Burns Brendon: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Burns Brendon: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:663;Page:11418] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I am very pleased to resume my comments on the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. This bill was first in the name of Simon Bridges but became a Government bill in the name of the Minister of Agriculture David Carter and it is good to acknowledge that the Minister is with us this afternoon as we continue the second reading. This is an important bill because it acknowledges that New Zealanders have a high disregard for and a low threshold of tolerance of animal abuse and have a concern about animal welfare. These matters have come into public prominence over the last year or two following some rather ghastly and horrific cases mostly involving domestic animals. 
But one has to say some of the background to this bill relates to the occasional ill-treatment or neglect of farm animals. As part of that context I believe there will be issues of negligence in relation to animal welfare on some of the farms owned by the Crafar family and the dairy herds that they were not necessarily looking after particularly well. The bill expands the categorisation of the ill-treatment of animals to include a new category of reckless ill-treatment and that covers neglect arising from animals being abandoned and left perhaps without food or water. Obviously in those situations they can suffer quite severe injuries and even die. 
I note that Budget 2010 expands the funding of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in terms of its role in dealing with the domestic side of animal ill-treatment and abuse. I applaud the Government for doing that. I think that is a very sound move and I congratulate the Government on acknowledging that the society plays a very very good role. It is a voluntary organisation in large part often funded by public donations. I am sure other members have collected for the society as I have. But the bigger question that I want the Minister to answer if he takes a call in this debate concerns funding for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. I have not yet had a chance to look through the Budget papers but currently the ministry which of course is the other big player in respect of animal welfare most particularly in respect of farm animal welfare has an entire complement of staff engaged in animal welfare of just seven full-time equivalents or 8.75 people but seven of those staff are engaged— 
Sue Kedgley 
: I think it is five full-time equivalents. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: It is five in the North Island and two in the South Island I understand from the submissions that the ministry made to the Primary Production Committee—five in the North Island and two in the South Island. 
In a past life I lived in Marlborough and I well remember a very distressed volunteer SPCA inspector coming to me and showing me photographs of neglected farm animals. He was absolutely powerless to deal with the issue; he simply did not have the necessary powers. The category of reckless disregard of animal welfare did not exist. Frankly he said it was not his job to deal with issues of animal negligence on the farm; he was busy enough with animal welfare issues in the domestic sector. Of course the only two Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry animal welfare staff were based in Christchurch which is a 3½ to 4-hour drive from Marlborough. It is not an easy task for a Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry officer to drive up and inspect a farm in Marlborough 4 hours away or to go even further to Nelson. I would like the Minister to give some indication of what he was able to do through the Budget process to ensure that the ministry’s staffing level for this work is supported in the same way that as I acknowledged the Minister has been able to win fiscal support from his colleagues to increase the resources available from the Crown to support the SPCA and the very fine work that it does. That matter is really really important. 
I want to look further at the issue of recklessness. The change that is enshrined in this bill comes from an acknowledgement that people can behave recklessly and that that can have huge and horrendous consequences for animals. It picks up on how someone can be charged under the Arms Act for reckless discharge of a firearm or someone can be charged with recklessly driving a motor vehicle. It is not the same as wilful behaviour but clearly the end result with a firearm or a vehicle or the neglect of animals can be very much the same. It can result in death and injury to innocent animals or in the case of those other two pieces of law human life. I think that this bill encapsulates an appropriate change. 
Labour is very much in support of this bill. We believe that most New Zealanders find animal cruelty to be truly repugnant. We want to see people be punished for it. Part of the problem has been that prosecutions can take a long time to bring to a successful conclusion. We are talking about five-figure sums to bring prosecutions against people even for a single prosecution to a successful conclusion. We want to support this bill. It is an important signal to those in the community in terms of domestic animals where there will now be better enforcement resources and support. 
But I would like the Minister to comment about the resources that he has been able to secure for investigating complaints about the treatment of farm animals because that issue is truly important. If we consider the numbers we realise there are probably far more animals out there on farms than there are in the homes of New Zealanders. If we consider the size of the now-reduced sheep flock we realise it is probably down to 35 million now— 
Dr Ashraf Choudhary 
: 30 million. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: It is down to 30 million; I have not been counting in the last little while. I think we are up to 6 million dairy cows. My colleague Ashraf Choudhary will keep a better total— 
Sue Kedgley 
: 100 million animals. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: There are 100 million animals in total so obviously the farming sector provides a huge component of that. I think it is imperative that we know whether the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry will get some extra resourcing so that it can play its part in supporting this legislation which commendably increases the penalties for those who either wilfully or recklessly ill-treat animals. Thank you.