McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It gives me pleasure to take a short call on the Crimes Amendment Bill and to support the bill and support the work of both the current Minister of Justice and those Ministers of the previous Government who put some work into this bill as well.Interestingly this bill was designed to repeal a whole lot of stuff and it's ended up adding a whole lot of more important stuff which I'll get on to in a minute. But it does repeal blasphemous libel and if you go on to what now is section 220A and 231A I'll bet there was a fair bit of blasphemous libel that took place around stock rustling in the early days—and it probably still does. None the less it's no longer prosecutable—well it won't be when this is finished. The other two are of course spousal immunity and the repeal of section 162 and much has been said about that tonight and I don't need to add to that discussion because I think the merits of that discussion or otherwise have been well documented in the House and certainly were well covered by Mark Mitchell.I want to now just briefly talk about though what was Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 185 introduced in Minister Little's name which has now become new section 220A and 231A. I just wanted to compliment the Minister—or thank the Minister I suppose—for picking that piece of work up and also Kieran McAnulty and the Primary Production Committee actually who got this piece of what was a member's bill introduced into this bill as an SOP and now it becomes those sections.Interestingly it introduces two new crimes as I said: 220A for theft of livestock and 231A which is entry on to agricultural land with intent to commit an imprisonable offence or a crime. The interesting thing about that is that that has never been a crime that you could very easily get a prosecution for before—in fact you couldn't really unless you trespassed or had a massively complicated system that would've been to trespass people as well—but it now enables both of those crimes to be prosecuted and prosecuted at a level that is much more serious and severe than it was previously when it was included in the Sentencing Act. So it's been introduced to the Crimes Act and that's made a big difference to it and I think it will give the police many more tools in their pursuit of these people.But it also gives us more protection or our communities more protection in the instance of livestock rustling or theft of livestock or even illegal activities on agricultural land with respect to the Biosecurity Act. That's hugely important for New Zealand and I guess became much more pronounced with the outbreak of M. Bovis and the potential outbreak of any other infectious diseases that might attack livestock in New Zealand because the theft of that livestock when it's infected and taking it down the road and putting it on someone else's land is certainly a big risk to New Zealand's biosecurity system. So I think the addition of this piece of the bill is quite an exciting opportunity for rural New Zealand for provincial New Zealand and for our farmers of New Zealand whether they farm bees trees or whatever.It also interestingly brings to bear a new I guess thought around the treatment of animals and what animals might think about being stolen. I know that's a slightly odd thing for someone like me to say but if you think about it and someone steals your pet dog or your cat I guarantee they get much more upset than we believe they do. That becomes a crime in a way. So it adds to the crime I suppose.So it is quite interesting and I think a lot of discussion has taken place on this particular piece of this bill in the last 18 months in this House and probably for a lot longer than that in our farming community—well our agricultural community—and even in this Parliament. To get a result through the Minister inserting it into this bill is I think a great result for rural New Zealand and it's very exciting. I have a great deal of pleasure in commending this bill and I look forward to its implementation. Thank you.