McKelvie Ian: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 05 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3149. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): It gives me no great pleasure to follow the expert on animals from Hutt South Trevor Mallard. He clearly is an expert on the life and times of the moa but knows very little about farm animals in my view. I want to make just a couple of comments on the comments he just made because I think it is grossly unfair to include all farmers in the general statements that he just made. What I do want to make the point about is that the Ministry for Primary Industries has a very strong team out in the provinces. It has a great understanding of farmers and farmers’ ability to handle livestock and I am quite sure the ministry is well aware of where the challenges are for the farmers. I certainly admit that there are farmers who are not perfect but I also want to make the point that I think they do a pretty good job on the whole and we certainly do our best to work within the rules.Now I want to get back to the topic of the day the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. This bill is critical to New Zealand’s future. I do agree with the previous speaker on that point. It is probably one of the most important bills that will come through this House along with perhaps the biosecurity bill and one or two other bills interestingly that affect the primary production sector because that is a sector that keeps this country going. They have a very strong underlying influence I guess on how New Zealand’s economy works and how the primary production sector works. The economy is driven by agriculture and it in turn is driven by these hugely important bills or Acts of Parliament that impact on a food industry that is worth some $40 billion to New Zealand and a livestock industry that contributes a large bit of that $40 billion to the food industry.We have amongst the best animal welfare codes in the world. We are very good practitioners in this field. I will talk a little bit more about the codes of animal welfare a little later but first I want to get on to a number of other issues that I guess have challenged the Primary Production Committee during the course of this bill which was in the select committee for quite some time.We dealt with household pets for example—and 70 percent of all households in New Zealand have pets. Gareth Morgan has picked on one very topical one: the cat. Most of our wild cats in New Zealand started off as household pets perhaps even in Hutt South. They have been dumped in our rural parts of New Zealand and consequently that is a large piece of what causes the major cat problem that Gareth Morgan frequently refers to. There are also obviously a large number of dogs as pets in New Zealand and many other animals. I am not saying for a minute that households do not look after their pets pretty well—I think that on the whole they do—but they certainly come under pressure. The other challenge we have with those household pets is the large large number of unregistered dogs—dogs that cause all sorts of problems in New Zealand’s communities. In fact we see some quite horrific injuries caused by those dogs when they attack children or even adults. Those are pets that have clearly not been maintained as they should be. They are also pets that come under the control of this very piece of legislation that we are talking about.I want to briefly mention the greyhound industry. The greyhound industry came in for a lot of focus in the course of discussion on this bill. Greyhound racing is I guess a sport. It also contributes to the New Zealand economy. It is challenged by the fact that when you breed an animal for performance you do not always get the performance you anticipate. We have to find other ways of dealing with those. Greyhounds are clearly dealt with under the Animal Welfare (Dogs) Code of Welfare. So the issues that were raised by people with relationships to the greyhound racing industry are in my view satisfactorily dealt with in the Animal Welfare (Dogs) Code of Welfare.The other issue that is very topical is one of pests and I guess you could put that in the same category as hunting. Pests—all introduced of course—are possums cats stoats rats etc. Mice are also a significant pest. We spend an awful lot of time keeping them out of our food chain keeping them out of places that we need to keep secure. We also have a great deal of problems with possums particularly in our native bush and forest. Cats stoats and rats likewise cause grievous damage to our native birds. There was some quite significant discussion on those topics during the course of the consideration of this bill in the select committee and I think again they are well dealt with under the relevant codes that apply to those issues.In New Zealand we farm some 45 million animals—probably a lot more in fact but we have an official count of 45 million - odd. We dealt with numerous issues in respect of them including—and I am not counting birds and things like that so I am not accounting for the poultry industry in that—microchipping tagging ear-marking horses’ teeth blacksmiths’ operations and all sorts of operations that take place on a daily basis in respect of animals. They were all dealt with in the course of the discussion on this bill. If I go to some of the things like horses’ teeth—which were I guess dealt with in the discussion around surgical procedures that are undertaken in respect of animals—for a long time very good practitioners with no qualifications have dealt with things like horses’ teeth and a number of other issues. In terms of blacksmithing in some parts of the world you have to have a ticket to enable you to shoe a horse under their welfare codes. In my view New Zealanders are a much more adaptable people. I think there are a large number of those procedures that can be undertaken extremely safely by people who have a great understanding of animals. So that came in for a lot of discussion in the course of this bill as well. I think we satisfactorily resolved that.I want to talk briefly about the live export of animals. Clearly we have an understanding that there will be no live shipments for slaughter in New Zealand. We do of course sell a large number of horses overseas both for sport—racing—and for other uses. We sell a large number of breeding animals—sheep dairy cattle—overseas for the same reason. I guess that if you look at the food trends of the world it is quite conceivable that sometime in the future there will be an opportunity to export very small numbers of very high-priced animals for slaughter—well I would not call it slaughter; I guess there will be a more practical term they will use for it. By the time they get to that point there will be a more practical term. And we did not during the course of this consideration outlaw the potential for live export of animals; it is just that we have an understanding in this country that we will not do it and I think wisely so. But there may well come a time in the future when we can in fact export for human consumption again in a smaller and I guess much more enlightened way.I want to talk about codes of welfare for a moment. I have here the Dairy Cattle Code of Welfare. Anyone who was concerned about the activities of “NAWAC” the National Animal Welfare Advisory Council which produced the codes of welfare for the Minister for Primary Industries will realise that these things are hugely comprehensive in my view. I think this is a very good document. I would have considered I suppose that as a farmer I do not need this kind of stuff but I think unfortunately we do need to set a standard. These codes of welfare set a very clear standard and I think they do a great job. There was some significant discussion around the make-up of the National Animal Welfare Advisory Council. The Minister has the ability to appoint those members and I think not only are they a very broad cross-section of the New Zealand animal-industry experts but also there are some independents on the council who are very competent people. I think it is more than adequate.I just want to talk very briefly about the Minister and the select committee. Obviously as I have said this bill is a very important part of what we do. It has been around for a while. In fact four of the select committee members who dealt with this bill have left this House: Shane Ardern Eric Roy Colin King and Shane Jones. They added a whole lot of value to this bill in the course of it. And of course the current committee of which most are in this House right now were also on that committee last year with the exception of a couple of new members on our side of the House and the man sitting in the Speaker’s Chair himself Deputy Speaker Chester Borrows. We have considered 1721 submissions in the course of this bill including 12 industry groups 20 advocacy groups and eight professional bodies. It was a pretty big job. I thinkthat on the whole the committee did an outstanding job with this bill and I am very pleased to see it coming through. I congratulate the Minister on getting what will be one of New Zealand’s key pieces of legislation through the House. Thank you.