Lees-Galloway IainHon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise and speak on behalf of the Labour Party in support of Ian McKelvie's Dog Control (Category 1 Offences) Amendment Bill and I want to congratulate my friend from the Manawatū Mr Ian McKelvie for seeing this bill through to third reading and shortly no doubt to Royal assent. It is as the member David Bennett who spoke on behalf of Ian McKelvie said a short bill and in the grand scheme of things perhaps people—history—will consider it not the most substantive bill. But it's an important issue. It's an issue that Ian McKelvie has chosen to progress and he's had marked success in doing that and so I congratulate him. This bill of course aims to reduce the time it takes for certain charges to be heard under the Dog Control Act. It also aims to improve the welfare of dogs involved in prosecutions under the Dog Control Act by reducing—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member is to stop reading his speech.Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: —the time that dogs are impounded in impounding facilities while those proceedings are being carried out. And so that's important. There is a much greater focus on the welfare of animals both farm and domestic pets and it's important that we take every step that we can to improve the welfare—the wellbeing if you will—of all animals whether they be farm production animals or whether they be working animals or whether they be pets—Hon Member: Another eight minutes to go.Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Yeah I'm sure there's inspiration on the ceiling—whether they be pets for domestic families.Hon David Bennett: Stop reading it.SPEAKER: Order!Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Anyway so this is a good bill from that perspective but I do want to pick up on the wider points made by David Bennett around the small but important impact this could have on our wider judicial system because of course what it does do is it takes from the responsibility of District Court judges the dealing with particular types of category 1 offences and hands those to justices of the peace which of course everyone hopes will help to speed up the processing of cases in general in the District Courts. I suppose I would characterise this as a National Party member making a small improvement to relieve a very big problem created by the National Party when they were in Government—SPEAKER: Order! Order! We're now going to return to the bill. Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well this is what the bill does Mr Speaker. This bill is designed to—SPEAKER: Order! I think I was relatively flexible with the member who spoke on behalf of the move of the bill. I've been relatively flexible with this member but if he's going to start making this a sort of highly political issue I'm going to bring him back to the bill.Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well what this bill does of course—what this bill is intended to do is to make the judicial process a more efficient one and I support that. I support that intention of the bill because the number of active criminal cases in the District Courts has increased. It increased between 2013-14 and 2016-17 by over 4000 cases as a direct result of changes that the previous Government made. So this bill does make some small steps in the right direction but it is an attempt to address a significant problem that as the previous member said does mean that victims have to wait too long for justice to be done. It does mean that people who are subject to the judicial process as the previous member said have to wait too long for natural justice. And as the previous member also said some people might not be guilty which is a revelation from the National Party I have to say that they admit that some people might not be guilty. But it is true that this bill will help take some cases out of the hands of District Court judges and put them into the hands of justices of the peace and that will—we have some great hope—help speed up people's access to justice and the efficiency of the court process. So this is a relatively straightforward bill. It does no harm that is for sure. It does some good and therefore the Labour Party is more than happy to support it.