Roy Eric: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoy Eric: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14873. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill): I see Minister McCully the Minister in the chair about to leap to his feet so I apologise for taking his call. My intention is actually to be of some assistance to the Committee in working its way through the issues there are with the Game Animal Council Bill. I think that most members of the Committee will know that I am actually a hunter. There have been some issues made out of two points which I want to address first. The first one is why we are doing this in urgency. The Hon Peter Dunne made the point that there are provisions that will expire. There are provisions that need to be put in place before next year’s commercial activity by safari parks and hunters so that issues that are actually anathema to the recreational hunter are dealt with. So there is no mischief there is nothing untoward about the reason why this bill is being deal with now. By February there need to be codes of practice in place.Let me deal with another issue that is perplexing the Committee. Why are we taking “recreational” out of the bill? In the last 12 months I have been a hunter and I can name five different hats that I have had. I have been a recreational hunter harvesting some eco-protein for the pot or the deep freeze or whatever else. I have been a trophy hunter—an unsuccessful but attempted trophy hunter. I have been a commercial hunter—I have sold product that I have harvested. I have been a pest hunter—I have dealt to wild pigs that were savaging young fawns on my deer farm and we wiped out an intrusion that happened there. And I have been a guide—people have paid money. I do that for charities. That is five different things. If you go to clause 4 “Interpretation”—Hon Ruth Dyson: And you’re an MP as well?ERIC ROY: Yes well that may amaze the member but you know I can multi-task. But if members go to clause 4 the interpretation clause there is no definition of “recreational hunter” and there is ambiguity about that. Everybody knows what a hunter is but not everybody knows what a recreational hunter is and at some point there could be some litigation about exactly what that means. So this is actually inclusive rather than selective. I want the Committee to just understand that—that thereis no mischief. This brings a level of inclusion to hunting and making sure that there are all of those representations because people often wear different hats.Can I then make some comment about clause 22 which is about the way in which fees may be extracted to pay for the Game Animal Council.Hon Ruth Dyson: What clause?ERIC ROY: Clause 22 I think. The mechanism is there. I have also had some experience in being on hunts in other countries but I have been too Presbyterian to pay. Can I just illustrate that it is in fact the habit of pretty much every country in the world to charge foreign nationals a different fee from locals. My experience particularly is in Wyoming. If you are a resident Wyoming citizen a tag for an elk is $150. If you are a non-resident but US State citizen it is $250 on top of the $150. If you are a foreign national outside the US it is $700 on top of the $150. That is one of the lower rates where it does occur. So we are not creating anything that is outside the realm of what is normal practice internationally where there is some kind of expectation that fees are paid by people who are not resident and those fees go towards the management of the environment and the various hunting species that are there. So that is an explanation of how that might work to actually fund the Game Animal Council.Can I then address the Supplementary Order Paper 395 on new clause 26A which talks about a code of practice for herding and hazing. This is one of those issues that needs to be dealt with post haste because there are a number of hunting guides that are ready to set in place contracts for next year. That is why there is some urgency about actually doing it. How did this actually happen? That is the question. Members need to understand that there is WARO—wild animal recovery operations—where significant numbers of animals are in the wrong place. The Minister of Conservation said in his second reading speech that when there are too many animals in the wrong place they need to be harvested and a wild animal recovery operation is a very effective way of controlling that. My interest is principally around Fiordland and every year 6000 deer are taken out by wild animal recovery operations in Fiordland. That is the number to keep the number to a sustainable level in Fiordland.Some of the more enterprising guides said: “Hang on there is a commercial application for hunting out of helicopters.” So they tweaked—I think that could be a word we could use—the wild animal recovery operation provisions to allow them to charge for the hunting of trophies the herding and hazing or the extension of how that actually happened. In many ways this is anathema to the recreational hunter and that needs to be dealt with and in most countries in the world there are some very strict rules about that. We in New Zealand have this very delicate relationship where we need to allow wild animal recovery operations to continue to harvest animals that are in excessive numbers in some places and yet not allow that provision for our people to conduct hunting experiences that are outside what is acceptable certainly internationally. If you go to a place like Canada you are not even allowed to hunt—not you Mr Chairman. A member is not allowed to hunt on the day that he flies in in case he sees a trophy animal on the way in or he does some detour routes on the way in looking for one. So the rules are quite specific.Hon Maryan Street: Why isn’t Lindsay allowed to hunt?ERIC ROY: Sorry has the member got a question? I am happy to answer questions. This is about putting provisions in place—and the member has read it very carefully—and I think that that Supplementary Order Paper around the codes is quite elegant. It gives an opportunity for the Game Animal Council to create a code that will set the rules around this and still allow for the sensible use of wild animal recovery operations. That is principally what that is about.So all in all I think that the Supplementary Order Papers add to the bill. I just run through the key points again. It is necessary to get this bill under way and passed through the third stage so that the time limits and the things that need to be put in place are put in place before the next commercial guiding activity starts. The removal of the word “recreational” takes the ambiguity away and the Supplementary Order Paper on clause 26 allows us to have best practice which will be accepted internationally.