Mackey Moana: Game Animal Council Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14848. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): It has actually been a while since our select committee the Local Government and Environment Committee considered this bill the Game Animal Council Bill. I think the Hon Peter Dunne must have all the patience in the world given how long it has taken to get to this point. I had to dig out all my notes and refresh my memory in terms of all the very very in-depth conversations we had at the select committee around the various aspects of this bill.It is disappointing that Labour is not able to support this bill. I think it is an opportunity lost. There is very definitely the potential in here for doing some very very good things from building on existing relationships creating relationships where those relationships do not currently exist and fixing relationships where in fact things have not gone so well and there was a range of ways that this bill could have been approached.I note that it was the advice of the officials that going down the path of creating stand-alone legislation as we have done here carried with it the most regulatory burden and the most cost and there were other ways that we could have approached this bill. Under section 5 of the Wild Animal Control Act of course the Minister of Conservation is able to establish any type of committee that is relevant to the purpose of the Act and clearly managing those tensions between recreational hunters and pest control and the preservation and stewardship of public conservation land is relevant to the purpose of that Act. But of course there were concerns raised that in doing that the Minister could also then very easily disestablish any such committee and they felt that that was perhaps too much power to be giving to a Minister of Conservation when we have a committee that everyone agrees should exist and when we have identified common goals as Ruth Dyson said. We appreciate that point of view but this could have also been done through making an amendment to the Wild Animal Control Act. That would have set up a committee that the Minister did not have the power to disestablish but would have been far more consistent with the legislation that the Department of Conservation already works under. So there was a range of different things that we could have done.I note that this goes right back to when we were in Government. I think that Steve Chadwick was the Minister of Conservation when an advisory group was set up to look at how this might be done. Well I think they were one of the first submitters that we heard from from memory—going back into the distant past—and they were not happy with the bill. In fact they said that this is pretty much exactly what they said not to do and they think that this will increase tensions not reduce them.Although I agree with a lot of what the Hon Peter Dunne said about what his party wants to achieve and what he is trying to achieve it is not as simple when you are dealing with an area like this which relies on relationship-building—very very much so—and this is not going to work if those relationships are not taken into account. You cannot simply through legislation just force that relationship-building and that was our concern the whole way through.There was a lot of common ground. What became very apparent at the select committee was that between all the groups and what we might call competing interests there was actually a hell of a lot of common ground that we could have built on to come up with a solution that did not exacerbate some of the tensions that do exist. I do not think there is anyone in this House—well I hope there is no one in this House—who is going to stand up and claim that this bill is going to see those tensions disappear because it will not. This is still going to require an awfully large amount of relationship-building. But in that room we also heard from recreational hunters in parts of thecountry where they work incredibly well with the Department of Conservation where they have worked between themselves to develop management plans that met the objectives of pest control but at the same time provided herds of a significant enough size for recreational hunters to be able to get maximum benefit out of that. And it works very very well.We also heard from parts of the country where it is an absolute dog’s breakfast where there is a complete breakdown in the relationship between the department and the recreational hunting community. I think a lot of it comes back to what the Hon Peter Dunne was saying about how the recreational hunting community is not particularly well-organised at the moment. So you have some parts of the country where it is very strong—certain herds that are stronger than others—but across the entire country it is not particularly well-organised. So I guess then it becomes the question of whether we put the cart before the horse with this piece of legislation.Could we have done this differently? At the moment we are asking a sector that by our own admission is still in its infancy in terms of organisation to carry out an incredibly important task. Maybe had we gone down another path of that relationship-building it may well have been that this is where we ended up. But we might have ended up there first of all by building on existing relationships developing those relationships and using them as an example where those relationships are very good and learning from negative experiences where those relationships have been very bad. We could have done this as an amendment under existing legislation. It may well have been that we would have got to this in the end once we had built up the capacity within the recreational hunting sector to be able to carry out the tasks that we are handing over to it.The National Party represents extensively provincial New Zealand where pest control is incredibly important not just for people who value conservation land but for farmers and for many others. If we do not carry out pest control effectively if we let that get away from us that has enormous implications for our economy as well as for our environment. So when we start to devolve responsibility away from the department—Shane Ardern: Have you ever shared that with your colleagues before Moana? You have? They’re not listening. Tell them again.MOANA MACKEY: —that currently does that then we have to be very very clear that those same things those same activities those same roles are going to be carried out. Mr Ardern was not on the select committee. I actually wish he had been on that select committee because I think the experience he has would have been very very useful. A lot of the discussions we had were very relevant to his area of expertise. I do not believe that with this piece of legislation we met the concerns that were raised at the select committee. That is all I am saying.I think there was probably I guess an intermediate step that we could have taken as I said perhaps on the way to a stand-alone game animal council bill with its own legislation that would have allayed the concerns of those who felt that devolving those powers right now was a bit soon and that the people we are devolving them to do not quite have access to the resources in order to be able to do that. But we want to build up that capacity with the Department of Conservation and with the Government and eventually yes we could potentially see far more devolution of some of this stuff to a game animal council. That is not far away from where actually the advisory committee that we set up when we were in Government to look at this was—the advisory committee that the National Government continued; the advisory committee that came before the select committee to tell us its thoughts.I note that if members read the regulatory impact statement they will see that these are all concerns that have been echoed right through the regulatory impact statement. Under “Problem definition” it says: “There is no information clearly establishing that current institutional arrangements in the management regime for wild animals requires change to improve participation among the different groups with interests in these animals and their effects on the environment. Differences in values and viewpoints between the relevant stakeholders are longstanding well understood within the sector and have not been resolved over many years. There is no evidence that current user groups and organisations (for example the Deerstalkers’ Association) are deficient in representing their members’ interest.” So I think the regulatory impact statement itself clearly says that the problem definition that the Government has done in justifying the need for this bill does not really represent reality.One of the issues that we spent a lot of time on at the Local Government and Environment Committee was how we were going to pay for this. It is always one of the more difficult things as you can come up with new councils—Hon Member: There were a lot of ideas.MOANA MACKEY: Well there were a lot of ideas. You can come up with a whole range of new committees and councils but someone has to pay for them. Ultimately when the rubber hits the road it is often the case unfortunately that everyone wants it but no one wants to pay for it. We looked at a range of options. The Government was not prepared to stump up the total funding for the board. There was some establishment money and I think $50000 a year but that $50000 a year ongoing—so $100000 in the first financial year and then $50000 in subsequent years—comes from reprioritising existing Vote Conservation funding. So it is not new money. It means that the Department of Conservation which is under enormous financial pressure at the moment as it is is going to have to find this money from somewhere else.So the question obviously around that is what has got to give in order to pay for this? There were really two main options. One was a levy on the export of trophy heads which was the path the select committee went down in the end. Submissions reflected concerns that this was unfairly targeting one group of hunters over another and that is a fair point to make. That could again create tensions within the hunting sector as opposed to trying to relieve them.Then the other option that we looked at was to put a levy on all hunting permits. There are about 34000 of these issued a year but they are currently free of charge. I guess there was a feeling in the select committee that applying it to everyone might again create a number of tensions within the hunting community. I think the discussion we had around operating costs actually reflected largely the discussion we had around the bill which is that we want to reduce tensions and not increase them. Unfortunately this bill does not achieve it.