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:14883. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I want to begin by focusing on schedule 1 which is around the role of enforcement officers and honorary enforcement officers under this new Game Animal Council Bill. Any piece of legislation is only as good as the provisions under which it can be enforced. So the enforcement and penalty provisions that are found in Part 2 of this bill will have meaning or effect only if those people who seek to break the law feel that there is an adequate chance that they will be caught in breaching the provisions of this bill.One of the concerns that we had at the Local Government and Environment Committee was the lack of detail around how many of these enforcement officers we would have. We know that every constable in the New Zealand Police will be considered an enforcement officer but we also know that police have a very large job to do outside of the Game Animal Council Bill. The reality is that I do not believe that our police force is going to be patrolling Department of Conservation land as a priority to catch people carrying out illegal hunting or illegal hunting of herds of national significance unless they have been tipped off that there is something very bad going on. Then the question comes down to who is going to do that day-to-day monitoring which realistically is not going to be carried out by the New Zealand Police.So we have a role in schedule 1 called “enforcement officers” and then we have what are called “honorary enforcement officers”. At the select committee our concern was very much that this not become the “Dad’s army” of the conservation estate andthat these be very real positions which bring in people who have the right qualifications experience and knowledge particularly in the areas of health and safety. Hunting is obviously a very dangerous activity and the last thing we would want to do is put people who are inadequately trained in harm’s way by sending them out into a part of the conservation estate where hunting is being carried out. It comes down really to schedule 1 clause 2(1) which says: “The Director-General may appoint any fit and proper person who is suitably qualified and trained …” but nowhere in the legislation do we find out what “suitably qualified and trained” is deemed to be. There are no thresholds set. There are no basic competencies put in place. So I would like to think that the director-general is going to do the right thing but as we can see public servants can be made to do things that they do not particularly want to do and that are against the interests of the Department of Conservation and what we would normally expect from the Department of Conservation.Phil Twyford: It’s been going on for 5 years.MOANA MACKEY: That is right—it has been going on for 5 years. If we were then to find out that the Government was under some pressure because in fact—I mean these are honorary positions. The Minister has the ability to reimburse for realistic costs but these people are not getting paid so I question really how realistic it is to think that we are going to get a big enough force of these people to be able to monitor these activities given that the people who are paid to do it—the paid enforcement officers—are the police force and this is not going to be a priority for them. There is a risk that that definition of “suitably qualified and trained” might be too watered down and be without adequate belt and braces in the schedule and in this part of the bill to say what the core competencies are. If the Government feels under pressure that it does not have enough people out there it might start to actually water down that definition of “suitably qualified and trained”. Then we may end up with people who are lesser qualified and trained carrying out this very important role.I want to just briefly go through some of the powers that these honorary enforcement officers will have. They basically will have all the powers that a police officer would have in the Department of Conservation: the power to intervene the power to prevent or stop offending the power to require personal details or the production of lawful authority and the power to search. The honorary enforcement officers “may without a warrant search any building vehicle vessel aircraft animal or other thing on public conservation land if—[they believe it] is in the possession or under the control of …” someone who they think is committing an offence under this legislation. That is the power to stop and the powers of seizure. Those are quite significant powers to be handing over to non-professional people and all we were asking really was that we have a little bit more detail in this part of the bill about the basic core competencies and requirements of an honorary enforcement officer given that they are basically going to have nearly all the powers of a police officer when they are acting on Department of Conservation land.