Dr Michael Morris Animal welfare writer nzchas.canterbury

Now that our parliamentary make up is known with certainty, it is worth taking a look at what the new government and parliament will mean for animals. On the face of it, the news looks fairly grim. The National party is known to support coastal shipping deregulation, offshore oil drilling, subsidies to the meat industry, boosting dairy exports, delaying or sidelining the emissions trading systems for dairy farmers, gutting the Resource Management Act, a lax approach to the clean stream accord, and other policy initiatives that encourage more suffering to farmed animals and wildlife. However, in some ways the National-led government record on animal welfare is better than its Labour-led predecessor, particularly in regard to factory farming.

Simon Bridges' private members bill was adopted by agriculture minister David Carter as a government bill. It not only increased penalties for animal offences (something which would have very little effect since judges never handed out maximum penalties even before the bill was enacted), but, more importantly, introduced the new offence of 'reckless ill treatment” of animals. It was this section that particularly worried Federated Farmers, given that it could potentially be used to prosecute those still keeping pigs and hens in intensive confinement.

The Clark Labour-led government oversaw reviews of both the pig and layer hen Codes of Welfare. However, both Jim Sutton and Jim Anderton as ministers of agriculture, totally ignored calls for a change to intensive confinement conditions. Minister Anderton in particular had an unprecedented mandate to free battery hens with a stroke of his pen, after a successful challenge to the Regulations Review Committee resulted in a ruling that the hen code of welfare was essentially unlawful. Anderton instead decided to condemn the hens to more misery after intensive lobbying from the industry.

This can be contrasted with David Carter, the National Party agriculture minister, who presided over a phase out of sow stalls by 2015, five years earlier than even animal campaigners expected. It has been cynically suggested that he only did so because his hand was forced after pigs became a political issue when Mike King publicised their suffering – but even if this is true, it does seems rather unfair to condemn a politician for listening to the public.

The animals also have useful allies in the minor parties the National Party has been forced to do deals with. United Future is the only party other than the Greens to have an animal welfare policy, and Peter Dunne has already done a service to the animals by negotiating a ban on heli-hunting as part of his agreement with the government. The ACT party is no friend of animal welfare, being on the side of money making over ethics, but as an individual, ACT MP John Banks has been outspoken on animal issues. He was certainly a thorn in the side of his National Party colleagues in the Bolger government over his opposition to the Kaimanawa horse cull, and his decision while mayor of Auckland to ban rodeos in that city was certainly an important step in the right direction.

The rise of the Green Party must also be good news for animals. The Greens have a comprehensive animal welfare policy that includes a ban on factory farming and stricter controls on animal experiments. Although the Green Party have never been in a strong enough bargaining position to implement any of their policy proposals, now they have 13 MPs, the extra parliamentary resources available to them may allow them to better promote compassion to animals, put pressure on the government, and place themselves in a stronger position for the next election.

Things are not as bad as they first seem, and the next three years will be very interesting.