Carter John: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Carter John: Local Government Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:3832] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 Listening to my colleague Mark Blumsky speak has prompted me to take another call. He has brought to my mind an issue that has not been covered. I want to put it in this context. What we are doing now is to give local authorities and Transit the ability to issue infringement notices. Earlier we had a debate on the Government’s proposals to change the laws around dog control. It says not enough dogs are registered and it wants to bring in a microchipping regime because local government is having trouble in policing dogs. That is the Government’s rationale for that measure. 
The question that comes to mind is why the Government thinks local government will be able to do any better in policing traffic infringements than it does in dog control. 
Bob Clarkson 
: Microchip the drivers. 
JOHN CARTER 
: I ask the member to hang on. We will get to how the Government may manage that issue in a minute and I ask the member not to give my story away. Twenty percent or 30 percent of the dogs in this country are not registered. The Government has said that local government cannot cope and is not dealing with the matter properly—it has all the laws but the system is still not working—so it will introduce microchipping. Fortunately we have managed to stymie that a bit by managing to get the bill amended so that farm dogs do not have to be microchipped. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Working dogs. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Farm working dogs. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: My chihuahua’s a working dog. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Of course—absolutely. Lots of dogs work. When we walk down the street we can see them working all the time. 
Mark Blumsky 
: Winston is. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Yes Winston works—Winston works a lot actually. 
The point is this: where does it logically take us if local authorities—organisations throughout the country—cannot do the job we have imposed on them? Where do we go next if we tell them to issue infringement notices and they come back and say they are having trouble in enforcing them? What is the next logical step? The next thing that will happen is that it will be decided the best thing we can do is to microchip buses. That will be the next thing we debate in Parliament. Obviously if the Government cannot microchip the dogs and wants to be consistent the next thing it will do is to say that we do not know who drove a particular bus so we had better microchip drivers. 
Where do we go to from there? The next thing is that instead of having drivers and passengers we will have blow-up dolls and— 
Bob Clarkson 
: Are those working bus drivers? 
JOHN CARTER 
: That is the point. Then we will have a debate on whether the drivers are working bus drivers urban bus drivers or rural bus drivers and whether they have to be microchipped in the country. Where do we go next? What happens if an urban bus driver is microchipped but goes to the country? Do we take the chip out? What logically follows? 
The point is that what we are doing is silly. We can make this whole debate stupid. What I have just said is silly because the problem we are talking about is that the Government is doing something jolly silly. It is not focusing on where responsibility should lie which is with the police. If the police have a problem with regard to administering infringement notices then they should be given more resources. If that is the issue we should make sure that the authority with the responsibility for the job can do it. 
We should not pass the buck to local government. The Government is already continually moving a stream of responsibilities to local government and local government is finally starting to wake up and say it does not like all the stuff the Government is shifting to it. In fact the Minister in the chair the Hon Mark Burton is himself—and my colleague will talk more about this—starting to acknowledge that fact yet tonight he supports the passing of this bill. It was never intended in the original legislation to allow local government and Transit to have this responsibility. But the Minister happily says that we should we should pass it over to local government. Rates rebates prostitution law reform building controls and anything we can think of are shifted away from central government so that the Government cannot be blamed for them and are handed over to ratepayers and local government. 
I say to the Minister that the National Party opposes this measure. We oppose it because it was never intended and because it is just another compliance cost—an unnecessary burden on local government. We do not support it and we will vote against this part.