Animal Welfare (Regulations for Management of Pigs) Amendment Bill

Good morning, everyone. When we finished last night, we were on the second reading of the Animal Welfare (Regulations for Management of Pigs) Amendment Bill. We’re at call No. 11—the Hon Damien O’Connor.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker; nice to see you here this morning. “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” Well, I was last, last night, and first this morning—amazing how this place can transform a few things.

Pigs: the animal welfare of pigs—you may think it’s a relatively minor matter. People will be wondering why we are rushing legislation under urgency to do with pigs’ welfare. Well, there’s a couple of core components of our economy that we need to keep in mind, and that is that we use animals to create wealth in this country, and we’ve done it very, very well, I have to say. For the most part, internationally, we’re recognised as having good animal management systems, but there’s an evolution in awareness—just as there has been around DDT and nicotine and other things like that. We’ve become aware of sentience and the fact that animals are not just things to be used and abused. We’ve developed, as a country, systems of animal welfare—protocols and standards. For the most part, the legislation was changed in the 1990s, and then it’s been upgraded and, generally, has attempted to put in place high standards of animal welfare. I don’t think we can say we’re the best in the world, but we certainly have some very high and respected animal welfare standards across the globe.

When it comes to pigs, 75 percent of the protein produced in the world comes from pork and chicken. There’s been increasing scrutiny on the systems used to produce that pork and that chicken meat, and there have been adjustments across the globe to those systems. Some time ago, the pork industry had to deal with the reality that these farrowing crates were perceived as a fairly negative impost upon animal welfare standards for pig management. The industry was given a heads-up a long time ago that perhaps things needed to change. When we have been in Government, we certainly did our bit to try to assist the industry—providing transition periods, seeking independent advice from the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC), and then indicating that, yes, we should change.

Now, can I just bring to the House the reality that it’s 55 percent of the New Zealand pork industry that is facing this challenge; 45 percent of the industry doesn’t have to worry about it because they run outdoor systems that don’t use farrowing crates, and they will not be impacted by whatever change this piece of legislation brings. It’s 55 percent of an industry that produces 40 percent of the pork for our country—about 60 percent of the pork we consume actually comes in from outside New Zealand. In fact, the pork industry has legitimately asked for us to look at the standards that apply to the pork that is being produced outside and imported into New Zealand. They’ve been asking for it for quite a few years, saying we should have equivalence, or we should at least ensure that they are doing better. I support that, but what this bill does is undermine their argument. “Be careful what you ask for” is something I would suggest to the pork industry, because if we were, indeed, to run the best systems in the world, then we could legitimately go to our trading partners and say, “Look, we can”—and, actually, trade legislation would allow that. We could say that we have some animal welfare standards and our consumers need to have assurances around the quality of animal welfare for that pork being produced.

The problem is that what the Government has done is ignore the opportunity to actually move forward. Following a transition period that we, in Government, provided to the pork industry—and there were a couple of interventions; the High Court ruled that the transition period that we had provided the industry actually wasn’t legal, and that’s why this piece of legislation is here. The lost opportunity is to move us forward to a clearly higher standard of animal welfare for pig management, and then to be able to apply standards to imported pork on the basis that we are aspiring to be the best country for the world and to have the best animal welfare practices in the world. We can’t actually claim that at the moment, but we’re getting close. Why not aspire to be the best country for the world? Why not aspire to be the best farmers for the world? I know that there might be members over there who think we are—actually, you’ve got to lift the lid on that and look across a number of areas of our farming systems. We’re good, we’re efficient, but we’re not the best in what are increasing areas of public and consumer scrutiny. Our long-term future depends upon us having the best systems in the world and the best systems for the world.

There are many colleagues who have covered the technical aspects of this piece of legislation. NAWAC is an independent organisation, and any Minister who deviates from their advice is a fool. Sometimes, they provide advice that’s not that pleasant for a Minister in the hot seat, but if you deviate from that, you’re in trouble, I can tell you, over time. We then end up in the tricky area of political debate that moves beyond science. When it comes to science, I have to raise questions around—because if you go back, science said DDT was OK; science said nicotine was OK; science has said perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances are OK. We’ve had a lot of science that’s actually been, in hindsight, commercially driven and misleading.

What I suggest is that the advice that the Ministry for Primary Industries provided to the Primary Production Committee wasn’t good science, and closer scrutiny of some of those aspects would lead many to believe that, actually, there’s a political element here that is distorting science. When we do that—when we shift from the independence of NAWAC and we distort the science that we are so-called independently assessing—then we are in trouble. I think, as a country, we have been proud of the systems of independent science, objective assessment, and attempts to evolve and maintain the best farming practices across the globe. We’ve done pretty well, but the coalition Government over there has shown, in many areas of governance, that it’s prone to corporate pressure and distortion of the facts in the direction that our international reputation is seriously under threat. Our ancestors worked really hard to build that, and this coalition Government is slowly dragging that into the mud.

Travel offshore and talk about carbon emissions, talk about some of the animal welfare, talk about modern slavery—all the areas that we need to focus on because others across the globe are. This is an area, and this is a piece of legislation, that deals with the standards of management of pork production for 55 percent of our pork industry—not the other 45 percent—and the question that it begs is: has the Government missed an opportunity to put us ahead of the world? Are they just bowing down to what has been a pretty consistent approach from the primary sectors of “Let’s kick for touch, and let’s just try and move this down the road.” They did it on emissions in agriculture—they still haven’t addressed that issue and the challenge—and they’re doing it on some animal welfare standards. This is a missed opportunity.

If the pork industry, or 55 percent of the pork industry, relies on this piece of legislation and on maintaining the status quo with minor adjustments—because that’s all it is—then they are kidding themselves to think that this offers them certainty. Whether it be from New Zealand consumers or others offshore—trading partners—we’re under the spotlight. It’s important that, when we do make adjustments, we do it for well-founded, robust, scientific reasons that do give industry certainty, or as much as we possibly can, and we don’t try to pretend that this is short-term pressure relief and still ignore the reality of the changes that the industry will have to make over time to ensure that it survives.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take the last call on this bill, the Animal Welfare (Regulation for Management of Pigs) Amendment Bill. There are just a couple of points I’d like to make. I remind everybody who may have been listening to the drivel from the other side just recently, that the policy objective is to support a legally compliant and welfare-focused transition for New Zealand pig farmers. It’s quite simple.

I am not sure whether anyone has read the regulatory impact statement, but the consultation undertaken has been significant and wide-reaching, and changes were made as a result of that. I commend the bill to the House.

Arena Williams—Te Pāti Māori’s call.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on this bill, the Animal Welfare (Regulations for Management of Pigs) Amendment Bill. This is a bill that has received many submissions from the industry and people who are concerned about these decisions following the High Court ruling under the Labour Government. What, overwhelmingly, those submissions said was that we should follow the science, that we should have a New Zealand system which is robust—

Dr Hamish Campbell: The previous speaker said bad science—he said the science was wrong. Trust the science—and he said the science is wrong.

ARENA WILLIAMS: —and can rely upon the most useful advice that we have available from the National Animal Welfare Advisory Council—or NAWAC.

But this is not a situation where that has occurred. I hear the member Dr Hamish Campbell, an advocate for science, heckling me on the other side of the House, and I say to him that if we were following the science here, this would be a very different bill. This would be a bill where there was regulation that was following advice, but that hasn’t occurred here. The Associate Minister of Agriculture has been advised about this, and the decision is different from that. The Hon Damien O’Connor is right when he says that we get into tricky territory here where we have removed this from the advice of the experts. We’ve removed it from the realm of the objective parts of our system which are beyond politics and are into the realm of following best practice around the world and working up to those, and we’ve moved it into a sort of political discussion about what our values are here.

I’ve heard members on the other side say, “Well, you know, this debate is getting shrill; this debate is getting about our values”—yes, because it has been dragged there by a Minister who is intent on giving effect to the proposal of the industry, which matches that proposal almost exactly and has been now enshrined in primary legislation, something that would’ve usually been worked out in the regulations because it is technical in nature and should follow the science.

I want to briefly address the Primary Production Committee’s considerations. The select committee did some work around the retroactivity in this bill and the provisions that were highlighted to it from the Regulations Review Committee. There are two provisions which seek to give a sort of special and unusual effect to two regulations in the animal welfare code for the management of pigs. Those are Regulations 25, 26, and 27, which were the subject of the High Court decision, and the words of the legislation here are pretty unusual. They say that those regulations have been validly made as if they always have been. What’s unusual about that is that they were the subject of the High Court decision, the High Court came to a finding on those that was carefully considered, and now we have primary legislation which purports to make them always have existed.

The problem with treating primary legislation as if it can change the past is that it can’t in fact change the past. So now we have a problem around proceedings that might be brought against people who relied on those regulations at a certain point in time when the law was knowable and known, and where they could have been adjusting their practices because that was the law. But these regulations are worded in such a way where the Government is saying, “Oh, well, even if you were in contravention of the law at the time, we are trying to make it the case that these regulations would’ve applied then.” That is difficult for any Parliament to consider passing just in and of itself, because you can imagine that people who were doing something unlawful at the time, or, indeed, people who were doing something lawful at the time, should be able to expect that the law is as it was and that any prosecutions, any actions that arose from their actions at the time would be judged on the laws of the time. We’ll come back to that at the committee stage.

In closing out what has been, you know, a debate about people’s values and not necessarily the science that we’re following, it is a reflection on all of us, what we will accept when we cannot see it. For most New Zealanders, they will never see sows in the situation that we are allowing to continue and lock in for many years under the legislation that we are passing now. It’s not really about the pigs; this is about us. This is about what we will accept, and accept on an industrial scale, from an industry that all around the world is updating its practices. We will be one of the countries that chooses not to and chooses to lock in these conditions.

This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Animal Welfare (Regulations for Management of Pigs) Amendment Bill.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to principal Act