Pugh Maureen; Dean JacquiMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. I stand in opposition to this bill the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill in its first reading tonight. We've heard some pretty pathetic contributions from the Government side and the Greens tonight about why this bill is so necessary.But let's go back to the beginning and how this all started. It was back on 2 September last year when the live export ship the Gulf Livestock 1 which had just left Napier on 14 August was traveling north-west in the East China Sea when it was capsized in strong winds and heavy seas whipped up by not one but two typhoons. So this was an extraordinary weather event that this ship was caught in and it was only less than two days from its destination. Now the ship was carrying almost 6000 head of cattle and 43 crew. That included 39 Filipinos two Australians and two New Zealanders. Only two survivors and a body were ever found by the Japanese coast guard and sadly only one of the survivors actually lived. Now we've heard a lot about the 6000 head of cattle and the loss of those beasts and actually we heard about the loss for weeks—it went on for weeks. The issue was kept alive—I heard the speaker from the Green Party talk about the activists. It was kept alive by activists and the Greens who used that tragedy as an opportunity to keep the story alive and to promote their tree-hugging leaf-eating lifestyles and showed no respect for alternative views. And that is all we were asking for: a bit of respect for how other people choose to live their lives. But no they don't want anything to do with eating meat they don't want anything to do with cows and they certainly don't want anything to do with supporting New Zealand's primary sector in this country. But what we didn't hear about was the loss of those poor souls that went down with the ship. I'd like to pay tribute tonight to Lochie Bellerby and Scott Harris our two Kiwis.Now as a result of the sinking of the Gulf Livestock 1 there was a review undertaken and that was done by QC Heron. It is interesting that out of that review came four recommendations—four. They focused on the maritime inspection of livestock carrier ships entering New Zealand. They suggested restricting stocking densities on vessels to 90 percent of former limits. And it increased the requirements for voyage reporting including the daily veterinary reports on those voyages and as Barbara Kuriger mentioned about the fodder requirements the feed stores that were to be left in reserve in case these were delays during the voyage. So this Government carried on with the review and then that review went off to the regulatory impact statement for this bill.There were two options that were open to the Government and one of them was to improve the quality of those transitions on to the journey of the exporting and on the boats or to ban live exports altogether. So what did this Government do? It took the lazy option and it banned a $261 million opportunity for this country. It said thanks to the 5000 farmers who for the last 10 years had been supplying breeding stock for live export and it just said Sorry. We're going to give you two years." And the farmers are supposed to feel grateful that there are two years to transition away. This Government has no idea about how to grow an industry and it is constantly ratcheting things back and making it harder. The only thing this Government knows how to do is to kill the economy and instead of working with the shipping companies working with the farmers to make sure that we are the very best livestock exporters in the world this lazy Government simply bans another income earner for New Zealand.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Kieran McAnulty—five minutes."