Roy Eric: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Roy Eric: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:3737] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 Firstly can I say that the National Party is deadly serious about dealing to dogs that savage people particularly children. I listened with interest to the comments of the Hon Damien O’Connor and he said words to the effect that if he had his way he would destroy any dog that bit a person. Well I have to say to him that it is his lucky day. Earlier in the day I tabled two amendments. One of them is an amendment to clause 8A. It states: “Any dog savaging a child under 13 years of age shall be put down.” That is how serious we are about dealing with this problem. 
Let me just explain about the age factor. The principal issue that brought this up was the attack on Carolina Anderson—so any child being savaged is the issue. Why 13? Well it is an arbitrary age but it is for this reason. If we have a companion dog that wards off someone attacking us there ought to be some recognition of that fact. Simply if a person is under 13 years of age that person is not likely to be attacking other people. It is most unlikely. So this amendment— 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: Why not 15? 
ERIC ROY 
: I can see that Mr O’Connor is delighted because anybody who does not vote for this amendment says that dogs are more important than children. That is the first point I wish to make. 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: So a 14-year-old’s not important? 
ERIC ROY 
: I ask how serious Damien O’Connor was on actually backing that up. That is my first amendment. 
I will raise some other issues about microchipping generally before I move to my second amendment. At the introduction of this legislation and at the report back I talked about the efficacy of microchipping. The Local Government and Environment Committee received a great deal of evidence about people who have had their dogs microchipped and the microchips could not be read a very short space of time afterwards. We heard of golden retrievers that had been microchipped before they left Great Britain and when they arrived here on the plane those microchips were not able to be read. So there is a suspect efficacy issue around microchipping. Because I have been making these points when I took a dog to the vet the technician said—and I will repeat it again—that I would need to check this every year. The Government has not told people that but there is an ongoing cost to make sure that this technology actually works. The vets wrote to me and said this was a good reason for microchipping: 30 percent of the dogs in New Zealand are unregistered therefore we should microchip. Well I have to say that if 30 percent are unregistered now with the simple cost of registration how many will be unregistered later? 
Hon Member 
: 50 percent. 
ERIC ROY 
: I have to say that I spent this evening with a number of farmers and I tell members that this legislation will be largely ignored. 
I also make this point. If this technology seriously worked why are we introducing it for dogs that are under 6 months on 1 July? I have had dogs all my life. I have had a team of dogs. I currently have one dog Kate who is 17 years of age. I had another dog Penny who lived to 19. Kate had her first litter of pups at 15 and I have no doubt she will make 19. But this bill says that in the year 2025 there will be dogs still not microchipped. How good a system is that to actually control a kind of database about where dogs are and how effective this legislation will be in identifying dogs? There will be a greater degree of disobedience about registering and there will be such a time lag that it will not mean anything till about 2030. How effective a piece of legislation is that to actually deal with the problem? 
I have to say that this bill is nutty. Yes we should be doing something. That is why I introduced this handwritten amendment that says that any dog savaging a child must be destroyed. That will modify the behaviour of dog owners more quickly than anything else. It does not matter whether dogs are registered or unregistered but if they attack a child the problem will be removed and that will modify the behaviour of people who have dogs that are unsupervised or dogs that attack people. 
I am looking forward to the support of the Hon Damien O'Connor and of anyone else.