Game Animal Council Bill

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 they want 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.

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.

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 ensuring that 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.

I call the honourable member Jacqueline Dean.

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 4,000 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.

I call the Hon Damien O’Connor.

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 have protection 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.

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!

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 necessary, extermination. 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.

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 to hunters. 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.

I want to advise the House that this is a split call.

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!

Sorry.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I was actually indicating that it was inappropriate to speak to the gallery.

Yes, that is what I thought. How much more—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member’s time is nearly up.

I will speak further about this in the Committee stage. I cannot support this bill.

This is a split call.

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.

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?

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.