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"There will be no other opportunity for you or members of your group to appear before the Committee in person. You may still make written submissions to the Committee if you wish."
Ross Meurant, MP Hobson, Chairman of the PPC - 1 May 1991

The above response to the many appeals from the ten witnesses that their evidence against vivisection be heard by the government shatters forever the myth that the petitions system is anything but manipulable and therefore fraudulent. History, thus repeating itself, demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt that the farce of the LD50 Hearing in 1985 was not the exception but the rule. That the biggest hurdle to the abolition of vivisection is the politician and the political system.

New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society Inc.
Wellington

18 May 1991

The Hon. J.B. Bolger
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Wellington

Dear Mr Bolger

I and my colleagues were appalled to learn from Mrs M. Moir of the Primary Production Committee dated 14 May 1991 (copy attached) that Mr Meurant, Chairman of the Committee deliberately allowed Committee members to wait for personnel of this Society to arrive for a Hearing on 17 April 1991.

Hand-delivered letters addressed to Mr Meurant at Bowen House, on two occasions, notified him well in advance that members of this Society would not be attending the proposed Hearing because the time allowed to hear our evidence was insufficient. (Copies of those letters are attached.)

It was shattering and insulting to us on the morning of 17 April 1991 to hear Mr Meurant announcing over Radio NZ that members of our Society "had not turned up to the Meeting" when he was perfectly aware that we would not be doing so.

Mr Meurant's attitude to the Petition at the Hearing of 20 March, in addition to being discourteous and aggressive rendered the whole event a mockery and a farce. It was glaringly obvious that members of the Primary Production Committee had not read our submissions, therefore it appears ridiculous to send them further written material as they suggest. Certainly more than enough evidence was presented that morning to impress any human-being of average persuasion that vivisection is fraudulent, dangerous to human health, and that a full-scale investigation is warranted.

The episode of the Primary Production Committee's refusal to hear the evidence supporting the NZ Anti-Vivisection Society's Petition to Abolish Vivisection in New Zealand signed by one hundred and twenty thousand New Zealanders, and the trivialisation of the subject by Mr Meurant, in addition to tragically impeding the course of human progress holds inherent and far-reaching consequences which you and your parliamentary colleagues on the Primary Production Committee, for reasons best known to yourselves, have, with either intent or lack of foresight, been eager to endorse.

Since you, as Prime Minister, have upheld the Primary Production Committee in its gross neglect of its responsibilities to the people of New Zealand, who both you and it supposedly represents, and who pays your combined salaries, it is obvious that the New Zealand Petitions system is as fraudulent as vivisection and that this country is no longer a democracy but in the grip of a dictatorship.

Yours Sincerely

Bette Overell

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