McAnulty KieranKIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Madam Speaker thank you very much. It's a delight to stand here and speak in favour of the Dog Control (Category One Offences) Amendment Bill I do have however one comment to make: just for the record it was not me who interrupted that speech; it was my good friend Greg O'Connor. The only reason I say that is because his interruption was not that good and I don't want my name attributed to it in Hansard. This speech will be a relatively short one because this bill has been traversed in detail throughout all stages and here we are on the verge of passing a common-sense bill. I'd like to take the opportunity to praise Ian McKelvie a man who I'm a big fan of. He's done a lot of good work representing Rangitīkei. His first member's bill—of course as members know there are some members who've been here for years and years and never once had a bill pulled out and Ian McKelvie has managed that feat twice this year. It looks like both of them are going to pass; one of them had to be taken up by the Government but it was still Ian's initiative to get that through. I also acknowledge Andrew Little for working with us to get that through past the line when it hit some stalls at the Primary Production Committee. This bill makes sense. As the previous speaker mentioned there are a lot of people with dogs; I had a dog once and his name was Max. I have mentioned this one particular story about Max in a previous reading of this speech but it is very relevant to this bill so I'm just going to touch on this again. The thing is that this bill is around category 1 offences. Now if you looked at it on the face of it one might be forgiven for thinking there are some serious crimes that are committed that involve dogs and one might not be comfortable with the idea of these sorts of things being dealt with by a JP. But this bill specifically states that it is category 1 offences. So my dog Max was a serial category 1 offender and he used to escape and run around and do all sorts of things. He'd always come back—Todd Muller: Poor teaching. KIERAN McANULTY: —but he would cause—that's right. It was poor training on the previous owner's part. We adopted Max from a lovely lady in Whanganui who neglected to tell us that he was a runner. But you know Max went into the pound a few times in Masterton and if this bill was in place at the time we would have been able to go through that process a lot quicker than what we had to. Todd Muller: He was running away from you. KIERAN McANULTY: He wasn't running away from me Mr Muller. He always came back. He just needed a breather just like most of my caucus from time to time—just need a breather from me. But you know they always come back. But the point is that this bill doesn't—Hon Member: Only because you're the whip. KIERAN McANULTY: Only because I give them lollies apparently. But nevertheless this bill doesn't touch on serious offending—such as for example causing serious injury. I think that's an important point to make because ultimately this is about making dealing with category 1 offences a smoother and quicker process. But there is actually a wider benefit which may not have been in the intent of the bill but certainly will come into effect once this passes. What we've seen is that the strain that has been placed on things like the Family Court over the last seven years or so is causing a serious backlog and in fact in May 2018 the Chief District Court Judge referred to a stretched judicial workforce that is being forced to redeploy judicial resource from the criminal jurisdiction to the Family Court. So what this bill will do in a small way is to contribute to that backlog and whilst there is a broader programme at play here by this Government to adequately resource the judicial system in order to address that backlog Ian McKelvie in a roundabout way is also assisting with that. So good on him and good on the other members of the House from all parties for standing up and supporting this. The Primary Production Committee did work in a good manner towards this partly due to the respect for Ian McKelvie and in other parts because this was a common-sense approach. So I congratulate him. I congratulate everybody that is supporting this bill. It is a good idea and it's good to see yet again that this House is banding together to support what makes sense.