Rich Katherine: Veterinarians Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Rich Katherine: Veterinarians Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:888] 
KATHERINE RICH (National) 
: 
 I am very glad to follow my fellow colleague’s contribution and I think that if anybody needs any evidence about how passionate the National Party team is about agricultural issues and issues relating to veterinarians they need only source the  
Hansard 
 of my colleague Phil Heatley who filled in a full 10 minutes on Part 1 of this bill. 
I did not have the luxury of being on the Primary Production Committee when this bill was reviewed so I apologise because some of the questions that I have about this bill might be rather simple compared with those of some of my more learned colleagues who have spoken previously. One of my questions is a simple question for the Minister: why does this bill repeal the Veterinarians Act 1994? My reading of the bill leads me to conclude that many of the changes we are talking about today could have been dealt with by way of amendment to the 1994 Act as opposed to repealing that Act and rewriting the whole legislation. 
My second concern relates to the amount of redrafting that we see just in Part 1. It seems that the first draft was totally inadequate and I am sure the Primary Production Committee worked very hard to improve the bill because we need only look at Part 1 to see that basically it has been rewritten in its entirety. When huge chunks have been struck out and new clauses have been put into the bill it makes me wonder whether the work was done in the first instance to draft this bill properly prior to its going to the Primary Production Committee. It is clear from some of the changes that have been made that Part 1 was totally inadequate because it has been rewritten almost in its entirety. 
My next question relates to the purpose of the bill which is written down as being to protect the public interest by aiming to ensure that veterinarians are competent to practise. I understand that and I understand that we need to have regulation for a wide range of professions in this country but I ask what mischief was this bill trying to solve. I have been in Parliament since 1999 and I have to say that I have not had one complaint from a constituent about a veterinarian. It is clear to me that there has not really been a groundswell of concern about the sector albeit it is a very important one. Veterinarians play a role almost like a rural general practitioner in many of our communities in the South Island but I have not seen any huge concerns raised about the sector. So I go back to my initial point of asking why we could not have dealt with some of these changes just by way of amendment as opposed to rewriting the entire bill. 
Although there is not a huge concern about Kiwi vets who have been trained in New Zealand universities which are easy for us to oversee to ensure that vets reach a certain standard I wonder whether these changes are basically designed to ensure that we have greater consistency and oversight of some overseas vets who come into the country—of which there are very many. I wonder whether this bill is designed just to try to incorporate some of the concerns that people have had about people coming from overseas who may not have qualifications that are easily likened to New Zealand qualifications. Perhaps that is the case and I would be interested in the Minister’s view on that. 
I come back to the main point that I suppose most members of the Committee agree on which is that most professions need some kind of overarching legislation that allows them to self-regulate as much as possible to be able to deal with complaints and issues of registration.