25] Part of the impetus of the Inquiry, and included in its terms of reference, is the high prevalence of mental health challenges, including suicide rates, amongst veterinarians. See also, for instance: Lenore Taylor, ‘Nearly 70% of veterinarians have lost a colleague or peer to suicide, study finds’, Guardian online, June 2022, available: here