Game Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGame Animal Council Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14853. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Game Animal Council BillSecond ReadingDebate resumed.NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central): I am very pleased to talk on the Game Animal Council Bill because it is an important bill. I think that it is all about a sensible and intelligent use of the conservation estate so that more people more New Zealanders can get out there and enjoy our natural environment. As has been discussed today in the House the Local Government and Environment Committee worked hard on this bill. We really wanted to deliver for two stakeholders. We walked a fine line to make sure that we delivered for the hunting community which is passionate about this bill but we also wanted to deliver for the environment and for conservation. Hunting and conservation are not mutually exclusive. We all want to see more people out and about and more recreationists out in our great outdoors because recreation is often the pathway to conservation. When you speak to recreationists whether they be hunters shooters fishermen or mountain bikers—the people who are out there—they are the first to extol the beauty of our natural environment and to be very sure that theywant to see it protected. Hunting is a hugely popular recreational activity in New Zealand and many hunters along with other recreationists whether they are fishermen or trampers or mountain bikers or climbers are also passionately committed to looking after our environment and contribute actively to practical on-the-ground conservation.This bill will give hunters a greater say in their sport just like fishermen have through Fish and Game and it will also provide the Minister of Conservation with a valuable stream of advice regarding recreational and guided trophy hunting of tahr chamois deer and wild pigs. Again it is a balance between giving the hunters more say and providing the Minister of Conservation with more abilities to look after the conservation estate. The Game Animal Council Bill provides a framework for collaborative management by stakeholders of this animal resource. It will ensure that the animals are permitted in only identified less sensitive areas and are well managed and that the natural environment is monitored. This of course will be a much better proposition for the environment than the present situation where stakeholders tend to be divided there is no process for shared knowledge or for goals and there is no opportunity to manage these animals in a much more efficient way. So we believe that this bill will provide a win-win. It will provide a better hunting experience for our recreationists but it will also manage and conserve our natural environment more effectively. I commend this bill to the House.ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Game Animal Council Bill. When this bill was first presented to the House we were not particularly impressed with it. New Zealand First thought that it was in its first drafting somewhat of a sop to the Hon Peter Dunne just to satisfy the Government’s confidence and supply agreement with United Future and that the Government was perhaps just giving lip-service to it initially as a result of that. We opposed the bill at the time but we were confident that if it went to a select committee and was given the proper light of day huge improvements could be made to it—and that turned out to be the case.I would like to commend the Local Government and Environment Committee which I am on for the work that was done on this bill because the bill is considerably changed from the original bill. The committee heard submissions in both Wellington and Christchurch. There were over 600 submissions in total and many were heard orally. Our hearings in Christchurch were an interesting experience. They were held at the International Antarctic Centre by the airport. It was not foreseen but through the wall from the hearings room a movie of Antarctica was going on. It was on a 30-minute loop with a large crescendo of loud music and sound. Jacqui Dean Paul Goldsmith and others will recall that it was somewhat ironic that as many of the submitters were getting to the end of their various presentations coincidentally there was a loud growth a crescendo of music and sound. It was somewhat ironic and people commented that they did not expect to have a musical accompaniment to their submission.Maggie Barry: Surreal.ANDREW WILLIAMS: It was quite surreal but it was quite fitting. Many of those comments and statements were being made by many parties from across a sector that is involved in game animals hunting recreation and conservation and it was very appropriate that they had a musical background to them. But it was good to see so many people coming together from all those interests and I would like to congratulate all those who did so many of whom had been involved on the Game Animal Council Establishment Committee for the last 5 or 6 years to get it to this point particularly the likes of Garry Ottmann who chaired that committee which brought much of the thinking together to where it is today.It was also very good to see in Christchurch an old colleague of mine Tom Williams who led the delegation there and spoke on behalf of quite a number of the entities. Tom was the former chairman of the New Zealand Game Industry Board many years ago when I was in the venison industry. Tom has huge experience from across the deer industry and the game industry and it was very good to see Tom again taking a lead role in bringing so many of those entities together as one voice.It really was impressive. You know there are really many different factions involved in recreational hunting in commercial hunting in commercial deer operations and in commercial farming that impact on the conservation estate where wild animals can interact with farmed animals and deer farms as well. It was very good to see so many of those people coming together with one voice.The Game Animal Council Bill will bring many of the parties together in a council that will have between nine and 11 representatives. It is good to see that it will be independently chaired and the select committee made some recommendations on this. Clause 12(1A) states: “The Minister must appoint as chairperson a member of the Council whom the Minister considers has the appropriate management and conflict resolution skills to chair the Council.” Our committee thought that it was very important that whoever is appointed as chair of this because there are many factions involved must have the ability to chair it and bring those parties together.This bill also provides a balance between the Department of Conservation and conservation principles and the recreational and commercial hunting sector. We believe that it achieves a good balance so that both sides are able to come to this council in one collective place and express the interests of all those involved in the many activities out there in the conservation estate and in the wild. It provides for the designation of herds of special interest and will improve the management of the likes of chamois deer tahr and wild pigs. The bill allows the Minister of Conservation to define locations on conservation land and designate a herd of game animals as a herd of special interest specifically for recreational hunting without adversely affecting other users or biodiversity values.We included in our recommendations on the bill things such as the council would be subject to LGOIMA—the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act—so that the council will be required to provide information as other local authorities in New Zealand are now required to provide official information on their meetings and their correspondence. The council must notify the Minister of the adoption of any procedure as soon as it is reasonably practical after it has been adopted. So again this council will have to keep the Minister well-informed of its intentions so that it can be monitored all the way through.It was interesting too that we recommended in terms of the trophy export levy in clause 22 that “A person must not export a game trophy from New Zealand that is a souvenir of an animal hunted and killed in New Zealand on or after the day this Act comes into force unless the person pays to the Council the game trophy export levy prescribed …” in this Act. Again this is a good thing because it does mean that highly prized game trophies will be charged a levy to be determined by the council and recommended to the Minister. Again these sorts of things can only be good to help improve the return and to then be able to have funding to go back into the estate itself and into managing the herds.In terms of funding again we provided for fees for hunting any animal that is part of a herd of special interest and for the game export trophy levies. Again there needs to be some form of funding to cover this. It does come at a cost but it is a necessary cost because at the end of the day all those involved will benefit from it. A nominal cost that is the result of this can only be good for the overall management of the herd in ensuringthat this is continued well into the future for this generation and future generations to be able to enjoy the great wild and the recreational sport that this involves and for commercial hunting as well.One of the other things that I believe is good in this bill is that there will be a review of the Act no later than 3 years after the commencement. That provides for Parliament to ensure that the council its activities and what comes out of this whole piece of legislation are monitored. The legislation will not be perfect there will be some teething problems no doubt and there will be a settling-down and bedding-in process while it all comes to be. But it is good that there will be a review within 3 years and as a result of that I am sure that any minor discrepancies or oversights in this bill will be picked up and addressed by a future amendment perhaps in this House.New Zealand First is supporting this bill. We think that the considerable changes that were put through as a result of the submissions and listening to the parties involved are good ones. We believe the bill is a step forward for this sector. We commend the bill to the House.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Jacqueline Dean.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Good call. The Game Animal Council Bill delivers on the Government’s 2008 and also 2011 confidence and supply agreements with United Future. It also reflects the work done under United Future’s 2005 confidence and supply agreement with the then Labour Government. The game animal panel which was chaired by Margaret Austin and included more than 4000 public submissions recommended that a statutory organisation be established to represent the interests of hunters of large game animals and to undertake the management of recreational guided and commercial hunting. An establishment committee was set up to undertake further public consultation on what the structure the membership and the functions of the council might be. Its recommendations widely consulted on have been incorporated into this piece of legislation.This legislation this bill creates a Game Animal Council which will advise and make recommendations to the Minister of Conservation on behalf of the hunting community on a range of hunting-related issues. The council will also be delegated powers to manage herds of special interest to hunters for the purpose of recreational hunting. I was interested to hear comments from the Green Party in relation to the fact that in its view this is a bill that is non-inclusive. Well I could not argue the contrary more strongly because the membership of the Game Animal Council will have people with knowledge and experience in areas such as recreational and commercial hunting deer farming safari park operations meat processing and exporting hunting-related tourism Māori hunting interests hunting-related research farming generally forestry and also nature conservation. So I would like to know from the Green members and they might care to take a call—what is so exclusive about that? This is a good bill and I commend it to the House.The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the Hon Damien O’Connor.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): Yes good choice. Labour supported this Game Animal Control Bill going to the Local Government and Environment Committee because we have for a long time recognised that we need to have I guess a more robust and certain system around the management of game animals in this country and of course the protection of the conservation estate. The bill has been considered by the select committee and a number of changes were made.Labour at this point is not supporting the bill because I guess in summary this is an MMP bill. It is really about a deal that has been done a political deal to push ahead something that in the end is not ideal and not truly fit for purpose. We do need to haveprotection for the conservation estate. At a time when the Government has squeezed funding for the Department of Conservation it is little wonder that staunch conservationists are a little bit edgy and concerned and paranoid some might say that it is all going to be shifted on to the private sector with deals done in a partnership model and that we are then going to shift the control of pests and wild animals on to the hunters. They are a little bit paranoid about that—hence their concerns from what we have seen and certainly in some of the Supplementary Order Papers that are coming up. It is understandable perhaps.It comes down to a philosophical divide about what we have conservation and public lands for in this country. We are talking about exotic animals. They have been introduced into the country just as trout have been. For those fish we have quite a robust system of protection that treats them almost as if they are an indigenous species. They are not. We have accepted that as part of mainstream management for the good of New Zealand as a whole. We are trying to establish a similar regime with this bill.An independent Game Animal Council is I guess in theory a good thing as long as it works in with the Department of Conservation. This will establish a point of conflict and there is debate about what that might mean. The elephant in the room if you like of course is the one of 1080 and its use throughout the country. I come from the West Coast an area that has been—Hon Ruth Dyson: An elephant in Sri Lanka.Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: An elephant in Sri Lanka. It will be here. It will almost be in the room soon—when John Key comes back tomorrow.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Back to the bill—I am sorry I have been distracted. Thank you. I will be back on target. It is a philosophical divide about whether we should use 1080 to control possums or not. Coming from a region like the West Coast we know that it is an essential tool to not only control bovine tuberculosis in animals but also protect the spectacular national parks we have. There has been over time some by-kill if you like—bycatch or by-kill—that is when spreading the 1080 deer have been killed. Staunch conservationists think that that is a great idea—kill anything that is not native. However the hunters think that they should have access to a recreational activity that gets them out in the bush that keeps them fit and that has been part and parcel of the New Zealand way of life—in fact people have survived by eating venison. But if in the end the Game Animal Council here was to stop the use of 1080 as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has alerted us to then that is not progress.I have had an assurance from the hunting sector from Garry Ottmann that that is not one of the things that the Game Animal Council would do. I welcome that assurance. However it is a contentious point in the hunting fraternity. There have been changes to the 1080 bait put out there in order to try to minimise the by-kill and to not inadvertently or unnecessarily kill deer. But you still come back to the core philosophical debate about whether there should be deer tahr or chamois in the conservation estate at all. There are Supplementary Order Papers on the Table that attempt to ensure that there are no managed herds in any of the conservation estate or national parks. I do not quite accept that because the reality for tahr and chamois is that they are often in national parks. This is indeed where the objective of the bill will play out. Either we have them in national parks or we do not.The other reality we are dealing with is a Department of Conservation that is squeezed for resources is that it will never be able to control or exterminate wild animals in the conservation estate or indeed even in areas of high natural values. So there will be a reliance on hunters to assist in that control and where necessaryextermination. But there are some double standards. In wilderness areas for example people are not able to use air access into these areas for recreational purposes such as rafting or tramping. However they are able to use air access for the control of wild animals. If one were to be very pure about it we would say that there should be no air access at all. So in summary there are a number of slight contradictions across the whole of the conservation estate that have been put in place for best management purposes. The issue here is to ensure that if this bill proceeds we have a Game Animal Council that works in the best interests of conservation and the hunters—not exclusively one against the other. We do support that.An aside but one that will have an impact on the kinds of recreational control that can occur is the issue of venison. We had a huge deer population in this country until the practice of farming and the value of the meat itself got to a level where people saw the economic driver to get out and kill deer. Indeed that was what we needed to do to drive down the numbers to actually see the restoration of a whole lot of natural values across the conservation estate. We were overrun with deer there was a commercial value put on them and we saw the extermination of them in some necessary areas. The fact that the meat industry is dysfunctional and has lost and is leaving opportunities on the table all around the world means that the value of venison is nowhere near where it should be. If the Government was to get on and sort out the meat industry and put a decent value on venison I think we would see real activity from the hunting fraternity to get out and help control deer.Labour is not supporting the bill at this point not because we do not want to support hunters to get out and enjoy the conservation estate and assist the Department of Conservation to control wild animals in areas but because we think it is actually going to create some tension that will be ongoing between the department and the Game Animal Council. I am comforted by reassurances from Garry Ottmann on behalf of the hunting sector that they will indeed do their best to work together. I hope that that does indeed happen. But when it comes to the issue of 1080 as a West Coast MP and former dairy farmer I am staunch. We must be able to continue to use 1080 in the conservation estate to control the exotic pests that frequent there. It is not just deer; it is stoats it is weasels and it is possums. We need to do that; otherwise the future of this country as an economic exporter of meat is at risk.I welcome the opportunity to speak more on a number of particular technical issues in the bill through the Committee stage but can I say that Labour supports hunters. We want people to get out into the outdoors. We want them to help the Department of Conservation to kill unwanted pests—anything they can hit. Stoats would be great. That is a very challenging target I would have to say but if we could have a bounty on them that would be great. But on the issue of deer chamois and tahr we need to ensure that there is appropriate control but that we protect the opportunities for people who do make a great effort to get out and hunt them. So we will work through. We want the best outcome here. We are just concerned that perhaps the Government has not got it quite right in its proposals.MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): I rise to speak to the second reading of the Game Animal Council Bill. It is sponsored by the Minister of Conservation Nick Smith. Many of the details of this piece of legislation have been tracked through by the Minister and by Nicky Wagner the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee which has ushered through this longstanding piece of legislation. It has been around since 2005. Peter Dunne had it as part of a confidence and supply agreement with the then Labour-led Government so it emerges.We had a lot of discussion at the select committee about the various elements of definition and about such vexed issues as what constitutes a herd of special interest tohunters. We resolved that it would be deer chamois tahr and wild pigs. There is a lot of other game out there to be hunted. National obviously supports the recreational pastime of hunting. There is a sense of entitlement for New Zealanders to be able to go out and shoot. In many occasions what they are doing for their recreational pleasure and interest is also enhancing conservation values.One of the things that stood out for me at the select committee was the work that was done by the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation. I think that is a really successful example of how recreational hunters can work in with conservation. That foundation has been managing the effects that deer have had on the environment of Fiordland for around about 7 or 8 years and the conservation and recreational hunting interests are in a very good balance. The recreational hunters for example have been responsible for 70 kilometres of predator lines to control stoats and rats in partnership with the Department of Conservation. They have released blue ducklings which have come back into Fiordland now. And recreational hunters have funded the removal of thousands of non - wapiti-type deer. What this shows us is an example of how the Game Animal Council can work when it gets up and running. As Peter Dunne said he hopes it will be a reality early in the new year. I support that.I think it is a lost opportunity that Labour is not supporting this bill. I am not surprised that the Greens are not. There is nothing new there. I would echo the sentiments of the previous speaker Damien O’Connor who just sat down about 1080. I too have spent time on the West Coast of the South Island recently. I am aware of the issues that are prevalent around New Zealand when it comes to possum control and pest control. I commend the use of 1080 and would hope that others might take the time to read the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s report on it. She has done a very good job of looking at the science of it and the way in which it actually works. So I think that those who are not aware should make themselves more informed before they state a view. But when and where 1080 is used is a debate for another occasion as are some of the key messages within this piece of legislation which I will come back to in more detail at other readings. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I want to advise the House that this is a split call.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I rise to take a split call with the Green Party on the second reading of the Game Animal Council Bill. I have got a couple of questions. Why are we debating this bill in urgency and why are we debating this bill at all?Why are we debating this bill in urgency? Well there can only be one reason. The regulatory impact statement on this bill is dated 17 March 2011. The work was commenced in 2008 by the then Minister of Conservation Steve Chadwick who engaged with the Hon Peter Dunne to talk about wild game animals and the control of wild animals through hunting and through conservation measures.One of the things that came out of that conversation was that there was a range of statutory possibilities available. It is unfortunate that the Government has chosen to pursue entirely the wrong statutory option and this is the lost opportunity. It is not the one that the previous speaker Maggie Barry spoke of but this is the lost opportunity. Instead of being able to have an advisory committee established by the Minister of Conservation under the terms of the Wild Animal Control Act we have a stand-alone Game Animal Council which costs money and has its own statutory authority—its own legislation in fact. It would have been more effective and less damaging to the relationships in this highly contested and quite fractious area to provide the authority for an advisory committee to be set up under the Wild Animal Control Act.In fact if that was not enough for the Government it would have been possible to amend the Wild Animal Control Act to ensure that the advisory committee could not be disestablished by the Minister. There are advisory committees under that Act at the moment but the Minister has the ability to disestablish them at any time. If the Government really wanted to give teeth to this proposal instead of escalating it into a bill a statute of its own it could have just said that this is an advisory committee under the Wild Animal Control Act the Minister is establishing it and the Minister will not have the power to disestablish it. That would have been sufficient.What we have now is a bill that is going to work against the common interests of the hunting fraternity and the Department of Conservation. There have been tensions for a long time between those two groups but this bill does not help. This bill makes it worse in fact. This bill makes those relationships inevitably more fractious. Why would the Government want to do that when there was conversation happening where interests on both sides were being taken into account and when there is a deal of common interest because of the damage that wild animals do to our biodiversity to our environment? So there is a deal of common interest there.The only reason I can think of that the Government has chosen the heavy-duty legislative option is to appease the Hon Peter Dunne because he was upset at being told that John Banks would be welcomed back to the Prime Minister’s Cabinet but he would not be. I can only assume that this bill turning up in urgency after a regulatory impact statement written more than 2 years ago is to appease the Hon Peter Dunne. That is not a model of democratic process. So I am sorry to all our visitors in the gallery who are here today—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!Hon MARYAN STREET: Sorry.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I was actually indicating that it was inappropriate to speak to the gallery.Hon MARYAN STREET: Yes that is what I thought. How much more—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member’s time is nearly up.Hon MARYAN STREET: I will speak further about this in the Committee stage. I cannot support this bill.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): This is a split call.KEVIN HAGUE (Green): On television at the moment there seems to be a resurgence in magic shows. I guess we might call them illusionists rather than magicians. Those of us who have been around a bit know that they accomplish their tricks through a combination of hypnosis and diversion. I want to suggest that something similar is going on here because we have had a number of Government speakers stand up in the House and talk about how this bill the Game Animal Council Bill is a bill to further the interests of recreational hunters. In fact the Government intends in the next stage that this House considers the Committee stage to remove all reference to recreational hunters from the bill. Recreational hunters out there around the country will be thinking that this is a bill for them. Actually it is not. Instead it is a bill for the top end of the commercial tourism hunting scene—the trophy hunters those who are paying the big bucks to get the big bucks. The Government is accomplishing that same trick of pretending that this is a bill for recreational hunters in order to garner support while in fact advancing the interests of only a few.I feel sorry I guess for the Deerstalkers Association which has been calling for a greater say for so many years in this country. In fact the bill that is being delivered is one that will not deliver it a greater say. It will not even need to be consulted by this Game Animal Council.It is not quite true to say that that particular part of the commercial hunting scene is the only winner out of this bill and that everyone else will pay. In his contribution to this debate Peter Dunne said that it was a red-letter day for recreational hunters. Of course that is an absurd claim but actually it is a red-letter day for Peter Dunne. I congratulate him in a political way on being able to parlay his United Future conference speech into getting a bill advanced through the remainder of its stages in urgency.I guess the political drivers behind advancing this bill are clear both from the use of urgency to get this bill into law as Maryan Street has just talked about to the House and also the history of this bill which has been outlined to the House today by Jacqui Dean. This is a bill that has been hanging around and that no Government has actually wanted to proceed with because it is a poor bill. This Government has now been forced to do that for political reasons. I say it is for political reasons because this was a bill that was opposed by for example—let us see—the State Services Commission Treasury the former Ministry of Economic Development the former Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Food Safety Authority. All of those State agencies opposed the bill along with every environmental and conservation organisation in this country. This is not a bill for conservation at all; it is a bill for Peter Dunne and for a tiny group of those commercial recreational hunters.I am going to talk some more at further stages but I want to just signal that as one of the few members of this House—perhaps the only one—who has served on a conservation board the West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board it is very clear that the existing law already provides for the kind of input into decision making that was being sought by recreational hunters. The existing law already provided for that. As other speakers have said if more was required amendments to the Wild Animal Control Act could have provided for that. This bill is completely unnecessary. On the West Coast Tai Poutini Conservation Board we had recreational hunters represented. We dealt very frequently with issues that were raised by recreational hunters. Those procedures were entirely adequate to deal with those concerns. I want to wrap up there and come back at a later stage to the further points I want to make.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): It is my pleasure to take the last call in the second reading of the Game Animal Council Bill. I cast my mind back to the many many hours that we the Local Government and Environment Committee spent listening to submissions on this bill—a very wide range of submissions. There is no doubt that hunting is a hugely popular recreational activity in New Zealand and that people feel very strongly about it. In fact I took my research very seriously and went out hunting for the first time a few months ago and I learnt firsthand the dangers of being too close to—Hon Trevor Mallard: How much did Simon charge you?PAUL GOLDSMITH: No—I learnt how dangerous it is to get one’s eye too close to the scope when firing a weapon. That was something I learnt.The Game Animal Council Bill which is part of National’s confidence and supply agreement with United Future will have hunters’ interests at the forefront and will also engage practically with conservation local and Government authorities and other sector groups. We will be hearing more about this over the next few stages and I do not want to delay the House any further. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you very much.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Game Animal Council Bill be now read a second time.Ayes69New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes51New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Māori Party 3; Mana 1.Billread a second time.In CommitteePart 1 Preliminary and key provisionsMOANA MACKEY (Labour): I had been hoping that the Minister with responsibility for the Game Animal Council Bill might be in the chair. Hopefully the Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully is able to answer some questions we have about Supplementary Order Paper 395. I am not sure that that face really inspires confidence that we are going to get an answer to all our questions but we will give it a go—we will give it a go. The Minister of Conservation Nick Smith has introduced Supplementary Order Paper 395 and I really hope that the Minister is going to take a call on it because it does actually appear to quite seriously change everything that we did at the Local Government and Environment Committee.I want to refer specifically to the proposed changes to clause 16 in Part 1 of this bill where we are removing the word “recreational”. So we are going to replace “managed for recreational hunting purposes” with “managed for hunting purposes”. Given that the entire purpose of this bill was meant to be around recreational hunting I am really worried about what that change means and whether that completely undermines everything we did in the select committee.When this bill went through the select committee we were very cognisant of the job that was before us to manage the tensions between the recreational hunting community and the Department of Conservation. That really was our focus. We were recognising the value of the recreational hunting community recognising that there were actually a number of common goals between the Department of Conservation and the recreational hunting community and that there were existing relationships that were already very good. There were some existing relationships that were very very bad but there was enough common ground for us to work on to bring together the recreational hunting community and those purposes where they aligned with the Department of Conservation’s vision and aspirations around pest control and the management of the Department of Conservation estate. So when I see in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 395 on Part 1 of this bill that we are removing the word “recreational” from the legislation it is deeply concerning.I hope that the Minister in the chair even if this is an issue that he has to come up to speed with very quickly is able to get some advice from officials. It is not looking good is it? It is not looking good. Given that this could potentially completely change the entire purpose of the bill—and the member Peter Dunne mentioned heli-hunting in his contribution or whatever new name we have given it to make it sound not so awful—I would like to know what this means in terms of the discussions we had at the select committee around the hunting of trophy animals from helicopters. If we are now saying that this is no longer about recreational hunting interests and it is just about all hunting interests that is a completely different kettle of fish and different from every conversation we had at select committee. It might be that this is some minor technicalamendment that does not actually change a lot or that is designed for a specific purpose but I think the very first thing we need in this debate is some clarification from the Minister in the chair around what that means.Why did we have a select committee process that spent all its time focusing on how the interests of recreational hunters worked in with the interests of the Department of Conservation and the general public on behalf of whom the Minister of Conservation is a steward of that land? Why did we go through all that if suddenly this bill is going to be about all hunting interests? I wonder whether it is because maybe we went down the path in terms of setting out how we were going to pay for this Game Animal Council of basing its fees on the number of trophy hunters. And maybe the Government just wants a whole lot more of those but I wondered whether it might be something that the Hon Peter Dunne might be able to refer to. For us this is very concerning.Just so that I can let the member know what our concerns are about we have been focused on recreational hunters. This amendment now takes the word “recreational” out and to me that is a major change. It is not something that was ever flagged at the select committee. If there was an issue with keeping the word “recreational” in there at the select committee I do not know why it was not raised with us then albeit it was decades ago that we had this bill at the select committee. Maybe the Hon Peter Dunne would be able to take a call on this Supplementary Order Paper 395 from Nick Smith and explain why in clause 16 we are changing “managed for recreational hunting purposes” to “managed for hunting purposes”. That does seem like a big change to us and in light of the comments he made about heli-hunting as well it would be good to get some clarification around exactly what that is trying to achieve and to allay concerns on this side of the Chamber that it is not actually going to make worse a bill that we are already concerned about and take the focus off recreational hunting which was what we understood to be the entire purpose of this legislation. So I look forward to getting some clarification on that.In terms of the rest of Part 1 of the bill when you look at the purposes of this bill in clause 3 they are: “(a) to establish the Game Animal Council and provide for its functions; and (b) to create powers for the Minister to manage herds of special interest; and (c) to allow the Minister to delegate his or her powers to the Council; and (d) to provide for fees and levies to fund the Council and its functions.” Our question would be again whether this is an appropriate way to achieve the purposes the policy intentions of this particular piece of legislation especially given that the official advice from Treasury and the Department of Conservation has been that this is not the way to go. Their advice was that this path has the most regulatory burden and has the highest costs and in fact there were other options available to the Government that would have been far easier that would have built on existing relationships that would have built on existing functions that would have identified where those relationships did not exist and that would have done so with far less regulatory burden and at a much lower cost. When you consider that the funding for this bill—$100000 in the first year and then $50000 per year after that—is going to have to come from money that is reprioritised within the Department of Conservation then it becomes even clearer that this pathway and the pathway set out in clause 3 “Purposes” in the bill is not the appropriate legislative pathway to be taking.This legislation has been a long time in the making. This is work that started under the previous Labour Government. The advisory panel provided advice none of which is really represented in this piece of legislation and when you look at what we have come up with there were far simpler ways to do it that could have actually been done a lot quicker—a lot quicker. They could have been done under existing legislation either within ministerial powers that already existed which would not have requiredlegislation at all or through an amendment to existing legislation which would have been far simpler than what we see in Part 1 of this piece of legislation.I know that part of the concern around simply using existing legislative or regulatory tools such as the ability of the Minister of Conservation to set up a special committee to look into this was about the power of the Minister in that role. These are always tensions that we have to manage in legislation regarding the Department of Conservation. It used to be the case that the Minister of Conservation had sole responsibility for all activities on the conservation estate as the guardian of that conservation estate on behalf of all New Zealanders. What we continue to see is an undermining of that role and I think that in Part 1 of the bill we see this again. We have had successive pieces of legislation that have taken away the ability of the Minister of Conservation to carry out that very very crucial role and again here in Part 1 of the bill we see that further undermining but for no gain. It is not saying that you cannot have some of the devolution that we see here from the Minister and from the department to other groups where there are shared goals where there are shared common interests and where those tensions can be managed.In that respect a lot of what we see in Part 1 and what we will see in the debate on it represents a lost opportunity. I do not think there is any question that there were enormous gains to be made here that would have benefited all parties who were in the process and that was very clear at the select committee when we heard from submitters. When we expected to see a much more polarised debate what we actually saw was a lot of people coming together wanting to talk about what they wanted to achieve in common. They wanted to highlight where those tensions did lie but they said: “These are not tensions that cannot be managed and these are not tensions that we cannot find a way through and if we cannot we will just agree to disagree.” There was a lot of goodwill from all sides of the debate and that is why I feel that this really is a lost opportunity.I am going to end my contribution there but I do come back to the amendment to clause 16 on the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper on the bill. It would be really good to have some clarification around that because that does seem like quite a wholesale shift away from what we were trying to achieve at the select committee and what the policy intentions were stated to be.Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): I just want to comment on two points that have arisen in the debate so far. The first is to just discuss this question of why the Game Animal Council Bill is being progressed at this time. At the end of the second reading Kevin Hague made reference to magic and illusions and I accosted him on the stairwell shortly thereafter and said that I thought that was a good description of his speech as well. There is no sinister reason or untoward motive for the timing of the bill’s passage being now; it is simply that certain things with regard to certain concessions have expiry dates. The council needs to be in place to give effect to either the renewal or the changes of those concessions as soon as possible. Indeed in my ideal world this bill would have been passed much earlier this year but that is another story.Hon Trevor Mallard: The member’s hardly had an ideal world this year. I share his position.Hon PETER DUNNE: It has been an interesting year and perhaps that member and I should get together to mutually commiserate at some stage. I want to come back to the questions that have been raised about clause 16. I just draw members’ attention to Supplementary Order Paper 395 and also to the changes that are being made to clause 7 because they need to be seen in tandem. What happened if I can recall the history very briefly was that at the time that the bill was being drafted we specifically excluded a number of what might be described as the private sector operators from itspurview because we did not want to infringe on property rights etc. Once the bill came back from the Local Government and Environment Committee the Government received submissions from a whole range of those groups. They came to see me. There were the tourism operators and there was a range of groups basically saying that they wanted to be brought under the purview of the legislation. We had previously excluded them. I said: “You give me your letter with your signatures to this and we will make the changes.” That is what happened.I should draw to the Committee’s attention because it has just come to my notice—some 15 minutes ago in fact—an email that I received this morning from Mr Garry Ottmann who has been listening to the debate. He has been quoted favourably by members from all sides during the course of this debate and I just want to read his comments on this issue which relates to clause 16. He said: “The removal of the word ‘recreational’ means that this bill will actually benefit all hunters in New Zealand. The council is there to serve the interests of all hunters.” That is a direct quote from Garry Ottmann the chair of the establishment committee this morning. So I say to the Committee that the concerns that have been raised about whether the removal of the reference to recreational hunters limits the scope of the bill in terms of the ability to cover their interests are in fact invalid. What we are doing is becoming much more all-encompassing and in fact the scope of the Game Animal Council is being increased significantly by the amendments which have the buy-in of all of the major players that are made on the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper.So a lot has been made of the need to get consensus of the need to get people working in the same direction and of the need to get people broadly having an agreement about the direction in which we should be travelling. All of that has been achieved—in fact it is one of the reasons why the bill has taken so long to get to this point. But it comes essentially as a package now agreed to by all of the interests in the sector and the final bit of the jigsaw that needs to be put in place is its passage because basically people cannot wait for that to happen.So I think that although I understand the concern that has been raised a lot of that is a debating point. In reality this is a broadening of the bill’s coverage. It will ensure that the concerns that a number of the members opposite have raised about just to whom the council will be talking whether it will be able to consult widely enough and whether it will be put into a narrow box are in fact being addressed. I think they are positive changes. They are certainly changes that I was working on at the time that I was interrupted in my duties and certainly ones that I would strongly support because they are in the best interests of what the Game Animal Council was set up to achieve. It is not being set up to be a lobby group. It is being set up to be an entity to manage the interests of the recreational and other hunting sectors in New Zealand to deal with a number of the critical issues that affect them both in terms of things like safety and in terms of specific issues like aerially assisted trophy hunting and access. I think that the breadth is appropriate.There is one other matter that I will comment on very briefly. Mr O’Connor raised during the second reading issues relating to 1080. He and I may have a different view about the impact of 1080 but it is not part of this bill and I would be very surprised if it was an area where the Game Animal Council would want to traverse very significantly at all. I am pretty certain that in the event that it did so then in that eventuality it would come up against some pretty stiff political opposition from the entrenched interest. I think the issue—and I say this with the greatest of respect—is a red herring in this particular debate. I am not saying that it is not significant in other contexts but in the context of this bill and this council it is not all that relevant and is therefore a red herring. I think that what is contained in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 395satisfactorily addresses a number of concerns that have been addressed. It also ensures that the council will be able to function effectively. I commend it to the House.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): That is a very interesting explanation from one of the sponsors of the Game Animal Council Bill Peter Dunne—even though the bill is not in his name—because I think that the recreational hunters in New Zealand and the Deerstalkers Association have been sold a pup with this amendment. If it is so anodyne then why was it not brought to the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider? Why is it being pushed through under urgency?Recreational hunters are being cut out of the bill through the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper 395 because it removes the word “recreational” wherever it occurs. That means that the Game Animal Council will have to liaise only with hunters and hunting organisations not recreational hunting organisations such as the Deerstalkers Association. It means that when the Minister is appointing members to the Game Animal Council he will not need to include anyone on the Game Animal Council who has knowledge or experience of recreational hunting; he has only to have somebody who has more general knowledge of hunting.The most fundamental change that this Supplementary Order Paper brings in is that herds of special interest will not have to be managed for recreational hunting purposes. They will have to be managed just for hunting. That means that the Game Animal Council potentially can manage these herds as a private recreational resource not for the benefit of Kiwi hunters but for well-heeled trophy hunters. This is another example of a Government by the 1 percent for the 1 percent. Nick Smith should be ashamed of himself given that he was on the select committee and he heard the passion of recreational hunters for their activity. This Supplementary Order Paper cuts right across that.It is interesting is it not that instead of Mr Dunne relying on advice from the Department of Conservation—an independent public sector agency—for what the clauses mean he is relying on Garry Ottmann who has got a very narrow sector interest in this and has been one of the major promoters of the bill. What we are seeing here is that the Government just as it penalised recreational fishers with its changes to the daily catch of snapper is through this legislation penalising recreational hunters by cutting their voice out by making sure that they do not have a seat around the table for the Game Animal Council.Why this is so dangerous is that the bill provides for the Game Animal Council to make recommendations to the Minister on how it is going to recover its costs to run this 11-member council. It allows the Minister then to make recommendations through an Order in Council to set fees and levies. The fees and levies for a hunter to be able to go hunting on Rakiura / Stewart Island for white-tailed deer at the moment are about $30 as the Department of Conservation covers its administration costs. If you have got the Game Animal Council with no recreational hunter representatives on it setting or recommending to the Minister the fees and levies for hunting white-tailed deer—if they become a herd of special interest—they may be in the thousands of dollars. Similarly with tahr—unaffordable for Kiwi hunters.That is why for this Supplementary Order Paper we need much more explanation. We need it from the Department of Conservation from officials not from Garry Ottmann about what this Supplementary Order Paper means. My reading of it is that by stripping out those references to “recreational” it will reduce the voice of recreational hunters. They will not have a seat at the table in the Game Animal Council.One of the other major concerns about the bill is the impact it will have on commercial deer recovery. Damien O’Connor talked about the huge benefit that commercial venison recovery had in reducing deer numbers several decades ago. Theyshoot about 18000 animals a year. They save the Department of Conservation several million dollars in pest control culling costs and yet those operators made extensive submissions to the select committee about the potential impact that this bill would have on them because of the increasing intolerance that some sectors of the hunting community have towards wild animal recovery operations and commercial recovery.At the moment those wild animal recovery operators are prohibited from being able to commercially recover deer and venison in recreational hunting areas which cover about 187000 hectares. It is likely that the Game Animal Council will not want them to operate in any areas where you have got a herd of special interest designated. That will actually reduce the ability of those commercial operators like Highland Cuisine which put in quite a detailed submission explaining how it processes wild venison for export.Highland Cuisines employs about 20 people directly and indirectly. It said in its submission: “We see the Game Animal Council with its potential costly bureaucracy as a direct threat and impact to our future business … The new Bill will be costly in real terms and become a bureaucratic and environmental burden for hunters business and tax payer alike …”. That is because Highland Cuisine has noted that since the Game Animal Council Establishment Committee had been established its suppliers who are going out in those helicopters shooting animals recovering the venison processing it and then exporting it to places like Germany were seeing an increased intolerance of recreational hunters towards them.So if the Game Animal Council given its substantial powers over these areas to be designated as herds of special interest excludes those operators that will restrict the areas where they can recover animals. And it will restrict what the National Government is on about a lot: added-value processing. These operators take something that is a problem a pest and turn it into an export that is of high value. That whole business community is being disadvantaged by this bill.The other major concern we have is just around the fact that the bill does not exclude herds of special interest from being established in our premier natural areas like our national parks. That is why there is Supplementary Order Paper 400 in my name to make sure that when the Minister decides whether or not to designate a herd of special interest it cannot be in a national park. The select committee did make some useful changes to the criteria that the Minister would use when he was considering whether to designate a herd of special interest. Clause 16 tightened them quite considerably and added criteria like the status of the land where the animals were to be found and the statutory requirements around that land but it does not include a specific exclusion on these areas being established in national parks.There have been problems with this in the past with the tahr plan. For a long time the tahr hunters argued that there should be no culling of tahr in Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park. This is despite the fact that national park legislation provides that exotic animals should be eradicated wherever feasible. But we had this hunting interest wanting to hunt tahr in the national park strongly opposing tahr culling and tahr control. It was only over very strenuous efforts that it was finally recognised that the national park legislation should prevail.Similarly if you do not have an explicit protection of national parks in the bill so that herds of special interest cannot be established in them we will see the Game Animal Council arguing against culling in national parks and potentially opposing 1080 drops. And certainly I agree with the concerns that Damien O’Connor raised about the value of 1080 as a pest-control tool. Although Mr Dunne can give the reassurances of Mr Ottmann and others that they will not be opposing 1080 that has not been the history in the past. Because of the undesirable by-kill deer hunters have opposed 1080. TheDepartment of Conservation has done a lot of work on deer repellent. We will come back to some other points later.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am very pleased to take a call on Part 1 of the Game Animal Council Bill. Can I just express my frustration that the Minister in the chair the Minister of Foreign Affairs has not seen fit to take a call. I think it is a very poor reflection on his regard for the Local Government and Environment Committee actually. This select committee which was made up of National members New Zealand First members Green Party members and Labour members worked really hard on this bill to try to get agreement. There were some areas where it was a case of “We’re clearly not going to go there—we will not get agreement on that.” but there were a huge number of issues that were in that middle space where if we just put our heads together and worked hard and diligently then we would be able to get agreement and we did.The few fundamental outstanding issues are the areas that have caused us to decide to oppose this bill. But I think that the Minister of Foreign Affairs should be taking a call and answering some of the questions that have been raised instead of sitting in his Minister’s chair smirking at the process and at members of Parliament. I do not think it is a very good attitude to have. It reflects an arrogance that I think is out of touch with the New Zealand community and the way that they want to see legislation progressed in this Parliament.The member who promoted this bill and first introduced it as part of a confidence and supply agreement with the previous Labour-led Government the Hon Peter Dunne made more sense in his contribution of 5 minutes than the Minister of Conservation has through this entire debate. But I am still very puzzled by one point that he made and it is pretty important in regard to Part 1 and Supplementary Order Paper 395 in the name of the Minister of Conservation the Hon Nick Smith. I listened carefully to what Peter Dunne said. He said that after the select committee process he was lobbied by private landowners. He said that there were lots of them who felt that they had been excluded from the view and then he mentioned tourism as an example of those lobbyists. He then said that that explains why clause 16 is being amended in the Supplementary Order Paper.Hon Peter Dunne: Federated Farmers were there.Hon RUTH DYSON: Take another call—I would like to hear the former Minister’s explanation because it in no way satisfied my concern that in Supplementary Order Paper 395 in the name of the Minister of Conservation it is being proposed that clause 16(1)(a)(ii) be amended by replacing the current wording which is: “managed for recreational hunting purposes”—that was the whole debate at the Local Government and Environment Committee; that we supported the recreational hunters—with “managed for hunting purposes”. That is not the debate that the select committee had. In fact the select committee was at great pains to ensure that what it was supporting were people who had hunting as part of their lifestyle not as their primary source of income. But this is not about slicing off a bit of public land for private profit. This is about supporting the genuine recreational activity that thousands of New Zealanders enjoy and because of that enjoyment they have a great passion for the well-being of our public land.So it was the recreational hunters that this was designed to be supportive of. That was the debate through the entire select committee and now we have ended up with a total rewrite of the purpose. For the Hon Peter Dunne to say: “I was lobbied after the select committee and the power of their logic was overwhelming so we ended up with Supplementary Order Paper 395 which fundamentally changed the purpose of the bill and the consideration of the select committee.” just does not wash actually. It does notwash. It has got no credibility and if it is not what the member said then I challenge him to clarify his position by taking another call. In my view he did not explain it and it does not justify the significant change.I go back to the comment I made earlier in regard to the head of the Deerstalkers Association Inc. Tim McCarthy. He said: “When it becomes an issue that affects the stakeholders of New Zealand’s public land and hunters are stakeholders in public land then surely the tail shouldn’t be wagging the dog as in this case.” That was his concern about where this legislation has ended up. It was quite interesting as we went through the select committee process because we heard from the people who had been on the advisory committee that was set up under the last Labour Government—again as part of the confidence and supply agreement with the Hon Peter Dunne in the same way as it has been with the current Government. They came to the Local Government and Environment Committee and said: “This is not what we envisaged. This does not work for us. It does not achieve the purpose.” Then we had the opponents of the Game Animal Council coming along and saying: “This does not work for us either.”It seemed like nobody was gaining. It seemed like this legislation had been put together in an environment of such tension between policy perspectives with no clear outcome. Nobody knew what the outcome of this was meant to be and so everybody was just putting in their tuppence ha’penny and we ended up with a mishmash of ideas and no clarity about the purpose of it. That was the result of that policy tension between the opponents and the proponents of this legislation.Members of the Local Government and Environment Committee tried to get a clear outcome. We said we wanted to ensure that the partnerships that are there for the taking and are actually obviously enabled by the current legislative regime work well. We heard example after example from around the country of where those relationships—between the Department of Conservation recreational hunters local iwi and community organisations—worked brilliantly. So clearly it is not prohibited by the current legislative regime but what we wanted to do was ensure that that strong partnership was better supported through this legislation.I think that what we have seen with the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper is a step in the opposite direction. I wish the Minister had listened more carefully or read the report from the Local Government and Environment Committee because it was an example of where members from different parties and with perhaps different perspectives could listen to each other and gain some understanding. It was the first time that I had worked alongside Andrew Williams actually from New Zealand First and I thought he made quite a significant contribution to the thinking on this legislation. We had different members on our team. Moana Mackey Shane Jones and I were often the three Labour people on it and we do not always think the same. Heaven forbid that three human beings alongside each other should always have complete agreement. We talked about that at the committee and I think that we learnt a lot from each other. I hope the rest of the select committee did as well.So to have all that good work undermined by a Minister who has not even taken a call in the Committee stage of this debate is very frustrating and I think a slap in the face to the good work that the select committee members did. Supplementary Order Paper 395 which changes the term “managed for recreational hunting purposes” to “managed for hunting purposes” is a complete undermining of the work that was done. It sends quite a different message to recreational hunters in New Zealand about what their value is and how they are considered by the parliamentary process.There are some other Supplementary Order Papers that relate to Part 1. There are three in the name of Eugenie Sage. I think that they are going to provide a good opportunity for further debate. She has outlined some of them already. They areintended to ensure that the understanding actually that the select committee had about what the Game Animal Council would be able to do is in fact reflected in the legislation. So it is not a shift in policy through the Supplementary Order Papers that the member has on Part 1; it is actually a belts and braces approach making sure that the legislation actually says what was reflected in the understanding of the select committee. So I commend consideration of those Supplementary Order Papers to you.I want to end by saying that Part 1 has quite a lot of the nuts and bolts operation of the Game Animal Council. It does not have the substantive area of debate that we will be having later on. I do hope that the Hon Peter Dunne is able to take another call before we finish the debate on Part 1 and clarify why he would be proposing that Supplementary Order Paper 395 be supported and how it came to be introduced at such a late stage. We have had the select committee process and months and months of this bill sitting on the Order Paper with no discussion with any other parties about a substantial change. Then under urgency and at the last minute we get thrown this Supplementary Order Paper and the Minister in whose name it is does not even take a call on it. I think that is a very bad process. It does not represent the good work that the parties did across the select committee.I know that Eugenie Sage has had her Supplementary Order Papers on the Table for a while. There is no point putting them on the Table when a bill is not before the House. But the Government members have known that this bill has been back on the Order Paper from the select committee for months and months and then we get treated with this very poor behaviour—a Supplementary Order Paper a fundamental change at the last minute under urgency. It is not good enough.Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): Abraham Lincoln once said of a colleague that their competence was restricted to causing crises where previously none existed. Having heard the debate this morning on the Game Animal Council Bill I think we are creating controversy where none actually exists.Let me just reiterate the points that I made in response to the Hon Ruth Dyson. When the bill was introduced it related specifically to the conservation estate. During the debate at the Local Government and Environment Committee the funding mechanism that was proposed in the bill was a levy on trophies realised from all forms of hunting—in other words all geographies. Following the report back of the bill a number of those groups that represent private landowners—and I include Federated Farmers as one example—came to the Government and said: “Because trophies taken on our land are going to be subject to the levy we think we ought to be included under the Game Animal Council rubric.” It is as simple as that. This is not about diminishing the role of recreational hunters—far from it. In fact it is including all hunting groups for the first time at the same table. If the members who are concerned look at the provisions relating to the membership of the council they will see that they are broad and will enable all interests to be represented.I just make this point as I conclude. I have listened to this debate and it has been a useful one but one of the themes that has come through repeatedly has been the risk of the Game Animal Council being at odds with other groups in the sector. The very best way to ensure that that is the case would be to limit the scope of its application. Far from doing that the amendments that are contained in the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper 395 actually bring people together for the first time.I cannot for the life of me see what the concern is about. I suspect it is an element of political point-scoring which is fair enough in this place. But frankly when you have the chair of the establishment committee say that there is not a problem with it and when you have the major groups that will be required to be part of the payment process saying they want to be included under the scope of the legislation—it is the first time Ican recall groups actually saying they want to be included in legislation; most times groups want to be excluded and left to do their own thing—you actually have the basis of a consensus moving forward. I think that the debate in Committee frankly diminishes the significance of that and puts at risk all of the good work—and I freely acknowledge that members opposite were part of this in the select committee in taking this concept and turning it into a proposition that is now workable and that is on the point of being established.There is no hidden conspiracy here. There is no hidden plan. It is a simple fact of responding to needs that have been expressed and ensuring that we get the best possible outcome in the interests of all hunting groups across this country.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent): I would like to take a brief call but in response to the Hon Peter Dunne I would say that the only thing that diminishes when bills are slipped in under the cover of darkness is democracy. I cannot comment on Supplementary Order Paper 395 because I have not had the opportunity to read it but I would concur with the Hon Ruth Dyson and members of the Local Government and Environment Committee. What I would like to do is take this brief call to explain the good points of these particular clauses and why I am supporting this bill. In doing so I would like to acknowledge the contribution made by a number of passionate hunters including Garry Ottmann and Roger Duxfield. I also acknowledge the work of Fish and Game’s Chief Executive Officer Bryce Johnson.The key point I want to make about clauses 3 to 26 is that the Game Animal Council Bill has the chance to reverse 30 years of friction and distrust between those who value game animal resource and those charged with conservation. Current legislation has fostered as has been expressed before me a win-lose environment while the new bill will create a win-win one. There has been a massive cost to our nation in wasted resources and negative environmental outcomes. The Game Animal Council will have a partnership relationship with the Department of Conservation whilst still remaining accountable to the Minister of Conservation and that is a good thing. Combining resources will greatly assist environmental outcomes. That is critical. Hunters have always been latent conservationists and I must say that when there are hints of pollution out there or pests I often get called by hunters and they are a great source of information. I do not know a hunter who is not a conservationist.But hunters have been forced previously into adversarial positions largely because their voices have been ignored. The Game Animal Council membership will have to take responsibility for constituent body issues and will have the mandate and resources to resolve internal conflict. One only needs to think of the use of helicopters for hunting industry standards hunter behaviour and so on and so forth. So having all game animal sectors around the table making consensus decisions is a huge achievement in itself. It indicates new maturity in sharing public and private resources. Having professional hunting and game estates included recognises the serious potential contribution commercial hunting can make to the economy and also conservation and will safeguard New Zealand’s international reputation in a sector that is very high up there in the tourist spend. Thank you.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I wanted to rise to speak on Part 1 of the Game Animal Council Bill. I am very pleased that the Minister in the chair at the moment is the Hon Murray McCully. I presume that he elected to do his duty during the course of this bill because of course he will have some interest in and knowledge about elephants. I look forward to him taking a call. Unfortunately elephants are not game animals and they should not be even though they are being slaughtered at a rate of about 100 a day in parts of Africa. However perhaps with that wonderful gain of an elephant in exchange for not upsetting the President of Sri Lanka the Minister might infact get us a bear from Russia in exchange for the human rights of gay and lesbian athletes as they participate in the Winter Olympics in Russia. We look forward to another unhelpful contribution.I have been on the Local Government and Environment Committee for most of the last year. I have never been privy to this debate because it all happened last year. So I have been listening very carefully. This bill has taken a long time to get to the House and here we have it under urgency. It is another one of these measures that the Government uses to appease disgruntled coalition partners. Of course we know that the Hon Peter Dunne has been disgruntled recently with the different treatment that he seems to have received compared with the Hon John Banks. That can be the only reason for this bill appearing under urgency because the work on it started in 2008. There was a regulatory impact statement in 2011. I presume that the Local Government and Environment Committee debated it in 2012 and here we are at the end of 2013 and suddenly it is urgent—suddenly it is urgent. I am afraid that the arguments that the Hon Peter Dunne put up—that certain things might expire before this date—actually do not wash because if you have the work starting in 2008 and coming to fruition only now in 2013 what exactly were the expiry dates? What exactly was going to expire and when that caused this to be brought in under urgency? I would like to know that.I have been listening very carefully to colleagues on both sides of the Committee who have been talking about the deliberations in the select committee. That select committee is chaired well by Nicky Wagner and by all accounts there was a great deal of work and effort that went into finding a suitable solution and a great deal of application by the members to the submitters and their submissions. But it seems to me that with Supplementary Order Paper 395 being introduced which deletes the reference to recreational hunters and simply talks about hunters and hunting rather than recreational hunters and hunting something is happening here that goes across what was discussed in the course of the select committee’s deliberation.Earlier in this debate the Green Party member Eugenie Sage was saying that she thought that recreational hunters were now with the introduction of this Supplementary Order Paper being sold a pup in this bill at which point the Hon Peter Dunne interjected and said “Look at clause 8—look at clause 8.” Well one can read clause 8 as I have and see that none of Eugenie Sage’s concerns is allayed by the content of clause 8. Clause 8 talks about the council membership. The Hon Peter Dunne when he got up a moment ago referred to that. Clause 8 says that the Minister has to appoint members to the council and that they have got to be people whom the Minister considers to “have collectively knowledge of and experience in relation to matters relevant to the functions of the Council.” Well that is a no-brainer. Then it goes on to say: “Knowledge and experience that are relevant include knowledge of and experience relating to (a) in the case of game animals—(i) recreational hunting: (ii) commercial hunting: (iii) deer farming: (iv) safari park operations:” and so on. But it does not say anywhere that those interests must be represented. It says that the knowledge and experience relevant to these areas should be present on the council but it does not say that recreational hunters should have a representative. I dare say that people who are commercial hunters may well have been recreational hunters at one stage in their lives and so they can claim to have knowledge about recreational hunting but there is no guarantee of representation.If the Minister of Conservation Nick Smith is so confident that his Supplementary Order Paper in deleting the word “recreational” actually does not do recreational hunters any harm then why not at the same time put in an amendment to clause 8 that says that these interests should be represented and not just have people who have knowledge of and experience that is relevant to those sectors? Why not havesomething that represents the concerns that were described so fully by Ruth Dyson as part of the fabric of the select committee’s discussion? It seems to me that the recreational hunters are not being provided for at all adequately. Firstly they are having several specific references to recreational hunters and hunting deleted from the bill and they are not having that compensated for by ensuring that representatives of recreational hunters are included amongst the membership of the Game Animal Council.In addition to that I still want to reiterate that this was not the only legislative solution available to the Government. Instead of escalating this into a monster that has its own statute why not simply amend existing legislation like the Wild Animal Control Act and ensure that there would be an advisory committee which would not have the costs and would not have the tensions that will now be entrenched because of this bill but would have ways of ensuring that the voices of hunters could be heard through the Wild Animal Control Act and the protections available there? This expensive option was not the only one available to the Government and it should have looked at others.The regulatory impact statement says that the non-regulatory options for achieving the objectives had not been explored or analysed further because the decision had been taken to proceed with the establishment of the Game Animal Council. The Department of Conservation says in the regulatory impact analysis of 2011—that is how urgent this bill is—that the Game Animal Council could be established either under section 5 of the Wild Animal Control Act or through an amendment to the Wild Animal Control Act. So why take the kind of nuclear option in making this a bill of its own? The Minister has not addressed that issue and I invite him to do so. I do not understand why the most difficult and the most expensive option has been chosen by the Government. Thank you.ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill): I see Minister McCully the Minister in the chair about to leap to his feet so I apologise for taking his call. My intention is actually to be of some assistance to the Committee in working its way through the issues there are with the Game Animal Council Bill. I think that most members of the Committee will know that I am actually a hunter. There have been some issues made out of two points which I want to address first. The first one is why we are doing this in urgency. The Hon Peter Dunne made the point that there are provisions that will expire. There are provisions that need to be put in place before next year’s commercial activity by safari parks and hunters so that issues that are actually anathema to the recreational hunter are dealt with. So there is no mischief there is nothing untoward about the reason why this bill is being deal with now. By February there need to be codes of practice in place.Let me deal with another issue that is perplexing the Committee. Why are we taking “recreational” out of the bill? In the last 12 months I have been a hunter and I can name five different hats that I have had. I have been a recreational hunter harvesting some eco-protein for the pot or the deep freeze or whatever else. I have been a trophy hunter—an unsuccessful but attempted trophy hunter. I have been a commercial hunter—I have sold product that I have harvested. I have been a pest hunter—I have dealt to wild pigs that were savaging young fawns on my deer farm and we wiped out an intrusion that happened there. And I have been a guide—people have paid money. I do that for charities. That is five different things. If you go to clause 4 “Interpretation”—Hon Ruth Dyson: And you’re an MP as well?ERIC ROY: Yes well that may amaze the member but you know I can multi-task. But if members go to clause 4 the interpretation clause there is no definition of “recreational hunter” and there is ambiguity about that. Everybody knows what a hunter is but not everybody knows what a recreational hunter is and at some point there could be some litigation about exactly what that means. So this is actually inclusive rather than selective. I want the Committee to just understand that—that thereis no mischief. This brings a level of inclusion to hunting and making sure that there are all of those representations because people often wear different hats.Can I then make some comment about clause 22 which is about the way in which fees may be extracted to pay for the Game Animal Council.Hon Ruth Dyson: What clause?ERIC ROY: Clause 22 I think. The mechanism is there. I have also had some experience in being on hunts in other countries but I have been too Presbyterian to pay. Can I just illustrate that it is in fact the habit of pretty much every country in the world to charge foreign nationals a different fee from locals. My experience particularly is in Wyoming. If you are a resident Wyoming citizen a tag for an elk is $150. If you are a non-resident but US State citizen it is $250 on top of the $150. If you are a foreign national outside the US it is $700 on top of the $150. That is one of the lower rates where it does occur. So we are not creating anything that is outside the realm of what is normal practice internationally where there is some kind of expectation that fees are paid by people who are not resident and those fees go towards the management of the environment and the various hunting species that are there. So that is an explanation of how that might work to actually fund the Game Animal Council.Can I then address the Supplementary Order Paper 395 on new clause 26A which talks about a code of practice for herding and hazing. This is one of those issues that needs to be dealt with post haste because there are a number of hunting guides that are ready to set in place contracts for next year. That is why there is some urgency about actually doing it. How did this actually happen? That is the question. Members need to understand that there is WARO—wild animal recovery operations—where significant numbers of animals are in the wrong place. The Minister of Conservation said in his second reading speech that when there are too many animals in the wrong place they need to be harvested and a wild animal recovery operation is a very effective way of controlling that. My interest is principally around Fiordland and every year 6000 deer are taken out by wild animal recovery operations in Fiordland. That is the number to keep the number to a sustainable level in Fiordland.Some of the more enterprising guides said: “Hang on there is a commercial application for hunting out of helicopters.” So they tweaked—I think that could be a word we could use—the wild animal recovery operation provisions to allow them to charge for the hunting of trophies the herding and hazing or the extension of how that actually happened. In many ways this is anathema to the recreational hunter and that needs to be dealt with and in most countries in the world there are some very strict rules about that. We in New Zealand have this very delicate relationship where we need to allow wild animal recovery operations to continue to harvest animals that are in excessive numbers in some places and yet not allow that provision for our people to conduct hunting experiences that are outside what is acceptable certainly internationally. If you go to a place like Canada you are not even allowed to hunt—not you Mr Chairman. A member is not allowed to hunt on the day that he flies in in case he sees a trophy animal on the way in or he does some detour routes on the way in looking for one. So the rules are quite specific.Hon Maryan Street: Why isn’t Lindsay allowed to hunt?ERIC ROY: Sorry has the member got a question? I am happy to answer questions. This is about putting provisions in place—and the member has read it very carefully—and I think that that Supplementary Order Paper around the codes is quite elegant. It gives an opportunity for the Game Animal Council to create a code that will set the rules around this and still allow for the sensible use of wild animal recovery operations. That is principally what that is about.So all in all I think that the Supplementary Order Papers add to the bill. I just run through the key points again. It is necessary to get this bill under way and passed through the third stage so that the time limits and the things that need to be put in place are put in place before the next commercial guiding activity starts. The removal of the word “recreational” takes the ambiguity away and the Supplementary Order Paper on clause 26 allows us to have best practice which will be accepted internationally.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): That was a very interesting explanation by Mr Roy but I am still puzzled. We can understand the code of practice around hazing but there is this fundamental change that herds of special interest are now no longer going to be established so that they are managed for recreational hunting purposes. This means that they can be managed then for trophy hunting purposes completely undercutting the previous thrust of the Game Animal Council Bill which was about promoting recreational hunting.I would just like to talk about clause 16 and the whole process of designation of herds of special interest because the Local Government and Environment Committee included some more specific criteria in there to ensure that the Minister did take a number of matters into account that were not in the original bill including the purposes of the Wild Animal Control Act. There were a number of submissions on the bill from regional councils like the Auckland Council for example. That is where again Supplementary Order Paper 395 is also of concern with the other change that it makes. The Supplementary Order Paper amends the definition of “game animal” to include chamois deer tahr and wild pigs that are kept in captivity. “Kept in captivity” is quite a loose term when you are talking about safari parks. In extensive areas in North Canterbury and Marlborough where animal numbers are allowed to increase quite significantly they are run and hunters who are paying for the privilege get a very easy opportunity to shoot an animal. So I would ask the Minister in the chair the Minister for Sport and Recreation who has not said anything during this debate whether he could explain why the definition of “game animals” has been expanded to include these animals that are run in safari parks.Potentially as I read the bill that means that herds of special interest could be established in those safari parks on private land and the problem with that is the potential implications it has for pest management. The Auckland Council was quite adamant in its submission that the bill should make it clear that the herds of special interest should be able to be established only on conservation lands and once an animal was no longer in its designated area it could be managed in accordance with other legislation i.e. the Biosecurity Act. We do not have deer everywhere in New Zealand. In Northland for example there has been a major effort by the regional council there to control deer numbers and prevent the establishment of feral deer populations. So if the bill with this Supplementary Order Paper is loosening the provisions around safari parks it means that regional councils the Animal Health Board and the TBfree New Zealand programme will have a reduced ability to control animals like feral pigs in order to prevent the spread of bovine TB and to make sure that landowners in those areas actually have proper fencing in place so that the animals do not escape. Could the Minister please explain what this whole expansion of the definition of “game animals” to include animals in captivity is all about? Why is that required when the bill has been promoted as being about improving recreational hunting in the first instance?I have put in three Supplementary Order Papers in my name that relate to clause 16. The number of matters that the Minister must have regard to has been expanded to include things like taking advice from the Ministry of Primary Industries primarily around biosecurity issues from any relevant regional council from the Conservation Authority and from any relevant conservation board and also having to look at theactual status of the conservation land. That was another important change that the select committee made to the bill—that you do not have just herds of specified interest being established but you actually have to designate the land area that they relate to. The Supplementary Order Paper seeks to address the concern that at the moment some of these introduced species are located in specific areas like the white-tailed deer population which is found only on Rakiura / Stewart Island. The Himalayan tahr population is found in the central Southern Alps between about the Rangitata River and the Landsborough River. Keeping those animals [Bell rung] confined to a particular range is really—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Does the member want to call?EUGENIE SAGE: Yes Mr Chair. Thank you Mr Chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You must ask for the call.EUGENIE SAGE: Sorry Mr Chair. May I have a call please?The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Eugenie Sage.EUGENIE SAGE: Thank you Mr Chair. Preventing the expansion in the feral range of these introduced animals is critical in managing their impacts on introduced biodiversity. My Supplementary Order Paper 399 seeks to ensure that the Minister has another matter to consider and that is that the designation as a herd of special interest will not lead to an expansion in the feral range and will not prevent its range being contracted as animal numbers are controlled. We all know that some hunters like to take animals and plant them in other areas to expand their hunting opportunities. That is highly irresponsible—particularly in relation to feral pigs because it spreads bovine tuberculosis—because it spreads the pests’ impacts by expanding their range.Supplementary Order Paper 400 which I have talked about previously is to prevent herds of special interests being established in national parks.The third Supplementary Order Paper in relation to Part 1 is Supplementary Order Paper 401 and I would encourage National members to consider this one seriously too. It makes very clear by adding an additional clause clause 16B that the Minister could withdraw the designation of a herd of special interest at any time and restrict the location and area of conservation land where that herd of special interest was managed. It also makes clear that he would consult the organisations that are already listed in the clause such as the Minister for Primary Industries the Department of Conservation regional councils the Conservation Authority and conservation boards. The reason for doing that is that it may become quite obvious that the Game Animal Council is not adequately managing the biodiversity impacts of herds of special interest that it has allowed the populations to expand to make it easier to go hunting and that that through the browsing impacts is affecting a lot of our threatened plant species and damaging habitat. The Minister has to have the power to actually be able to uplift that designation or to reduce the area that it applies to. It is a belt and braces approach as Ruth Dyson has noted but it is a sensible one to make clear that the Minister has those powers. I would encourage the Government members to consider it seriously. Thank you.Phil Twyford: Mr Chairman please may I have a call Mr Chairman.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Can I just explain why I mentioned that to the previous member—just continuing to stand after your 5 minutes is up does not mean that you will get the next call. You must call out “Mr Chairman”. That is the second time you did it. I did not pull you up the first time but just for reference in the future just ask for the call again by saying “Mr Chairman”. Phil Twyford has asked for the call and I am going to give it.PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Please Mr Chairman may I have a call? Thank you—thank you Mr Chairman. It is good that we are rewriting the Standing Orders on the hoof.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no we are not.PHIL TWYFORD: It is good to follow yet another excellent contribution by the member Eugenie Sage and actually I wanted to say also that the member for Southland Eric Roy—Eric Roy: Invercargill.PHIL TWYFORD: Invercargill I beg your pardon. He made a great contribution and it was good to have someone of his firsthand knowledge of hunting and have some real detail to put on the bone. I want to register the ongoing frustration on this side of the Chamber with the lack of any contribution from the Minister in the chair the Hon Murray McCully. I do not know how much hunting is done in East Coast Bays these days but probably more—Hon Trevor Mallard: Probably quite a few Tory members looking for the seat.PHIL TWYFORD: Well I want to come to that but I suspect more hunting is done from the comfort of big-game lodges that has been tacked on to various foreign affairs excursions and international conferences. We live in hope that Mr McCully will make a contribution and answer the many questions that have been posed in the course of this debate.It seems to me looking at the background to this Game Council Bill coming to the Committee stage that it is something of a textbook study on how not to make legislation. It is a pretty unsatisfactory process. If we put aside just for a minute the details of what the bill seeks to do it is an unsatisfactory process and I want to provide some background to why Labour is not supporting the bill at this point.When the bill was first tabled in the House and had its first reading I have to say that there were mixed views within the Labour caucus but considerable sympathy for some of the intent of this bill to provide a place for hunters to stand within the governance of our natural environment and recreational system in New Zealand and a considerable sympathy with their desire to have more of a say to be part of decision making and to protect their access to hunting places around this country. As with all these sorts of things there are always complex trade-offs to be made and I think we have reached a point where we believe this bill actually hinders rather than helps the building of constructive relationships between the hunting community and the conservation estate and that actually the risk now is that this bill will do more harm than good.I want to just touch on some of the arguments why we believe that that is the case. The first is that the council as it is set up in Part 1 of the bill is being set up as a stand-alone separate entity. There was a lot of debate I understand at the Local Government and Environment Committee that in fact it could have been set up as an advisory body. What the bill does is the opposite of creating clean lines of accountability and authority. It basically muddies cuts across and sets up competing interests in the management of the conservation estate and I think that is unfortunate. I would suggest that in time that will make it unsustainable. It sets up direct and competing interests in the management of wild animals. So that is the first thing.The second thing—just as worrying I think—is that in regard to the final determination on a proposal for conservation purposes for example the dropping of 1080 for pest eradication purposes it gives the Game Animal Council that determinative role. That is a serious issue. That is going to create strife. It will build into the system a real tension around what is already a fraught issue in terms of decision making.The third issue is about funding of the council and that is one that the select committee worked really hard on.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes72New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes48New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Mana 1.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 395 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to Part 1 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes69New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes51New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Māori Party 3; Mana 1.Amendments agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 399 in the name of Eugenie Sage to clause 16 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes48New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Mana 1.Noes71New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 400 in the name of Eugenie Sage to insert new clause 16A be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes48New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Mana 1.Noes71New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 401 in the name of Eugenie Sage to insert new clause 16B be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes48New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Mana 1.Noes71New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 1 as amended be agreed to.Ayes69New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes51New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Māori Party 3; Mana 1.Part 1 as amended agreed to.Part 2 Miscellaneous provisionsThe CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): We now move to debate on Part 2. This is clauses 27 to 36 and schedules 1 to 3.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): It is good to speak on Part 2 of the Game Animal Council Bill which deals with some of the issues that even though not as substantive as the ones we have already been debating caused the most discussion in the Local Government and Environment Committee. One issue in particular that we discussed was that of offences and penalties.We also spent a huge amount of time in the select committee talking about how the Game Animal Council would be funded. I was really fascinated by how many proposals we had about the different methods of funding. There was always some group within the hunting fraternity that said: “That is an excellent idea—but we should be excluded.” It did not matter what model we considered or what model we thought would be an appropriate and fair way of funding the Game Animal Council through some sort of levy there was always a group that explained to us—and I think that they were being perfectly honest actually—how that would impact unfairly on them. So this part has a bit about that a bit about the offences provisions and a bit about the further definition of the “herds of special interest” and what animals may be hunted within those.I was very interested to hear an earlier contribution about how much money was going to be spent on operating the Game Animal Council. The estimates that the Local Government and Environment Committee got were $100000 for the first year of set-up and from then on after the first 12 months it would be $50000 per annum. At the same time we have had the chief executive of the Department of Conservation on the radio this morning onRural Newssaying that his department was not going anywhere near the advocacy required for the Ruataniwha dam proposal which opponents say will turn the Tukituki River toxic.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Hon RUTH DYSON: The Department of Conservation said it would cost it $250000 to prepare and defend a robust case about the nitrate management on the Tukituki River. That is just 3 years of the funding required as outlined in Part 2 of this bill for the Game Animal Council because if it is $100000 for the first year and $50000 after it then in 3 years you have pretty well chewed through the same amount of money that the department was not prepared to use to defend—and perhaps even atsome future date enhance—the quality of a river and a river that actually has significant conservation values—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! This is outside the scope.Hon RUTH DYSON: Just going back to the more specific areas in this part Eric Roy in his contribution talked about the regimes that are in place in other countries. I will be interested in his contribution on this because he is right in saying that other countries have a much stricter regime around what can be hunted what can be taken from the country and what can be used for what purpose within the country. They usually have a regime where people from overseas are charged a much higher rate to hunt on public land than they would be if they were a resident of that country. Mr Roy used the examples of Canada and a state in America to emphasise his points. We do not go into that level of detail in this legislation.The select committee did not talk a lot about whether we should have a different regime for overseas nationals. I have not checked the Table recently but there may well be a Supplementary Order Paper proposing that sort of regime. It is a little more detail than the committee was able to get agreement on though. In clause 28 we talk about a person “who hunts or kills any game animal that is part of a herd of special interest”. That is a herd that has been designated as a herd of special interest. If they hunt or kill an animal without an authorisation without a licence or a permit and without complying with the terms of that authorisation however it is given whether through a licence or a permit they then are liable to be convicted of an offence that is then liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $2500.I would be very interested to hear from some of the hunters in our Parliament as to whether they consider that to be a high enough penalty to deter people from committing such an offence because that is another area that the committee felt quite weak on in terms of knowing exactly what level of fine you would need to impose to deter anyone from committing that act. A person might say: “Well I’m interested in hunting. I can’t be bothered getting a licence or a permit or if I applied for one I might not qualify. There would be reasons that I would be excluded from being granted a licence or a permit to hunt.” So what would be the level of fee that would make them say: “Oh if I got caught I’d be fined that amount of money.”? That is exactly what clause 28 in Part 2 is aiming to do. It is aiming to set a fine at a level that would stop people from hunting or killing animals within a herd of special interest without a licence or a permit.The next couple of clauses in Part 2 sort of flow on from that. We have got clause 29 “Capturing conveying or possessing game animal that that is part of a herd of special interest”. There are obviously a limited number of ways that people could be doing that but this is different from hunting or killing. Again we set the fee at what we considered an appropriate level—$5000. So if a person captures conveys or possesses a game animal that is part of a herd of special interest without a permit or a licence they get a fine of $5000.Next in that series of fines relating to animals that are part of a herd of special interest is the provision in clause 30 “Restrictions on liberation of game animal that is part of herd of special interest”. This attracts the biggest fine in Part 2 and that is a fine of $50000. So Parliament is saying that that offence—the offence of liberating a game animal that is part of a herd of special interest or allowing any game animal that belongs to a herd of special interest to escape—is considered to be the most offensive of the three offences much more so than capturing conveying or possessing a game animal and even more so than hunting or killing an animal in a herd of special interest.I think that sometimes we go over these fines and penalties provisions quite lightly. But if you take a step back and consider why we have them the whole point is to create an environment where the weight of the penalty is such that it would stop somebodyfrom moving to commit the offence. It is not just an after-the-event consideration—that we should punish somebody because they have committed an offence. There is also the deterrent factor in the penalty regime and we certainly hope we have got it right.There are a few other provisions in Part 2 but those are the four main ones that I wanted to concentrate on. I do think it is an important regime for us to debate and I hope that it carries on for another little while.EUGENIE SAGE (Green): The concerns we have over Part 2 of the Game Animal Council Bill are around this whole notion of offences. I guess it reflects the whole thrust of the bill which is turning a problem animal into a valued resource and therefore undermining the control that is needed of these animals. So making it an offence to hunt or kill an animal in a herd of special interest as clause 28 does potentially means that if you have a Kiwi hunter who strays into an area that has been designated for a herd of special interest and he or she has not complied with all the provisions and has not got the necessary authorisations that the earlier part of the bill sets up he or she could be charged with an offence. It also means that the Department of Conservation the staff of which are already pressed in terms of managing the one-third of the land area of New Zealand with a budget equivalent to that of Hamilton City Council’s is going to be responsible for some of the enforcement of these provisions. So that is taking those staff away from the much more important duties of managing biodiversity values and potentially having to be responsible for enforcing these penalty provisions.We have seen a similar conflict arise with the Wild Animal Control Act. The best deer the best chamois and the best tahr are dead ones. So anybody who goes out hunting these animals and killing them is doing good for our indigenous species which are found only here in New Zealand. But by this bill making it an offence—Hon Shane Jones: The best one’s in the hangi.EUGENIE SAGE: —means that—well maybe the best one is in a hangi too. It is also dead if it is in a hangi. But making it an offence to kill them is potentially undermining the need to go out and kill them and it is going to set up the tension that several speakers from the Opposition have talked about earlier between the Game Animal Council wanting to protect these herds of special interest as a resource for them to enjoy and exploit and actually needing to reduce their numbers to protect biodiversity. That tension is really apparent in clause 28 where it is an offence to kill any animal in such a herd.So Mr Chair—I was just surprised to see a member of the Opposition in the Chair. That was a refreshing change. This again is an example of how the bill is not needed how it will set up internal conflicts in the management of conservation land and how it twists the Department of Conservation’s primary purpose of managing conservation land to preserve and protect our natural resources and our indigenous species. Now it will be charged instead with potentially protecting those exotic animals those browsers which have a heavy impact on a lot of our threatened plant species and with making it an offence if anyone kills them. So that again is our concern about the bill. It is setting up a very bureaucratic regime because of the need to get a permit issued by the Game Animal Council and the need to pay the fees to kill these species which people can now go out and freely hunt in return for an easy-to-get permit from the Department of Conservation. If you are going to capture convey or possess a game animal that is part of a herd of special interest without having the Minister of Conservation’s permission you are also committing an offence under clause 29.We have already seen some of the parties that were promoting the establishment of the Game Animal Council such as the Game and Forest Foundation. It was issuing press statements in 2010 that were criticising Silver Fern Farms inHokitika on the West Coast for killing chamois recovering those carcasses processing them and thenexporting them. So again these offence provisions will set up a real tension potentially between the wild animal recovery operators and those whom the Game Animal Council protects and whose interests the council is being established to promote. So these offence provisions cut right across the need to reduce these exotic animals to low numbers in order to protect indigenous biodiversity. As Ruth Dyson commented the Local Government and Environment Committee spent a lot of time dealing with how the Game Animal Council would be funded. This part of the bill also deals with the export of game trophies which is intended to be one of the funding mechanisms and sets up offences there.Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Can I just clarify something for a moment? Are we dealing with Part 2 and schedules 1 and 2 or—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Yes and 3—schedules 1 to 3.Hon MARYAN STREET: Schedules 1 2 and 3—thank you very much indeed. That may make a difference to what I say. In Part 2 of this bill the Game Animal Council Bill subpart 1 deals with offences and penalties and subpart 2 deals with other matters. Before I begin on this let me say that in due course I also want to refer to the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 395 which amends clause 33. However I just want to recognise the contribution from Eric Roy earlier which I found very helpful particularly with some of those clauses in Part 1 that had raised questions. So I thank the member for that but it did leave me with some more questions which are now exacerbated by Part 2 because this is the bit that deals with in the first instance offences and penalties.It seems to me that if some of the difficulties between hunting organisations and the Department of Conservation and so on had been resolved through a different measure—that is not by a statute setting up a Game Animal Council on its own—then some of the provisions in Part 2 would not be necessary either. Certainly offences need to be established and that could easily have been done I think under the Wild Animal Control Act to which I have referred previously and it could have been done in a way that was cooperative and came out of an advisory committee established under that legislation rather than under this legislation.So although I recognise that offences and penalties are necessary the thing I am questioning in this part is that this entire process and this special bureaucracy that is being established to implement it would not have been necessary in this form if the Minister of Conservation had chosen to take more notice of the submissions that were put in by submitters to the Local Government and Environment Committee or had chosen to take more notice of the regulatory impact statement written by the Department of Conservation.This really goes back to stage 1 for me because if these penalties and provisions here and the definitions of a “herd of special interest” and so on are all essential then it might have been better to have it come as recommendations from an advisory council that the Minister could not disestablish under the Wild Animal Control Act.I want to go to another matter and it is in schedule 1 which talks about enforcement officers and honorary enforcement officers. We see in clause 1 that enforcement officers are clearly appointed “within the meaning of section 2(1) of the Conservation Act 1987 as an enforcement officer for the purposes of this Act.” So there will be warranted officers appointed under the Conservation Act to carry out the enforcement functions required under this piece of legislation. Schedule 1 then talks about the appointment and removal of honorary enforcement officers. An honorary enforcement officer here in schedule 1(2) is somebody “who may be appointed for a term not exceeding 3 years but may be reappointed: (b) may be removed from office by the Director-General bywritten notice if the Director-General considers for any reason that the person is no longer a fit and proper person”—[Bell rung] I just wish to conclude this point fairly quickly.Schedule 1(3) states: “The Minister may reimburse an honorary enforcement officer for reasonable expenses”. This goes back to a theme that is being pursued by this Government when it comes to the care and protection of our environment. The Minister of Conservation has stripped back the Department of Conservation to such an extent that now it cannot even carry out its legal functions. So it cannot preserve protect and advocate for the environment given the stripping-back of the staff of the Department of Conservation.The Minister’s answer to that has been partnership. It has been words around partnering with volunteers and charitable organisations in order to ensure that our environment can be adequately protected. This is the same Minister who wants to get housing on the cheap through giving minuscule amounts of money to third-sector organisations in housing provision. He wants to contract out parts of the functions of the Department of Conservation because it can no longer fulfil those functions because of retrenchments and staffing. He wants to contract out those functions to volunteers and voluntary and charitable organisations and so get environmental protection on the cheap.This is now environmental—or game animal—enforcement on the cheap with enforcement officers. So I presume that the Minister has in mind that he will give a cap to the people who volunteer to take up this position. They can then with their own resources with this hat on that says “honorary enforcement officer” stroll around our environment ensuring that the provisions of this bill and particularly the requirements of Part 2 are being honoured and are being implemented.I worry that this is the same model that is being used in other areas where the Government wants to withdraw money that it provides for legitimate and legislated functions and pass that over to charitable organisations individuals and the private sector in some cases in order to carry out what should be Government functions. The Minister should resource this properly if he wants the functions to be carried out adequately. Thank you.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): I want to begin by focusing on schedule 1 which is around the role of enforcement officers and honorary enforcement officers under this new Game Animal Council Bill. Any piece of legislation is only as good as the provisions under which it can be enforced. So the enforcement and penalty provisions that are found in Part 2 of this bill will have meaning or effect only if those people who seek to break the law feel that there is an adequate chance that they will be caught in breaching the provisions of this bill.One of the concerns that we had at the Local Government and Environment Committee was the lack of detail around how many of these enforcement officers we would have. We know that every constable in the New Zealand Police will be considered an enforcement officer but we also know that police have a very large job to do outside of the Game Animal Council Bill. The reality is that I do not believe that our police force is going to be patrolling Department of Conservation land as a priority to catch people carrying out illegal hunting or illegal hunting of herds of national significance unless they have been tipped off that there is something very bad going on. Then the question comes down to who is going to do that day-to-day monitoring which realistically is not going to be carried out by the New Zealand Police.So we have a role in schedule 1 called “enforcement officers” and then we have what are called “honorary enforcement officers”. At the select committee our concern was very much that this not become the “Dad’s army” of the conservation estate andthat these be very real positions which bring in people who have the right qualifications experience and knowledge particularly in the areas of health and safety. Hunting is obviously a very dangerous activity and the last thing we would want to do is put people who are inadequately trained in harm’s way by sending them out into a part of the conservation estate where hunting is being carried out. It comes down really to schedule 1 clause 2(1) which says: “The Director-General may appoint any fit and proper person who is suitably qualified and trained …” but nowhere in the legislation do we find out what “suitably qualified and trained” is deemed to be. There are no thresholds set. There are no basic competencies put in place. So I would like to think that the director-general is going to do the right thing but as we can see public servants can be made to do things that they do not particularly want to do and that are against the interests of the Department of Conservation and what we would normally expect from the Department of Conservation.Phil Twyford: It’s been going on for 5 years.MOANA MACKEY: That is right—it has been going on for 5 years. If we were then to find out that the Government was under some pressure because in fact—I mean these are honorary positions. The Minister has the ability to reimburse for realistic costs but these people are not getting paid so I question really how realistic it is to think that we are going to get a big enough force of these people to be able to monitor these activities given that the people who are paid to do it—the paid enforcement officers—are the police force and this is not going to be a priority for them. There is a risk that that definition of “suitably qualified and trained” might be too watered down and be without adequate belt and braces in the schedule and in this part of the bill to say what the core competencies are. If the Government feels under pressure that it does not have enough people out there it might start to actually water down that definition of “suitably qualified and trained”. Then we may end up with people who are lesser qualified and trained carrying out this very important role.I want to just briefly go through some of the powers that these honorary enforcement officers will have. They basically will have all the powers that a police officer would have in the Department of Conservation: the power to intervene the power to prevent or stop offending the power to require personal details or the production of lawful authority and the power to search. The honorary enforcement officers “may without a warrant search any building vehicle vessel aircraft animal or other thing on public conservation land if—[they believe it] is in the possession or under the control of …” someone who they think is committing an offence under this legislation. That is the power to stop and the powers of seizure. Those are quite significant powers to be handing over to non-professional people and all we were asking really was that we have a little bit more detail in this part of the bill about the basic core competencies and requirements of an honorary enforcement officer given that they are basically going to have nearly all the powers of a police officer when they are acting on Department of Conservation land.PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I moveThat the question be now put.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): So coming back to my point after that brief and very good speech from Mr Goldsmith—Hon Ruth Dyson: What a contribution.Paul Goldsmith: Better than yours.MOANA MACKEY: Yeah OK. It is about this definition of “suitably qualified and trained” and it is the Director-General of Conservation who will be appointing these people and making these judgments but as we know directors-general in the Department of Conservation can be leaned on to do things that they are not particularlycomfortable with. We know that that is the case particularly in terms of the Ruataniwha Dam scheme which is currently before a board of inquiry—Hon Judith Collins: Don’t know that at all.MOANA MACKEY: I am sorry Mrs Collins but where there is smoke there is fire. I do not think there is anyone who is under any illusion that the Department of Conservation was not weighed on very heavily—weighed on very very heavily—to pull its submission on the Ruataniwha Dam scheme. That is quite clear. The Minister leaned on the Department of Conservation and this happens from time to time. So that is why we are asking in this piece of legislation that where we have Ministers in the National Government who are prepared to lean on their directors-general and their public servants to get them to do things that they do not want to do it is important in legislation like this that when we are giving people the power of a police officer—Hon Ruth Dyson: The staff member resigned.MOANA MACKEY: That is right. A staff member actually did resign over what happened in the Department of Conservation with Ruataniwha so it does happen. It has happened; it is happening. That is why when we are giving these honorary enforcement officers basically the role of a police officer in the conservation estate and it is the director-general who is determining who is “suitably qualified and trained” we should have a little bit more in the legislation to make it clear. And when we cannot find enough of these people—because they are not paid positions; they are voluntary positions—and when suddenly there are not the numbers that were promised in the conservation estate it is important that the Minister does not then lean on the director-general to say: “Well we just need to water down those kinds of standards you’ve put in place for what these people”—Hon Shane Jones: Honorary politician.MOANA MACKEY: Well it would be good to have some basic core competencies around that as well. So when you look at the extensive powers—I mean we are very disappointed that we were not able to get that under schedule 1 of this bill.One of the good things in Part 2 of the bill is clause 35 “Review of operation of Act” which means that in 3 years’ time when we are the Government we will get to see whether or not this legislation has actually met its intentions where the gaps are and we will pledge to carry out a proper review of the Act. We believe that this was a lost opportunity and that there were real synergies and common goals that could have been built on between recreational hunters or all hunters now. This bill was about just recreational hunters; it is now about all hunters which changes the flavour significantly. We will see how the Act has operated in practice and whether the many many concerns that officials right across the board from Treasury and the Department of Conservation raised during the development of this policy and the select committee process have been realised and if they have been realised we will see what we can then do about it. We do pledge to carry out a very thorough and transparent review of this Act in 3 years’ time.It would actually be good to have an element of independence perhaps in that review. The review of the operation of the Act as it is currently in the bill is that the Minister will do that and as we know this is a Government that is not afraid to put out reviews that do not reflect reality but reflect what it wants reality to be. So it is a shame that there is not a little bit more independence in clause 35 in relation to the review of the operation of the Act just to give the public confidence that this is not the Government finding what it wants to find or trying to brush away any criticisms or concerns that claims it made about the way that the Act would operate have not actually come to pass. I think in terms of the very significant change that we made in Part 1 of the bill which was to basically remove the word “recreational” from the entire bill and now make this bill apply to all hunters. We are very concerned about that because wethink it actually shuts the recreational guys out. We wanted to make it very clear that even though these are small voluntary organisations—they are recreational; they are not professional—these are the people whom we really want to be involved in this process. We want them to be part of the engagement the Department of Conservation has and now there is no requirement to do that because there is no mention of the word “recreational”. It is very telling that the change the Government made which we will be reviewing under clause 35 in Part 2 of this bill never came to the select committee. At the select committee this was never raised with us as problem. Actually this is Minister Bridges’ modus operandi so it is quite fortuitous that he is in the chair at the moment. It never came to the select committee. It was dropped—MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I moveThat the question be now put.Motion agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 395 in the name of the Hon Dr Nick Smith to Part 2 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes69New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes51New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Māori Party 3; Mana 1.Amendments agreed to.The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 402 in the name of Eugenie Sage to clause 28 be agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the amendment be agreed to.Ayes48New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Mana 1.Noes71New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Amendment not agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat Part 2 as amended be agreed to.Ayes69New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes51New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Māori Party 3; Mana 1.Part 2 as amended agreed to.Schedule 1agreed to.Schedule 2agreed to.Schedule 3agreed to.Clause 1A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 1 be agreed to.Ayes69New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes51New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Māori Party 3; Mana 1.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2A party vote was called for on the questionThat clause 2 be agreed to.Ayes69New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1; Independent: Horan.Noes51New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; Māori Party 3; Mana 1.Clause 2 agreed to.Bill reported with amendment.Report adopted.Third ReadingHon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice)on behalf of theMinister of Conservation: I moveThat the Game Animal Council Bill be now read a third time. This bill establishes an independent Game Animal Council to improve the management of wild game hunting in New Zealand. Hunting is a traditional free Kiwi pastime. The Government wants the thousands of New Zealanders who hunt continuing to enjoy and benefit from hunting while also contributing to the responsible management of wild animals to protect conservation and other values.The Game Animal Council Bill establishes an independent statutory body to give greater representation to the interests of recreational hunters. The Game Animal Council aims to better manage recreational and commercial hunting activities for deer tahr chamois and wild pigs. Key functions of the council include advising and making recommendations to the Minister of Conservation on hunting issues providing information and education to the sector promoting safety initiatives conducting game-animal research and undertaking management functions for designated herds of special interest. An independent whole-of-sector Game Animal Council will get hunters working together to improve cooperation within the sector and help resolve conflicts.The council’s first task will be developing an industry-led code of practice for controversial aerially assisted trophy hunting methods such as shooting from a helicopter and herding and hazing. Once the code of practice is approved—expected to be by the end of next year—the Minister of Conservation will be able to make it a mandatory condition of aerially assisted trophy hunting concessions from the Department of Conservation by regulation. In the interim the Minister will be considering the inclusion of conditions requiring compliance with the existing voluntary code which limits shooting from the air and the practices of herding and hazing in relevant concessions.The establishment of the Game Animal Council and regulations around the practice of aerially assisted trophy hunting are a core part of National’s confidence and supply agreement with United Future. We would like to thank United Future leader Peter Dunne for his passion and determination in getting the Game Animal Council established and ensuring herd-and-chase style heli-hunting becomes a thing of the past. We would also like to thank the Local Government and Environment Committee for its work on this bill. Once this bill is passed the Minister of Conservation intends to move rapidly to establish the Game Animal Council so that it can get on with its important work. We all look forward to seeing its code of practice for aerially assisted trophy hunting. I commend this bill to the House.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Mr Assistant Speaker thanks for giving me the call in the third reading of the Game Animal Council Bill. Originally when this bill was introduced Labour was very familiar with its history. As part of the confidence and supply agreement with United Future in the previous Government we established an advisory group that travelled the country and did a very good job actually on getting the various views on the subject that is now the point of this legislation. Margaret Austin was the leader of that process and I want to commend her for her passion and integrity throughout that process. I also acknowledge the 4000 or so submitters who contributed to the early thinking along that path.There are of course extreme views on either side. There are some who would say there should be no hunting at all in New Zealand and some who would say there should not be a Department of Conservation. Those are not the views that the Local Government and Environment Committee was involved in hearing from and considering. We heard from a very large number of well-respected New Zealanders who had a contribution to make that was worthwhile. I really enjoyed that part of the process. Sometimes at select committees you get very few submitters or you might get submitters who are just very narrow in their point of view and want to give only their perspective and do not consider anyone else but that was not the case for all but a few of the submitters whom we heard.Most of them were people who had a real passion for New Zealand and loved the outdoor life. For many of them it was the first time they had ever made a submission to a parliamentary committee. They were much more comfortable with their tramping boots their shorts and their Swanndri out with a pack on their back than in the confines of a select committee room in front of a bunch of members of Parliament. But they were passionate about what they see as their patch their part of the world the public land of New Zealand and their opportunity to hunt in a recreational capacity.There was a lot of tension between the recreational hunters and the commercial hunters. I can remember one submitter who came and talked to us and told of how he had endured hours and hours and hours of climbing up very steep terrain—I do not recall exactly where it was; it may have been in Taranaki—to try to get a deer. He had got nearly to the top nearly to the point where he would be able to shoot this deer and a helicopter came over and just whooshed in and scared the deer away and then they went off and shot some deer from the helicopter. He was pretty angry about that. He saw heli-hunting as a really bad practice and very intrusive on what he saw as a core part of his well-being of his lifestyle as a New Zealander.So not only do we have the physical benefits of hunting—you know people get out in the fresh air and they do a lot of hard work to get to the areas where they go hunting—they obviously get food for their family and very importantly as well they reduce the pests that we have got on our land. We have got a lot of work to do in that space. We have far too many pests that destroy the very environment that we all love so much.So the select committee process itself was a really good one. The committee worked I think across all parties in a very constructive way. We had a bit of a shortened process. We wanted a little bit longer to consider the bill and I think we would have got a lot more agreement had we been given the little extension that we asked for. But no the bill was closed down. It got sent back to the House and here it has sat for months on the Order Paper—months.Darien Fenton: That’s disgraceful.Hon RUTH DYSON: It is very odd. It was very frustrating for the committee. We said: “We think we can get this better. We think we can get this right. We think we can get agreement if we have a little bit longer.” No we were denied that opportunity—“Get that bill back to the House.” Then the bill sat on the Order Paper for months and months and months and here we are on a Wednesday morning under urgency debating legislation that could have been brought to this House and dealt with in a proper manner. I think the process is offensive to good parliamentary process and I am surprised that so many of the National Party members now just take it for granted that we will do things in a bad form in a bad way. Well what you get when you follow bad process is actually bad legislation. That is something that none of us would want. Even if we do not agree with legislation we would want it to be robust.Then of course we have had the Minister of Conservation’s Supplementary Order Paper 395. It was not discussed with any political parties before the debate started. It was not signalled during the months that we have had this bill on the Order Paper and not progressing through Parliament. It was just dropped on the Committee at the last minute. It was sort of “I’ve got the numbers. Who cares?”. Well actually a lot of people do. A lot of people care about good process and about things being debated and considered properly because in the end that is how you get high-quality legislation.I think it is above all a wasted opportunity. It was an opportunity to get the various perspectives around this issue together and to work through their differences until you got agreement. I think that was absolutely possible. When we first debated this bill Labour said we would support its referral to a select committee but we did express our serious concerns.We expressed concerns about the actual structure of the Game Animal Council which is a separate entity rather than a structure such as a ministerial advisory committee or any such comparable structure. That could have been set up under the Wild Animal Control Act. We did not need a separate piece of legislation. We did not need the type of consideration that this bill has gone through. Not only did we think that that was an unnecessary structure but also it was against the specific advice of both Treasury and the Department of Conservation. They said that setting up the Game Animal Council as a separate entity would set up direct and competing interests in the management of wild animals. They thought that it would be the highest cost in terms of regulatory time and in terms of resources.So here we have got an organisation that creates division that creates confusion and that costs heaps of money. I cannot see who is winning out of this so far. It does not sound like this is a win-win situation when of course we could have had a win-win situation. The opportunity was there for us to take and it was thrown away by the Government.I want to put on record not just our appreciation of the submitters but also the respect and value that Labour places on recreational hunting in New Zealand. It is a core part of so many people’s lives and it makes a huge contribution in terms of controlling animal numbers and protecting our biodiversity. We heard from many recreational hunters during the select committee process about their frustration with the Department of Conservation and how they were not able to work together. There was always tension;they were always arguing. We heard from others—probably about similar numbers actually—about the strong good and healthy relationship that they had with the Department of Conservation in their areas. We heard the same from iwi. They said that in some parts of the country it worked like magic and in others it just was not working at all.I wish we had been able to pick up the threads of what works in some areas and then develop a way of transposing that across the country so that every area could operate benefiting from the valuable staff and resources of the Department of Conservation and from recreational hunters local iwi community groups—the list goes on and on and on. Why does it work in some parts of the country and not in others? We never really developed the answer to that question but this bill is not the answer. The establishment of the Game Animal Council is not going to be the answer at all. I think that it will cause further division and tension and it will not let us pick up the opportunity that we had of learning what works and replicating it.We did have a lot of discussion about the final determination of a proposal for conservation purposes such as the dropping of 1080. My colleague Damien O’Connor has already referred to that and put a pretty staunch stake in the ground in terms of his support for the use of 1080. We have had the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment saying that our forests will be silent unless we take a massive step up in terms of pest eradication and 1080 is currently one of the most effective means of doing that.The final point I want to mention is in regard to the funding of the council. That has been a very difficult issue and it is one on which all members of the committee worked hard. The purpose of this legislation will not be achieved by what we have ended up with today despite the best efforts of the select committee. The bill creates a tension between the Game Animal Council and the Department of Conservation—the very thing it sought to remove. That is in no one’s interest. When this bill is reviewed in 3 years I hope that we can have an opportunity to improve it and really reshape it to achieve the purpose that was intended.NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central): Well we have heard a lot of debate about the Game Animal Council Bill in the House today but I remain convinced of the positive outcomes of this bill—the positive outcomes for the hunting community and the positive outcomes for the conservation estate. In fact it has confirmed my belief that hunting and conservation can and must go hand in hand. There is plenty of evidence to support the belief that the majority of those attracted to our great outdoors as recreationalists—in this case hunters—learn to love our special places and become entrenched conservationists.This bill is a significant achievement for hunters. It gives them much more say in their sport. But it is also designed to improve the outcomes for and protection of the conservation estate because it provides for better management of herds of special significance in specified areas. The Game Animal Council is a framework for collaborative intelligent management of hunting and game animals. Those animals are tahr chamois deer and wild pigs. This is in really stark contrast to the rather haphazard divided and often confrontational management or lack of management that is in place currently.The Local Government and Environment Committee spent many hours investigating and discussing this bill. There has been huge interest in the topic and active discussion since back in 2005. We heard from a significant number of submitters.Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.