Street Maryan: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14859. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to take a split call with the Green Party on the second reading of the Game Animal Council Bill. I have got a couple of questions. Why are we debating this bill in urgency and why are we debating this bill at all?Why are we debating this bill in urgency? Well there can only be one reason. The regulatory impact statement on this bill is dated 17 March 2011. The work was commenced in 2008 by the then Minister of Conservation Steve Chadwick who engaged with the Hon Peter Dunne to talk about wild game animals and the control of wild animals through hunting and through conservation measures.One of the things that came out of that conversation was that there was a range of statutory possibilities available. It is unfortunate that the Government has chosen to pursue entirely the wrong statutory option and this is the lost opportunity. It is not the one that the previous speaker Maggie Barry spoke of but this is the lost opportunity. Instead of being able to have an advisory committee established by the Minister of Conservation under the terms of the Wild Animal Control Act we have a stand-alone Game Animal Council which costs money and has its own statutory authority—its own legislation in fact. It would have been more effective and less damaging to the relationships in this highly contested and quite fractious area to provide the authority for an advisory committee to be set up under the Wild Animal Control Act.In fact if that was not enough for the Government it would have been possible to amend the Wild Animal Control Act to ensure that the advisory committee could not be disestablished by the Minister. There are advisory committees under that Act at the moment but the Minister has the ability to disestablish them at any time. If the Government really wanted to give teeth to this proposal instead of escalating it into a bill a statute of its own it could have just said that this is an advisory committee under the Wild Animal Control Act the Minister is establishing it and the Minister will not have the power to disestablish it. That would have been sufficient.What we have now is a bill that is going to work against the common interests of the hunting fraternity and the Department of Conservation. There have been tensions for a long time between those two groups but this bill does not help. This bill makes it worse in fact. This bill makes those relationships inevitably more fractious. Why would the Government want to do that when there was conversation happening where interests on both sides were being taken into account and when there is a deal of common interest because of the damage that wild animals do to our biodiversity to our environment? So there is a deal of common interest there.The only reason I can think of that the Government has chosen the heavy-duty legislative option is to appease the Hon Peter Dunne because he was upset at being told that John Banks would be welcomed back to the Prime Minister’s Cabinet but he would not be. I can only assume that this bill turning up in urgency after a regulatory impact statement written more than 2 years ago is to appease the Hon Peter Dunne. That is not a model of democratic process. So I am sorry to all our visitors in the gallery who are here today—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!Hon MARYAN STREET: Sorry.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I was actually indicating that it was inappropriate to speak to the gallery.Hon MARYAN STREET: Yes that is what I thought. How much more—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member’s time is nearly up.Hon MARYAN STREET: I will speak further about this in the Committee stage. I cannot support this bill.