Game Animal Council Bill

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 technical amendment 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—$100,000 in the first year and then $50,000 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 required legislation 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.

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.

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 its purview 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 395 satisfactorily 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.

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. They shoot about 18,000 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 187,000 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. The Department of Conservation has done a lot of work on deer repellent. We will come back to some other points later.

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.

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 not wash. 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 are intended 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.

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 I can 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.

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.

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, in fact, 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 have something 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.

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?

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 there is 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?

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 6,000 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?

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.

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 the actual 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?

Yes, Mr Chair. Thank you, Mr Chair.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You must ask for the call.

Sorry, Mr Chair. May I have a call, please?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I move, That the question be now put.