Animal Welfare Amendment Bill

It is a pleasure to be able to speak on this very important Animal Welfare Amendment Bill up in front of the Chamber this afternoon. I want to talk about some of the specific parts of this bill, and also make a couple of introductory comments. The first one is that animal welfare really matters to New Zealanders. About two-thirds of New Zealand households own a pet—and some of them have more than one pet—so it is hugely important that we get this bill right, and it is my belief that, broadly, we have got this bill right. The other important thing about animal welfare is that we have a multi-billion dollar industry—in terms of the primary production part of our economy—that relies very heavily on animal welfare. A lot of our exports depend on animal production. And so this bill goes a long way to line up both of those important parts of animal welfare in New Zealand, both for those members of society who treasure their pets and for those whose income and GDP rely heavily on animal production and, importantly, on those very important export markets.

The other important thing regarding this Animal Welfare Amendment Bill is that I want to acknowledge all of the Primary Production Committee members, who got it into very good shape. I want to come to one particular member this afternoon, and that is Mojo Mathers from the Green Party. She has put a lot of effort into it, with her team, focusing on some of the important issues for this amendment bill.

Mojo Mathers has a variety of Supplementary Order Papers on the Table this afternoon. I want to address, in particular, Supplementary Order Paper 44, which was introduced by Ms Mathers. This is because of concerns that the Government has about Supplementary Order Paper 44 being too broad and potentially having unintended consequences in the way it was drafted. I thank Ms Mathers for bringing this particular issue to the Government’s attention. As a result of that, sitting on the Table is Supplementary Order Paper 69 in my name. We believe that this amendment still captures the essence of what Mojo Mathers was trying to achieve with her Supplementary Order Paper 44. I had a very good chat with Mojo Mathers this morning and explained the Government’s decision for introducing a Government Supplementary Order Paper, and I know that she is broadly supportive of the introduction of my Supplementary Order Paper.

It is a useful point to draw to the Committee’s attention—in terms of focusing on that Supplementary Order Paper—that there never has been any animal testing of cosmetics or finished ingredients in New Zealand. But this amendment sends a very important message that New Zealanders care about their animals, that testing of this nature is unacceptable, and that it will never happen if this Supplementary Order Paper passes this afternoon. It is also important to note that we have a very strong framework and processes in place for any animal testing done in New Zealand. Any testing for products like medicines has to be approved by an independent ethics committee and has to prove that the benefits outweigh any harm caused.

While I am on my feet, I also want to address Supplementary Order Paper 46, which is from Mojo Mathers. It is the Government’s view that we will be supporting and adopting this Supplementary Order Paper. The member has rightly pointed out changes made at the select committee to transitional provisions in the bill by removing the words “on a particular sector”, and this Supplementary Order Paper is consistent with the original policy intent in the bill. I thank the member for spotting the need for this minor technical change.

That was a very relaxed speech from a very relaxed Minister for Primary Industries, and I think relaxation in the area of animal welfare is something that he is becoming renowned for. We have an appalling history and series of practices in New Zealand in animal welfare, on farms—in particular, on poultry and pig farms—but not only there; we have an appalling record of cruelty to some pets. And we have a Minister who regularly, when there is a crisis, fails to act, fails to show concern, and pretends that the ineffectual approach taken by the ministry, which is basically understaffed and scared to do proper promotion of animal welfare, is OK. It is not.

There has been a slow approach to this piece of legislation, which was introduced in May 2013. It languished on the Order Paper until August 2013, when the Government gave it a first reading. It was reported back in June 2014. It got a second reading in November 2014. Now, nearly 2 years after its introduction, we have come to look at the details of the bill. Anyone who cared about animal welfare would have given this legislation higher priority than that Minister has.

The Labour Party finds cruelty to animals abhorrent but we also know—and my colleague Damien O’Connor often reminds us—that the international reputation of our exporters depends on having good policies and practices in New Zealand, and the example of a few idiot farmers can destroy the reputation of our primary industry and place our exports across a wide range in danger. It is particularly important going into Europe, becoming more important going into the United States, but now even in the Asian market, at that top end, people are looking at the practices that we have when they are looking for premium product. If we ignore that, we ignore some of the best markets for our product. As I say, there are some idiot farmers who place that at risk and, frankly, the attitude of the Minister and of his ministry is far too often to turn a blind eye to it, not to crack down and prosecute.

This legislation is better than what is currently in place, but it will depend on the enforcement. But, frankly, a Government that takes 2 years to get legislation through, which has really stretched the agency responsible for enforcement, does not give me a lot of faith in its ability to get this sorted. I do want to compliment the Minister. I think that now, 700 days after it was brought to the Government’s attention, the bill has a Supplementary Order Paper that addresses the cosmetic testing issue. It was not an issue on the first reading, it was not an issue in the select committee, and it was not an issue on the second reading, but at last the Government has folded. I want to join with the congratulations to Mojo Mathers on the work that she has done on leading on this issue. It is something that she knows she has always had our support on, but the fact that the Minister has finally caught up with the importance of our international reputation in this area to the rest of our primary industries is something that is a compliment to her. For that reason, we will of course support the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper.

I have moved Supplementary Order Paper 48 to the bill. What this Supplementary Order Paper does within clause 56 of the bill is replace a 10-year phase-in period and a 5-year renewal process for the abolition of cruel practices with a 7-year period. What we are saying is that we should not have cruel practices at all, but what we do accept is that changing the practices in some farming operations is going to take some time. What we want to do is be reasonable to farmers in order to make the changes. But 15 years to stop the awful practices that we see on many of our pig farms—practices that are actually worse than the practices of a generation or two before. They have just got to stop, and 15 years to stop them is just far too long.

So that is why I am moving Supplementary Order Paper 48. What that does is take the 10-year cruel practice exemption that the Minister can grant—and he can grant a 5-year renewal of that—down to a maximum of 7 years with no right of renewal. I say to the Minister that if that is not good enough and if he thinks that farmers will, in fact, need a longer period and he thinks it should be renewed after 7 years, then he should bring—as an Opposition member, because I can accept that that is what he will be by that stage—something back to Parliament for the whole Parliament to consider. I think it is unreasonable for any Minister, whatever their party, to be left with the right to continue for 15 years practices that this Committee today is deciding are unacceptable. We are making a decision to have a better regime, but we are granting a Minister time and an ability to override it, and in my opinion that is something that is not acceptable.

There is a further series of Supplementary Order Papers that the Committee is considering. We will be guided by Mojo Mathers on whether she wants her one to go through as well. I am assuming that the Minister’s one will override her one, but if that is not the case, it would be good to have discussion on that one. We will not be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 355 in Mojo Mathers’ name. We think that it is appropriate for there to be a balance of practicality and economics in making decisions on the part of the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee. That is something that I think you have got to do as part of that process, and taking out that balance is something that I think goes a step too far, so we will not be supporting—as we have indicated to her—that particular Supplementary Order Paper. We will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 47, which deals with the deprivation of life for non-human hominids. This is generally known as the great apes issue, and we support Supplementary Order Paper 47, which essentially limits the reasons for killing apes within New Zealand to euthanasia. It cannot be done just as a matter of convenience.

Of course, I am pleased to hear that the Minister is going to be supportive of the tidying up of his untidy work on the legislation. The bill is better than the current legislation, but not good enough.

It is a shame when you have got to start at the back end of your speech and finish at the front end, but that is what I am going to do. I take issue with the previous speaker, Trevor Mallard, on a number of things he has raised in the point of that speech, and I take exception to the way that he dealt with farmers. Clearly, legislation is never going to stop errant people; it is only going to prosecute them or punish them for being errant. I think those numbers are very few in New Zealand, and I think it is a gross miscarriage of the use of this House, in fact, to use the terminology that he used around the number of people who, I guess, break the law and things like that. I also need to defend the Minister for Primary Industries and his ministry. I think they do an outstanding job. We have an international reputation second to none when it comes to animal welfare—the only countries that do better than us have no animals—and I think we are particularly careful about how we treat animal welfare in this country. We do have a great record, as I have said.

I just want to touch on Supplementary Order Paper 48, in the name of the previous speaker, which I will refer to as Mr Mallard’s Supplementary Order Paper. Over the years a regime has evolved around the way we look after and, I guess, treat animals, and that has evolved over centuries throughout the world. We have some practices in New Zealand that this Parliament clearly thinks—and I agree—will eventually need to be changed. But changing practices that have evolved throughout history and evolved for the better on the whole throughout history is a long-term process. I think it is totally impractical to think we can stop these practices after 7 years when we may well need to take significant notice of the changes that occur in those years leading up to the expiration date of our tolerance for them. We certainly need to have some ability to allow those practices to continue, provided they are closely monitored and managed in a proper manner. So for that reason we will not be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 48. I think it is far too severe, and I think it places our ability to farm in at least two areas of our food chain at great difficulty when, in fact, all we would do is accept produce from countries that do not have the same set of standards we have.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: No, it wouldn’t.

It certainly would. So I think that is interesting.

I want to go back to the beginning of this bill and the reason for it. It is hugely important to New Zealand. It deals with about $25 billion worth of exports annually, and that is increasing on an annual basis. We have a huge amount of importance put on that. I also want to deal very quickly with the select committee process. I know that the Minister touched on it, and I think that the cooperation around the somewhat, I guess, agitated debate on this bill was pretty good around that table. It took quite some time to get the bill through the Primary Production Committee, and that process, certainly from the Green perspective and from a number of inputs from the Labour Party, had quite an interesting impact on where this bill has eventually got to. I think we have arrived in a pretty good space on that. So some 2½ years after the introduction of the bill we are back in the Chamber talking about the Committee stage, and I think on the whole we are in a good space.

I want to very briefly talk about the Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Minister, Supplementary Order Paper 69, which is very important in that it enables us still to deal with, if we need to, issues that are quite, I guess, complicated around the health and welfare of the New Zealand community, and at the same time it protects animals from any kind of cosmetic testing—I guess the word “cosmetic” is probably the most logical word. So it puts us in a good space in that respect. It enables us to do some work if it is urgently required, but, certainly, it precludes us from doing what I would call the spurious or the miscellaneous stuff, which we can certainly find other ways of satisfactorily getting through if we need to.

I think we have arrived in a good space on this bill. I think the select committee did a great job on it, and I think that all those people involved in it, from the chairman, Shane Ardern, down, had a great input and did very well.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: He was a real farmer.

He was a very good farmer, Shane Ardern. I am happy to leave it there in the meantime. I think we are in a good space.

I am recalling the passage of the original animal welfare bill in the late 1990s, when my colleague Pete Hodgson took over from me. I was a member of the Primary Production Committee then, as I am now. He, though, as a vet, had a particular passion and skills in the area of animal welfare. So he took over and did a lot of the negotiating for Labour, and now we have my colleague Mr Mallard, who is spokesman for animal welfare, but I remain the spokesman for primary industries. It is a healthy balance. He likes the poodles; I like the big dogs. I guess there is a different approach to it, and as a farmer and as a representative of the primary sector, I guess, keeping some reality in this debate is really important. I think that, generally, Parliament has done a good job. I acknowledge the Minister in the chair, the Hon Nathan Guy. He has had, at a very late stage, a flash of brilliance or wisdom and has introduced Supplementary Order Paper 69, which, I think, addresses the things my colleague Mr Mallard has been asking for, as indeed has Mojo Mathers, for some time. The Government is slow to learn but it does learn, and I have to acknowledge that.

As Trevor Mallard said, our international reputation relies on our ability to care for animals properly. The finer points are that there are many who want to eat meat but do not want to slaughter animals. That is the reality, the conundrum, that faces many consumers, I guess. They want to be the beneficiaries of a really good, safe food system, including good animal welfare. Indeed, that is what they expect, and at the end of the day there are some realities, some harsh realities, of course, around the slaughter of animals for consumption that we have to continue to allow, be it in relation to hens or to the production of pork or beef. We just have to make sure that we keep the right balance. Indeed, the issue of exemptions and the time frame to allow those practices to be phased out is a very important issue. We acknowledge that there are practices that we have now accepted are unacceptable—if you would like to include that contradiction, I guess—so we want to phase them out over time.

Let us take sow stalls, for example. They were introduced to protect the piglets, of course, so they would not get squashed. A harsh reality of pig farming is that many of those young piglets do get squashed in an uncontrolled environment. However, 50 percent of the pork in this country comes from production systems that do not use sow stalls, so we need time to ensure that the rest of the pork industry can transition to the phase-out of those sow stalls. Indeed, that was an agreement early on. The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee has accepted that. There were recommendations, and we say that although the Government has extended the time, there should have been a commitment to that phase-out period, which was 2015, I think, originally.

None the less, the Government has eased off on some of those things, and with that easing-off comes a risk to our international reputation. We have moved in the area of the export of live animals. We have banned that practice until we get robust or absolute guarantees of the safety of those animals. Some ask, of course, for their treatment to be monitored in the export market to which we send them.

Consumers are ultimately the people who will drive this. There are ethical obligations for us, of course, as humans, to look after animals, but as a country dependent upon the production of food we have to make sure we meet consumers’ expectations. I have before me here a recent report from Lincoln University, which was investigating maximising export returns and consumer behaviours and trends. In China, India, and the UK, all of our export markets, all those consumers basically said they would pay more for a product that came from systems that had robust animal welfare regimes in them. They have actually quantified it. The report notes, for example, that in Sweden and Denmark a 4 percent premium could be obtained for beef products where there were good animal welfare standards, 32 to 96 percent for pork, and 36 to 112 percent for chicken—more for outdoor housing access. There are now many scientific and well-researched figures that back up the value for New Zealand of having the very best animal welfare system in place.

There is a concern—and my colleague referred to it—as to how we oversee this. The Minister is in charge of a Government department called the Ministry for Primary Industries. It is a big organisation. It is charged with the oversight of forestry, fishing, farming, horticulture, biosecurity, food safety, and indeed animal welfare. It is Labour’s view that that is too broad a range of responsibilities, and I think we have seen the ministry and the Minister fail in terms of their oversight in the area of biosecurity, and, indeed, in food safety. We hope that it does not fail too much in animal welfare, because all of those three crucial areas must be maintained in terms of the standards, the regulations upheld, and our reputation, which is integral to our ongoing export of food from the country. I think there are some real risks because of the structure of the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Minister’s oversight, and the fact that the Government has not funded them properly.

So, in the passage of this bill and the implementation of better and more up-to-date standards, I hope that we can ensure that the standards can be policed properly. In fact, out in the domestic area and in farming areas, the ministry is relying on the SPCA to go out, to monitor, to alert, and sometimes to enforce these regulations. I do not think that is necessarily good enough for an organisation that relies to a large extent on voluntary funding.

We in Labour will support the passage of this legislation, but there will be issues we raise along the way. One of the things put forward, of course, is that if we have a very robust, sound animal welfare regime in this country then we should be proud of it and indeed market it and get some value, as identified in this report from the market place. But this Government refuses to accept country-of-origin labelling for products made and produced in this country. It is head in the sand stuff for the Minister to advocate for the best production systems but not to acknowledge that and promote that in a way that delivers a benefit from it to the farmers, to the pork producers, to the chicken producers.

So what I say to the Minister is that he should perhaps follow through with this more robust animal welfare regime and ensure country-of-origin labelling to meet the requirements across the Tasman, in Australia—we normally have trans-Tasman food regulations—which would say to the farmers of whatever, beef, or pork, or chicken, that if you have abided by this new set of regulations and the passage of this legislation, then you deserve to have a premium for your product. That is where this Government is failing the producers in New Zealand. It will impose upon them, through the passage of this legislation, often additional costs that we believe, collectively as Parliament, are necessary to uphold our reputation. But to then not offer those same producers a benefit to offset that cost is, in our view, irresponsible. The Government has played, I think, an odd role in taking a hands-off approach to country-of-origin labelling when it has had a hands-on approach to all of these other necessary areas in food production.

Can I just say that there are a number of issues for the farming sector that need to be considered. They will not be addressed directly in this legislation. They are things such as the housing or the pastoral production of beef and milk across the country. There is increasing scrutiny of systems within New Zealand as to how we are producing our milk and beef and whether we are going to actually get, as I say, a premium from pastoral production. We now have people putting a lot of dairy production in housing or part housing, and some of them, in fact, have full-time housing of cows. So the question of whether that then does put us at risk is something that I think the ministry has to look at. Very briefly, the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee—

I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in this Committee of the whole House as we debate the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. This is a bill that New Zealand First does support, and we have supported it from the outset.

I am not going to take too much issue with the position of the Minister for Primary Industries and berate him too savagely at this stage, in spite of what other Opposition members have done. I think the National Government has taken enough of a flogging at the hands of New Zealand First this week, so we will let those wounds heal a little before we come back to it. I do wish to look at some of the Supplementary Order Papers, and particularly the Minister’s own amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 69.

I do, as other members have done, want to acknowledge the work of Mojo Mathers and her team in the Greens in bringing this issue to the attention of the House. I would call it a success in terms of the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has now brought. We did look very closely at Mojo Mathers’ first Supplementary Order Paper dealing with cosmetic substances, but we are much more comfortable with the version that the Government has now brought. We are certainly not happy that there has not previously been a prohibition on testing cosmetic substances on animals in New Zealand, or at the very least that there has not been a practice of prohibition for quite some time.

We were concerned, when looking at the original draft that we saw from the Greens, that there was no protection for ingredients in the supply chain that, although they may end up being used in cosmetic substances, were not solely intended for that. We might have had a situation where there would have been a prohibition on the testing of ingredients for cosmetics that also had application to other products such as medicines, agricultural compounds, and veterinary medicines, as the Minister has pointed out. So we are much more comfortable with the thrust of the Supplementary Order Paper that the Minister has brought forward, and we will be supporting it for that reason, not because we are opposed to the proposition that Mojo Mathers has brought. We do support it, and we thank her and the Greens for it. We just feel that the version that the Minister and his advisers have created is going to be far more practical in terms of its utility.

I will now turn to Supplementary Order Paper 48 in the name of Trevor Mallard. We do support it. There is a great concern that the bill as drafted, as the explanatory note says, “allows regulations to be made for up to 10 years with a potential extension of another 5 years when phasing out harmful practices relating to animals.” At the time this was being debated through the select committee and through the term of the last Parliament, I sat on that committee as an observer, by the committee’s leave. It was noted, both by industry and by ministry advisers, that for certain things, such as sow crates, there was no technical alternative on the horizon to the crates as they were being used. It was not a case of people being opposed to phasing them out, but for the system of farming that requires them there was simply nothing available on the immediate horizon to replace crates for that type of usage.

We certainly take note of that. However, we do agree with Mr Mallard that 7 years has to be a sufficiently long period of time for the industry and for technology to catch up with where that requirement is at. We could, of course—as I have mentioned earlier in the debate—move to an entirely free-range farming system that does not require the use of crates. That is a decision that the British Parliament made some years ago, and so all pork that is farmed in Britain now is free-range. However, Britain has a situation where they still have subsidies for agricultural production, as does the rest of the European Union. We do not, of course, so if we were to bring in such a system in New Zealand, it would be the New Zealand consumer who would be shouldering the entire cost of that more expensive free-range farming system, whereas in countries like the UK and other places that do have subsidies obviously that cost is not borne, so that is a consideration that does have to be taken into account by politicians and by voters in New Zealand. It is a separate question that has got to be addressed differently.

Just taking a step backwards slightly, I say that when we look at Supplementary Order Paper 355 we do oppose it. Again, I give credit to Mojo Mathers for bringing the issue to the attention of the Committee, but to remove the ability of the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee to take into account practicality and economic impact when carrying out its functions kind of runs contrary to the basis, the reasons, for New Zealand being an agricultural nation. Yes, we do have a reputation to protect in terms of how we are regarded in overseas markets, and yes, we do want to give the best regard to the animals that we farm, that we keep as pets, etc., etc. But we also have to remember that at the end of the day when we are farming animals, we are farming them predominantly for our own purposes and for our own benefit. Regardless of how well we treat them and how well we keep them, at the end of the day for the most part we kill them and eat them. It is a matter of expediency for us to do that.

There is some ground in between the two ideals—the one that is purely economically driven and the one that is purely ideologically driven. Somewhere in between those two extremes there has to be a practicality that takes account of the fact that in order to enable us to farm these animals in a way that suits our purposes, there are going to be times when we do not treat them particularly nicely. One of those, of course, is at the end of their lives when, as I say, we kill them and we eat them.

So there does have to be provision, I think, for the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee to take into account the practicality and the economic impact of the measures that they bring to bear on animal welfare. For that reason we will be opposing Supplementary Order Paper 355.

As the Minister pointed out in his opening address, thanks again to Mojo Mathers, who really has done a great deal of work with regard to this—to the benefit of animal welfare and to the benefit of the whole Committee. It is gratifying to know that if a technical fault such as the words of a particular sector can slip through the net, with all the oversight that the ministry gives it and that political parties give it, that technical fault can be taken out at this stage in the Committee. We are thankful for that. We appreciate that. We will be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 46.

There is another one that we will support—Supplementary Order Paper 367, also in Mojo Mathers’ name—but with a little clarification. It speaks about a suitable alternative. It says: “In this section, suitable alternative means [an] equivalent project that does not involve the use of an animal.” I do have a slight concern, going back to what I said before, with regard to the higher cost of some non-animal tests. We would just like some clarification from Mojo Mathers, or perhaps from somebody else from the Greens when they make a contribution, as to whether or not economic considerations will be included in the definition or in the consideration of the word “suitable”.

It is all well and good saying that there may be alternative methods for determining, say, toxicity, and there are technological advances that are happening right now and other ones that are on the horizon, which will mean that certain tests that now require the use of a live animal can be done with dead animal tissue or even cultured animal tissue. But we do also have to look at the practical considerations that those tests, certainly in the early years until the advance of technology reaches a certain point, may be prohibitively expensive. If we can get some clarification on that, we would be much happier about supporting that.

Finally, getting down to Supplementary Order Paper 47 with regard to the deprivation of life of non-human hominids—we will be opposing this. The primary reason is not that we do not believe that our great ape brethren do not deserve the same regard. It is simply that we believe that if an animal such as a great ape is going to be deprived of life under these circumstances, it should be a vet who makes that decision rather than a bureaucrat. We do not want to leave that decision solely to a director-general who, for all their qualifications and professionalism, may well be subject to any other kind of political pressure. We would rather leave that to the vets, and that is why we will be opposing Supplementary Order Paper 47. However, all those things said, we do still support the passage of the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. I will speak more about this in the third reading. Thank you very much.

I would just like to express my deep appreciation to the Government for stepping up and basically adopting a ban on animal testing for cosmetics. Having campaigned on this for a very long time, and finding out about it only this morning, I say that it is, I think, a real win for animals in New Zealand.

I think it will be an incredibly important move to make because the reality is that we talked about a strong ethical framework for the animal ethics committee that approves the testing, but the reality is that it does not make consistent decisions. With regard to the outdated LD50 tests, one animal ethics committee had approved a number of these tests in the last few years, whereas another one said that it would never use them or approve them because basically they do not meet the three Rs of research. Given that they make inconsistent decisions, and given that assurances in the past that certain tests would never be used in New Zealand have been proved wrong with regard to the LD50 tests, there is a real desire that we take this step and adopt a clear ban on the testing of cosmetics on animals. It is one that is hugely popular, that the public supports, that there is massive international support for, and it is a really good step forward.

I really appreciate the consistent support that Trevor and the Labour Party have given for a ban on the testing of cosmetics; it is really appreciated. I also appreciate the New Zealand First question around the testing of cosmetics. The amendment that the Government has put forward is much tighter than the one that I would have put forward in my Supplementary Order Paper 44. But, none the less, the principle that certain types of tests are not appropriate to be undertaken, they are not ethically defensible, is one that was really important to establish in the bill.

I also, just at this point, want to pick up on another aspect while we are talking about animal testing. The committee, after much discussion, put my amendment that proposed to require animal ethics committees to consider or use alternatives not to approve a particular animal test if there was a suitable alternative available. I am pleased that the Government at least has stepped up to say that they must be required to consider the alternatives. Even if they are not required to, they can still go ahead with an animal test.

Section 100(f), inserted in clause 35 of the bill, says they have to assess the suitability of using tests that do not use animals. Up until now, animal ethics committees have not even had to consider that. So sometimes there are very standardised tests that do not use animals that are available to test the toxicity and other things. This was really highlighted during the whole debate on the psychoactive substances bill, where the whole paper by the Ministry of Health proposed only animal tests to be used for testing psychoactive substances. In fact, there were alternatives available for all of the necessary testing that was being proposed that did not use animals.

You have to ask why animals have to suffer for the sake of a psychoactive drug or for the sake of a lipstick, or any of these things. We really need to be moving forward to stopping any unnecessary testing. There have been incredible advances made in alternatives to animal testing, with skin cell cultures, replicas of organs, and computer models. There are all sorts of things. All around the world they are shifting away from using more animal data, which is often totally unreliable, and are using alternatives. So we have taken some small steps in this bill. I will be leaving my Supplementary Order Paper to require alternatives on the Table, because I do think that that is the stronger requirement.

With regard to the concept of affordability, some of these tests are at the moment more expensive because they are not established in New Zealand. Once we have established them, once they have bought the computer models, then moving forward it will actually be cheaper in the long run. That has happened overseas, and that is what needs to happen in New Zealand. We have become too reliant on the old ways of testing. We are not being innovative enough to bring in these new forms of testing that do not involve animals, and that is what the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill needs to be requiring.

I would like to thank Trevor and talk about Supplementary Order Paper 47, which is the great apes Supplementary Order Paper. Thanks to the Labour Party for its support for that. This Supplementary Order Paper was basically motivated by Dr Jane Goodall’s work around the great apes, and how her work has showed that they have the most incredible capacity for language development and using tools. They can learn sign language. They can communicate with people and express their actual emotions in abstract concepts. There was one very powerful video that I have seen of a chimpanzee. When her primary caregiver explained that she had been away for a while because she had had a miscarriage and lost a baby, the chimpanzee made the sign for cry, expressing sympathy. Even though chimpanzees do not cry, it was able to express real emotion and identification.

So, basically, their emotional and intellectual development is very much on par with human 2-year-old children, and the question then becomes: should we be convenience killing any of these animals, because it just should not be happening in New Zealand. People say: “Oh, but it won’t happen.”, but again zoos do convenience kill a whole range of animals when they have more than they require or the animals are redundant for their purpose or it is no longer fashionable for people to go and look at them. So there has been a lot of international outcry around the world where they have done convenience killing of animals. The purpose of this Supplementary Order Paper is really to protect the ones that are the most advanced emotionally and intellectually in terms of their development, and it will be interesting to see what kind of support there is for that.

Finally, I want to touch on Trevor’s Supplementary Order Paper 48, which proposes to restrict the transitional arrangement from up to 15 years, down to 7 years, and we absolutely support that. The bill has moved forward from where it was previously, so I do want to thank all the select committee members and the Government for the removal of having an indefinite time frame for practices that breach the Act, like battery cages and farrowing crates. It is wonderful that we finally have a concrete time frame, which means, as I understand it, that those farrowing crates, which have been determined to be in breach of the Act, will now have to be phased out within 10 years or at the most 15. But I would hope it is within 10 years because the industry has been widely signalled that these farrowing crates are not acceptable.

We are in support of Trevor’s amendment reducing it down to 7 years, because we do think they can do it. The suffering in these farrowing crates is horrendous. We have all seen footage and videos of the suffering that goes on in these intensive pig farms. It is just not acceptable. There are other ways of doing it, and that is what we should be moving towards. We need to be moving towards free-range pig farming, and these kinds of cages are things that are just not OK for that kind of suffering to be implemented.

I just finally want to say that the bill talks about international reputation. It is all very well to have a law that sounds good on paper or reads well, but at the end of the day it is the monitoring and enforcement that are really going to count, and that is going to require more funding, more resourcing, and more proactive enforcement of what happens on farms. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to speak on the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. I would like to just start by saying that I do not think I can let the member who started out, on the Opposition side, get away with the comments he made about farming. I would like to just point out that farmers do not have a monopoly on idiocy, and I think that you have got to be very careful when you go down that track. I would like to say, actually, that farmers are reliant on their animals and they live with them every day when they are out working with them. They rely on their productivity. Happy animals are more productive and farmers have a vested interest in their animals being happy and productive, a good financial interest in it. Having been a farmer myself, I know only too well that stock that do really well are very happy, and we have seen lots of evidence of that.

I would like also to congratulate the Minister for Primary Industries. I did not have the pleasure of sitting on the Primary Production Committee when this bill started through the process, but I think we have ended up with a really sound bill. It is important that we get a bill that has a good framework that will last through time, because what is acceptable today may not be acceptable in the future. Certainly, what was acceptable in the past is not always acceptable today. To get that bill written in such a way that it will last a long time is really a great skill and I tip my hat to the Minister on that, so thank you.

It is important that the bill is able to be enforced, and enforceability in the bill is really important, and I do take on board what the previous speaker, Mojo Mathers, said about it coming down to whether there are enough resources there. I am very confident that there are currently. I think that it is easy to point the finger and say that there are not and you always need to throw more money at it. In fact, the Government under its Better Public Services has shown that Government can actually deliver more for less, and we have seen that right across a number of different ministries. I am sure that that is the case in the Ministry for Primary Industries. Having that clear enforceability is really very important, but you must have the framework and the legislation, and we actually have that on this side. I congratulate you on that. We must have clarity as well in this legislation, and I am very pleased that it is there and the bill is transparent. That is really important.

We have talked a lot about farming and I think that we must not forget that, actually, as the Minister for Primary Industries pointed out, two-thirds of households have a pet—at least one. That is a lot of animals when you think about it. Often there is no economic driver to look after those pets necessarily that well and it is important that we have a good framework to enforce that and ensure that those animals get the treatment that they deserve.

Farming is the backbone of New Zealand’s economy. In fact, I think if we took primary production away, the New Zealand economy would virtually disappear. It was talked about earlier that animal welfare issues would be a threat to our exports, I think the threat is not so much that we would not have our export markets; it is actually that the price that we sell our exports at is so important. We are niche marketers and the people who buy our products at a higher price are buying them on choice. Things like animal welfare are essential to their having confidence in that area. That is where I think it is. It is not necessarily about having our markets closed to us; it is about being able to sell at that higher end. That has been recognised and I know the Minister has a great understanding of this, and it is really important for the future of New Zealand’s agriculture that we aim at that top end. That is where we are going as a country and that is how we will grow our export returns. It is going to be value, really, over volume in the long term, in a sustainable way, and I think that is very important.

I would like to talk about Mojo Mathers’ Supplementary Order Paper 44. I would also like to congratulate her on putting up a Supplementary Order Paper that was well thought out. Unfortunately, it was a bit broad and there were unintended consequences that could have come out of that. The Minister has recognised that and come up with Supplementary Order Paper 69, which deals with that area but in a much more concise way, and achieves what the member set out to, but ensures that we do not foot-trip ourselves by getting tangled up in little technicalities further down the line. So I think that is very important. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to rise and speak at the Committee stage of the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. I am pleased to speak on this because, first of all, Labour is supporting the legislation. It is good to speak on a bill where we can actually be positive about what is occurring in Parliament, because frequently we find that that is not the case under this Government. I am also pleased to rise and speak on the bill because I do consider myself to be an animal lover. I have been around animals all my life. Actually, I was brought up on a dairy farm in a little place in the Waikato by the name of Walton—this is probably the only thing that the Hon Judith Collins and I have in common. I have had animals involved in my life right from the very start—animals that we have relied on for our family income, and animals as household pets. And through my association with the horse racing industry, I have been involved in animal welfare from that perspective as well. So this is an issue that is actually very close to my heart.

I would say at the outset that this bill does concern me. I do not rise to speak to too many bills where, when we are talking about the commencement clause, the bill talks about quite a number of sections coming into effect 5 years after the date that the Act receives Royal assent. It concerns me that for quite a number of sections—I think it refers to sections 4, 10, 12, 13, 16, 20, 22, 25, 45, and 57—it could take 5 years before they come into force. I was not on the Primary Production Committee, so I am not familiar with the details of those sections, but I would be interested to hear from the Minister as to why that particular time period has been named in the commencement clause of this bill, because, as I say, it is very unusual. Mostly when we are debating bills and giving priority to those bills by the use of parliamentary time, it is because we want them to take effect immediately. That is normally what we are doing.

I will, however, note that I do want to speak strongly in favour of Supplementary Order Paper 48, put in by my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard, because his Supplementary Order Paper actually speaks to that issue. It ensures that the piece of legislation that we are passing, which bans or outlaws the mistreatment of animals, will be a reality within 7 years—not the possibility of 15 years, as the bill in its current form allows. The bill does actually allow up to 10 years for these practices to become completely outlawed or banned, and then it has the provision of another 5 years as, I guess, a little bit of fat in the system as well. It seems alarming to me that given we are dedicating parliamentary time to this debate, right here, right now, in the year 2015, we would find it acceptable for some of these practices to continue until the year 2030 or beyond, depending on when Royal assent is given for this bill.

It seems to me that there appears to be a lack of urgency from the Government benches as to how soon they want to make sure that these practices disappear. From the Labour side of the Chamber, we are clear about this: it should not take anywhere near 15 years to be able to get rid of the mistreatment of animals, which this bill is designed around—7 years is well long enough and easily adequate for those practices to change. So I would challenge the Minister and his colleagues to give us the justification for why such a long period would, in fact, be needed. I think it may well be that the Government underestimates the ability of those involved in deriving their livelihoods from animals to be nimble and to change their practices in a shorter period of time. I think it tells us quite a lot about how the Government feels about those who rely on animals for their income—that the Government thinks they will be slow to respond. That is why the Government is giving this extraordinary amount of time for these practices to change. I would very much like some comment from the Government benches on that issue.

I notice that new section 30C, inserted by clause 17, protects hunting in safari parks. Maybe this is a piece of local information—local to New Zealand, that is—that I am unaware of, but I would like to know from the Minister where the safari parks are that this new section would apply to. It is not actually something that I have been involved in. I have not booked myself into a safari park in New Zealand to hunt and kill animals. I am really quite unsure as to what new section 30C applies to. If the Minister could let us know about that, I would really prefer that he do it in a way that was not an advertisement for that one safari park that might exist in New Zealand that has escaped my attention. But I would be interested to know where that does occur.

I do, however, want to note that the bill outlaws—and so it should—the killing of animals in a wild setting. It does not actually use that phrase.

💬 Dr Megan Woods: Does it cover moa?

I am sure it does cover moa. The issue that I really do want to cover—because it is a very serious issue, and it is the one that sticks in my mind, which I believe this bill will deal with—is that shocking incident where seals were clubbed to death. It is a very, very important thing that we do make sure we have got a piece of legislation that does address that issue, not just because animal welfare is important to our economy and to our export sector, not just because of that, but because it is the right thing to do. In that instance, when those seals were killed—just for the pure entertainment of a few young men, it appeared—that is something that the entire nation, I think, found completely distasteful.

I do want to draw a link, because I have been thinking about why it is that the mistreatment of animals is so abhorrent to us. Yes, it is abhorrent in its own right, but there is a lot of research that now backs up the assertion that people who will be cruel to animals will be equally cruel to humans. There is a very strong link between those who find it entertaining to be cruel to a defenceless creature that cannot fight back and those who will hurt children. There is a strong link between those who commit offences against animals and those who are involved in domestic violence as well. I did not want to sit down after speaking in this debate without making sure that we drew that link—that this is an important bill, in its own right, but that it is also equally important because it relates to how we interact with each other as people. Thank you.

It is good to make a contribution to this very important bill. We have had a very good discussion around the Committee this afternoon. It is interesting to hear some of the comments that have been made this afternoon by all of the parties represented in the New Zealand Parliament. They are broadly supportive of the direction of amending the Animal Welfare Act 1999 and bringing it up into modern times.

It is interesting that some of the comments have been that the Ministry for Primary Industries is not doing enough or the Minister is not doing enough. I would refute that very, very strongly. The reason why I can say that is that we have done a lot, and this bill shows that we are prepared to do even more when dealing with animal welfare issues and making sure that we have modern regulations. We have still got all of that discussion to be had, because once this bill is through the Parliament we will work on the regulations, which are basically going to give the teeth to implement the primary legislation that we are indeed debating this afternoon.

I will give you a few examples to show that the Government does care about animal welfare. In 2010 we introduced the new offence of reckless ill-treatment, which means the imprisonment term has gone from 3 years to 5 years. That has been broadened out. Fines have increased from $50,000 to $100,000 for individuals, and from $250,000, as it was then, to $500,000 for bodies corporate. Also, last year we introduced a ban on blunt force trauma killing of bobby calves. We all know that that is unacceptable as a routine practice, so that changed. The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee went out and consulted, and brought advice back to me, and that change has been implemented. Also, last year we banned shark finning, and that needs to be acknowledged because it is an offence under the Animal Welfare Act. That has been toughened up as well. We have got more compliance officers working on animal welfare. If people have concerns, then they should ring the Ministry for Primary Industries to get it to investigate. The ministry does investigate, and indeed it does bring prosecutions to bear.

There is an important point that I think we should not lose in the debate this afternoon. Just a few months ago, in November 2014, the global charity World Animal Protection ranked New Zealand as first equal, out of 50 countries around the world, for our animal welfare regulatory system, alongside the UK, alongside Austria, and alongside Switzerland. Is it not fantastic that we have an endorsement from a global charity that has looked at 50 countries around the world and ranks New Zealand first equal? I think we should all be very, very proud of that fact. There has been a bit of discussion this evening about Trevor Mallard’s Supplementary Order Paper 48 and the 7-year transition. The Government cannot support Supplementary Order Paper 48, because we are of the view that industry needs that 10-year transition period—

💬 Dr Megan Woods: Industry are more nimble than that.

Well, I am very happy to have the debate, but let us talk about egg producers as an example. They are currently transitioning away from battery cages. I think we would all acknowledge that. They have started doing that. Industry is making good progress. Of course, this came from the fact that the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee went out and consulted, looked at all of the science, and produced the evidence for the Government to make the change. We should be aware of the fact that eggs are one of the cheapest sources of protein for Kiwi families. They are an extremely reliable and important food source for low and middle income families, and many others, actually, in New Zealand as well.

If you go too hard and too fast on this transition period, then you need to be aware of the changes that industries need to make. Egg producers, for example, have got to change. They have got to change from battery cages to colony cages. They need to, first of all, go and purchase some land, because we are talking about a new building in a lot of cases. They need to then go out and raise the capital. They then need to go to the local authority and get a consent. More than likely that is a publicly notified consent process. So let us bring some practical realities into this debate about this transition period.

The other important thing is that currently I do not think there is any egg importation, because of biosecurity conditions here in New Zealand. So if you close down an industry and move too quickly on the transition period, you will see a huge spike in the price of eggs, and I do not think anyone would want that. That is why we need to be very practical on this transition period.

Kia ora. I would like to speak to the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill and some of the Supplementary Order Papers. I would also acknowledge the Government’s changes in terms of the issues around the use of blunt force and shark finning as great examples of change, but I would also note that those changes came with a lot of public pressure. The Government bowed to public pressure. These are what we see as issues that have risen to public attention, but meanwhile huge cruelty carries on and the Government is doing little on some other areas where it could. So I look to the Minister for Primary Industries and hope that he and his ministry will drive harder on issues of animal welfare during this very term—during this very year would be a really good start.

I realise that in New Zealand we have a major cultural weakness, in fact, around farmed animals and what we can do and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, but, clearly, there is a shift. Even this bill shows some of the shift and the issues around animals as sentient beings and so forth.

As my colleague said, the monitoring and enforcement will be where this bill and other changes that have happened in recent times are really measured. The word “practical” comes up here, and most in the House, apart from, I think, the Green Party, have talked about the practicality or balance—

💬 Hon Members: Ha, ha!

The people on the Government side who say “balanced” and “practical” and laugh do not mind the cruelty going on in cages and farrowing crates and other things that are happening in nearly every form of farming. What is balanced about accepting cruelty? There is nothing balanced about it.

The Minister for Primary Industries talked about the cheapness of eggs as a protein source but totally forgot that vegetable protein can be produced a hang of a lot more cheaply and with far fewer environmental effects in terms of a lot of our animal production. In saying that, I am what I call a selective omnivore. I will eat some meat if it is produced organically or it is wild, or something like that, and has not been brought up in a cage. There is no excuse for carrying on with caged farming.

I have a lot of sympathy for the pork industry. We have got to look at the pork industry in context, because the context is an import health standard that allows almost 50 percent of the pork consumed in New Zealand to be imported and that we do not have any control over how those pigs are produced. Those disadvantaged pig farmers in New Zealand are competing against pork produced in ways that we are saying we need to phase out. So, Minister, I ask you to look at issues around the import health standard as well. I know that they have been traversed right through in a range of courts, but why was that? It was because the Biosecurity Act is not strong enough. All these bills and Acts need to be looked at in the context of the others. We must have some changes so that we get rid of those farrowing crates sooner but also help our producers so that they do not have to compete with cheap, cruelly produced meat, imported from overseas.

In terms of hens, the last time the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee did any changes I think it basically, effectively, said that hens could still live in space that is the size of an A4 sheet of paper. They might be in a slightly bigger cage, a few of them, but, effectively, each has that much space. There is no need for that, and the sooner we change that, the sooner people will look at, and take up, the opportunity of genuine free-range systems. We must move to that. The context is also how the regulations are enforced and how the Minister and his ministry get in there and ensure that enforcement and monitoring.

I would like to speak a little bit, too, on the alternatives. My colleague Mojo Mathers talked of what happened in terms of the psychoactive drugs part—another context. That context there showed that there are real alternatives to these cruel practices. But if we say “practical” and “balanced” too often, you would say “Oh, it’s not practical. Economically there’s a disjunction and we can’t afford to go down that path.” If it was people being involved in the testing, we would be doing that as quick as lightning. We would have no problem with bringing in the alternatives. There are tissue cultures and there are a whole range of technologies that are very advanced that can take the place of all these sorts of testing. There will be more changes that will need to come and there will be amendments in the future beyond those that are in front of us today.

I am also grateful to see the Government doing something around the cosmetics area and doing it as a leader in the direction of change that we need. I really do acknowledge, and am grateful for, that change in Supplementary Order Paper 69, but with the exemptions to the measure, there is a real risk that you could drive almost anything through it because of the number of different substances that might be included in the exceptions. It will be over to the Minister and the ministry to make sure that it is not rorted in some way, that we have real depth to this, and that we are leaders in the world and show the way forward around animal welfare. It was said that we are first equal in the world. That might be in terms of the system we have, but the application of the system, I would suggest, needs a little bit more scrutiny.

So thank you. We will, obviously, be supporting this bill and the bulk of the Supplementary Order Papers in front of us. Thank you.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Kia ora mai tātou. Tēnā tātou katoa. Members, we are considering the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. The question is that Part 1 and Part 2, the schedule, and clauses 1 to 3 stand part. I will put the motion. I will put the Minister’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 69. All those in favour will say Aye—

💬 Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Voting presumably had not started on this matter prior to the dinner break. It would, therefore, usually be customary for the Chair to ask whether there are any additional people who wish to speak before putting the question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Well, it may or may not be customary. If we had not stopped for dinner, we would not necessarily wait to see whether there were any calls, bearing in mind the calls that we have had. We note that Labour members have had six, National have had five, New Zealand First have had two, and the Greens have had four. At the time members were seeking the call there was only one member seeking the call and the Minister had previously spoken in the call before that. If we had not stopped for the dinner break, I would have put the motion at that time. I do not see the fact that the dinner break has intervened as a reason to hold off putting the vote.

💬 Chris Hipkins: I certainly understand that that may be a rationale for accepting, for example, a closure motion by the Chair, but simply closing down a debate without testing the will of the Committee at the present point seems to me to be at odds with the practices of the Committee.

💬 Steffan Browning: Mojo Mathers had one 10-minute block and I had the best part of 10 minutes. You have called it four speeches. Mojo Mathers particularly, who has got a number of amendments that are being considered, needs to speak further to that. I have certainly got another—I would like at least another 5 minutes if I could too. Thank you.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am prepared to show some leniency on this particular occasion, bearing in mind the mover of those Supplementary Order Papers. The point is that at the time that people were seeking the call immediately before the dinner break there was not a scramble to be called. There was only one person on their feet seeking the call and it became appropriate to actually put the motion at that time. I am prepared to take another call from Mojo Mathers, if she wishes one.

I wish to speak to clarify the intent of my Supplementary Order Paper 355, which is the one that would delete new sections that have been inserted around economic impact and practicality. There seemed to be a misunderstanding that this Supplementary Order Paper would mean that the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee can no longer consider these factors. That is not the case. There are already existing allowances to consider other factors, including economic impacts and practicality. What we were concerned about is that this bill now elevates them to explicit factors that may be considered. Our concern around that is that these factors are precisely the ones that have been used historically in the past to justify codes of welfare that allow extremely cruel practices such as keeping and confining battery cages, sow crates, and farrowing crates. Therefore, given that history of how economic impacts and practicalities had been abused in the past, we are very concerned that elevating them explicitly in the bill will send the wrong message about what kind of factors are important when we are setting codes of welfare, when we are setting regulations. It is not that they cannot be considered; they can be considered. They already are considered.

But we do not think these factors in particular justify explicit elevation in the bill. That is what this Supplementary Order Paper aims to do. It just removes the elevation of these factors. It does not remove them altogether as factors that can be considered. I wanted to clarify that in light of the comments that were made by New Zealand First and Labour in particular. So it is not about removing those factors that can be considered altogether; it is about stopping them from being elevated because we think that that is, given the history, not desirable in this bill.

I wanted to also respond to the comment that was made by the Minister for Primary Industries around us having been assessed for regulations, as being world leaders, first in the world. That does not apply, in fact, to many practices. In particular, it does not apply to practices such as battery cages and colony cages. Overseas countries have gone in a very different direction. Many countries are far more progressive around animal welfare than New Zealand is. For example, a European Union directive has set a phase-out date of battery cages from 2012, which is nearly a decade ahead of our phase-out date of 2022. In Austria, Germany, and Switzerland they have set phase-out dates for colony cages now. So at the time that we are bringing in colony cages, they are going to be phasing them out. That is how far behind we are in terms of our factory farming of animals. The earlier factory farming is something that still, unfortunately, is a really significant issue that this bill does not really come to terms with.

It is fantastic that the bill is going to have more enforceable regulations, but the real test will be whether the Ministry for Primary Industries actually uses the new powers that it has under this bill to take cases to prosecution. The Press just the other week did an inquiry into the number of prosecutions that were happening on Canterbury farms in particular, where literally thousands of animals have been found to be mistreated or neglected. They were absolutely shocking cases of abuse, and hardly any of them were taken to prosecution. Some of these examples are absolutely appalling, like a video of four boys who videoed shearing a sheep that was left with bloodied legs. They should have been prosecuted. Instead, they ended up with verbal advice being given to them by the Ministry for Primary Industries. I do not consider that acceptable. The public does not consider that acceptable. We expect more from the Ministry for Primary Industries. We expect it to take cases like that to prosecution. We hope that when the regulations become more enforceable the ministry will be given the tools to be able to prosecute clear cases of animal cruelty on farms, because there are far too many and they need to be followed through.

The final bit that I wanted to talk to was Supplementary Order Paper 367, which is the one around suitable alternatives. I am hoping that Labour and New Zealand First will support this one. What this one does is require that if animal ethics committees know of a suitable alternative to a particular animal test that complies, then they may not approve the trial on animal testing. They may approve it only if it complies with the restrictions on the use of animals in research and testing or teaching and if it complies with any conditions issued by the committee.

In this Supplementary Order Paper, “suitable alternative” means an “equivalent project that does not involve the use of an animal”. That is really interesting because the Ministry for Primary Industries officials took this particular Supplementary Order Paper out for feedback from research companies and people actually doing research on animals. Some of them came back with the sort of sense that the sky was going to fall in if they actually were not allowed to continue doing all the animal tests that they currently do. It really hinged around their interpretation of what “a suitable alternative” meant, because they were saying: “Well, we’re required to do some particular animal tests by such and such a regulation.” The reality is that if you are required to test a particular product by regulation on an animal, then there is no suitable alternative that does not use animals, because you are required to. Maybe the regulations should be updated, but this does not affect these kinds of requirements, because for the purpose of a suitable alternative means one that meets the purposes of what they are aiming to test for. If you are required to do that by regulation, this Supplementary Order Paper would not affect that.

Nearly all of the concerns that were raised by animal testing organisations were around that, and it is really important to realise that there is a vested interest by these companies in continuing to use animals in their research because their reputation has been built around that, that is where they have acquired their skills, that is where they have invested in the research facilities, and they actually have not invested in the alternatives that need to be brought in from overseas expertise. We need to build up that expertise here, and this Supplementary Order Paper will help drive innovation in New Zealand in the direction that we want to go as a country—one that does not rely on the use of animals as testing subjects. This is some of the most cruel, barbaric, and awful exploitation of animals that goes on in some of these testing research facilities and we should be doing everything we can to ensure that they go through only the most appropriate tests and that everything else is replaced wherever possible. That is what this Supplementary Order Paper demands. Thank you very much.

I move, That the question be now put.

I intend to make only a relatively brief contribution to this debate. In reply to Mojo Mathers, who has asked our position on her Supplementary Order Papers, I am happy to indicate that the Labour Party will be supporting the majority of the Supplementary Order Papers that she has put forward. I also want to say that we will be supporting the bill overall.

There is one clause in the bill, on my quick reading of it, that I have a concern about, and that is, simply, the clause that potentially allows for bad practices to continue for 10 years, and even, potentially, for that to be extended for a further 5 years beyond that. It simply raises a very basic and fundamental question: if something is going to be unacceptable in 15 years’ time, why would it not be unacceptable now? Although I understand the need for some transition, surely we should be trying to speed that process up. Simply allowing poor practice to exist for a further 15 years is something that I think members of the public would want to see the Parliament move significantly faster on. So I am fully in support of Supplementary Order Paper 48, put forward by my colleague Trevor Mallard, which would restrict that to 7 years, and not allow it to be continued forward for a further 5. I think that is a very sensible amendment.

Overall, there are some good provisions in the bill. I am pleased to see that there will be the ability for tighter regulations. I am particularly pleased to see some of the provisions around live animal exports. I think those are steps in the right direction, so overall, although I think it would be fair to say that I do not think that the bill goes far enough, I think the provisions that are in the bill are worthy of support.

I move, That the question be now put.