The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, has defended his threat to put down Hollywood star Johnny Depp’s pet dogs, saying no one should be able to circumvent Australia’s strict biosecurity laws.
Depp’s Yorkshire terriers, Boo and Pistol, departed for California on Friday night following an ultimatum from Joyce earlier in the week which warned the actor his pets must leave Australia or face being put down.
The 50-hour deadline was due to run out on Saturday morning.
Joyce faced backlash over his ultimatum, with some critics saying he was being too harsh.
But on Sunday, the agriculture minister defended his stance, saying the same rules apply to Depp as to everyone else.
“If he flouted the laws, and we catch you, you have two choices – and it’s not peculiar to him – the destruction of the animal or the animal goes back,” Joyce said. “We can’t start making exemptions.”
He dismissed calls to retrospectively put Boo and Pistol in isolation.
“Does that become the default mechanism for how we do biosecurity in Australia? If we catch you, then you go into quarantine,” the minister asked.
Immigration minister Peter Dutton said an investigation into how the pooches made it through customs was underway.
“We’re going through the information on that right now. There are a whole range of things that are called into question – the signing of the plane’s manifest, the signing of the declaration that you sign when you come into our nation,” Joyce said.
He quipped the investigation will take into account whether upscale fashion label Louis Vuitton “has a mechanism for anti-poodle screening” built into its luxury luggage line.
Depp is currently on location in the Gold Coast, filming the latest in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise.
It is expected he and his wife Amber Heard will face a hefty fine for failing to declare the pets when they arrived in Australia by private jet last month.