MELBOURNE, Australia
In the end, Australia did not kill Johnny Depps' dogs.
One day after the country's agriculture minister gave Depp a 50-hour deadline to get the hounds out of the country or they would be euthanized, Barnaby Joyce tweeted that they have now left Australia.
“Dogs gone," he wrote Friday, a statement by his department adding that they had left Queensland on a flight to the United States.
In light of the exit, Joyce sought to defend himself from the international uproar that came in response to his threat.
“Despite the hype and sensation surrounding the dogs’ owners, Australia has strict biosecurity requirements for good reasons—to protect Australia from exotic pests and diseases that can seriously harm humans, animals and our economy,” he wrote.
Joyce highlighted the exit of the cocker spaniels as evidence that Australia's efforts to protect biosecurity were working.
“With regard to accusations that this is a failing of our biosecurity system, it is in fact evidence that the system is working given the dogs were discovered, placed under a quarantine order and now successfully exported,” he said.
Depp is reported to have failed to declare the dogs to customs when he and his wife returned to Queensland by private jet last month.
The Hollywood actor has been based on Australia's Gold Coast filming Pirates of the Caribbean 5: Dead Men tell No Tales, but took time out from the set to fly home to seek treatment for a hand injured during filming, according to the Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday.
"He has decided to bring to our nation two dogs without actually getting proper certification and the proper permits required. Basically, it looks like he snuck them in," Joyce had told reporters.
On Friday, Joyce thanked "the dog’s owners and their associates" for their cooperation and compliance with the agriculture department’s quarantine directives.
Australia's ports and airports have some of the toughest screening measures in the world. The country has extremely tight biosecurity laws, given that much of its flora and fauna is unique, and some have no resistance to foreign disease or bacteria.
The quarantining of dogs is enforced very strictly as some have been found to carry rabies. The minimum period for animals entering Australia is 10 days.
Since Joyce announced his threat, his comments have made headlines around the world and on social media.
Australia has been forced onto the back foot. The Herald reported the country's Minister for Industry and Science, Ian Macfarlane, assuring the nation Friday that the government had not "declared war on two terriers,"
"It is actually quite a serious issue," he said. "We want to see the matter resolved so that our quarantine is maintained.
"We can't afford to have it compromised, even for the dogs of film superstars. We have given the owner of those dogs the option to take them out of the country and bringing them back in if he so wishes through a proper process," he added.
"You cannot have exceptions if you want to keep diseases and pests out of this country."
In the last 24-hours, more than 15,000 people have signed an online petition to save the dogs’ lives, and a radio shock jock implied Friday that it was Joyce who should be in the doghouse
Prior to a live phone chat with the minister Friday, Kiis FM's Kyle Sandilands Joyce referred to him as "an insensitive w.....r", "a disgrace" and "a gerbil of a thing."
A spokesman from Joyce's office has since told the Herald that he is seeking an apology.
The DJ has since said that Depp had done the wrong thing, but called the minister's choice of words "just too much."
"We just sound like a bunch of hillbilly redneck losers saying 'bugger off back to Hollywood or we'll euthanize your dogs'," Sandilands said, according to The Herald.
"Why do you have to sound like such a hero on there, making out you're going to kill someone's dogs... A lot of dog lovers will be just hating your guts right now," he told Joyce, when the agriculture minister called in.
"It's the law, mate; that's how it works," Joyce replied.
