Mackey Moana: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Mackey Moana: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am very happy to stand and take a call on the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. It is nice to see the Hon David Carter finally take a call in this House on a bill but it is a bit of a shame that he had to nick the bill from Simon Bridges in the first place. It is a bit of a shame that it took a National Party backbencher to come up with an idea on which David Carter weighed in saying “Here is my opportunity to actually get on my pins and make a speech in the House so I am pulling rank. Thank you Simon Bridges but this legislation is now mine.” That is all right. It is good to do it before the reshuffle I say to the Minister; that is always a good time to do it. Shane Ardern is snapping at the Minister’s heels. Mr Ardern is a real farmer and a real man who knows what he is talking about with regard to animal welfare. So I say to the Minister that his pulling rank is a very shrewd move. Poor poor Simon Bridges is not here; he is probably up in his office weeping as he hears his legislation being taken through the House by the Hon David Carter. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: You cannot refer to someone who is not here. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Labour will be supporting this legislation. 
I want to support the comments made by my colleague Damien O’Connor who highlighted the fact that although raising the penalties is a good idea if we do not have the resources needed to police those penalties then the penalties are meaningless. That message has to come through on this legislation because unless the people who commit these crimes really fear that they will be apprehended and that the penalties may come to pass then the penalties are completely meaningless. I urge the Government to put proper resourcing into this area because as we know 20 years ago one-third of animal abuse prosecutions were done by the police with the Ministry of Agriculture and the SPCA doing some as well. But now the SPCA does up to 90 percent of the animal welfare work. That is a significant shift which shows us how far the resources have gone away from the police doing this work and taking it more seriously—or having the resources to be able to take it more seriously—to charitable organisations like the SPCA having to pick up the flak. 
There was a particularly terrible case in my patch in Gisborne where the SPCA really highlighted the difficulties involved in raising money to carry out prosecutions. The SPCA had picked up six dogs over 2 weeks that were absolutely skeletal. Their condition was so extreme that they had eaten their own faeces which comprised just pine needles. That is the reality of animal cruelty in this country. Those dogs were 6 months old but they were no bigger than 9-week-old pups; that shows how incredibly emaciated they were. One pup was so emaciated that the  
Gisborne Herald 
 reported that sunlight could be seen coming through her hind legs. That shows the seriousness of the situation. Carol Martin the Gisborne branch manager of the SPCA who is fantastic said it was very important to get an ongoing prosecution fund going for the SPCA because if such animal abuse is not prosecuted then the animals are simply returned to their owners and the abuse continues. If this law is not properly resourced and if the SPCA is not able to carry out those prosecutions then it does not matter how high the penalties are. 
I think we also need to take into account the fact that only 0.4 percent of animal cruelty complaints result in a conviction. That is very telling because there is no disincentive for people when they know that less than half of one percent of all animal cruelty complaints result in a conviction. When one looks at the case in Gisborne one finds that the manager of the SPCA said her organisation had taken successful prosecutions in the past but the award of costs was absolutely pathetic and did not cover the real cost of taking a prosecution for cruelty to animals. 
This is where we come to the real problem with regard to prosecuting animal cruelty in this country. People have to look for solicitors to put their hands up to do pro bono work in order to take these prosecutions or they go to the police and hope that the police have the resources to be able to take a prosecution. But I think this is probably Carol Martin’s most important comment: “When you head for the courts you have already lost. If we don’t educate these people it’s going to be an ongoing event”. That is the flip side of this issue as it is with any law and order issue. We have the prosecutions and the penalties but if we do not do the work at the other side to educate people and to intervene then we will not get anywhere on the issue. 
When we look at the headlines relating to animal welfare in New Zealand we see an escalation in complaints over the past few years in particular. I do not know whether it is just an escalation in the reporting of cases or whether it is an actual escalation in animal abuse. Who knows? But the fact is that those complaints are particularly difficult to read about often because they do not involve just hardened adult criminals but also involve children. A number of the animal welfare complaints that we have had in the last few years do involve children. 
When I was at university studying for my science degree—I am running a bit of a risk of sounding like Aaron Gilmore here—I also did criminology alongside it. I know that the ACT Party and David Garrett do not like criminology probably because it is evidence based but the fact is that criminology shows very very clearly an enormous connection between animal cruelty and human violence. This is the other reason that we need to take animal cruelty incredibly seriously because the people who are committing it now are the future violent criminals in our country. If we can get to them when they are committing these offences—hopefully before they commit these offences; when they show a propensity for committing these offences—then we can avoid much greater violence down the track. Many studies in psychology sociology and criminology particularly in the last 25 to 30 years have demonstrated that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty of the kind that we are now unfortunately seeing in our country—in New Zealand. 
The FBI has recognised the connection between animal cruelty and violent offending since the 1970s when it did an analysis of serial killers. It showed that nearly all of them had killed or tortured animals when they were younger. Other research has shown patterns of animal cruelty amongst the perpetrators of domestic violence child abuse and elder abuse. In fact the connection goes so far that the American Psychiatric Association considers cruelty against animals to be one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder. The link is well documented. 
We have a real opportunity here not just to pass higher sentences for something else but to use this legislation to look at how we can intervene. I know that the National Government does not like early intervention. I know that it likes to pass completely ineffective legislation like the “three strikes” legislation which will do nothing to keep New Zealand communities safer but here is an opportunity to look at early intervention. I want to quote The Humane Society of the United States which is the largest animal advocacy organisation in the world: “Researchers as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies nationwide have linked animal cruelty to domestic violence child abuse serial killings and to the recent rash of killings by school-age children”. In a study of 57 families where there were incidents of child abuse 88 percent of the offenders had also abused animals. The ACT Party and the National Party are so keen on “three strikes” that they may be interested in the First Strike campaign by The Humane Society of the United States against animal cruelty which is designed to raise awareness of the connection between animal cruelty and other violent crime. The society helps communities to identify some of the origins of violence to predict its patterns and to prevent its escalation and it also works in a productive way which is what we should be doing in this country with animal protection agencies and shelter workers. 
Debate interrupted.