Dunne Peter: Game Animal Council Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDunne Peter: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14845. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): Today is a red-letter day for recreational hunters in New Zealand for a couple of reasons. First there has been—and I think the member who has just resumed her seat Ruth Dyson alluded to this in part—a measure of suspicion amongst many of them as to whether the Game Animal Council would ever eventuate. After all it is almost a year since this bill the Game Animal Council Bill was reported back to the House and some of those advocates were deeply suspicious that that was as far as it would go. So today is important to give reassurance on that score. It is also important for them because as the Minister of Conservation said in his introductory remarks this Game Animal Council effectively parallels for game hunting interests the role of Fish and Game in terms of freshwater fish etc. So upon the passing of this bill we will for the first time have integrated approaches to themanagement of the major recreational sectors in New Zealand. I think that is a very positive step forward.But it has been a long journey. I want to take some time this morning to rehearse some elements of that journey. In United Future’s 2005 confidence and supply agreement with the then Labour Government there was a special committee established to review pest management issues. That committee was chaired by my former colleague and very good friend the Hon Margaret Austin who is well-known in this House. The Minister said earlier that this bill attracted 660-odd submissions. That is a fraction of what the Austin committee attracted by way of submissions. There were 4500 submissions to that committee which met in the period of 2005-08. One of the strong recommendations that came forward from that committee was that there be a move towards the establishment of a Game Animal Council. So this morning I want to immediately acknowledge the work of Margaret Austin and the earlier work of her committee in getting us launched on the journey.When the change of Government occurred in 2008 we included in our 2008 and 2011 confidence and supply agreements with the current Government provisions firstly for the work of the Austin committee to be advanced and secondly as it happened for the Game Animal Council to be introduced. What happened after 2008 was that an establishment committee chaired by Garry Ottmann from the Game and Forest Foundation was set up to take those recommendations from the Austin committee and start to develop the basis for a Game Animal Council.The establishment committee consulted widely in New Zealand. It consulted with similar agencies in Australian states. They are not entirely comparable but there were valuable insights to be gained from them. By the time of the 2011 election we were on the way to preparing the legislation that comes before the House this morning. So I want to acknowledge the work of Garry Ottmann and successive officers of the New Zealand Deerstalkers Association—more particularly of recent times Tim McCarthy and before him Alec McIver and Bill O’Leary who has been a constant advocate right throughout. I want to acknowledge all of the work these people have done in bringing this proposal to the stage where firstly it becomes legislation and secondly it is about to be passed by the House today.I listened to what I thought was a relatively constructive speech from Ruth Dyson. I do not agree with everything she said and I think that some of the concerns that she expressed may well be dealt with once the council is established but I think there were some important points. I do not see the Game Animal Council being set up to be a competitor to the Department of Conservation in that sense. Rather I see it as part of the devolution of responsibility to a range of interests. One of the things that strikes one when you look at the whole recreational sector in New Zealand is that it is not particularly well-organised at this time. There are a series of responsibilities that sit in different places. They are not well coordinated and are a little hard to understand. One of the issues that the Game Animal Council will face will be to be the focal point for bringing together a lot of matters that relate to the game animal sector—and to the hunting sector in particular—not just in terms of the physical act of hunting but for issues like the promotion of safety.That brings into prospect the work that the Mountain Safety Council does and how that can be better coordinated and plugged into existing systems. The Mountain Safety Council is an extraordinary organisation. It has been around for 40-odd years. It does not actually formally report to anyone. It is funded on the basis of contracts from the public sector—the police search and rescue etc.—but it does not have a physical home. What it is crying out for is some form of integration with the work of agencies like the Game Animal Council.The issue that has arisen over time in tandem with this has been the question of what used to be known as heli-hunting which now has the more grand title of assisted aerial trophy hunting—it is somewhat of a euphemism I think for what actually happens. There has been a constant dispute between the recreational hunters and the purveyors of assisted aerial trophy hunting services about whether the playing field is level.As part of our confidence and supply agreement in 2011 there was provision for the phasing out of assisted aerial trophy hunting through making restrictions to herding and hazing etc. When as Associate Minister of Conservation I received the applications nearly 3 years ago from that sector I made a condition of the permits that were granted that there be no herding and hazing. Having told me that this was a practice that they never engaged in those in that sector promptly took me to a judicial review for having put into their agreements the things they said they never actually engaged in. We won that position in court but the issue arises again as these permits expire in February of next year.The solution that will be proposed by way of a Supplementary Order Paper a little later today—effectively charging the Game Animal Council with monitoring the application of those provisions and then developing a code of practice—is I think an elegant one. It is an elegant one for a couple of reasons. Firstly it will resolve an issue that has caused so much tension. Secondly it will ensure—and this is really the platform on which I believe the Game Animal Council needs to be launched—that the council will have an effective role in terms of future issues that affect the recreational hunting sector. One of the great fears in the early days of this debate was that we were setting up an agency that would be a talk-shop that would do very little and would have little connection to what was going on. The fact that we have been able to identify this particular issue as one that sits neatly within its purview is I think a good indicator of what will happen in the future.There are very complicated issues regarding access to land and the member who preceded me Ruth Dyson alluded to those. There are always delicate issues regarding the quantum of hunting being allowed in particular sectors. I am aware of certain management plans that work well and others that are challenged by hunters who see other people from outside their particular geographic location coming in to steal their bounty if you want to use that term. The Game Animal Council will be in a much closer position to monitor to regulate to recommend and to cajole behaviour in those particular areas.I think what we will see once this legislation is passed is not fears being realised. These fears are understandable at the moment because this is new. I think what we will start to see once the council is appointed—and I think getting it up and running early in the new year is a priority—is a process whereby for the first time we have a genuine forum where the issues that affect recreational hunters can be put on the table can be debated and can be understood by conservation authorities by the Department of Conservation by the Government and by Parliament as a whole.So this is a red-letter day. It is a very important day for the recreational sector in New Zealand. I think it sends a signal and it is this. This was an unusual perhaps unique and certainly not especially popular campaign when we began it back in 2005. It was seen as being a little quirky. The reality is that hunting is a mainstream issue for New Zealanders. What this bill demonstrates is that by commitment by tenacity and by perseverance you can make change and you can achieve positive outcomes. It demonstrates that you can give a sport that is enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders a proper place and a way in which it can be recognised its talents and attributes can be respected and the input the people who partake in that sport have into broader conservation policy can be given credibility. So I welcome the second readingof this bill. I am looking forward to the debate that will ensue and to the bill being passed by this House hopefully a little later on today.