McKelvie IanDOG CONTROL (CATEGORY 1 OFFENCES) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I move That the Dog Control (Category 1 Offences) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. Got that right. Thank you.Hon Tim Macindoe: It's all downhill from here.IAN McKELVIE: I think it's the first time I have.I want to start my contribution tonight by thanking the select committee under the interesting chairmanship of David Bennett—I know he's been called a couple of other things already tonight—for the manner in which they considered this bill. I also wanted to thank the Department of Internal Affairs and their staff for the way they contributed to it as well.Interestingly four members of the select committee who considered this bill were part of the highly skilled but unsuccessful New Zealand cricket team that attended the parliamentary world cup in England earlier in the year. And of course we spent quite a bit of time on that little adventure talking about this extremely important bill.This bill was referred to the select committee on 5 September 2018 so it really shows how time can march on with pieces of legislation and shows what a time consuming process it can be to get legislation to the post well even to a second reading. We received 13 submissions from a variety of individuals and councils particularly and other organisations whom this bill will particularly affect. And of course it does particularly affect councils as they are responsible for the majority of the animal controls activities in New Zealand. This dog control of course comes under animal control in most councils' business plans.There were three main premises of this bill: to ease the workload of the courts; to ease the time dogs spend in the pound or what you might term the dog prison" and effectively it enables them to get out quicker; and to make it easier quicker and cheaper for councils and errant dog owners to process these cases and come to a satisfactory outcome. In other words it takes cases—I was going to say frivolous; they're not frivolous at all—out of the courts and it allows JPs to deal with them which effectively frees up court time. That's one important factor of this.The second thing I mentioned before was that it eases the time dogs spend in the pound or wherever else they might be kept when they are effectively taken into custodial care by the councils or dog control officers. They're taken in for various reasons—some of those reasons which don't apply to this bill. In fact things like violent attacks on people and those more serious offences are not affected by this bill. They generally either lead to a dog being put down or can even end with a dog owner going to prison.So the bill effectively allows JPs to hear and resolve these cases which I think is positive. There are not a lot of cases heard or dealt with in this area but none the less every case we can take out of the court frees up court time and makes a difference.I just wanted to go back to the issue of dogs and the fact that they are kept or captured I guess or handed in for various reasons and kept in the pound until such time as their cases are resolved. One way or the other they can lead to a charge. If they lead to a charge they eventually can end up in this situation so in other words they become a category 1 charge and that's how they end up going through this process that's described in this bill.There are dog owners and dog owners. There are good dog owners and bad dog owners. There are also good dogs and not such good dogs. I think most dogs though are the product of their owner. So the misdemeanours that occur as part of this legislation are clearly the problem the dog owners should face not the dog. Often the dog becomes the victim of it unfortunately. There are however some breeds of dogs which I don't think should be allowed to exist in New Zealand or certainly not as pets and they certainly aren't covered by this piece of legislation.During the course of the submission process we heard from Federated Farmers and I guess the significance of Federated Farmers is that their members are probably the largest dog owners in New Zealand with a large number of working dogs playing their part in the agricultural scene in New Zealand. A lot of councils have differential charging regimes for dogs and for dog licensing and working dogs certainly have a different charging rate in most regimes but the owner of those dogs has got to be what they call an approved owner. So in other words if you're an approved owner and you are known to or can prove that you look after your dogs well that you maintain them and that you manage the dogs well you're liable to become an approved owner—or there will be other descriptions in other councils—and as such you'll end up with a discounted registration rate for example. Most of those people are not the people that this bill deals with because generally they will look after those dogs to an extent that they never need to become wards of the State you might say or part of this process. We also heard during the course of the submissions from the justices of the peace and from one or two individual justices of the peace. I think most of our MPs will deal with many many justices of the peace because one of our unusual roles I suppose—well I find a slightly unusual—is in fact to appoint the justices of the peace in our electorates or we're part of the appointment. We're part of the nomination process I suppose you would say. I've been hugely impressed in my time as a member of Parliament in the number of people who give a lot of time acting as justices of the peace in our community. Not only do they give a lot of time but I was a justice of the peace myself for a little while—I didn't carry on with that because I'm not that kind of disciplined person that can deal with things properly—and the training that they go through now compared to the training that I went through when I became a justice of the peace which was non-existent basically is significant.So I think we can have absolute confidence that those people are very capable of playing their part in any kind of role they might need to do with respect to this bill. Of course during the first reading the Greens were effectively opposed to this bill on the basis that they felt justices of the peace were not suitably trained to take their place in the bill. I would argue that's not the case and I think that there's very good reason for justices of the peace to be competent to deal with the issues and the challenges of this bill.During the course of the Primary Production Committee there were a couple of changes made to the original bill as there were some categories of offence that it was decided didn't need to be contained in this bill as they were dealt with elsewhere in the legislation adequately and in fact community magistrates could deal with those again outside the system so that didn't need to be taken part of. So I think that this bill whilst it doesn't deal with a large number of cases it takes an onus off the courts it eases—I was going to say "hardship on dogs"—makes the welfare of those dogs that get into trouble or whose owners get them into trouble a little better and it also makes it quicker easier and cheaper for councils to manage these processes. I think it will also encourage councils to perhaps go a step further and charge some people for misdemeanours knowing that they can get out the other end of it in an easier manner. So I hope that this bill gets support as it goes through its second reading and I commend to the House. Thank you."