Greg Fleming

I reluctantly concluded that there was just no other

I could land, really.

I would have had to have just ignored the evidence to have concluded anything different.

People have thrown crackers in the past at the house and skyrockets and so on.

Yeah, well, actually, in my case, it was growing up on a small farm in the Wairarapa, and it was back in the days when we had, this was back in the 80s, and we had, you're old enough to remember, we had things called the puhas, and they were stacks of red, quite large crackers, and you'd put them, I'd pick up a half-dried cow pat and then put it in there and wait till the fuse was just about burnt down.

and then throw that cow pat, and it would explode in the air and splatter cow poo everywhere.

And if you were good at your throwing, I could have it explode just above my brother's head.

So that was my background.

When I look at it, I sort of shudder to think that that's what we were doing down the back of the farm without our parents' knowledge.

Thankfully, firecrackers have become a lot safer since then, i.e.

you can no longer buy weapons like that.

But the issue is in part about public safety now, but actually what it's more about is the incredible trauma that it causes to animals.

And this is the thing.

So there were two things that persuaded me.

One was the increasing cost on ACC of the accidents that are happening.

and related to that the reports from FENZ.

Whilst there was a drop-off there for a couple of years, the increase that we've been seeing over a long time is now back in play.

So we are seeing more public damage and fires and the like.

But the other one, and the one that really swung me, was just the stories from all of the animal welfare agencies.

Just the trauma that the animals... And honestly, I shudder now to think back those days there I was on our family farm.