Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I also congratulate the member for Rangitīkei Ian McKelvie on bringing this very sensible bill to the House. This is a serious issue it is a growing issue and with the cost of meat that is in the supermarkets at retail level it is only going to continue to grow without some specific attention. Making a crime of livestock rustling an aggravating factor in sentencing and elevating its seriousness I think is a timely reminder and New Zealand First totally supports this. In fact I can reveal—the Opposition were very interested before the break in the 38-page or was it the 33-page document but I can tell you that one of the policy development programmes that we had was indeed this very issue. So we support this totally and we would in fact take it a little bit further. I think the member talked about confiscation of equipment—utes and trucks and whatever—and we would certainly support elevating that up. We probably wouldn't go as far as capital punishment which it may have been in the past but I think that's only the moderate members of this House. I think if you went into some parts of rural New Zealand and asked them they probably would advocate for that. It is something that really concerns rural New Zealand. The financial scale of this already has been mentioned by several speakers. The Federated Farmers survey said it was $120 million a year. I think that's probably conservative. Let's put some scale around that. The average sheep and beef farm in the beef and lamb estimates for this year will make $84000. That's before tax and before personal drawings. The average farmer is not wealthy. Yes they have a landholding that holds some value but their cash flow and their cash in the bank at the end of the year are often pretty thin and that's in a year when prices are quite elevated. Last year it was only $69000 and as we know in many parts of the country including where we are in Otago and Southland and I know in Taranaki and previously on the West Coast it's been very very dry. There are other mitigating factors as well that are putting financial pressure on and this is just another one that we can't countenance. This is an insidious crime. Farmers are largely defenceless. Properties are often large they are remote and they are isolated. The average age of sheep and beef farmers is 58 so you know through that that there are a number of farmers in their 60s and 70s and 80s living out in these remote places. These are traumatic crimes when people come on to your property often armed. You can't lock your gate. They'll just cut the wires as the Hon Nathan Guy just referred to before. My elderly neighbour has actually adopted some of the technology that was referred to before. He's set up some infrared lights—he's lost some stock—and that causes stress in itself because possums or whatever trip them off as well. So he's constantly on edge with this technology and this threat. As has been witnessed before there were the 1400 lambs in Whanganui. I quote the farmer involved there: It totally mentally debilitates you. Constantly making sure that everything's alright. … I'm a mentally tough person most farmers are. But I'm human also—I'm still struggling with it." As has been noted previously 26 percent of farmers are thought to have been affected but I would say most of us don't know. I wouldn't have a clue. It's hard. When you're mustering you're always missing a few here and there in a gully or through a fence or into another mob. It's just hard to know exactly how many you've got so you could lose within the margin of error and not know. So the 60 percent that don't report—I would say that on top of that there's plenty of us that have been victims that would never know. It shows how important the 1800 extra police that this Government is committed to is. We need to be out in these rural areas in some scale with a police force to be able to deal with these crimes. These are now sophisticated crime syndicates and they deserve our attention. They are also armed on many occasions and I would say that this is a preventative measure as well. Someone is going to get killed at some point. So we look forward to progressing this measure through the House. Thank you."