McKelvie IanDOG CONTROL (CATEGORY 1 OFFENCES) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I move that the Dog Control (Category 1 Offences) Amendment Bill be read a first time. I nominate the Primary—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! There is a word you missed out in that. Could you just go back and read that?IAN McKELVIE: I move that the Dog Control (Category 1 Offences) Amendment Bill be read a first time.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): There's a word that you just missed. It should be be now read a first time." Let's try that again.IAN McKELVIE: Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I move That the Dog Control (Category 1 Offences) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill.Thank you for that tolerance Madam Assistant Speaker. I was going to say there will be no disruption during the course of this reading but I've disrupted it myself!The purpose of this bill is to reduce the time it takes for certain charges under the Dog Control Act 1996 to be heard. It proposes to allow category 1 offences under the Act as defined in section 6(1) of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 to be heard by justices of the peace and community magistrates rather than by District Court judges. Under the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 justices of the peace and community magistrates are authorised to sit as judicial officers in the District Court criminal jurisdiction only where enactment creating the offence provides for it—in this case the Dog Control Act 1996 which I propose we amend to allow this to take place.It gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce this bill to the House—a simple bill but none the less one which will take a load off the court system. As an example of this in 2016 there were 456 charges under the Act—427 of them were category 1 offences. This amendment will effectively speed up the resolution of these cases and allow judges to get on with more pressing and complex matters.A category 1 offence is an offence defined in the Criminal Procedure Act as an offence not punishable by a term of imprisonment. A category 1 offence does not apply to the following three matters which are defined in the latter stages of the said Act and I think it's worth reading those out because they are quite critical to the end result of this bill: section 32(2) which effectively deals with a dangerous dog and its potential or need to be destroyed; section 54(2) which deals with every person who commits an offence which amounts to an animal welfare issue where animals are not fed watered exercised or adequately provided for and who is liable to a fine not exceeding $5000 or three months' imprisonment—in other words an animal welfare abuse case—and section 57(2) where a dog owner commits an offence where a fine of $3000 is applied and any damage caused by the dog attack is able to be levied or the destruction of the dog ordered for that matter. I completely support these exceptions. I think they're matters which rightly should be adjudicated on in a court by a judge.It's worth noting that the victims of many of these offences—and at times attacks—often suffer long-lasting impacts of them some leaving a serious injury and long-lasting scars both to mind and body. Many of these offences also lead to death and serious injury to livestock—for those in the business that's called a "worrying dog"—devastating for the livestock and the people concerned. The successful introduction of this bill would save the justice system some money and time it would save dog control authorities some money and time and it would also save the dog owner some money and often the poor dog some time in the pound—all round a good conclusion.I have two reasons for being interested in this matter. Firstly my time in local government made me very aware of the frustration of dog owners—albeit errant at times—and council animal control officers at the length of time it sometimes takes to get a resolution to these cases. One of the reasons for this frustration is of course the cost to the dog owner of pound fees vet fees and other miscellaneous costs. Often another reason for this frustration is the delay in getting a court hearing. The cost to dog owners is a subject of much debate in rural and urban communities alike as are the difficulties posed by terminology and the terminology used in the Dog Control Act such as a "preferred dog owner" or "selected dog owner" or a "dangerous dog". And on that topic the iconic New Zealand bushman Barry Crump once said "Anyone who keeps a savage dog is scared of something." And actually when you think of the stuff that comes through our electorate offices that's often extremely true—and I often think that those dangerous dogs frankly should be banned myself but that's for another day.A working dog—and the definition of a working dog is hugely complex—is defined very well in the Dog Control Act but it covers a number of different areas. The costs of these things are often the subject of much contention in our communities and certainly of a lot of debate around the council offices of New Zealand. The councils on the whole or district councils and territorial authorities are in fact the dog control authorities in New Zealand. It's interesting to look at dog registration fees and they vary significantly right throughout New Zealand. Just for an example a general registration in the Manawatū District Council costs $103 if you pay by the due date. For a neutered or spayed dog it's $66; for a working dog it's $33; for a dangerous dog it's $232 and for a menacing dog it's the same price. So you can see there's a lot of contention around the costs of owning and registering a dog.The other interesting factor in this whole dog-charging regime is the disability assist registration—so the ability to register a dog to assist with all sorts of things but primarily with blindness which I guess is the most common one. There is no charge for that and I think it's absolutely appropriate there should be no charge for that—not for a minute that those dogs don't sometimes give as much grief as every other dog interestingly but that's the way we live in our society and I guess that's the risk we take. So there are risks with all sorts of dogs.Dog control laws are put in place to protect members of the public from the activities of dogs and the actions—or lack of them—of their owners. One of the tragedies here—and maybe that's too strong a word—is that many dogs are punished blamed and even put down because of the incompetence of their owner and the negligence of that owner and I actually think we should pay a whole lot more attention to the control of the owner of the dog rather than the dog. A lot of these laws of course are said to deal with the owner of the dog but unfortunately it's the dog that invariably becomes the victim of all of these things and I think that often when people are attacked by dogs it is frankly not the dog's fault. The dog gets put down but it's probably the owner that should be dealt with in a much more severe way. I wasn't like I say going to suggest they should be put down but certainly there should be some much stronger action taken against the owner.So these dog control fees are calculated using what I suppose in local government parlance is called the public-private formula which is a very again contentious issue which every council deals with differently. In that case a particular percentage of the fee is applied to the dog owner and a percentage of the fee is applied to the public so that's where you get the public-private bit from. So that's how those dog fees are set.Another reason for my interest in this bill is the number of complaints that I and I'm sure many of you—not you Madam Assistant Speaker sorry—that many of us in the House get through our electorate offices about matters relating to dogs: to the delays in court proceedings and the costs that these delays impose on the owner. I should make the point here though that this bill is not so much about easing the life of the errant dog owner as it is about easing the life of the animal control authorities and the courts. As dogs and indeed all other pets become more prevalent in the lives of New Zealanders and we live longer and often alone the increasing reliance on pets as companion animals will inevitably lead to more of these kinds of challenges around dog offences—dogs going missing and getting into trouble. This increase in dog numbers will of course lead to increases in the workload for animal control authorities and subsequently the court.It's worth documenting a couple of court cases just to demonstrate the complication of this. You can have a charge laid under the Dog Control Act 1996 where a dog is not controlled—so a person loses control of that dog. Currently that could end up in court. So just because you've lost control of your dog or it's wandered or whatever you could end up in court defending that. That's a significant cost to the New Zealand community. Another case where it becomes very doubtful as to the degree of the penalty or severity of the case is where a dog attacks someone. So there are degrees of attack which again I think is a bit of a variation that will need to be worked through in the course of a select committee discussion on this bill should we get there. It's a privilege to be able to introduce legislation into this House no matter how great or small the impact. This is the second time this year I've had the opportunity to do it. I look forward to listening to the discussion that takes place tonight and I hope that my bill is successful in getting through to the second reading. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."