Dunne Peter: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDunne Peter: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14864. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): I just want to comment on two points that have arisen in the debate so far. The first is to just discuss this question of why the Game Animal Council Bill is being progressed at this time. At the end of the second reading Kevin Hague made reference to magic and illusions and I accosted him on the stairwell shortly thereafter and said that I thought that was a good description of his speech as well. There is no sinister reason or untoward motive for the timing of the bill’s passage being now; it is simply that certain things with regard to certain concessions have expiry dates. The council needs to be in place to give effect to either the renewal or the changes of those concessions as soon as possible. Indeed in my ideal world this bill would have been passed much earlier this year but that is another story.Hon Trevor Mallard: The member’s hardly had an ideal world this year. I share his position.Hon PETER DUNNE: It has been an interesting year and perhaps that member and I should get together to mutually commiserate at some stage. I want to come back to the questions that have been raised about clause 16. I just draw members’ attention to Supplementary Order Paper 395 and also to the changes that are being made to clause 7 because they need to be seen in tandem. What happened if I can recall the history very briefly was that at the time that the bill was being drafted we specifically excluded a number of what might be described as the private sector operators from itspurview because we did not want to infringe on property rights etc. Once the bill came back from the Local Government and Environment Committee the Government received submissions from a whole range of those groups. They came to see me. There were the tourism operators and there was a range of groups basically saying that they wanted to be brought under the purview of the legislation. We had previously excluded them. I said: “You give me your letter with your signatures to this and we will make the changes.” That is what happened.I should draw to the Committee’s attention because it has just come to my notice—some 15 minutes ago in fact—an email that I received this morning from Mr Garry Ottmann who has been listening to the debate. He has been quoted favourably by members from all sides during the course of this debate and I just want to read his comments on this issue which relates to clause 16. He said: “The removal of the word ‘recreational’ means that this bill will actually benefit all hunters in New Zealand. The council is there to serve the interests of all hunters.” That is a direct quote from Garry Ottmann the chair of the establishment committee this morning. So I say to the Committee that the concerns that have been raised about whether the removal of the reference to recreational hunters limits the scope of the bill in terms of the ability to cover their interests are in fact invalid. What we are doing is becoming much more all-encompassing and in fact the scope of the Game Animal Council is being increased significantly by the amendments which have the buy-in of all of the major players that are made on the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper.So a lot has been made of the need to get consensus of the need to get people working in the same direction and of the need to get people broadly having an agreement about the direction in which we should be travelling. All of that has been achieved—in fact it is one of the reasons why the bill has taken so long to get to this point. But it comes essentially as a package now agreed to by all of the interests in the sector and the final bit of the jigsaw that needs to be put in place is its passage because basically people cannot wait for that to happen.So I think that although I understand the concern that has been raised a lot of that is a debating point. In reality this is a broadening of the bill’s coverage. It will ensure that the concerns that a number of the members opposite have raised about just to whom the council will be talking whether it will be able to consult widely enough and whether it will be put into a narrow box are in fact being addressed. I think they are positive changes. They are certainly changes that I was working on at the time that I was interrupted in my duties and certainly ones that I would strongly support because they are in the best interests of what the Game Animal Council was set up to achieve. It is not being set up to be a lobby group. It is being set up to be an entity to manage the interests of the recreational and other hunting sectors in New Zealand to deal with a number of the critical issues that affect them both in terms of things like safety and in terms of specific issues like aerially assisted trophy hunting and access. I think that the breadth is appropriate.There is one other matter that I will comment on very briefly. Mr O’Connor raised during the second reading issues relating to 1080. He and I may have a different view about the impact of 1080 but it is not part of this bill and I would be very surprised if it was an area where the Game Animal Council would want to traverse very significantly at all. I am pretty certain that in the event that it did so then in that eventuality it would come up against some pretty stiff political opposition from the entrenched interest. I think the issue—and I say this with the greatest of respect—is a red herring in this particular debate. I am not saying that it is not significant in other contexts but in the context of this bill and this council it is not all that relevant and is therefore a red herring. I think that what is contained in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 395satisfactorily addresses a number of concerns that have been addressed. It also ensures that the council will be able to function effectively. I commend it to the House.