Goudie Sandra: Dog Control Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Goudie Sandra: Dog Control Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:644;Page:13898] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the bill. National will support the Dog Control Amendment Bill (No 2) being referred to the select committee because this issue is of concern to New Zealanders. But sadly this is a poor excuse for a bill. It is all of 4 pages and is simply window dressing to give the appearance of doing something. There has been no real problem analysis so all we have ever seen in respect of dog policy is constant tinkering and nothing really substantive to deal with irresponsible dog owners. That is whom we need to be dealing with—irresponsible dog owners. The Minister talked about good law. He is the very Minister who in talking about changes to the New Zealand Fire Service could not even do the financial analysis to support any recommendations for change. The Minister is only tinkering with the issues and putting out yet another discussion document. There are to be lots more talkfests and another review but nothing substantive that will make a difference.  
This issue is about irresponsible dog owners. They are the people who will never register their dog and they expect everybody else to pick up the tab for that. It is the irresponsible dog owners those who do not register their dogs whose dogs are the majority of the animals found wandering on the streets and we do not want them to be there. But everybody else bears the cost for those people who think they have a right to have a dog and who get off scot-free when it comes to the cost of policing their dogs.  
What does the bill really do? Essentially the bill provides for three things: policy to be done through regulation the schedule of breeds of banned dogs to be done by Order in Council—and that can be done by the Minister—and councils to adopt policy within 12 months of the regulation having been made. Let us look at the first one: policy by regulation. This is where the Government has failed to do any real problem analysis. It still does not understand the issues and has put out yet another review consultation document in respect of the Dog Control Act. How many changes have there been under this current Government since it has been in office in respect of that Act? I would suggest that there have been more than enough for the Government to finally understand what the issues are. But hang on! The Prime Minister needs to look good so that is why this bill is here. It is 4 pages long and it does not really do very much at all. Although this bill is about amending the Act to allow for policy to be done by regulation there is no real policy to go with it. The Government has put up a 4-page bill in order to make whatever changes it wants through regulation without the openness and transparency that a full legislative process has to offer.  
I will give members a classic example of a situation where openness and transparency have been abused through the regulatory process—that is legislation by stealth in respect of the Animal Welfare (Restriction on Docking of Dogs’ Tails) Bill. That bill which was introduced to Parliament by Dianne Yates was dropped because there was no support for it. There was no majority support and no public support for the bill so it was dropped canned trashed or discharged—whatever we want to call it. Nobody wanted a bar of it so that bill disappeared. And what happened? The Minister went along and talked to the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee. The committee has now included in an animal welfare code for dogs the ban on the docking of dogs’ tails. That is a back-door method; it is not a case of openness and transparency. It does not provide the full public input that should be provided and that is what happens when we try to do something through regulation. It is a back-door method. That is exactly what has happened with regard to the ban on the docking of dogs’ tails. It has gone through the back door because the Government could not get it through the front door.  
I turn to the second aspect of the bill—the power of the Minister to add to the schedule of banned breeds by Order in Council. There is some evidence that the breeds currently listed in the schedule as banned breeds are part of a significant number of the dog attacks that occur in America so they are part of our banned breeds schedule here in New Zealand. However other breeds have not been identified in the same way as those breeds. The breeds on the banned list in the schedule are fine but other breeds have not been identified in the same way as them. One of the biggest problems we have with regard to this issue is identifying the actual breed of a dog. There are many cross-breeds in this country and it is very very difficult to identify them. Vets do not want to do that; dog owners do not want to do that. We can call the dog concerned a mongrel. Why would we add more breeds to the schedule? The use of DNA testing to establish the actual breed of a dog is plain silly.  
Let us face it; it does not matter what sort of breed a dog is. Any dog has the potential to attack a person—any dog has that potential. For the Prime Minister to say that if certain dog breeds are banned then dogs will stop attacking people is absolute nonsense. It is simply nonsense; it makes no common sense at all. Actually common sense saw Annette King coming here with her Electoral Finance Bill. It was smothered in her bosomy embrace and in that instance it is unlikely to see the light of day for some time. However in spite of that common sense will not die even though it is taking an incredibly severe beating at the hands of the current Government.  
I now want to talk about the third aspect of the bill whereby councils are required to adopt a policy no later than 12 months after a regulation has been made. Councils must use the special consultative process and that actually comes at a cost to councils. I just wonder whether it would have been better to allow councils to adopt the policy at their earliest possible convenience. That could have allowed them maybe to piggyback that consultative process on the back of that for some other issues thereby reducing the cost of having to adopt policy that is instigated through regulation within 12 months of the regulation having been adopted. I think some consideration needs to be given to the costs on councils. I do not see any consideration of that in the bill.  
But as I said previously there is no policy to speak of within this bill. Here we are 7 years down the track under the current Government and it has still failed to identify the issues substantively address them and deal with them by targeting irresponsible dog owners and in some way trying to recognise the cost to councils of dog control. But no the Government has failed to do that. If we look at the bill we see that there is some confusion around one of the issues in relation to the neutering of dogs. The explanatory note of the bill talks about neutering being compulsory—as I understood it when I read it—but the bill talks about neutering being at the discretion of the local authority. So even with just a simple 4-page bill this current Government still cannot get it right. Government members talk on and on about doing something but they have come up with a bill of about 4 pages with nothing substantial in it at all to deal with irresponsible dog owners. They have completely missed that point and that is something we need to deal with.  
We need to deal to the irresponsible dog owners—those people who do not contain their dogs properly do not look after their dogs properly and do not socialise them properly. We need to make sure that they bear the brunt and the cost of dog control so that it does not fall so much on the shoulders of all the responsible dog owners. We need to go a lot further than this bill which really is appalling. I take issue with the Minister when he talks about good law because this Government does not know what good law is.