Dunne Peter: Dog Control Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Dunne Peter: Dog Control Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
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Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I want to take a brief call on the Dog Control Amendment Bill (No 2) to make just two broad points. The first is that I have always had a strong view that we should be moving towards the compulsory neutering of dangerous dogs. That has been reinforced by a number of incidents that we have seen over the years and I think the most particular and recent of those was the incident in Christchurch when parents were innocently in a park with their children and a dog actually broke out from a neighbouring property to savage one of those children. People should not be under that risk when they are in a public place. So the bill’s provisions that go some way down the path of providing for the compulsory neutering of what are called menacing dogs is welcome in that respect. Those dogs are listed in schedule 4 of the legislation. But there has to be a question remaining as to whether that schedule is complete. That is a matter that I think will be judged over the period of time.  
The second point I want to make is the more substantive one. I support the moves that are contained in this bill to require local authorities that say they want to take a more active role to in fact have a more active role in respect of dog control policy. But there is one glaring omission in the legislation that will make it difficult for that role to be effective and until that omission is addressed it will put some measure of doubt upon the credibility of our overall approach to dog control policy.  
I want to quote from the Government’s own Cabinet paper on this issue. That Cabinet paper warned: “There is little systematic information collected or monitored on the incidence and characteristics of dog bites or attacks.” The paper states further: “It is therefore difficult to build an overall picture of the effectiveness of the dog control regime.” The Government’s response to that pretty trenchant criticism from officials was to indicate that it is prepared to look at ways to improve data collection. But that is a very woolly and vague statement. I will not attempt to pick up the phrase used by the previous speaker but I think he would describe it as “wuffly”—it means absolutely nothing. Until we have a compulsory data collection regime administered by local authorities whereby we know precisely the incidence of attacks the impact of those attacks on children and other persons and the types of breeds that are responsible for those attacks our dog control policy will continue to be ineffectual. This bill fails to go that far. It is a welcome first step but it is not going to deal with the fundamental issue and we are still going to continue to find incidents occurring where the safety of the public is put at risk. 
Although we support the introduction of this bill as a step towards an ultimate policy we note that in fact it really sets up a consultation process and until that process has been completed and more definitive steps have been put in place we have to conclude that the proposals contained in this bill will be of limited value only.