Hutchison Paul: Dog Control Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hutchison Paul: Dog Control Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:613;Page:9887] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I believe I have in the order of 4 minutes and 53 seconds to speak on the schedules. Schedule 1 certainly demonstrates just how bad this Minister of Local Government’s perspective is in terms of priorities. 
Under schedule 1 the infringement fee for “Failure to implant microchip transponder in dog” is $500 and the infringement fee for “Failure to keep dog controlled or confined” is also $500. Which is the one that will contribute most towards preventing dangerous dog attacks? Undoubtedly it is “Failure to keep dog controlled or confined”. Yet we have the Minister insisting that New Zealand dogs are universally microchipped. It seems to me that this is clearly a case of the Minister’s mind his machinations his love for bureaucracy and his love for central control making his perspective get way out of line. The fine is $500 if one fails to implant a microchip in one’s pet chihuahua or whatever it is and $500 if one’s pit bull terrier is not controlled. That seems absolutely wrong. I think it is indicative of how this Labour Government has failed to look at the detail of this bill but instead has insisted on smothering it in bureaucracy. The next offence in schedule 1 reads: “Failure to keep dog under control”. The infringement fee is $500. How does that compare with “Failure to implant microchip transponder in dog” which also has a fee of $500? Certainly in terms of achieving the aim of this bill which is to prevent dog attacks that injure individuals there is no comparison. 
Why has this Minister gone against the wishes of the Local Government and Environment Committee and insisted on bringing in a Supplementary Order Paper at the last minute that not even the chairman of the select committee a Labour Government member knew about? The chairman had not even read it. The Minister could not help himself—he slipped it in. He wanted to impose bureaucracy to smother the bill with bureaucracy. When one analyses it one finds that it is absolutely inappropriate that the infringement fee for failure to implant an unnecessary microchip is the same as that for failure to keep a dog controlled or confined or failure to keep a dog under control. After all we have clearly learnt that microchipping is unnecessary. It is not a priority and it is very costly. 
We note that schedule 2 lists the dogs that are subject to a ban on importation. These include the Brazilian fila the dogoArgentino the Japanese tosa and the American pit bull terrier. Again one of my concerns comes back to the regulations regarding how one schedules the new breeds. It seems incredible that although the Regulations Review Committee recommended that this procedure was inappropriate the bill before us shows us that the Labour Government prefers to see dogs added to schedule 4 in schedule 2 in this way even though this matter is particularly controversial. Surely all the checks and balances of the traditional parliamentary procedure should be looked at very carefully and maintained when one is going to add breeds to schedule 4. It seems quite incredible that the Minister chooses to ignore the advice of the Regulations Review Committee. Not only does he ignore the advice of the select committee but he ignores the advice of the Regulations Review Committee and I think that is very sad.