McKee Nicole; Rurawhe AdrianNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill on behalf of the ACT Party. I just before I start would like to perhaps make some comments on comments that were raised from across the Chamber. I've heard about this law being a deterrent and that not being good enough. Well you know I don't have a legal law degree but what I would have thought is that every law we make is for some form of deterrence. That is why we make the laws.Further to that when we talk about or hear about situations where police dogs have been killed and the two-year sentence hasn't been placed on the perpetrator—so why increase it to five? Well I would have thought this uneducated person over here that by increasing it to five the judges might actually start to use the ability to give a deterrence—oh I got that wrong; give a sentence to the perpetrator who has killed an animal.The third point that I would like to make is in regard to all of this good intent that we are hearing that could be fixed—with some of the issues that have been addressed from across the floor there—in a select committee hearing. But what I have heard bill after bill after bill is just a flat-out No we don't even want to go there. Oh we like your attempt. We thank you for what it is that you're trying to do but no that's it we're going to leave it there. We're not going to allow the community to come in and have a say on this."So getting back to my speech I'm going to start to repeat some of the stats because I think that they really are quite important: 24 police dogs have died since 1972; four of them have occurred just since the 2000s came in. That is an average of one police dog every two years. And when we have 40000 callouts that is really pretty good stats but we've still lost 24 dogs. We had Gazza in an armed incident in 2016 we had Gage who was shot dead in Christchurch in 2010 and then we had the Tangowahine Dargaville shoot-out in December last year where thankfully the animal was not killed. I think what we have here is legislation that has not fixed the problem about criminals with guns because now they are shooting our police dogs. That falls on your heads over there because the Labour Party put through a piece of legislation that has not protected them.Not only that I'd also like to address the fact that it is not just police dogs; what we have are guide dogs hearing dogs mobility dogs therapy dogs epilepsy dogs assistance dogs medical alert assistance dogs service dogs and police dogs. They are there to do a job and there are seven organisations in New Zealand who can certify that these dogs are not purely attack dogs but are actually able to complete a task to help their humans and help society.Blind Low Vision New Zealand have approximately 250 dogs. It takes 18 to 20 months to train them and it costs $75000 per dog. Now if that is what it takes for a Blind Low Vision dog imagine what it takes for a service dog. Imagine what it takes for a police dog to be trained. And then we've got the Ministry for Primary Industries detector dogs. They are not attack dogs; they are dogs that have been trained to go into major airports and ports and look after our communities and make sure there are no bombs in those places. The New Zealand Army have over 100 teams of patrol dogs and detector dogs. So ideally I'd like to see a bill where we can protect all of the dogs that help society.But at the end of the day ACT does like to stand up for the minority parties. I believe that a dog specifically trained to help and protect humans deserves respect for the taking of its life. The trainers of all these dogs—whether they are service disability detector or police—deserve closure upon the untimely death of their family friend. This bill is not about all of those dogs; it is about the police dogs—it is about the police dogs in the Policing Act 2008. And if this bill can be amended to include all service dogs ACT would howl in approval!But on behalf of Nero Nick Thor Barlow Jon Ebba Panzer Luke Sarge Ozi Rada Josh Lance Ryka Rex Spike Kone Jock Mal Valour Duke Enzo Gage and Gazza—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."