"Mr Chairman, prior to introducing the case for the abolition of vivisection I would like to make a couple of comments:

1. I assume that the Committee has noted the seven hundred supporting Submissions to this Petition, and that every member of the Committee has viewed the video Hidden Crimes which was submitted as a crucial part of the evidence. ^*



2. I also assume that representatives from Health, Education, the Environment and Science will be present at these Hearings. Our Petition is far more applicable to Health than it is to Agriculture. ^**

Mr Chairman if I am wrong in either of these assumptions then I suggest that the NZ petition system is equally as invalid and fraudulent as vivisection and believe that we should change to the Swiss system of holding a public referendum for issues which get over one hundred thousand signatures.

3. Also Mr Chairman I am a bit uneasy that the Committee has perhaps not grasped the crux of this Petition. In a letter dated 18 December 1990 from Mr Elder, a Committee member, to a member of the public, he says: 'You may rest assured that we will be very keen to get an honest appraisal of the situation, and to recommend any changes which we see as necessary to reduce the suffering of helpless animals.'

Mr Chairman, it is letters like this that prevent us from being able to rest assured, and how can the Committee give an honest appraisal, if it obviously has no idea what it is asking us to rest assured about, or what it is appraising?

Nowhere on our agenda have we asked for a reduction of the suffering of helpless animals. I have just shown the Committee a photograph of a suffering and anguished human mother and her deformed son. We have not asked for a reduction of animals used in vivisection. We have not asked for monitoring of vivisection. We have not asked for accountability of vivisection.

We have asked on our Petition for vivisection to be abolished because it is a wrong principle, a methodological error, the wrong system. Because it did not in the past, does not in the present and will not in the future - work!

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* Apparently only two of the five committee members had viewed Hidden Crimes. It is doubtful that the supporting submissions had been viewed by the Committee. The submissions of the witnesses were, I believe, not at hand, since Lawrence O'Halloran was incorrectly questioned from the submission of the principal petitioner.

** There were no representatives from Health, Education, the Environment or Science present.