Sage Eugenie: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14866. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): That is a very interesting explanation from one of the sponsors of the Game Animal Council Bill Peter Dunne—even though the bill is not in his name—because I think that the recreational hunters in New Zealand and the Deerstalkers Association have been sold a pup with this amendment. If it is so anodyne then why was it not brought to the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider? Why is it being pushed through under urgency?Recreational hunters are being cut out of the bill through the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper 395 because it removes the word “recreational” wherever it occurs. That means that the Game Animal Council will have to liaise only with hunters and hunting organisations not recreational hunting organisations such as the Deerstalkers Association. It means that when the Minister is appointing members to the Game Animal Council he will not need to include anyone on the Game Animal Council who has knowledge or experience of recreational hunting; he has only to have somebody who has more general knowledge of hunting.The most fundamental change that this Supplementary Order Paper brings in is that herds of special interest will not have to be managed for recreational hunting purposes. They will have to be managed just for hunting. That means that the Game Animal Council potentially can manage these herds as a private recreational resource not for the benefit of Kiwi hunters but for well-heeled trophy hunters. This is another example of a Government by the 1 percent for the 1 percent. Nick Smith should be ashamed of himself given that he was on the select committee and he heard the passion of recreational hunters for their activity. This Supplementary Order Paper cuts right across that.It is interesting is it not that instead of Mr Dunne relying on advice from the Department of Conservation—an independent public sector agency—for what the clauses mean he is relying on Garry Ottmann who has got a very narrow sector interest in this and has been one of the major promoters of the bill. What we are seeing here is that the Government just as it penalised recreational fishers with its changes to the daily catch of snapper is through this legislation penalising recreational hunters by cutting their voice out by making sure that they do not have a seat around the table for the Game Animal Council.Why this is so dangerous is that the bill provides for the Game Animal Council to make recommendations to the Minister on how it is going to recover its costs to run this 11-member council. It allows the Minister then to make recommendations through an Order in Council to set fees and levies. The fees and levies for a hunter to be able to go hunting on Rakiura / Stewart Island for white-tailed deer at the moment are about $30 as the Department of Conservation covers its administration costs. If you have got the Game Animal Council with no recreational hunter representatives on it setting or recommending to the Minister the fees and levies for hunting white-tailed deer—if they become a herd of special interest—they may be in the thousands of dollars. Similarly with tahr—unaffordable for Kiwi hunters.That is why for this Supplementary Order Paper we need much more explanation. We need it from the Department of Conservation from officials not from Garry Ottmann about what this Supplementary Order Paper means. My reading of it is that by stripping out those references to “recreational” it will reduce the voice of recreational hunters. They will not have a seat at the table in the Game Animal Council.One of the other major concerns about the bill is the impact it will have on commercial deer recovery. Damien O’Connor talked about the huge benefit that commercial venison recovery had in reducing deer numbers several decades ago. Theyshoot about 18000 animals a year. They save the Department of Conservation several million dollars in pest control culling costs and yet those operators made extensive submissions to the select committee about the potential impact that this bill would have on them because of the increasing intolerance that some sectors of the hunting community have towards wild animal recovery operations and commercial recovery.At the moment those wild animal recovery operators are prohibited from being able to commercially recover deer and venison in recreational hunting areas which cover about 187000 hectares. It is likely that the Game Animal Council will not want them to operate in any areas where you have got a herd of special interest designated. That will actually reduce the ability of those commercial operators like Highland Cuisine which put in quite a detailed submission explaining how it processes wild venison for export.Highland Cuisines employs about 20 people directly and indirectly. It said in its submission: “We see the Game Animal Council with its potential costly bureaucracy as a direct threat and impact to our future business … The new Bill will be costly in real terms and become a bureaucratic and environmental burden for hunters business and tax payer alike …”. That is because Highland Cuisine has noted that since the Game Animal Council Establishment Committee had been established its suppliers who are going out in those helicopters shooting animals recovering the venison processing it and then exporting it to places like Germany were seeing an increased intolerance of recreational hunters towards them.So if the Game Animal Council given its substantial powers over these areas to be designated as herds of special interest excludes those operators that will restrict the areas where they can recover animals. And it will restrict what the National Government is on about a lot: added-value processing. These operators take something that is a problem a pest and turn it into an export that is of high value. That whole business community is being disadvantaged by this bill.The other major concern we have is just around the fact that the bill does not exclude herds of special interest from being established in our premier natural areas like our national parks. That is why there is Supplementary Order Paper 400 in my name to make sure that when the Minister decides whether or not to designate a herd of special interest it cannot be in a national park. The select committee did make some useful changes to the criteria that the Minister would use when he was considering whether to designate a herd of special interest. Clause 16 tightened them quite considerably and added criteria like the status of the land where the animals were to be found and the statutory requirements around that land but it does not include a specific exclusion on these areas being established in national parks.There have been problems with this in the past with the tahr plan. For a long time the tahr hunters argued that there should be no culling of tahr in Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park. This is despite the fact that national park legislation provides that exotic animals should be eradicated wherever feasible. But we had this hunting interest wanting to hunt tahr in the national park strongly opposing tahr culling and tahr control. It was only over very strenuous efforts that it was finally recognised that the national park legislation should prevail.Similarly if you do not have an explicit protection of national parks in the bill so that herds of special interest cannot be established in them we will see the Game Animal Council arguing against culling in national parks and potentially opposing 1080 drops. And certainly I agree with the concerns that Damien O’Connor raised about the value of 1080 as a pest-control tool. Although Mr Dunne can give the reassurances of Mr Ottmann and others that they will not be opposing 1080 that has not been the history in the past. Because of the undesirable by-kill deer hunters have opposed 1080. TheDepartment of Conservation has done a lot of work on deer repellent. We will come back to some other points later.