King Colin: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Procedure In Committee 
King Colin: Animal Welfare Amendment Bill — Procedure In Committee 
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COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 We are in the Committee stage of the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. It is a very appropriate bill to have before the Committee. What stands out quite clearly is that we had a Government for 9 years that did absolutely nothing so it is a bit rich to hear the oratory from the Opposition that we do not have anything in the way of substance around animal cruelty. 
It was appropriate too that we had the Minister of Agriculture and of Forestry in front of us at the Primary Production Committee this morning. He made the point very clearly that three pillars underpin the importance and value of the New Zealand farming industry. They are the quality of our food safety the way that we look after our environment and most important animal welfare. It is on that basis that we see that Budget 2010 has added another $8.2 million to ensure that New Zealand has robust animal welfare legislation and that we keep on looking to improve the situation where there are any gaps. 
It is worthwhile reflecting on the fact that this bill had its beginnings with the outstanding member for Tauranga Simon Bridges who brought the bill forward as a member’s bill. It was then taken over as a Government bill to ensure something was urgently done. We have had a whole decade of lip-service with no substance delivered from the very poorly informed and poorly connected previous Labour Government. When we look across to the benches on the other side of the Chamber we can understand why we had that because there was a total failure by Labour to have representation from the primary production sector. 
When we look at the bill we see that it handles matters in a very constructive way. When we took submissions and heard and questioned submitters we could see clear evidence that because of the way that the legislation is drawn up there is a big gap between what is achievable and what is desirable. First of all section 28 of the Act talks about the wilful ill-treatment of animals and that proved to be an incredibly high threshold to satisfy. More often than not the problem was that it was difficult to prove that there had been wilful intent. So the way that the law will be constructed in the future is that another category will be introduced in new section 28A “Reckless ill-treatment of animals”. That will be a lot easier to prove because if a person goes out and performs and behaves in a given way it will be possible far more often to prove that that person was behaving recklessly. Proving wilful intent is quite an abstract definition and it is one that can be argued against more often than not. 
Just to start and frame the value of this legislation I say it is very important to put that step in place because the very substance of this bill is intended to give the law some teeth and to make it enforceable. Very often we hear the judges being criticised in the public domain but more often than not the reason why they are being criticised is that lawyers look at how they might get the best outcome. Given that a conviction for the wilful ill-treatment of animals probably has a 10 percent chance of being achieved and a 90 percent chance of failure they then fall right back to the basic charge of ill-treatment of animals. This bill introduces the new category of reckless ill-treatment of animals which is measured by the very same criteria as for wilful ill-treatment.