Kedgley Sue: Veterinarians Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Veterinarians Bill — First Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 It seems that there is a cross-party consensus on the Veterinarians Bill which is very good news indeed. It seems to the Greens that the main purpose of this bill is simply to make it easier for overseas vets to apply to register in New Zealand in order to address the shortage of vets in New Zealand that has been created by so many of our vets going overseas. 
We agree with Doug Woolerton from New Zealand First that it is all well and good to send this legislation to the select committee and consider it there but we need to address why there are such shortages in the veterinary profession and why so many of our vets are heading overseas. We think that the shortage of vets in New Zealand should be met in the first instance by attracting back those who have left the profession or gone overseas to practise and by increasing the number of students trained in New Zealand rather than always relying on overseas sources whenever we encounter a shortage in any skill line such as this. 
To attract veterinarians back here we need to make the profession more attractive. There needs to be less isolation for rural vets less stress and in particular less debt for students who are undertaking veterinary studies. We need to remember that students must undertake a 5-year course to become veterinarians and many of our veterinarians are saddled with crippling debts after they have trained which is why of course they head overseas. So the real solution to the veterinary shortage in New Zealand is not just to bring in overseas vets. We must deal with the issue of student debt. 
The Green Party has a policy of introducing a universal student allowance and of wiping out student debt progressively. In this case for a veterinarian for every year a vet worked in New Zealand after obtaining that training a significant percentage about a quarter of his or her debt would be wiped. That is the way to address the problem rather than with this short-term solution of trying to bring in vets from overseas. The underlying problem of the shortage of vets is of serious concern to us. The shortage impacts on all sorts of aspects of agriculture and it also impacts on animal welfare. 
Already we are seeing the impact of the shortage of vets. An audit of veterinary prescribing was done last year and it found that some vets were not even bothering to visit animals. They were dispensing prescriptions to animals without even visiting farms. The vets basically seemed to be just responding to the demands of farmers. There seemed to be a lack of monitoring and auditing and some really rather slack standards. We assume that this situation comes in large part from the shortage of vets in New Zealand. So we are very concerned about increasing the number of veterinarians and improving animal welfare. We wish that veterinarians would take a leading role in this. We are very pleased with the leading role they have taken on the debate on tail-docking and we very much look forward to their taking an equally leading role on other even more crucial animal welfare issues such as the cruel treatment of pigs and hens which are kept in cages where they cannot express any natural forms of behaviour. 
It is unfortunate that veterinarians are not speaking out about these practices despite the fact that they breach the objectives of the Animal Welfare Act. Also of course it is veterinarians who are dispensing the very large amounts of antibiotics that the millions of chickens in New Zealand are fed for breakfast lunch and dinner despite the fact that there is increasing evidence of the spread of antibiotic resistance throughout our chicken flocks. 
We look forward to veterinarians taking a more proactive role in animal welfare issues. We also want to see more and better-trained New Zealand veterinarians. We support the bill’s referral to the select committee and we will support it there and afterwards. We hope that improvements will be made to the bill at the select committee as others have suggested.