Hague Kevin: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14860. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): On television at the moment there seems to be a resurgence in magic shows. I guess we might call them illusionists rather than magicians. Those of us who have been around a bit know that they accomplish their tricks through a combination of hypnosis and diversion. I want to suggest that something similar is going on here because we have had a number of Government speakers stand up in the House and talk about how this bill the Game Animal Council Bill is a bill to further the interests of recreational hunters. In fact the Government intends in the next stage that this House considers the Committee stage to remove all reference to recreational hunters from the bill. Recreational hunters out there around the country will be thinking that this is a bill for them. Actually it is not. Instead it is a bill for the top end of the commercial tourism hunting scene—the trophy hunters those who are paying the big bucks to get the big bucks. The Government is accomplishing that same trick of pretending that this is a bill for recreational hunters in order to garner support while in fact advancing the interests of only a few.I feel sorry I guess for the Deerstalkers Association which has been calling for a greater say for so many years in this country. In fact the bill that is being delivered is one that will not deliver it a greater say. It will not even need to be consulted by this Game Animal Council.It is not quite true to say that that particular part of the commercial hunting scene is the only winner out of this bill and that everyone else will pay. In his contribution to this debate Peter Dunne said that it was a red-letter day for recreational hunters. Of course that is an absurd claim but actually it is a red-letter day for Peter Dunne. I congratulate him in a political way on being able to parlay his United Future conference speech into getting a bill advanced through the remainder of its stages in urgency.I guess the political drivers behind advancing this bill are clear both from the use of urgency to get this bill into law as Maryan Street has just talked about to the House and also the history of this bill which has been outlined to the House today by Jacqui Dean. This is a bill that has been hanging around and that no Government has actually wanted to proceed with because it is a poor bill. This Government has now been forced to do that for political reasons. I say it is for political reasons because this was a bill that was opposed by for example—let us see—the State Services Commission Treasury the former Ministry of Economic Development the former Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Food Safety Authority. All of those State agencies opposed the bill along with every environmental and conservation organisation in this country. This is not a bill for conservation at all; it is a bill for Peter Dunne and for a tiny group of those commercial recreational hunters.I am going to talk some more at further stages but I want to just signal that as one of the few members of this House—perhaps the only one—who has served on a conservation board the West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board it is very clear that the existing law already provides for the kind of input into decision making that was being sought by recreational hunters. The existing law already provided for that. As other speakers have said if more was required amendments to the Wild Animal Control Act could have provided for that. This bill is completely unnecessary. On the West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board we had recreational hunters represented. We dealt very frequently with issues that were raised by recreational hunters. Those procedures were entirely adequate to deal with those concerns. I want to wrap up there and come back at a later stage to the further points I want to make.