McKelvie IanSENTENCING (LIVESTOCK RUSTLING) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I move That the Sentencing (Livestock Rustling) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill. Mr Speaker—or Madam Deputy Speaker; we've got a bit of both—the purpose of this bill is to amend the Sentencing Act 2002 to deter people from engaging in livestock rustling by identifying it as an aggravating factor at sentencing. I'm going to start tonight by saying that I would very much have liked to have introduced a bill with more teeth than this one has.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm sorry to interrupt the member but can those who are leaving the House just have a bit of quiet and respect. Thank you.IAN McKELVIE: I thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I just thought it wasn't interesting. I would have very much liked to have introduced a bill with more teeth than this one but I felt it may have been difficult to get general acceptance of a harder line which I feel this bill will achieve—a general acceptance I mean. I hope that that will become part of the discussion during the select committee stage as I imagine submissions will point to the challenges faced particularly by those farmers who live in more remote parts of our beautiful country and the difficulty in getting a conviction for stock rustling. There are commonly two types of livestock rustling: one where the odd animal is nicked for the freezer which seems on the face of it pretty harmless but nonetheless it's worth a significant amount of money; and the other which is organised and well organised by driving stock from a farm and basically laundering them through a supposedly legitimate business. Livestock rustling defined as the theft of livestock from farms or properties has in recent years become more prevalent and was established—or was estimated—to be costing the farming community over $120 million per year last year. With a lamb now being worth over $150 it's probably much more than that. So you can see it's a problem but it's not only an economic one as I will try to illustrate a little later. To quote the Federated Farmers This activity is not only a threat to farming businesses but also creates risks to people's safety in more isolated parts of rural New Zealand as often rustlers are armed and equipped with quite sophisticated tools to assist them." I don't know how many of us in this House know what it's like being woken in the middle of the night by gunshots in close proximity to your house. That house could be some kilometres from the nearest neighbour. To look out the window only to see vehicle lights just appearing over the hill to go out not only to find bits of your sheep deer steer or pig lying in the paddock with the best cuts gone down the road—that's if you're lucky. If you're not lucky you could find a truckload have gone down the road and the truckload could also consist of one's beehives or laying hens which of course raises another topic for the select committee: just what is in fact covered as livestock. Livestock in the old days was easy to identify. It no longer is. I can tell you it's a little scary very annoying and of course it's theft by any measure to have your stock taken in the middle of the night.One could equally go out to find your dog missing your horse shot—this happened in my home town recently—animals mauled by rustlers' dogs and fences cut. It's frustrating and at times devastating for families and individuals. A link can also be found between wilful trespass; poaching which could involve the removal or killing of wild deer trout rabbits and gamebirds without permission; general theft from farm buildings all of which are behind farm fences and gates; and stock rustling. I use the farm fences and gates in this context because I see the crime of stock rustling as no different than the crime of burglary which would most likely be the charge if one were prosecuted for taking something from an urban property or shed. This will be a topic for the select committee to deal with at an appropriate time. I thought it worth quoting a passage from our distant past and it comes from a book called Ghosts of Otago by Georgiana Andersen and it reads "Yes he was involved in some stock rustling thing that went wrong and a shepherd got killed. He's in the Arrowtown jail but they're going to move him to Dunedin day after tomorrow. He's scheduled to hang next Friday." Lucy said. "I thought you might like the chance to … throw rotten eggs in his cell or something before they take him away."I don't propose anything or advocate anything quite as drastic as that for the poachers or rustlers of today. But it is an interesting reminder of our distant past and how seriously this crime was taken and the very different types of—I guess—sentences we have nowadays for very similar types of crime. The people who commit these crimes are usually people with some skills quite a degree of fitness and people with energy because you need to have energy to chase livestock around hills in the middle of the night and you need to have a little bit of dedication as well.So the point I want to make is I don't think putting them in prison is the answer because these people are useful and often have plenty of ability. So I think it would be really quite nice to find another way of punishing these people for the crime—or well yeah the crimes they commit I guess. After all energy is required as I said to commit these mischiefs and those people with energy have got a use all over the place. These people also often have a sense of adventure and even remind me of my days as a student and the odd twilight market gardening adventure my fellow students often talked about at night.I would like to see the select committee look to giving the courts some unique penalties for these crimes but that of course may be a step too far. For this reason I'd have liked to have seen powers similar to those included in the Fisheries Act and Wild Animal Control Act included which would give or could give authorities the power to seize tools used to commit these crimes. However I have chosen to leave that option to the select committee to consider. I'm sure if the bill gets through its first reading a number of submissions will be received on this matter alone.The statistics such as they are make a compelling case for a toughening up of this legislation. And I say "such as they are" as unfortunately the police stopped collecting statistics on this type of crime in 2014—this being one of the most compelling reasons for moving as I have here to give them more tools for prosecution to succeed and more incentive to follow these crimes with more vigour. There is over $20 billion worth of livestock farmed in New Zealand and an estimated $120 million are stolen or rustled annually. In a 2016 farmer survey 26 percent of respondents had stock stolen. In the last five years 41 percent of those were reported to police 44 percent of those were further investigated and 4 percent of them resulted in a court appearance. That's an interesting statistic in itself.As I said 2014 was the last year the police collected statistics and in that year 215 cases of livestock theft of over $1000 were reported; 22 were resolved. In total in that year 2014 653 cases were reported and 50 were prosecuted or resolved—not a great success rate but there are significant difficulties dealing with this type of crime. It's a very difficult crime to detect and it's very difficult to detect the people that commit it. The real reason for that—and it's also a reason you might ask why so much livestock are stolen in New Zealand and a lot of it's not even reported—is because the isolated terrain that we often farm in is a very difficult part of New Zealand to either identify people who are involved in these crimes or in fact to understand that the stock has gone missing for quite some time after they've gone missing. That's not because farmers neglect their stock; it's just because of the difficult nature of the business we're involved in.One of the other big difficulties with stock rustling is identifying the animals stolen and proving that they've actually been stolen or what they are without suitable paperwork or identification. The ability to identify will be significantly enhanced as our animal traceability methods improve and that may happen quickly with a bit luck but I do think it's important that we have good traceability methods and processes in place and it will help with this cause or this particular crime.In one of the biggest cases reported in New Zealand history 1400 lambs were stolen at an estimated value of $120000. They were stolen in one night and as I explained earlier you might ask how that could happen but it can happen quite easily in isolated rural New Zealand. At the same time I go back to my point that these people have got to have a bit of energy a bit of skill and frankly a bit of talent. They'd be much better employed as shepherds than doing what they do but none the less that's what happens. There was also in very recent times the Canterbury case of the large number of cows that I guess went missing but in fact effectively that's the same thing as rustling.So it's a very difficult crime to detect. It's a difficult crime for the police to prosecute and the more incentive we can give the police to prosecute that and the more options we can give the courts in my view to punish them without necessarily—as I said I don't think locking them up is the answer. So I hope that the select committee will get the opportunity as a result of this debate tonight to consider all those factors as this bill moves forward.So Madam Deputy Speaker thank you for the opportunity to present this bill at first reading to the House and I'll listen with interest to further discussion tonight."