McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Mr Chair. I thought I was going to be too slow to get up but I got there. It's a pleasure to take a call on the Crimes Amendment Bill. Obviously from my perspective I'm particularly pleased to be taking a call in support of the Minister Andrew Little's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185 which is in effect a strengthening of a bill that I had in Parliament as an amendment to the Sentencing Act. It came into Parliament interestingly just over 12 months ago so it's taken 12 months. That shows the progress of making law. I want to congratulate the Minister for picking it up in this manner and I thank the Primary Production Committee for encouraging this course of action. I had a great deal of help from the other side of the House in getting it there and my own support of that as well.So the course of action was interestingly supported by all submitters who submitted to the original bill when it came to the Primary Production Committee early last year. The interesting thing about this for me is that the SOP creates effectively two new offences for theft of livestock and other animals. The Minister did explain briefly earlier in his contribution what the all other animals" inferred but I want to use a bit of an example—not quite the one Matt King would have used.It extends the crime to include all sorts of animals not just livestock. Ironically the definition may not have included a racehorse or a pet dog and I think the Minister referred to that but the best known example of this of course is a racehorse who was probably the greatest racehorse to ever race in Europe. For the Irish in the room that will be a reasonably good story. The horse was called Shergar. He was stolen from his box in the middle of the night ironically by the IRA which I suppose isn't surprising given he was in Ireland.The IRA actually thought he was worth a lot of money. He was worth a lot of money—some £10 million he was valued at. They also thought that he had one owner in the Aga Khan so that was the reason they stole him because they stole him for a ransom. The problem was he had 38 owners and they couldn't get an agreement on whether they would pay a ransom or not. Some of them had insurance; some of them didn't. Some of them probably didn't need the money—probably the Aga Khan didn't need the money—but it was a very interesting example of exactly what the Minister is talking about.But it goes on from there because Shergar was effectively gunned to death by the IRA. When you think about that it's very similar to the story that the Minister told earlier about the little pony down in Otago. They're sort of tragic things because those don't only affect the people that are concerned but they must have—and I don't understand whether they do or not—a massive effect on the animal. Of course this bill to some extent addresses that issue and that was very much a part of the discussions we had in the course of altering the Animal Welfare Act a couple of years ago because the sentience of animals became quite a topic. So that's a very good reason—with two odd examples I suppose—of why you would want to change the bill and create the new offence of theft of livestock and other animals.The other interesting one that's been added to this is the entry on to agricultural land with the intent to commit an imprisonable offence. What that amounts to of course is an interesting point but it could be anything. So this offence it sort of gives the police much more power—and I think Matt King referred to that—but it also gives them the opportunity to prosecute people for going on to land as they would currently be able to prosecute them for going into your house with an intent to commit a crime. I think that's a huge improvement in the legislation to protect farmers in the event of these very unsavoury kinds of events occurring because it is—as I said in an earlier speech I made on this topic—very frightening for those people down a one-way street or a one-way road in the middle of the night well isolated from the rest of the world to have people sneaking around their properties and around their house often armed. You get a bit of a fright.So livestock rustling's become much more prevalent as food prices have risen and the security around urban businesses have made other forms of theft a little more difficult and a little less rewarding. If you think about it you could steal a ring out of a jeweller's shop and you take it down to the pawn shop and you'll probably get about a tenth of its face value whereas if you steal a cattle beast—and they stole a couple of them in Whanganui just a couple of weeks ago and they found them on the spit at Castlecliff Beach with only a few bones left. It's quite possible that those cattle beast would have been worth a bit more than they were in Northland Matt but probably a couple of thousand dollars and they may well have doubled in value by the time they got to wherever they were sold off in bits. So it's quite a profitable business if you've got the energy to do it.The other thing about these crimes is they are often created by people with plenty of energy and you'd think they're worth preserving those people because they're not in my view necessarily the same type of I suppose crook—for want of a better word—that you might find committing some other kinds of crime because they do require a fair bit of energy.The other issue that I think we're really challenged by in this—and the Minister again referred to it briefly in his speech—is the issue of trying to catch these people. The second change to the crime entry under agricultural land does give the police a big head start as opposed to where they were before.Whilst I don't think some of these crimes are particularly serious the big issue that's come up I guess in the last 12 months with the M. bovis affair is that biosecurity risks of livestock travelling around the country are significant. So for livestock to be travelling around the country in a stolen truck and with a torch in the middle of the night and being dumped anywhere in the New Zealand is hugely challenging—challenging for the farming community and challenging for the biosecurity risk of this country. M. bovis won't be the last issue that we have that affects livestock in that respect.So that's a big challenge I think for our rural communities. It's a challenge for our police and it's also a challenge in the manner in which we can capture or eventually capture and prosecute the people that do this. So that I think is a really large challenge for us all. As I said in the introduction to the Sentencing (Livestock Rustling) Amendment Bill over a year ago—in fact it was 21 January 2018—theft of livestock from farms is estimated to be well in excess of $120 million a year. Those estimates were put in at a time when stock were not worth what they're worth in Northland now but in fact they're worth a lot more than that and so that could be quite significantly more money involved in this than that. In fact I'm sure there will be a lot more money involved in this than that and as one travels around the country you hear all sorts of stories of these kinds of things going on.The other thing that that this bill effectively encompasses in one form or another is all sorts of things that were never covered under the original Crimes Act and that's the potential of theft of beehives—all sorts of things that nowadays have become extremely valuable. I suppose we might see the day—we might have seen it actually—when a mānuka plant is probably worth more than some of those other plants that they travel around the country with at night. I'm not sure it has been but it might be.So you see that all sorts of things change in agriculture very quickly—or change in rural New Zealand or rural provincial New Zealand very quickly. And as we've heard so much about I suppose the transformation of our economy the rural economy is certainly transforming at a great rate. The things that challenged us in the days of the Mackenzie country when the Mackenzie country was named—and of course in those days they used to hang rustlers no problem at all but we don't do that now. But the things that have changed since those days are absolutely significant and make quite a difference.These types of crimes are not only a threat to animals and to their property; they're also a threat to people. And I think that one of the things that really concerns me I guess is in the more remote parts of New Zealand where these types of activity take place and they take place a lot because you might find that you've got someone who's effectively—well they may not even be poaching but they'll be out hunting. They won't know they're effectively poaching—I suppose that a definition of poaching might be they're on land that doesn't belong to them or they're not permitted to go on to. It often happens in Department of Conservation land where you get all sorts of people without permits to go there out hunting and things like that and they're next to or adjacent to people who live there. And it's quite frightening for those people.So I think it has a very nervous effect on these people and to some extent a psychological effect on it. So we want all New Zealanders to feel safe whether they're rural New Zealanders or not and I think changes to this bill in the SOP will reassure rural New Zealand—and not only rural New Zealand—that this Parliament cares about those sorts of things and wishes to make some improvements to it. I think this has given some very real teeth to the police and to rural New Zealand for that matter to protect themselves in a much better manner than they have. It also sends a pretty strong message to potential rustlers that if they're caught they can expect to get some pretty serious treatment. I think that the treatment they get obviously would be dependent on the crime.So from my perspective I think it's a very good addition to the bill. I congratulate the Minister. Thank you for putting it in there. And just very briefly on the Minister the first time I ever had an association with the Minister was when Timaru had nicked McCain Foods off Fielding. So you've just got to be very careful. But that was some 15 or so years ago. You've got to be careful."