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New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society Inc

30 August 1989

Mr A. Wallbank - MP for Gisborne
- Chairman of the Primary Production Committee
Parliament House
WELLINGTON

Dear Mr Wallbank

I acknowledge (a) your letter of 25 August 1989 in which you inform me that the Primary Production Committee has refused to register public Submissions in support of this Society's Petition, and (b) the copy of your letter to Mr Terris of the same date in which you express surprise at the Committee's decision. Similar surprise and disbelief was also expressed by Mr Terris on 4 July 1989 when I and another representative of this Society sought his intervention against the instructions in the Committee's letter to our Society dated 16 June 1989 which called for the sole Submission of the principal petitioner, and its verbal instruction that no other evidence would be recorded.

Considering that Mr Terris, as you highlight, has demonstrated advocacy for our Society in the Committee room, as he has frequently done in public, and bearing in mind that his note to you of 4 August confirmed your agreement to call for public Submissions, and asked for press statements to that effect, I am concerned, in face of your dual agreement that the four remaining Committee members wielded their power to overturn your decision, thereby denying us the right to negotiate our Petition. I am also curious why they were sufficiently determined to do so.

The official grounds the Committee gave for refusing to record Submissions other than that of the principal petitioner are as follows: -

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