Dyson Ruth: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14868. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am very pleased to take a call on Part 1 of the Game Animal Council Bill. Can I just express my frustration that the Minister in the chair the Minister of Foreign Affairs has not seen fit to take a call. I think it is a very poor reflection on his regard for the Local Government and Environment Committee actually. This select committee which was made up of National members New Zealand First members Green Party members and Labour members worked really hard on this bill to try to get agreement. There were some areas where it was a case of “We’re clearly not going to go there—we will not get agreement on that.” but there were a huge number of issues that were in that middle space where if we just put our heads together and worked hard and diligently then we would be able to get agreement and we did.The few fundamental outstanding issues are the areas that have caused us to decide to oppose this bill. But I think that the Minister of Foreign Affairs should be taking a call and answering some of the questions that have been raised instead of sitting in his Minister’s chair smirking at the process and at members of Parliament. I do not think it is a very good attitude to have. It reflects an arrogance that I think is out of touch with the New Zealand community and the way that they want to see legislation progressed in this Parliament.The member who promoted this bill and first introduced it as part of a confidence and supply agreement with the previous Labour-led Government the Hon Peter Dunne made more sense in his contribution of 5 minutes than the Minister of Conservation has through this entire debate. But I am still very puzzled by one point that he made and it is pretty important in regard to Part 1 and Supplementary Order Paper 395 in the name of the Minister of Conservation the Hon Nick Smith. I listened carefully to what Peter Dunne said. He said that after the select committee process he was lobbied by private landowners. He said that there were lots of them who felt that they had been excluded from the view and then he mentioned tourism as an example of those lobbyists. He then said that that explains why clause 16 is being amended in the Supplementary Order Paper.Hon Peter Dunne: Federated Farmers were there.Hon RUTH DYSON: Take another call—I would like to hear the former Minister’s explanation because it in no way satisfied my concern that in Supplementary Order Paper 395 in the name of the Minister of Conservation it is being proposed that clause 16(1)(a)(ii) be amended by replacing the current wording which is: “managed for recreational hunting purposes”—that was the whole debate at the Local Government and Environment Committee; that we supported the recreational hunters—with “managed for hunting purposes”. That is not the debate that the select committee had. In fact the select committee was at great pains to ensure that what it was supporting were people who had hunting as part of their lifestyle not as their primary source of income. But this is not about slicing off a bit of public land for private profit. This is about supporting the genuine recreational activity that thousands of New Zealanders enjoy and because of that enjoyment they have a great passion for the well-being of our public land.So it was the recreational hunters that this was designed to be supportive of. That was the debate through the entire select committee and now we have ended up with a total rewrite of the purpose. For the Hon Peter Dunne to say: “I was lobbied after the select committee and the power of their logic was overwhelming so we ended up with Supplementary Order Paper 395 which fundamentally changed the purpose of the bill and the consideration of the select committee.” just does not wash actually. It does notwash. It has got no credibility and if it is not what the member said then I challenge him to clarify his position by taking another call. In my view he did not explain it and it does not justify the significant change.I go back to the comment I made earlier in regard to the head of the Deerstalkers Association Inc. Tim McCarthy. He said: “When it becomes an issue that affects the stakeholders of New Zealand’s public land and hunters are stakeholders in public land then surely the tail shouldn’t be wagging the dog as in this case.” That was his concern about where this legislation has ended up. It was quite interesting as we went through the select committee process because we heard from the people who had been on the advisory committee that was set up under the last Labour Government—again as part of the confidence and supply agreement with the Hon Peter Dunne in the same way as it has been with the current Government. They came to the Local Government and Environment Committee and said: “This is not what we envisaged. This does not work for us. It does not achieve the purpose.” Then we had the opponents of the Game Animal Council coming along and saying: “This does not work for us either.”It seemed like nobody was gaining. It seemed like this legislation had been put together in an environment of such tension between policy perspectives with no clear outcome. Nobody knew what the outcome of this was meant to be and so everybody was just putting in their tuppence ha’penny and we ended up with a mishmash of ideas and no clarity about the purpose of it. That was the result of that policy tension between the opponents and the proponents of this legislation.Members of the Local Government and Environment Committee tried to get a clear outcome. We said we wanted to ensure that the partnerships that are there for the taking and are actually obviously enabled by the current legislative regime work well. We heard example after example from around the country of where those relationships—between the Department of Conservation recreational hunters local iwi and community organisations—worked brilliantly. So clearly it is not prohibited by the current legislative regime but what we wanted to do was ensure that that strong partnership was better supported through this legislation.I think that what we have seen with the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper is a step in the opposite direction. I wish the Minister had listened more carefully or read the report from the Local Government and Environment Committee because it was an example of where members from different parties and with perhaps different perspectives could listen to each other and gain some understanding. It was the first time that I had worked alongside Andrew Williams actually from New Zealand First and I thought he made quite a significant contribution to the thinking on this legislation. We had different members on our team. Moana Mackey Shane Jones and I were often the three Labour people on it and we do not always think the same. Heaven forbid that three human beings alongside each other should always have complete agreement. We talked about that at the committee and I think that we learnt a lot from each other. I hope the rest of the select committee did as well.So to have all that good work undermined by a Minister who has not even taken a call in the Committee stage of this debate is very frustrating and I think a slap in the face to the good work that the select committee members did. Supplementary Order Paper 395 which changes the term “managed for recreational hunting purposes” to “managed for hunting purposes” is a complete undermining of the work that was done. It sends quite a different message to recreational hunters in New Zealand about what their value is and how they are considered by the parliamentary process.There are some other Supplementary Order Papers that relate to Part 1. There are three in the name of Eugenie Sage. I think that they are going to provide a good opportunity for further debate. She has outlined some of them already. They areintended to ensure that the understanding actually that the select committee had about what the Game Animal Council would be able to do is in fact reflected in the legislation. So it is not a shift in policy through the Supplementary Order Papers that the member has on Part 1; it is actually a belts and braces approach making sure that the legislation actually says what was reflected in the understanding of the select committee. So I commend consideration of those Supplementary Order Papers to you.I want to end by saying that Part 1 has quite a lot of the nuts and bolts operation of the Game Animal Council. It does not have the substantive area of debate that we will be having later on. I do hope that the Hon Peter Dunne is able to take another call before we finish the debate on Part 1 and clarify why he would be proposing that Supplementary Order Paper 395 be supported and how it came to be introduced at such a late stage. We have had the select committee process and months and months of this bill sitting on the Order Paper with no discussion with any other parties about a substantial change. Then under urgency and at the last minute we get thrown this Supplementary Order Paper and the Minister in whose name it is does not even take a call on it. I think that is a very bad process. It does not represent the good work that the parties did across the select committee.I know that Eugenie Sage has had her Supplementary Order Papers on the Table for a while. There is no point putting them on the Table when a bill is not before the House. But the Government members have known that this bill has been back on the Order Paper from the select committee for months and months and then we get treated with this very poor behaviour—a Supplementary Order Paper a fundamental change at the last minute under urgency. It is not good enough.