van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you very much Mr Chair. It's a pleasure to take a call on this. Looking at this title—I mean the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill; I think it's quite clear that that is not an appropriate title for the bill because effectively it is simply an export ban on livestock. That is what we really should be considering here. If the Minister wants to have an appropriate ideological approach which obviously is their approach then the appropriate mechanism would just be to call it an export ban or a Jacinda said I had to" bill for example. Because the reality is that when we think of animal welfare in New Zealand we have very high animal welfare standards across the board. Every now and again there will be the odd exception to that and everyone in the industry will condemn any of those sorts of breaches. But standards are very high here. If we are wanting to address animal welfare standards in general then perhaps an animal welfare amendment bill would be appropriate. But this title is inappropriate for the nature of the specificity of what this bill is trying to capture in terms of simply banning live exports. What we really need to be addressing if the Minister has concerns is around the standards on the vessels. Because broadly animal welfare in itself is quite good on those vessels as well. There are some areas that it could be improved and that's what we will talk to further through this debate as we get to some of the excellent Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that our animal welfare spokesperson Nicola Grigg has put forward; looking at highlighting some of those animal welfare aspects that would be appropriate under an animal welfare amendment bill rather than just a carte blanche ban on effectively freight by sea which is what this bill is looking to do. Of course that comes with risks—looking to have a blanket ban—because actually when you consider a territory like the Chatham Islands a wonderful part of New Zealand they rely exclusively on sea freight for getting their livestock back to mainland New Zealand for processing. So if we are putting a blanket ban on or the intent is to have no movement of livestock via vessels then that is a real issue for them as well. The Animal Welfare Amendment Bill if it is to be called that should be much broader looking at animal welfare considerations across the farming industry and the areas where we might make some improvements. But clearly this isn't an appropriate title for this bill. We have a range of SOPs as I said that we'll be talking to throughout this debate highlighting some of the issues that would be more appropriate under a bill of this name or else potentially looking at renaming the bill. I wonder if the Minister would accept that actually that is a more appropriate position for us to take; that if we are wanting to amend the animal welfare standards such as this then he should be accepting those amendments agreeing to what we're putting forward and helping to enhance the animal welfare standards on the vessels rather than simply banning what is an important trade for a number of farmers around New Zealand and provides a significant economic contribution to their businesses and therefore into their regions and the economy as a whole. So the impact here is really significant. One of the aspects that we touch on through those SOPs is around tightening up those animal welfare aspects making sure that the vessels are fit for purpose—because I think that's one of the fundamental issues here is that a number of the vessels that are being used in this trade are not up to the standard that we would like to see. The Minister touched on it himself in terms of some of the temperature issues that can be present for parts of the journey as they move from New Zealand up to those export markets. Absolutely we need to ensure that animal welfare is maintained. Ultimately though when you look at the statistics—and that is an important aspect; you look at the science you look at the reports—animal welfare in general on the vessels is actually to a very high standard. We see very low numbers of deaths. They're often coming off the vessels in better condition than they boarded at New Zealand. So from that perspective animal welfare is well maintained. Of course we can always do a bit better and that comes to the Minister's comments as well around how we are viewed globally by our markets. I would say well his comment was that there's some concern potentially or he alluded to the concern that our customers might have from the continuation of this trade. I don't know that I share that; I certainly haven't been hearing that strongly. I would say the bigger concern is what happens as a result of the ban of livestock under the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. The ban of those exports actually will lead to a much higher number of livestock going to slaughter potentially at younger ages and that could have a bigger impact on our markets. So there's a lot to be discussed under this. We have some good SOPs and I hope the Minister will support them."