Mallard Trevor: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is subject to correctionMallard Trevor: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3115. Text is subject to correction.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I want to thank you for giving me the call and to acknowledge right at the beginning the leadership of Mojo Mathers in this debate and in highlighting the issues of animal welfare to the extent now where it is in the political mainstream and a major party has made considerable progress towards having policies in the area that are realistic. It is a pity that the Government has not—but even I will admit that this bill is much better than the current legislation.I do also want to apologise to that member for my own poor handwriting which resulted in me indicating to the House that we would support one of the amendments that we were voting on the “great apes” amendment. We did not and that was a mistake. I apologise for my handwriting which was not good enough for the whips to interpret.The Minister for Primary Industries still does not really get it though. He does not understand that it is in the economic interest of this country to have a reputation for animal welfare that is much better than the one we currently deserve. Every 2 or 3 months we have examples of farmers who let the side down. They are not typical farmers they are not run-of-the-mill farmers but as I have said on every occasion when I have addressed it they let the side down. The Minister’s slackness in resourcing the enforcement from the Ministry for Primary Industries is the main reason that many farmers get away with it for years and years and years and as a result of that our reputation is placed at risk.The Minister needs to know that world views on animal welfare are changing. They are changing in New Zealand; they are changing especially in Europe. And one of the biggest risks that we have is one of the programmes that has been shown on New Zealand television about our awful treatment of animals—mainly pigs but also chickens and occasionally beef cattle—being shown on television in Europe. If that occurs then our reputation will take a massive hit and what will make it worse will be if the Minister is shown once again in his apologist mood towards farmers who are cruel to animals. On just about every occasion when one of the series of abuses has been revealed publicly the Minister has been interviewed and he has been an apologist for the slack enforcement of his ministry—the slack enforcement of his ministry. He has supported its levels of enforcement. He has said that it does a good job. And the problem which is obvious to everyone is that he is conflicted on this issue in his ministerial role. He misunderstands his responsibility as the Minister who is responsible for animal welfare and he tries to sweep cruel practices under the carpet.There are some things that we should have done here. For example we should not let cruel practices continue for another 15 years and that is what that Minister supported. We should be stopping the puppy milling that is occurring in New Zealand and that is what that Minister supports. We should be stopping the euthanising of the vast majority of greyhound puppies that are born in New Zealand but that is what that Minister supports. This Government tries to pretend it cares about animals but if we see the opportunities that are lost as part of this legislation we see that it does not.Debate interrupted.