Mackey Moana: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14884. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): So coming back to my point after that brief and very good speech from Mr Goldsmith—Hon Ruth Dyson: What a contribution.Paul Goldsmith: Better than yours.MOANA MACKEY: Yeah OK. It is about this definition of “suitably qualified and trained” and it is the Director-General of Conservation who will be appointing these people and making these judgments but as we know directors-general in the Department of Conservation can be leaned on to do things that they are not particularlycomfortable with. We know that that is the case particularly in terms of the Ruataniwha Dam scheme which is currently before a board of inquiry—Hon Judith Collins: Don’t know that at all.MOANA MACKEY: I am sorry Mrs Collins but where there is smoke there is fire. I do not think there is anyone who is under any illusion that the Department of Conservation was not weighed on very heavily—weighed on very very heavily—to pull its submission on the Ruataniwha Dam scheme. That is quite clear. The Minister leaned on the Department of Conservation and this happens from time to time. So that is why we are asking in this piece of legislation that where we have Ministers in the National Government who are prepared to lean on their directors-general and their public servants to get them to do things that they do not want to do it is important in legislation like this that when we are giving people the power of a police officer—Hon Ruth Dyson: The staff member resigned.MOANA MACKEY: That is right. A staff member actually did resign over what happened in the Department of Conservation with Ruataniwha so it does happen. It has happened; it is happening. That is why when we are giving these honorary enforcement officers basically the role of a police officer in the conservation estate and it is the director-general who is determining who is “suitably qualified and trained” we should have a little bit more in the legislation to make it clear. And when we cannot find enough of these people—because they are not paid positions; they are voluntary positions—and when suddenly there are not the numbers that were promised in the conservation estate it is important that the Minister does not then lean on the director-general to say: “Well we just need to water down those kinds of standards you’ve put in place for what these people”—Hon Shane Jones: Honorary politician.MOANA MACKEY: Well it would be good to have some basic core competencies around that as well. So when you look at the extensive powers—I mean we are very disappointed that we were not able to get that under schedule 1 of this bill.One of the good things in Part 2 of the bill is clause 35 “Review of operation of Act” which means that in 3 years’ time when we are the Government we will get to see whether or not this legislation has actually met its intentions where the gaps are and we will pledge to carry out a proper review of the Act. We believe that this was a lost opportunity and that there were real synergies and common goals that could have been built on between recreational hunters or all hunters now. This bill was about just recreational hunters; it is now about all hunters which changes the flavour significantly. We will see how the Act has operated in practice and whether the many many concerns that officials right across the board from Treasury and the Department of Conservation raised during the development of this policy and the select committee process have been realised and if they have been realised we will see what we can then do about it. We do pledge to carry out a very thorough and transparent review of this Act in 3 years’ time.It would actually be good to have an element of independence perhaps in that review. The review of the operation of the Act as it is currently in the bill is that the Minister will do that and as we know this is a Government that is not afraid to put out reviews that do not reflect reality but reflect what it wants reality to be. So it is a shame that there is not a little bit more independence in clause 35 in relation to the review of the operation of the Act just to give the public confidence that this is not the Government finding what it wants to find or trying to brush away any criticisms or concerns that claims it made about the way that the Act would operate have not actually come to pass. I think in terms of the very significant change that we made in Part 1 of the bill which was to basically remove the word “recreational” from the entire bill and now make this bill apply to all hunters. We are very concerned about that because wethink it actually shuts the recreational guys out. We wanted to make it very clear that even though these are small voluntary organisations—they are recreational; they are not professional—these are the people whom we really want to be involved in this process. We want them to be part of the engagement the Department of Conservation has and now there is no requirement to do that because there is no mention of the word “recreational”. It is very telling that the change the Government made which we will be reviewing under clause 35 in Part 2 of this bill never came to the select committee. At the select committee this was never raised with us as problem. Actually this is Minister Bridges’ modus operandi so it is quite fortuitous that he is in the chair at the moment. It never came to the select committee. It was dropped—