Animal Welfare Amendment Bill

BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) Link to this

I am very pleased to resume my comments on the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. This bill was first in the name of Simon Bridges, but became a Government bill in the name of the Minister of Agriculture, David Carter, and it is good to acknowledge that the Minister is with us this afternoon as we continue the second reading. This is an important bill, because it acknowledges that New Zealanders have a high disregard for, and a low threshold of tolerance of, animal abuse, and have a concern about animal welfare. These matters have come into public prominence over the last year or two, following some rather ghastly and horrific cases, mostly involving domestic animals.

But one has to say some of the background to this bill relates to the occasional ill-treatment or neglect of farm animals. As part of that context, I believe there will be issues of negligence in relation to animal welfare on some of the farms owned by the Crafar family and the dairy herds that they were not necessarily looking after particularly well. The bill expands the categorisation of the ill-treatment of animals to include a new category of reckless ill-treatment, and that covers neglect arising from animals being abandoned and left, perhaps without food or water. Obviously, in those situations they can suffer quite severe injuries and even die.

I note that Budget 2010 expands the funding of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, in terms of its role in dealing with the domestic side of animal ill-treatment and abuse. I applaud the Government for doing that. I think that is a very sound move, and I congratulate the Government on acknowledging that the society plays a very, very good role. It is a voluntary organisation, in large part often funded by public donations. I am sure other members have collected for the society, as I have. But the bigger question that I want the Minister to answer, if he takes a call in this debate, concerns funding for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. I have not yet had a chance to look through the Budget papers, but currently the ministry, which of course is the other big player in respect of animal welfare, most particularly in respect of farm animal welfare, has an entire complement of staff engaged in animal welfare of just seven full-time equivalents, or 8.75 people, but seven of those staff are engaged—

SUE KEDGLEY (Green) Link to this

The Green Party is pleased to support this bill. It is the first bill to deal with animal cruelty, even in a very modest way, in the past 11 years that I have been in this Parliament. We particularly support the introduction of the new charge of reckless ill-treatment, and we congratulate the Minister on overseeing legislation with this charge. We hope it will make it easier for the SPCA and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry inspectors to make successful prosecutions for animal abuse.

However, we remain deeply disappointed that the provisions of this bill do not apply to the literally millions of animals that suffer from animal cruelty on a daily basis, as a result of farming practices such as sow crates and battery hen cages. Frankly, it is absurd that the provisions of this bill do not apply to the thousands of pigs that are locked up in cages where they cannot even turn round, or to the 3 million hens that are kept in cages for all of their lives. In fact, the provisions of this bill will not apply to any farming practice that is legalised by a code of animal welfare. This legislation will not apply to anyone who has a code of animal welfare, and that applies to the intensive farming of cows. It is interesting too that the whole of Parliament will rally around and support a bill that lengthens jail sentences and gets tough on individual acts of cruelty to animals, when at the same time most parties in this House continue to turn a blind eye to even more serious cases of institutionalised cruelty to animals, such as battery hen cages and sow crates. Animal welfare commentator Peter Sankoff pointed out recently that politicians hate only some kinds of animal cruelty and they are perfectly happy to promote other types. This bill is a classic example of that.

The Green Party does not believe that by simply increasing the length of sentences we will decrease the number of cases of animal cruelty, when we consider that only 11 people—yesterday the 11th person was convicted for cruelty to thousands of chickens—in the history of New Zealand have ever been jailed as a result of animal cruelty charges. Although 10 years ago Parliament increased the sentences for animal cruelty from 3 months to 3 years, the number of people being prosecuted did not increase. In fact, nobody has ever been sentenced to 3 years in jail for animal cruelty—most offenders get just a community sentence, if at all—so one wonders what will be the purpose of extending sentences to 5 years. But we do hope that the new charge of reckless ill-treatment in this bill will have some real effect.

This brings me to the major reason why there are so few prosecutions for animal cruelty in New Zealand. It is because there are so few animal welfare inspectors and so few resources. Even last year more than 14,000 complaints were made about animal cruelty, but only 44 prosecutions were actually laid. The reality is, as others have pointed out, that we have only seven full-time Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry inspectors undertaking prosecutions for animal cruelty, even though we have over 100 million animals in New Zealand. Also, 92 percent of complaints about animal cruelty are made to the SPCA, and this effectively means that the Government has abdicated its duty to monitor animal welfare to inspectors from a charitable organisation, the SPCA—60 percent of its staff are volunteers, many of whom work only part time.

The SPCA informed us during our hearings on the bill that it is unable often to undertake prosecutions because it is so short of funding. It is interesting that the SPCA is the only enforcement agency in New Zealand dealing with criminal offences that has to finance itself through donations. In our view, there is little point in increasing penalties for animal cruelty crimes if the enforcement agencies are so under-resourced that few prosecutions are ever made. We are informed that only 3 percent of the cases that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry investigates result in convictions and that only 0.3 percent of the cases that the SPCA investigates result in a prosecution. We are, therefore, extremely pleased that some money has been found in the latest Budget to increase the budget to carry out prosecutions for animal cruelty and that some of that money will make its way to the SPCA. Again, we congratulate the Minister of Agriculture on managing this Budget allocation.

There were some very interesting submissions on this bill during the select committee process. Federated Farmers came in and they proposed that the entire new clause relating to reckless ill-treatment should be thrown out of the bill because it could expose owners of production animals to prosecution. Horror! In fact, they need not have worried, because almost all production animals are already protected by codes of animal welfare, so, as I have said, the bill will not apply to them. But the attitude of Federated Farmers was extraordinary. Their view is that animal welfare standards should not apply to the entire farming sector. In fact, in their submission they said that it should be made clear in the bill that it applies only to domestic animals and not to production animals. In other words, they are saying that there should be one standard in one law or regulation for individual, companion animals and that there should be a completely different and lax law for farm and production animals because the farming sector generates so much of our wealth.

That is extraordinary, particularly as some terrible instances of animal cruelty have been carried out by farmers. The Crafar farms have been mentioned, but there have been incidents where farmers have literally starved their animals to death. It is completely intolerable that the farming lobby should argue it should be completely exempt from the standards in this bill. Then the pig industry had the gall to turn up and tell us that it had been shocked by recent incidents of animal cruelty and that it abhorred—those are its words—any incident of cruelty towards animals. Can members believe that? That was from the pig industry. When questioned about that extraordinary statement, representatives from the sector said that they did not consider keeping a sow in a crate for months on end, where it could not turn round, to be cruel. They tried to argue that if the pig code allows sow crates and says that they are legal, then somehow in law they are not seen to be cruel; they are seen to be promoting animal welfare. It is extraordinary that the pig industry is suggesting, somehow, that keeping sows in stalls is promoting animal welfare, but that is what the industry said.

Others have said that this bill was drawn up because of the public’s incredible response to some terrible incidents of cruelty to companion animals, but the truth is that there was a huge public response to the video footage showing the way that production animals, mainly pigs, are treated in New Zealand when it was screened on Sunday last year. There was an absolute public outpouring, but still nothing has been done. The pigs are in their cages. The drafting of the pig code is dragging on. It was supposed to have been completed last year, but now we are halfway through this year, and there is no sign of the pig code. It looks as if the pigs will remain in their cages. On the one hand, we are busily congratulating ourselves on this wonderful new legislation that deals with animal cruelty, but, at the same time, we are procrastinating, being evasive, and doing nothing about pigs in cages. That is an utter example of institutionalised cruelty to animals, and we are turning a blind eye. I am not allowed to use the word “hypocrisy” in this Parliament, but otherwise that is the word that would spring to my mind.

Finally, I say that it is interesting, and I think that pig farmers will have to wake up. Even in Australia, a major pork producer has shifted its 45,000 sows from stalls to group housing. The owner has said that there is no point in trying to defend a production system that, in the eyes of the consumer, is indefensible.

Hon HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) Link to this

I rise to support the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill on behalf of the ACT Party. We note that the purpose of the bill is to improve the way that offences relating to the ill-treatment and neglect of animals are prescribed in the Animal Welfare Act 1999, and to increase the penalties for this type of offending. The ACT Party is very pleased to support this bill, along with every other party in the House. Thank you.

Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) Link to this

I start by thanking Simon Bridges; the Animal Welfare Reform Bill is actually his bill. The Minister of Agriculture is the Minister in charge of it now that it has become a Government bill—and the Minister has been sort of missing in action for quite some time—but the credit really goes to Simon Bridges, who brought this bill to the House to begin with.

As we have heard, we have seen horrible pictures on TV in relation to kittens being fed to pit bull terriers, and this being filmed, and there was also the story about the 33 dogs being shot at close range. Those are the sorts of horror stories that we cannot allow to be continually broadcast on TV and on radio stations. Animal cruelty is simply not acceptable in this country. I am really delighted, as has been said before, that we have a bill that deals with some of those issues.

As my colleague Damien O’Connor said yesterday, this bill does not really do a lot. It enhances some penalties, in terms of fines and in terms of the prison sentence being extended from 3 to 5 years. That does not really solve the problem as such. In my view, this legislation is just an interim measure. Enhancing penalties and extending prison sentences will not solve this problem. In a way, the need for this bill is a reflection of the society that we have, of the people who abuse animals, and, particularly, of those who abuse small animals in urban areas. This legislation is a reflection of the nature of our society, which is becoming more and more violent. Unfortunately, the abuse of animals is related to the abuse in communities and families.

So Labour supports this bill. I say to the Minister that I acknowledge the provision in the bill for extra resourcing, particularly in respect of the SPCA, in the form of $8 million over 4 years, which is a small amount but a good start. I think that extra resourcing will get some of the non-governmental organisations to help in this area. Whereas 20 years ago the police, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and the SPCA dealt with about one-third of the cases of ill-treatment, in recent times about 90 percent of cases are dealt with by the SPCA. I think that shows that there is a lack of resources in this area.

In respect of prosecution, it is amazing that a lot of animal abuse complaints are lodged but few result in convictions. For example, in 2008 over 14,000 complaints of animal abuse were received by the SPCA, but only 110 complaints resulted in charges being laid, and only 58 people were convicted. That example shows that it is pretty hard to prove in court that there has been animal ill-treatment. Also, a lot of cases are not reported. I hope that this bill will in some way help more cases to be dealt with.

I will talk about the issue of animal abuse going forward. In my earlier speech, I said that the whole animal abuse area is [Interruption]—I am being urged by the other side to hurry up, but I say to them that there is plenty of time, and they should not worry. The issue of animal abuse is an expanding area of legal practice overseas, particularly in relation to the ill-treatment of animals on the farm. We need to be very careful as we go forward, because I worry that in many areas of the market a lot of non-tariff barriers will be placed on us. We are one of the biggest exporters of meat and dairy products. If we are not careful, the stories of animal abuse cases could potentially go overseas and become quite difficult for us in terms of future trade.

I have highlighted in the House the issue of sow crates. For example, we have heard stories of cubicle farming taking place in Canterbury, and we have heard about the potential of that practice to jeopardise the future of that industry. There is also the issue of possums and the 1080 debate. When those stories get out there, people become suspicious of how we treat our animals, and to what degree there is neglect of these animals in society. We need to make sure that we strengthen our rules and laws as we go forward, particularly in relation to what happens on the farm, because we do not want those stories to get out of New Zealand to overseas market places and affect our trade adversely.

This is a good bill. We all are in the House in support of this bill, and I am delighted to support it. I know there is a short time until 6 o’clock, and it looks like the Government’s MPs are very keen to pass the second reading debate tonight. We did good work in the Primary Production Committee. There are a number of colleagues here, like my colleague Damien O’Connor, and others from the other side. They have been very helpful in terms of scrutinising this bill in the select committee. With those few words, I commend the bill to the House.

SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) Link to this

I want to say just a few words. The first thing to say is that I commend the excellent Minister of Agriculture, the Hon David Carter. Is it not fantastic to see that the work he has done has seen $8.2 million put aside for animal welfare in the Budget? Is that not outstanding? It is absolutely marvellous. It deserves to be acknowledged. It takes a Government that is about action to overcome a Government that was all about no action over the last 9 years. Nothing was done in the last 9 years under the previous Government. This Government has taken action, and particularly this Minister has taken action. He saw the great potential in Simon Bridges, the wonderful member of Parliament for Tauranga, who brought forward this bill, the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. The potential was seen in it. We applauded this bill. It became a Government bill because we acknowledged its importance. I think it is fantastic that we have achieved so much, particularly in regard to the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill. I am delighted to support its passage through the House.