Sage Eugenie: Game Animal Council Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14850. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a call on the Game Animal Council Bill. The Green Party certainly supports recreational hunting on public conservation land. As Moana Mackey said there are 34000 hunting permits issued each year by the Department of Conservation. Many Kiwis get immense enjoyment from getting out into the back country and going hunting because of the physical challenges involved and the stamina required and actually just from being out in the back country being up on those scree slopes and being up on the tussock tops enjoying the views waiting for deer and scanning through binoculars for chamois.It is a long tradition that New Zealand has of free access to conservation land to go hunting. We understand that and recreational hunting is just as valid a use of our back country as tramping mountain biking fishing or any other opportunity out there. But we have a big problem with this bill because it is not about strengthening the Kiwitradition of going hunting. It is not about boosting hunter numbers and encouraging more young people to go hunting. The regulatory impact statement made it quite clear that there was not any evidence that the current institutional arrangements required change in order to improve participation of people in hunting as a sport.This bill is primarily about catering to a small group that can afford to pay for helicopters and guides to go trophy hunting. It is about giving them management control and considerable influence over the management of conservation land. The Government’s Supplementary Order Paper 395 by stripping out of the bill any references to recreational hunting makes that quite clear. This bill is likely to make it both more expensive and more bureaucratic for Kiwis to go hunting.There is no reason for this bill as other Opposition colleagues have noted. There are alternative ways of giving a better voice for the hunting fraternity. It is only going through because it is the pay-off to United Future for its support of the Government’s asset sales legislation and it is part of the confidence and supply agreement. The bill does not recognise what the Department of Conservation is doing to improve relationships with the hunting sector. It does not recognise improvements to the hunting permit system or the outreach that a lot of the conservation boards are doing and it is unnecessary as the regulatory impact statement made very clear.We already have the Wild Animal Control Act. The purpose of that Act is to achieve coordination of hunting measures and it is to provide for the regulation of recreational hunting commercial hunting and wild animal recovery operations. It was an option—which many parties supported such as the Conservation Authority—of setting up a ministerial advisory committee under the Wild Animal Control Act to advise the Minister on hunting. That would have achieved much better integration with the current legislative framework and with the current structure of managing hunting rather than this stand-alone bill and stand-alone agency.We could have also got a greater voice for hunting through additional appointments to the Conservation Authority or to conservation boards. We had a very interesting submission at the select committee from the Tongariro/Taupō Conservation Board which talked a lot about how it was working to ensure that hunters’ interests were accommodated. If you use existing agencies in existing legislation you are going to get that cooperation that collaboration amongst the different stakeholders. Setting up the Game Animal Council as a single hunting organisation will not see that collaboration and will not foster it. It is likely to create significantly more conflict and division in the management of conservation lands. So that is one reason we are opposing it.The bill is also setting up an unnecessary quango. We already have liaison committees under the Wild Animal Control Act and they have a significant influence on how hunting is managed on conservation land. You only have to think of the Himalayan Tahr Control Plan Implementation Group which I was on in a former life. That was dominated by hunters. That was very influential in determining how tahr were managed and making sure that hunters actually got a real privilege in getting helicopter access to wilderness areas. There are existing mechanisms like those liaison committees under the Wild Animal Control Act.One of the other reasons we oppose the bill is the significant cost in establishing the Game Animal Council. As the regulatory impact statement said the council would have the highest costs in terms of time and resources as well as being the least aligned to the current wild animal control regime and legislative framework. The Government is proposing to direct at least $100000 annually and potentially $200000 annually to establish the council. That is a significant cost for the Department of Conservation when the push is for it to be engaged in effective spending and we know because of the funding cuts that it is very much under financial constraints. Where we have seen thesestand-alone councils established elsewhere such as in New South Wales the council failed to break even and the state Government there had to subsidise its game animal council to the tune of $3.5 million.So here if the Government does not subsidise the council to that amount we are likely to see significant fees imposed on recreational hunters. Originally the council was to be funded just by levies on the export of trophies. The Local Government and Environment Committee amendments to the bill include a power for the council to recommend to the Minister how it wants to recover its costs and then there is a power for the Minister to impose fees and levies. The Green Party’s concern is that the combination of those powers plus the stripping out of any reference to recreational hunters through the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper is going to mean potentially that the council will set very high levies to hunt animals in herds of special interest that only the trophy hunters can afford.At the moment the Department of Conservation does not charge people to go hunting. It recovers its costs for hunting permits but that is generally only about $30 a permit. So the Department of Conservation at the moment supports that Kiwi tradition of going hunting. The Game Animal Council is likely to undermine that because of the need to recover the costs of running an 11 to 12-member council and its costs in doing research and other work on these herds of special interest.The State Services Commission Treasury the former Ministry of Economic Development the former Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the former Food Safety Authority all opposed this bill. The Government normally takes the advice of these agencies. National’s rhetoric is all about cutting through red tape and bureaucracy yet in establishing this stand-alone agency with significant management powers it is setting up more red tape and bureaucracy.But our major reason for opposing it is that it introduces multiple use management on the public conservation estate and that it is at odds with the whole thrust of conservation legislation and the Department of Conservation’s statutory purpose which is to protect and preserve natural and historic resources and our unique indigenous biodiversity. Because animals like tahr and deer are being changed by this bill from being recognised as a problem and as having an impact through their browsing on our high country soils on our indigenous species into being seen as more of an asset of value we are going to see significant conflicts between the Game Animal Council and the Department of Conservation when it wants to undertake culling and control operations and when it wants to do aerial 1080 operations to control possums. The Game Animal Council in seeking to protect its stakeholder interests is likely to oppose that.So the whole desire of the Game Animal Council to maximise hunting opportunities will conflict with the management of conservation lands and pest control. That is obvious from the fact that there is nothing in this bill that prohibits the Minister from establishing herds of special interest in our highest-category protected areas like national parks nature reserves and ecological areas. That is why there is Supplementary Order Paper 400 in my name to amend that. If the Minister is genuine about continuing to protect conservation values there should be a clear commitment that these herds of special interest not be established in national parks nature reserves scientific reserves and ecological areas because of the damage that introduced browsers cause.There is significant international concern about this bill. The Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand attached to its submission a letter from the vice-chair Oceania of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. That was from Penelope Figgis and the deputy vice-chair Bruce Jefferies to the Minister ofConservation. It emphasised that there is “significant deep-seated apprehension that the legal and philosophical principles that underpin New Zealand’s conservation management systems would be both undermined and compromised if introduced animal management is taken over and driven by the interests of commercial game animal groups and a limited number of recreational hunters.”We have a lot more to say about this bill which we will do in the Committee stage. Thank you.Debate interrupted.