Kedgley Sue: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Procedure In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Procedure In Committee 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I will start because I omitted to do so the first time by congratulating Simon Bridges on originating the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. In particular I congratulate the Minister of Agriculture because not only did he pick up this bill but he has added in the single most important clause which is the new clause concerning the reckless ill-treatment of animals. Furthermore he has indeed increased the budget for the resourcing of inspectors. 
The bill began its life really just to extend sentences for animal cruelty but the reality is that that will not result in reduced numbers of prosecutions for breaches of animal welfare. The legislation already permits 3-year jail sentences yet we have rarely had anybody jailed. In fact I think that only 10 people have ever been jailed in New Zealand history for breaches of animal welfare and nobody has ever yet been jailed for a 3-year sentence. Most like the farmer Mark Spitz who slowly starved to death a number of his cattle received some hours of community service so let us not delude ourselves into thinking that by adding more years to sentences we will reduce the number of prosecutions. 
David Garrett 
: Why did you vote for it? 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: We voted for it because there was a new clause a new category of reckless ill-treatment of animals. We hope that that new clause that new category will make it easier for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the SPCA to prosecute for animal cruelty. We hope it will give them more leverage because frankly until now it has been very very difficult to undertake prosecutions—because of the law and because there have been so few people around to take any prosecutions. 
Between the years of 2007 and 2009 the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry undertook only 44 successful prosecutions and as someone has mentioned there were only five inspectors. Yet we have a hundred million - odd animals here in New Zealand. Only 3 percent of the cases that the Ministry investigated resulted in a conviction and only 0.3 percent of the cases of the SPCA. Actually the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry had effectively abdicated its responsibility to monitor animal cruelty to the SPCA. We know that 60 percent of the people who work for that society—the inspectors—are volunteers; many of them work on a part-time basis. It is the only enforcement agency in New Zealand that has to fundraise for itself and try to raise its own money. That was the reality. It was very difficult under the legislation to bring charges. It was incredibly difficult for the SPCA because it does not even have proper funding and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry had only five inspectors. It is little wonder that we have had just a handful of cases of prosecution for animal cruelty coming through every year. 
We think it is great that we now have the new category which I think will make it easier to take those prosecutions and that we will have 10 inspectors instead of just five. I hope there will be more support for the SPCA too for the fantastic work that it does. It acknowledged in hearings that there were many prosecutions it was unable to take simply because it does not have the resources to enable it to take them. 
As I have said previously it is good to hear this Parliament actually debating the subject of animal cruelty. Let us hope that we will having improved the legislation for prosecution of individual acts of cruelty against pets turn our attention to institutional cruelty. Let us hope that the pig code—the revision of which it was promised would be completed last year—will be completed. It still has not been completed; we are still waiting for it. We are still waiting for the code for hens which was due also to be completed last year. Let us hope that when those finally surface we will as a Parliament have the courage to address institutional cruelty against animals.