Foss Craig: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Procedure In Committee 
Foss Craig: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:664;Page:11832] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. Firstly I acknowledge officials and fellow Primary Production Committee members who have helped get us to this stage. I also acknowledge Simon Bridges the MP for Tauranga who originated this bill with his original discussion of this matter as a member’s bill. I think we should celebrate the way that the legislation evolved from that idea to being picked up by the Minister of Agriculture the Hon David Carter. It became a Government bill and was sent to the select committee which brought another element and view to Mr Bridges’ original intentions making it fit New Zealand’s primary scene a little bit better with the help of many submitters who came to the committee. 
Members will note from the commentary that not much has changed from the bill that arrived at the committee. I will talk about submitters in a minute but on the whole most submitters were in favour of the bill and many submitters thought the bill should have gone even further than the bill before us. 
One of the major changes as we see in the commentary is that we clarified the notion of ownership. Under the circumstances we replaced “having custody of animals” with “owning or exercising authority in respect of animals”. Many examples were made such as when on the farm someone is looking after some animals or a sharemilker has legal ownership etc. All those issues were raised by submitters and considered by the committee and officials and we came to the recommendation of change that we have in the bill before us. 
Also we have increased penalties for contravention of a disqualification order. I will talk about the forfeiture of animals in particular. The bill had a lot of support from the legal fraternity and I acknowledge that many of them have offered their services pro bono to help set some of the precedents in cases that may come under this new bill. Forfeiture raised some interesting issues in that how and when something was forfeited brought about questions of charges of guilt being assumed instead of innocence or guilty before proven. If an animal was in danger it could be taken away from someone; from an animal cruelty point of view that is absolutely fine. Questions and discussions were had as to whether the animal should be taken away because it is in danger; perhaps other animals could be. In the time before that case comes before the courts we need to ask what is happening to that animal. But from a due process point of view does the animal’s being taken away imply some kind of guilt or otherwise? 
We had quite a few submitters and on the whole they were very supportive of the bill. Many of them wanted it to go a fair bit further. I acknowledge the Auckland SPCA; there was good strength in the message and suggestions it gave to the committee. Other SPCAs tended to have same message. They wanted a single ill-treatment offence and we agreed with that. They wanted an animal abuse registry to be set up. That is quite interesting and something for further consideration as this legislation plays out once it is enacted. We have all heard horror stories whereby those who have been convicted or suspected of animal cruelty have a whole lot more going on in their lives unfortunately potentially impacting on families children and their communities. Some of the examples showed that a key indicator of wider abuse was their cruelty to animals which was quite a revelation to many of the committee members. 
Dairy New Zealand and Federated Farmers also made submissions as we would expect and they brought in interesting and fair perspectives from the rural sector on-farm. Often animal welfare issues are seen from an urban environment meeting the reality of a rural environment. Sometimes issues happen out there on the farm—down the back in a drought situation—with the best of intent where no cruelty has been intended. But we need to make sure that every effort has been made to avoid cruelty to animals. Sometimes circumstances beyond the custodian person’s control or the owner’s control can result in some kind of cruelty. Exceptions were made there; Federated Farmers made those points particularly well.