van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I would like to start by commending Ian McKelvie for bringing this bill before the House. It's a great opportunity to strengthen this for the rural space.It's also a privilege to follow on from the team of fantastic farmers we have on this side—firstly Ian McKelvie then the Hon Nathan Guy and the Hon David Bennett all good farmers in their own right. So it's a privilege to be following on from them as the next speaker for the National Party.I'd also like to thank the other parties across the House for supporting this bill through its first reading. Whilst there may well be some additional questions that they would like to see answered I look forward to helping to answer those through the select committee process and I am indeed looking forward to having this presented before us at the Primary Production Committee.What we're talking about here is an aggravating factor at sentencing. Rustling should be an aggravating factor at sentencing. I think it's an appropriate reflection of the escalating issue that we're seeing in rural communities across New Zealand. We've heard a number of factors tonight that might potentially influence why someone may or may not do that and the types of rustling that we're seeing—whether it be the random one or two animals taken near the side of the road or a more structured cohesive stealing of a large number of animals. Regardless of that the victims in either case are rightly left devastated. This is a violation of their property their rights and I think this is an appropriate way to acknowledge that.This aggravating factor for rustling in particular is I think a good opportunity to acknowledge the remoteness of rural New Zealand and by imposing a harsher penalty and creating this as an aggravating factor it helps to perhaps alleviate some of the issues around that remoteness the isolation that might perhaps not deter criminals otherwise. So this could be that extra catalyst to make them question their decision around what they are doing.It helps gives victims confidence to report the crime as well. This will be an additional deterrent to those criminals and those victims then hopefully will have the confidence to step forward and say This is not right. This shouldn't be happening. Let's report it." You can have confidence as we've heard that there are indeed many cases going unreported at this stage that should indeed be reported in the future.It can be hard to defend against as a farmer. When you have a big property you don't necessarily know exactly how many stock are in each paddock at any particular time. You can have the odd losses so it may even be possible to have been a victim without realising it as well.Aside from that though it's important to create this opportunity so that police can act. Whilst we had a great programme in place rolling out additional police rurally to help with this 140 extra rural police were coming on board—it's great to see the Government continuing to focus on increasing police numbers. I look forward to seeing the distribution of those across rural areas. It will be a great way for them to start to pick up on some of these issues and progress a stronger action plan in this space to help reduce the incidence of livestock rustling.Looking at the higher-scale end of it in terms of the big numbers I think there's also a potential food safety risk here. If we're talking about people taking significant numbers of animals from a property where are those animals going? How are they being processed? How are they being sold or transitioned into the market? What's happening with them what are the processes being managed around that and the potential food safety risks that that could present as well?Of course we've also heard about the other areas in rural New Zealand that there are issues with horticultural crime apiculture as well fuels and bikes chainsaws—all these areas. Rural areas within New Zealand are subject to crime like the rest of the country but taking into account this aggravating factor of livestock rustling at sentencing is I think a great way to help provide that additional deterrent in some of those more remote parts of New Zealand.Again I'd just like to commend Ian McKelvie for bringing this bill forward and I thank the other parties for their support. I commend it to the House."