Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I was going to say that I completely agreed with everything the honourable member Jacqui Dean said in contribution and support of the Dog Control (Category 1 Offences) Amendment Bill until she blamed us for her Government's nine long years of doing absolutely nothing in dog control. So the audacity of a member coming to the House supporting Ian McKelvie's bill—and so it should be supported; it's an excellent member's bill—but then saying What's the current Government done about it?" Not even a year we've been in but we haven't solved all the problems. I'm sorry that we haven't managed to solve nine years of neglect in less than a year but at least we've got a plan and we're well under way in so many areas that are critically important.I want to congratulate Ian McKelvie for this member's bill. Some members' bills you know we get in the House and we just laugh at them because they're so waste of time and waste of space. This is a small bill but it's not a waste of time and it's not a waste of space. It's really sensible. It looks at the problem that we've got in the regime of dealing with people who have offended against the Dog Control Act.I had to look up I must be honest—I had no idea what a category 1 offence was in dog control legislation. It's never been a particular passion or interest of mine but the more I studied it—you never know that may well become my number one passion in the future.So what the member's bill saw as a problem was the fact that currently we have a very high level of consideration for offences against the Dog Control Act and it means there's a huge delay in justice and a threat to animal welfare. So Ian McKelvie put his thinking cap on and said: what could be done about this how could we speed up the process and make it fairer for the people involved probably less costly as well although I'm not sure that the member—I have listened to his speech on introduction; I'm not sure he mentioned the cost. He may well do that in his reply but I'd be interested to know if it is anticipated to reduce costs because I think it will.But the point is to have people who have committed category 1 offences against the Dog Control Act—their offence heard by a justice of the peace or a community magistrate. Everyone in this Parliament will have dealt with justices of the peace and most will have dealt with community magistrates. These are people who are community driven who are passionate about giving back to their community through the justice system and probably almost without exception people in whom this Parliament could have a lot of faith. I know that earlier the question was raised: if this was suddenly imposed would our justices of the peace and community magistrates be trained to deal with offences under the Act? I'm sure that that's something that the select committee can give consideration to. Probably by the time that the bill would be enacted there'd be a period that we'd require some training for people before they'd be allowed to sit in consideration of this. That's my thought anyway and Mr McKelvie will have given it much further consideration than I would and might have better ideas.It was also interesting to see just how many of these offences have taken place. In the year that's noted in the explanatory note the 2015-16 year there were 456 charges under the Dog Control Act. That's a lot. That's more than one a week—one a day. That is a lot of offences and of those 427 were for category 1 offences. Category 1 offences are the group that are proposed to be heard under this bill by a community magistrate or justice of the peace and those are offences that are not punishable by imprisonment. So there's only 29 that are really at the serious end and they are the ones that would be left in the current regime of hearing. All the rest the 427 if you take that year as an example would then move to JPs and community magistrates.I think it's a really thoughtful bill. It identifies a real problem that we have. It identifies a solution that by all accounts on first reading and consideration of the contributions to date would solve the problem. I think that the member should be commended and the bill should be supported."