Sage Eugenie: Game Animal Council Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Game Animal Council Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14912. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): I am pleased to take a call on the third reading of the Game Animal Council Bill. When this bill was introduced the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society described it as a political trophy awarded to Peter Dunne for his loyalty to the Government. It is certainly a very fine trophy. If it were a deer head it would have a lot of points on the antlers. It has been a very controversial bill. There were more than 600 submissions on it and it was opposed by the major conservation and environmental groups conservation agencies the New Zealand Conservation Authority a lot of the conservation boards regional councils and the Auckland Council.We are getting to the final stages. We in the Green Party still believe that the Game Animal Council is being established for all the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. As a stand-alone council that is promoting the interests of hunting it is putting that recreation in a very privileged position in relation to all other users of conservation land. Trampers mountain bikers kayakers and other users do not have their own special legislation that gives them special access to the Minister of Conservation and gives them Government funding and the ability to recommend that fees be set. Essentially this bill is establishing a glorified lobby group for hunters which is going to be funded by the Crown and by Kiwi hunters.One of the tragedies of the bill is that it overlooks the opportunity provided by conservation boards which are a diverse group of iwi representatives recreational representatives farmers hunters conservationists and others who advise the department. They provide collective advice from a range of different points of view. We heard in the Local Government and Environment Committee how boards like the Tongariro/Taupō Conservation Board are working with hunters to give them more influence in the management of conservation land. Conservation boards are an integrating body. The Game Animal Council as a stand-alone one is likely to exacerbate the conflict between conservation values and hunting.We do not think the bill is needed because it essentially duplicates the work of some other agencies. In the firearms and hunting safety areas it is duplicating the work of the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association and the Mountain Safety Council. We do not think it is needed because we already have recreational hunting areas under the Wild Animal Control Act and they cover nearly 190000 hectares of New Zealand. We already have liaison committees such as the tahr one under the tahr control plan. We already have a number of successful examples from the hunters’ perspective of where herds that they see as being nationally significant are managed on conservation land with input from hunters.Both Maggie Barry and Nicky Wagner talked about the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation and its work in Fiordland. Wapiti in Fiordland National Park are managed by the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation and the Department of Conservation through provisions in the Fiordland National Park Management Plan which recognises both the interests of hunters and biodiversity values. Similarly the white-tailed deer population on Rakiura / Stewart Island is very popular with hunters. It is managed under the provisions of the Rakiura National Park Management Plan but in consultation with hunters. In both these areas hunting management operates well and to the satisfaction of the hunters concerned as many of the submitters made clear in their submissions to the select committee so we do not need this bill.As the Southland Conservation Board noted in its submission—and it has obviously had experience with both wapiti management and white-tailed deer management—the bill risks undermining the existing goodwill that has built up between the Department of Conservation and hunters and it could well overwhelm these local initiatives where you have got a centralised agency like the Game Animal Council being established and because of our concern that that will primarily promote the interests of trophy hunters and commercial guides rather than the average recreational hunter. That is potentially likely to happen because we have got an 11-member council that has got to fund its activities and it is going to be very keen to supplement its income that it gets from the export of trophies so it will want to collect fees. If it is going to be collecting fees there is nothing in the bill that requires those fees to be set at a reasonable level.But our primary reason for opposing the bill is that it cuts right across the Department of Conservation’s statutory responsibilities to protect and preserve our indigenous plants and wildlife and the landscapes they inhabit. The Hon Mr Dunne wassaying that that is just our concern. It was a concern that came through in a range of submissions including from organisations like the Auckland Council. It is a real concern because of the significant powers that the bill gives to the Game Animal Council in relation to the management of herds of special interest. Even this term turns pest animals such as deer tahr and feral pigs—problem animals—into being seen as an asset. It is very unlikely that the Game Animal Council when it is managing these herds will want to permanently reduce their numbers contract their range or eradicate them. Of course that undermines a strong commitment to the management of these species as pests because of their browsing impacts on indigenous vegetation and because of their contribution to soil erosion on high country lands. So the council’s desire to maximise hunting opportunities will cut across and conflict with the need to control and cull these browsers.There is nothing in this bill about promoting and achieving better outcomes for tourism for better pest control for bovine TB management or even for better results for conservation. That is why we have got this concern about the undermining of the Department of Conservation’s statutory purpose. As the Auckland Council said the likely results of the bill will be far worse for conservation.I was very disappointed in the Committee stage that the Government did not support Supplementary Order Paper 400 in my name to make national parks and other high status protected areas off limits to the establishment of herds of special interest because there is a parallel provision to the one that was in the Supplementary Order Paper in the Wild Animal Control Act that prevents the establishment of recreational hunting areas in national parks. So why if the Government believes and Mr Dunne believes that this bill would not undermine conservation values and would not undermine the protection of our indigenous biodiversity did they not support a parallel provision that would have put national parks off limits to these herds of special interest?Members from the National Party have said that this bill in establishing the Game Animal Council replicates or is similar to the Fish and Game Council. We would point out that the management of Canada geese was taken away from Fish and Game because it was seen as having a conflict in managing Canada geese for hunting and also because of concern that farmers had with an increase in Canada geese numbers and their browsing impacts on farmland. Fish and Game no longer manages a species where it has got that conflict of interest. Similarly here you will have the Game Animal Council managing species that have impacts as pests so that is an internal tension that is not good for biodiversity.The final reason we are opposing it is still those changes in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 395 that take out the reference to recreational hunting as a management purpose for the herds of special interest. That we believe will mean that the council will be dominated by an elite group of trophy hunters safari park operators and commercial guides and we will not see the traditional Kiwi sport of hunting promoted.