Guy Nathan: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGuy Nathan: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2738. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): It is a pleasure to be able to speak on this very important Animal Welfare Amendment Bill up in front of the Chamber this afternoon. I want to talk about some of the specific parts of this bill and also make a couple of introductory comments. The first one is that animal welfare really matters to New Zealanders. About two-thirds of New Zealand households own a pet—and some of them have more than one pet—so it is hugely important that we get this bill right and it is my belief that broadly we have got this bill right. The other important thing about animal welfare is that we have a multi-billion dollar industry—in terms of the primary production part of our economy—that relies very heavily on animal welfare. A lot of our exports depend on animal production. And so this bill goes a long way to line up both of those important parts of animal welfare in New Zealand both for those members of society who treasure their pets and for those whose income and GDP rely heavily on animal production and importantly on those very important export markets.The other important thing regarding this Animal Welfare Amendment Bill is that I want to acknowledge all of the Primary Production Committee members who got it into very good shape. I want to come to one particular member this afternoon and that is Mojo Mathers from the Green Party. She has put a lot of effort into it with her team focusing on some of the important issues for this amendment bill.Mojo Mathers has a variety of Supplementary Order Papers on the Table this afternoon. I want to address in particular Supplementary Order Paper 44 which was introduced by Ms Mathers. This is because of concerns that the Government has about Supplementary Order Paper 44 being too broad and potentially having unintended consequences in the way it was drafted. I thank Ms Mathers for bringing this particular issue to the Government’s attention. As a result of that sitting on the Tableis Supplementary Order Paper 69 in my name. We believe that this amendment still captures the essence of what Mojo Mathers was trying to achieve with her Supplementary Order Paper 44. I had a very good chat with Mojo Mathers this morning and explained the Government’s decision for introducing a Government Supplementary Order Paper and I know that she is broadly supportive of the introduction of my Supplementary Order Paper.It is a useful point to draw to the Committee’s attention—in terms of focusing on that Supplementary Order Paper—that there never has been any animal testing of cosmetics or finished ingredients in New Zealand. But this amendment sends a very important message that New Zealanders care about their animals that testing of this nature is unacceptable and that it will never happen if this Supplementary Order Paper passes this afternoon. It is also important to note that we have a very strong framework and processes in place for any animal testing done in New Zealand. Any testing for products like medicines has to be approved by an independent ethics committee and has to prove that the benefits outweigh any harm caused.While I am on my feet I also want to address Supplementary Order Paper 46 which is from Mojo Mathers. It is the Government’s view that we will be supporting and adopting this Supplementary Order Paper. The member has rightly pointed out changes made at the select committee to transitional provisions in the bill by removing the words “on a particular sector” and this Supplementary Order Paper is consistent with the original policy intent in the bill. I thank the member for spotting the need for this minor technical change.