McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. I learnt to take my face accessory off a bit earlier today. I was really interested in the last speaker because we are—Hon Member: As long as your teeth don't fall out.Hon Member: Leave the dentures in brother.IAN McKELVIE: They're very expensive ones. Now I was just intrigued by the last speech. I think this bill in all seriousness is a very good bill and I commend Mojo Mathers all those years ago for bringing it to the Parliament and I think it's just unfortunate that she's not here to see it on its way through the House. But of course if I was like the Greens I'd oppose this bill on principle because in fact I had a bill called the dog control amendment bill—which amends one of the same Acts this is amending actually—which actually gave the power the courts have to some JPs to do some pretty simple work. The Greens voted against it. I don't know why; they didn't know why but they did. So I would have thought that on the same basis we'd vote against this too but I'm not going to suggest we do that for a minute.This bill it does two pretty simple things. It amends the Human Rights Act by changing one definition in it and it also amends the Dog Control Act 1996 by changing basically one clause in that. But the interesting thing about this bill for me is that it'll be very interesting to see where it gets to at select committee because there is potential for it to go further than Mojo Mathers envisaged it going at the time if you think about companion dogs and the use of companion dogs now and there's all sorts of other dogs that aren't necessarily disability assist dogs but that have the same impact on people's lives. I in the Rangitīkei electorate in Cheltenham in fact have a dog trainer who trains dogs to do all sorts of extraordinary things. So there are medic alert dogs and all sorts of things like that that effectively take the place of those little bracelet things that we wear with MedicAlert" written on them and the dog does the job for you.So I think it's pretty amazing what dogs can be trained to do but of course they're not only trained to do these jobs—so I think it was Penny Simmonds that said earlier that they're not necessarily pets—but in fact they are effectively pets to the extent that they become companion dogs. So they're extremely valuable to the people that own them. I remember not very long ago having significant arguments again in my electorate with tenants of council flats who weren't allowed to have dogs in the council flats. All those people in those council flats are effectively pensioners. Most of them or many of them are living on their own so they're challenged by loneliness and all sorts of things. So there's a whole lot of things that could come up in the course of the select committee process which may well I guess change the original intent of this bill and in fact expand it and there's potential for that to happen. I find that quite interesting.Now the other challenging thing about dogs and I suppose they're pets but many buildings around Wellington have a no dog policy in them. I know in the building I live in there was a woman there for quite some time who had a very small dog actually. She carried it down in her purse each morning and you'd catch it sticking its nose out the top of the purse each morning she carried it down the lift. I'm pretty sure it was illegal—well according to the building rules it was illegal—but anyway she carried it down each morning and carried it back at night and it lived in her handbag and it was quite an interesting thing.But I think all nonsense aside this bill is a good bill. In fact in my view it's what the members' bill thing that happens in this House was designed to do because it enables a member like Mojo Mathers to bring something that was dear to her put it into a very simple Act actually but actually make a difference to quite a lot of people as a result of it. So the National Party certainly supports this bill to the next stage and we look forward to the select committee process which I think will be quite valuable.Just one last word I guess on the disability sector which in fact this bill is designed to assist. I spent quite some time I suppose you'd call it working in that sector and it's a challenged sector at the best of times but there's a whole lot of areas that will benefit significantly from a piece of legislation like this so the potential is unlimited. So we commend the bill to the House and thank you Madam Speaker."