Burns Brendon: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Procedure In Committee 
Burns Brendon: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Procedure In Committee 
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BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I am very pleased to rise in support of the Committee stage of the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill and to commend Simon Bridges the MP for Tauranga for having the initiative to bring this bill forward. I note that it emerged on New Year’s Day this year. It was very strategic timing of the MP to bring it forward at that point. I acknowledge that it has been a past deficiency of members right across the Chamber in that this issue has not come forward but I note that there have been members opposite critical of that fact who have been here in their second and third terms and who might themselves have picked up this issue as a member’s bill some considerable time earlier. Labour of course supports this bill. We want to see appropriate penalties for the repugnant practices that sometimes are perpetrated on both domestic and farm animals and this bill goes a long way towards that end. 
I acknowledge that in the Primary Production Committee today the Minister said that New Zealand’s clean green image was very important to New Zealand. It is really the base of our capacity to earn our living as an export nation and I want to remind him too that animal welfare issues are also one of the measures by which New Zealand will be judged in the international market place. The judgment will always be harsher for us than for other nations because we are a small nation that does not have some of the clout of bigger nations. The unfair nature of international trade is such that our record has to be better than most if not all in respect of things like our environment and in respect of things like the practices of animal welfare. 
I wanted to ask the Minister in the chair the Hon David Carter therefore to outline for us the increases in the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in relation to the farm inspectorate. I think it is acknowledged that some of the issues in respect of animal welfare do indeed incur on farms. I think that a staff of five active inspectors from a total staff of about seven or eight in the special investigation unit in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is not sufficient when we are talking about protecting an export base that is reliant upon agriculture and worth many many billions of dollars. So I would like the Minister to take a call to indicate to us what exactly the increase is in that budget for the ministry. 
Although the focus of the bill will have been formulated in response to issues of domestic cruelty in fact underlying the legislation is the broader issue of animal welfare on farms. Most of our farmers are exemplary in the way that they treat their stock. They have every reason to be so apart from being genuinely humane New Zealanders because the better the welfare of the animal the better the return is for the farmer. It is one of those win-win outcomes. 
But we are all conscious I think of the situation that emerged on the Crafar farms through last year and into this year. There were definite issues of farm neglect that the Ministry of Forestry and Agriculture identified. I note that as this bill was being adopted by the Minister as a Government bill there was also a dairy cattle code of welfare being announced and unveiled after concerns were expressed by quite an eminent agricultural scientist who took photographs of very skinny cows at a Morrinsville saleyards. That prompted two animal welfare investigations and it led to that code. It took 3 years for that code to come through—I think the Minister might confirm that. As industry leaders like John Luxton the chair of Dairy NZ have noted the new code will strengthen the industry’s international reputation. That is hugely important because as I said we will be judged by our animal welfare issues as much as we are by our environmental record. But that is beyond the scope of this bill today. Dr Dalton said in one of the stories reporting the Minister’s announcement of this new code that the new code for animal welfare and dairy cattle should be nailed to every farm gate and be on every milk tanker so that there could be no question to farmers that they have to take account of all the issues of stockmanship and husbandry of animals they are responsible for. 
I am very pleased to see that this bill is coming through. It will be a tool in the tool kit for the Ministry of Forestry and Agriculture in terms of its capacity to deal with animal welfare issues on farms when they happen from time to time. Probably in most instances those are issues of recklessness which is a new measure in this bill. Probably very few farmers would ill-treat their animals with any kind of wanton regard but there are situations where farmers are stressed or unable to cope and stock are left in back paddocks; obviously they can suffer a great deal. So I am very keen to hear from the Minister.