Kedgley Sue: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 Today is something of a red-letter day for animal welfare but it has to be said that for 10 years until now there has been a stony silence in this House about animal cruelty. For 10 years the major parties in Parliament have ignored the pleas and petitions of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders to put an end to the worst cases of animal abuse—namely sow crates and battery hen cages. For 10 years when I have raised issues of animal cruelty in this House MPs have cracked jokes rolled their eyes and seemed unable to take the issue seriously. So it is great to sit here and listen to MPs speaking thoughtfully about animal welfare particularly the previous speaker Damien O’Connor. 
I congratulate Simon Bridges and David Carter on bringing the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill to the House. The Green Party supports the bill in particular the introduction of the reckless ill-treatment charge which is new and the other provisions that will hopefully make it easier for the SPCA and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry inspectors to take prosecutions for animal abuse. We will put forward amendments at the select committee to strengthen some of the other provisions in the bill. 
I have to say at the outset that we are deeply disappointed that this bill is so narrow in its scope and addresses only a tiny proportion of the cases of animal abuse in New Zealand. We are disappointed too that the bill does nothing to amend the loopholes in the Act that allow hundreds of thousands of animals to suffer on a daily basis—for example pigs in sow crates and battery hens. Simon Bridges said that this bill will improve the law across the board. Sadly it does not. It deals only with individual acts of cruelty against animals and it turns a blind eye to institutional cruelty against animals which comprises the overwhelming majority of cases of animal cruelty in New Zealand. 
As a Parliament we cannot in good conscience get tough on individual acts of cruelty to animals while ignoring even more serious cases of institutional abuse. The Minister of Agriculture and Simon Bridges have read out examples of individual cases of abuse. They have said that New Zealanders are increasingly shocked by these individual cases of cruelty to animals and that is true. But New Zealanders were even more shocked by Mike King’s expose of the conditions of pigs in New Zealand. Butt what has happened? Nothing has happened. The pig welfare code that was promised last year still has not materialised so let us put this bill into perspective. 
As animal welfare lawyer Peter Sankoff observed wryly in a recent blog politicians “only hate some kinds of animal cruelty and are perfectly happy to promote other types.” It is vital if we are not to be accused of hypocrisy that we demonstrate that this Parliament cares about all forms of animal cruelty not just some by widening the scope of this bill and ensuring that tougher sentences apply to all people who abuse animals not just some. 
The Green Party supports the increase in penalties for ill-treatment because this is one of the most common types of offence. But like Labour members we want to make it clear that increasing the maximum length of a sentence from say 3 years to 5 years will not reduce the incidence of animal abuse in New Zealand. The reality is—and it has been pointed out—that people found guilty of animal cruelty are very very rarely jailed in New Zealand. There have been only 10 such cases even though the legislation already permits 3-year jail sentences. In fact 10 years ago Parliament increased the sentences from 3 months to 3 years but sentences for animal abuse have not gone up. Not long ago a farmer Mark Spitz ignored repeated warnings from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and slowly starved a number of his cattle to death yet he received only 250 hours of community service and a fine. That case is typical. I quote Peter Sankoff again. He said that raising sentences is “the easiest thing Parliament can do and sadly it’s a reflex action”. It is designed to distract us from the real problems of animal cruelty. He said: “It makes for nice yelling though (Let’s raise penalties! Let’s send those bastards to jail!).” 
If this Parliament is committed to reducing animal abuse we must look at the wider issues. One of them has been touched on: why are there so few inspectors investigating incidents of animal cruelty why are there so few prosecutions and why is the funding for animal welfare and prosecutions so pitiful in New Zealand? The truth is that there is very little point in increasing the penalties for animal cruelty crimes if the enforcement authorities are so under-resourced that few prosecutions are ever made. This is the reality; this is the truth. 
This bill will raise expectations as previous speakers have said and unless there is a huge increase in resources and funding for more inspectors it will be as Jim Anderton suggested window dressing. We also need to address the issue of why the Government does not enforce the Animal Welfare Act properly. Why do we have only five full-time Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry inspectors even though there are more than 100 million animals in New Zealand? Why does the ministry prosecute only 1.85 percent of the complaints it receives? Why has the Government effectively abdicated its duty to monitor animal welfare to inspectors from a charitable organisation—the SPCA—60 percent of whose inspectors are volunteers many of whom work part time and whose work is seriously hampered by the fact that they do not even have full police powers of prosecution? 
Why does the Government not properly fund prosecutions of animal welfare breaches instead of relying on the public to donate to the SPCA? Why does it not fund the SPCA properly? Why has it basically abdicated all its work to the SPCA which is so cash-strapped that it does not carry out any random inspections and cannot afford to undertake prosecutions that would be expensive. 
The  
Farmers Weekly  
pointed out a few years ago that the animal welfare team in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is emaciated. Greg Reid stated in 2008: “The reality is at the moment we are so thin on the ground and we are running from bushfire to bushfire. A lot of what the public see is just the surface of it—it’s quite chaotic.” In other words the Government-funded welfare inspectorate budget is so pitiful that it is delegating this work to a charity that does not get funding. 
Unless we deal with this issue the bill will be simply window dressing. Unfortunately the bill does not deal directly with anything to improve the inadequate system of monitoring and enforcement but we will seek to amend this at the select committee. The reality is that people and indeed probably judges perceive animal welfare offences as a different kind of crime from other crimes so we would like to see guidelines added to the Act to help judges decide on the seriousness of an offence and therefore the appropriate length of the sentence. 
We are pleased with the clause that provides that offenders can have all their animals removed not just the ones that were ill-treated and we agree with a few other aspects of the bill. But we think it is critical that we strengthen the provisions relating to the abuse of farm animals not just companion animals. Most prosecutions for the abuse of farm animals are taken under sections 12 13 and 14 of the Act not section 28 so we would like to see a similar strengthening of provisions around section 12 of the Act. 
The Minister has said finally that all acts of cruelty are unacceptable to this Parliament. This is music to my ears. Many speakers here have made similar comments. I therefore look forward to the Minister finally acting on issues such as the banning of sow crates and battery-hen cages because if he does not the public will see this as a complete double standard. The public will see that we are getting tough on some aspects of animal cruelty while ignoring others. 
The former Minister of Agriculture Jim Anderton said that our Animal Welfare Act is renowned as progressive by our trading partners. I can assure members that it is not renowned as progressive by most people who care about animal welfare in New Zealand.