Arms Legislation Bill

I move, That the Arms Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

We all know why we’re here today. It has been a long journey. The journey did not actually begin on 15 March 2019; it began on 30 June 1997. Almost 23 years ago, Judge Sir Thomas Thorp told us what was wrong with our firearms legislation. At that time, the Arms Act was already 14 years old. In 2020, the Arms Act 1983 is not only well out of date but dangerously out of date. Successive Governments failed to act on Thorp’s recommendations, and what has been the cost of that failure? The National Party knows. The ACT Party knows. They know because former MP for Epsom, the former National police minister, the former leader of the ACT Party, the Hon John Banks, has told them. He said, following the terror attack last year, that the greatest disappointment of his political life was his failure to act after the mass murder at Aramoana in 1990. I refuse to be the former Minister approached by victims’ families in 20 years’ time and asked: “Why didn’t you change the law, why didn’t you take guns off gangs and bring in tougher penalties for gun crime?” These are the questions that will haunt Simon Bridges and David Seymour instead.

Owning a firearm is a privilege, not a right. We need to do all we can to ensure only law-abiding citizens are able to obtain firearms licences and use firearms. Since March last year, police have seized 2,138 illegal firearms from gangs and other offenders. It’s an average of 43 a week—

Hon Nathan Guy: Is that all?

Hon STUART NASH: Is that all? These are the guns that have been pointed at or used against police, and you say, “Is that all?” Shame on you, Mr Hudson.

There is no point in members opposite wringing their hands over last week’s news from Tauranga when a police car was riddled with bullets from a high-powered weapon. Welcome to a police officer’s world. Welcome to the everyday reality of policing. I am on the side of police. I am working hard alongside the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, and others in Government to give police all the tools and the resources that they need to stay safe as they work to keep our communities safe; that includes the trial of the eagle helicopter in Christchurch, just announced this week; it includes new body armour; it includes new police on the street, soon to pass the milestone of 2,000 new police since the coalition took Government; and it includes tougher penalties for gun crime—and Mr Hudson is not voting for that. It includes new powers to stop a gang member ever getting a firearms licence, which they technically can do at the moment—and Mr Hudson is not supporting that. This is the true Government of law and order, not a party of cheap rhetoric like the members opposite. They ran down police numbers and ignored the Australian gangs who arrived in 2008.

I want to address some of the changes made at the select committee. I want to thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their time and their careful deliberation, especially those who turned up to the meetings. I certainly want to thank the chair who, I think, did a fantastic job under trying circumstances. Since it was introduced, more than five months ago, the legislation has been improved by the public process. The committee heard from every single submitter who asked to be heard. Their voices have made a difference. I have also worked closely and collaboratively with the Hon Ron Mark and New Zealand First to ensure that we get the best law possible. I thank them for their constructive dialogue.

The improvements deliver on the bill’s objectives and enhance the workability for both firearms licence holders and the police. The legislation will place greater controls over high-risk firearms and the safe use of all firearms.

Let’s look at some of the changes: licence duration. We propose firearms licences for five years’ duration instead of the current 10 years. Many submitters commented that this was too short. The committee found most firearms licence holders who receive a conviction do so within the first five years. So it recommended five-year licences for first-time licence holders only. Then, for successful relicensing, it would be a 10-year licence. However, if an applicant had their previous licence revoked or let it expire, their new licence would be for five years once more. The introduction of an interim step added more security and then gives trust by allowing a longer licence period after someone has demonstrated that they are deserving of the privilege of holding a firearms licence.

The committee also reviewed the notice required for when police wish to inspect a firearms licence holder’s storage or a shooting club’s firearm storage. It is recommended this should be at least seven days’ notice.

The committee also clarified that temporary transfer of firearms for less than 30 days would not require an update to the registry unless they are pistols, restricted weapons, prohibited firearms, or prohibited magazines. This ensures that when firearms licence holders lend another licence holder their firearm, or leave their firearm temporarily in the care of another licence holder while travelling, they are not creating an overly burdensome compliance system.

There are other technical changes. This includes a recommendation from the Privacy Commissioner that access to the firearms registry be clarified so that the only reason to access is to assist agencies in their functions relating to arms. For example, Customs’ access and use would be around managing the import of firearms into New Zealand.

There were also changes recommended to the provisions relating to health practitioners. These provisions are about keeping people safe during times of vulnerability. The committee has clarified the definition of health practitioner to ensure that only appropriate health professionals have to consider informing police of a concern with a patient.

For the first time, the fit and proper person test for a firearms licence explicitly excludes gang members, associates, or members of an organised criminal group—and that party isn’t voting for that. Why is the Opposition trying to block this? They like to shoot off their mouths, but do nothing about the actual criminal shooters. Changes made by the committee also give police the power to consider whether someone applying for a licence has had restraining orders made against them. The use of firearms in family harm is an indictment in our society.

Dealers: the committee clarified the activities that would now require a dealer’s licence. It is recommended that the bill state that a dealer’s licence is required for people engaged in lending, hiring, selling, or supplying firearms as a commercial activity central to their business. The committee also recommended that members of shooting clubs selling firearms for the benefit of the club, and hunting guides operating on a small scale, be exempt from the dealer regime.

Several changes and clarifications have been recommended for the certification of shooting clubs and shooting ranges. This includes removing the requirement for ranges to have public liability insurance, lengthening the time frame for obtaining certification, and clarifying that a range officer, not a manager, must be on duty when a range is in use. This better reflects many shooting clubs’ and shooting ranges’ practice and terminology.

The changes we are looking to implement in this legislation have been worked on assiduously over the past few months. But, in reality, there is at least 23 years of knowledge and analysis behind them. As mentioned, John Banks himself said his greatest regret as Minister of Police was not being able to change firearms legislation. Stand for something for a change, Mr Seymour.

We have taken the time to do a sense check on this bill. I am pleased with the work that the officials, most MPs, and communities have put into the creation of a better firearms system. A UMR poll in September found 70 percent of people supported strengthening our firearms laws; 16 percent were opposed. In Canterbury, a staggering 81 percent of people are calling for tougher gang laws. It is up to us as Government to listen to the voices of our communities, to take into account the health and safety and wellbeing of the good men and women of our police service who are out their every single day facing this threat, and to balance the lawful use of firearms against the harm they do in the wrong hands.

This is a very good bill that is long overdue, and it’s an absolute privilege and a pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s actually quite rich that we have a Minister leading a bill that is focused almost entirely on greater cost, regulation, and rules on people that already follow the law, and he’s prioritising that ahead of things like firearms prohibition orders that would actually do something, giving police a genuine additional tool to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, and particularly gang member criminals.

The Minister of Police has been gazing at his navel for over two years now on that initiative. We campaigned on it in 2017. We’ve had a bill in the members’ ballot. It’s now been drawn for a second time. The Minister and his colleagues voted it down in 2018 and they’ve denied leave for that measure to be brought forward. Over two years later, he’s still wondering what he might or might not do about it, but he’s very quick to add cost and regulation on members of New Zealand society that do not break the law and do not represent a risk to public safety, while doing basically nothing about those that do.

Now, when this bill was introduced and had its first reading, we made it very clear that we opposed it for that very reason: the very reason that it does nothing about genuine criminal activity in gangs and does everything about layering cost, administrative burden, and regulation on people that already follow the rules.

Now, the backdrop to the committee considering this bill, particularly in its latter stages of consideration, was a New Zealand with a proliferation of gang tension and violence, often involving firearms. Just in the space of two or three weeks: gun shots in Ruatōria; gun shots in Napier at a health centre; a shotgun blast in Taradale, which almost hit a young infant in a car seat; and pistol crime shots in Tauranga, with semi-automatics used, a triple homicide—or two homicides: one double and a single homicide there. Of course, a suspect also lost his life while seeking to evade police. This is the backdrop in which we were considering this bill. What does the bill do about those sorts of crimes? Absolutely nothing—it does absolutely nothing.

Here’s the thing—here’s the thing—the Minister doesn’t want to accept, which is the evidence—and this actually strikes to the registry too. He and the Prime Minister have repeatedly said, “We’ll keep guns out of the hands of criminals.” Well, that’s certainly not the evidence that was presented to the committee in this instance, and, in the select committee inquiry of 2016-17, the evidence out of Australia—which has had a registry for many a year—was that in the case of homicides, in 90 percent of those involving firearms, the firearms are not registered. So the register is not keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals. To his point about the provisions in this bill about how gang members can be denied a licence, well, just under 90 percent of firearms offences in Australia—that evidence showed us—are committed by people who don’t have a licence. So putting tougher licence provisions on people that follow the law is going to do nothing at all for those that don’t.

It was an absolute opportunity missed. We could have added firearms prohibition orders to this bill in committee, the right place for consideration of serious policy. But the Minister instead wanted to do a bit more navel gazing and had some sort of consultation thing that ran to about 13 January—still plenty of time to have taken that and placed it in the bill; he chose not to. He chose not to add provisions to the bill that would have targeted genuine criminal activity and gangs.

Instead, what he did do, of course, was he did add greater regulation-making power by seeking to drop on the Finance and Expenditure Committee a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), SOP 408, seeking to ban a couple more firearms types that he and the Police had missed the first time around. Now, that actually, arguably, is a good thing. The committee is the right place to discuss and debate that. But one of the things it did—perhaps the most egregious part of that SOP—was, right at the very end, it enhanced the regulation-making power that was placed in there in April, permitting the Government, through their advisers, Police—or Police through the Government—to ban pretty much any firearm that they might want to at any time. In fact, it goes further, because the way it seeks to enhance that power is to limit what can’t be banned. So it’s actually making a far too powerful regulation-making power even worse.

Along the way, though, what the committee was expected to do, and to report on, was to make life a bit tougher for those who already follow the law. For instance, clubs and ranges—which the regulatory impact statement from officials showed very clearly have no history in New Zealand of a problem at all—suddenly are expected to have administrative processes and burden placed upon them—on groups, small groups, of volunteers—that threaten, in some cases, the very existence of those clubs and ranges. The worst point of all about that is that they are the safest areas for firearms use in the country. They are already regulated by rules of shooting bodies, because most of them—not all of them, but most of them—participate in some sort of sports shooting activity. It could be pistol, it could be 3-gun, it used to—until the law changed—be service rifle, and others. But none the less, those clubs and ranges are the best managed and the best regulated through their club arrangements. Instead, the Government just wants to layer more on them. It’s not going to make anyone safer—it’s not—because people aren’t unsafe in those environments in the first place.

Along the way, of course, we looked at the fit and proper person test, and there was this desire to have proactive notification. We discovered in the Finance and Expenditure Committee—I won’t say “quite by accident”, but we discovered in the committee—that such already exists. It exists under the Health Information Privacy Code, which already permits health practitioners to notify the police if they are concerned about a serious threat to the life of—in this case—the firearms holder, to the public safety, or to the lives of others.

There are two parts they have changed. One is actually good, which I’ll start with, and one is not so good. The part that they’ve changed which is really good is that it, effectively, creates an indemnity from prosecution for that health practitioner, which we’re told does not exist under the code and existing legislation. That’s a good thing. It gives an additional sense of protection to the practitioner that if they are discharging their duty well, they are not going to face prosecution.

But the bad part is that it changes the threshold for notification. It actually reduces it down, and neither the Government directly nor their advisers could give a proper justification to the committee as to why that was necessary. We suggested that they could take the threshold words as currently exist under that code, bring them into the legislation, wrap around that protection, and have a very, very solid, proactive notification system and one that we would have no problem at all supporting. But they chose not to do that.

With regard to the registry—as I have touched upon—which we’re told consistently will keep guns out of the hands of criminals, the evidence from overseas shows it simply won’t do that, and in some jurisdictions it has shown to be so difficult to try to implement and so costly that they’ve actually pulled it out. But in the places where it does remain, we have seen the evidence that it simply doesn’t deliver on that objective.

Now, we’re not opposed ideologically to having a registry, but what we say and maintain is that it’s got to deliver a practical and useful objective that is measurable and—most of all—achievable. With the repeated claim from this Government that this is about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, we know through the evidence it cannot do that. We cannot support it on that basis.

We have maintained, since April, that there should be exemptions allowed for the legitimate use of now prohibited firearms. Pest control is one, and we thought we were going to get a regime for pest control in the first bill in 2019, but that didn’t happen. Despite submissions on this, it wasn’t discussed in the select committee this time. Instead, the police and the Government have put through a regulation which flies in the face of what they have set up in the first place. They said that they were going to stop people having faux companies claiming to be pest controllers to work around the law, but they’re now encouraging farmers to do exactly that. We don’t think that’s the right way to deal with this sort of policy, and that should have been in the committee.

Sports shooters—as I’ve said, those clubs and ranges are the safest place for the use of firearms in New Zealand. There is a legitimate use for sports shooting. There should be an allowed exemption, specifically for those that affiliate to genuine international bodies that hold genuine international competitions and where the members here are prepared to affiliate to a body that has suitable regulations, such as Pistol New Zealand, which is highly regarded.

This was an opportunity to actually create a decent bill that would tackle crime, not the innocent. Regrettably, the Government has chosen not to do that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in support of the Arms Legislation Bill, and I wish to begin my speech with thanks. Thanks to the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who worked hard on this bill, including many of the members of the Opposition, who engaged very constructively with it, but especially the members of the Government. I’d like to thank the submitters who put in submissions—all 3,527 of them—and I would especially like to thank the 381 submitters that we heard in person.

I think we sat for 41 hours on this particular bill. I missed a few hours of that because we had simultaneous subcommittee meetings running, but other than that, I heard all the submissions.

There was some very strong representation from the gun lobby—from people in support of guns—and, in fact, some really extreme views. One submission blamed the Prime Minister for the massacre in Christchurch. It said that the Prime Minister at the time that the licence was issued to the shooter was the person responsible, and then said, “It disgusts me that the Prime Minister has accepted no responsibility herself.” It was an astonishing claim, and one that I felt just undermined the submission entirely.

Another submission said that the real problem was that the bill all went wrong in the preamble and that “owning firearms is a right”. It never really has been in New Zealand. Then it went on to complain that “New Zealand law is being made compliant with the United Nations treaty” and it used the word “globalists”—the “globalists” that signify someone is speaking from an alt-right perspective. That is someone who wanted guns in this country and did not want this bill.

I think the submission that worried me the most was the person opposing this bill who said that the real problem was State control—it was not an issue of safety, but there was an issue of increasing State control over the people, comparing New Zealand to Venezuela, Russia, China, and Germany in 1933. This person went on. He said, “I am asking as a young New Zealander, don’t set us down this path to subjugation. This route will only end in tears one way or the other, and given our current leadership, that ending is likely to be with the words ‘Arbeit macht frei’.”—what an extraordinary thing to say.

Extraordinary claims like that require extraordinary evidence—extraordinary evidence that there is subjugation and a lack of freedom in this country. I would like to point out that today, the news came out that the Cato Institute has ranked New Zealand in terms of freedom in the world, and where has it ranked New Zealand? At number one. There is no evidence to support some of these extraordinary claims made by the gun lobby.

Nicola Willis: You’ll take us backwards—you’ll take us backwards.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Of course, there were many, many—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’m sorry. Ms Willis, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind leaving the Speaker out of the discussion. Thank you. Sorry, Dr Russell.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: There were many, many other representations from people opposing this bill, very strongly worded, from gun enthusiasts and gun clubs—people who brought up some objections to the bill. Some of them were very, very strongly worded, but they made some good points. For example, with respect to gun licences, they said, “Come on, if someone has proved themselves, do we really need to go through the process every five years?”, and that is why, as a committee, we came back with a recommendation that after you’ve proved yourself for the first five years of your licence, then we’d go to a 10-year licence. That was a reasonable compromise that we took because of what submitters said.

Submitters said that, actually, it was unfair that police could turn up with no notice and inspect the place where guns were being kept. As a committee, we agreed, and we’ve come up with, I think, the really good idea that there has to be seven days’ notice. That’s sitting in this bill, and that is because of people who came and made submissions, and we listened to those submissions and made a change.

We have said that if a person is lending a firearm, then that does not have to be recorded on the register straight away; instead, we’ve gone for 30 days. If you lend a firearm to someone or give it to someone, then it must be recorded in the register after 30 days, and why that length of time? Well, that means that someone has got enough time to lend a shotgun to a mate for a hunting trip and it doesn’t need to hit the register. So, again, a perfectly reasonable compromise there.

In the bill as drafted, the bill had said that we needed a range “manager” on duty at ranges at all times. Now, a “manager” implies a certain level of control over club activities, and lots of people belonging to gun clubs which operated ranges pointed out that under their rules, they typically have a safety officer on duty whenever the range is being used. If we reflected that—having a safety officer—then that would capture the existing good process and would work perfectly well. So we’ve made that change in the bill—and so on and so on. Right through the bill, where good suggestions have been made, however strongly worded, we have taken up those suggestions to make this bill work better. So that robust engagement has worked.

We did not accept reinstating MSSAs—or military-style semi-automatics. People came up with two reasons for them. One was pest control, but we’ve worked out a perfectly good way of managing genuine needs for pest control, not just somebody who wants to go and shoot a few bunnies over the back of the farm on occasion. The other reason was for sports. People felt that there was a justification for having MSSAs for shooting sports. We pointed out—many of us pointed out—that it wasn’t exactly an Olympic or a Commonwealth sport; it was actually quite a minority sport. So shooting is a Commonwealth or Olympic sport, but not this particular discipline. And they said, “Well, actually, it was under consideration for the Olympics.”, but that turns out not to be the case. In fact, the four proposed new sports for the 2024 Olympics are break-dancing, sports climbing, skateboarding, and surfing. So that is not the case.

So why put this bill in place? Because people want it—people like Rural Women New Zealand. Rural Women New Zealand, who deal with firearms all the time, are strongly in support of this bill. They surveyed their membership, and 83 percent of the members of Rural Women New Zealand agree with the purpose of this bill; 71 percent agree that there should be a registry for guns, for firearms. They agreed that licensed clubs and shooting ranges should be regulated. In other words, this body of women with real standing from the rural community support this bill.

The Suicide Mortality Review Committee supports this bill. Why? Because, and I quote, “There is strong evidence that more restrictive gun laws are associated with lower rates of suicide involving firearms [and] studies from Australia have found that the introduction of the 1996 National Firearms Agreement … was associated with a reduction in firearms and total suicide rates”.

The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists echoed the Suicide Mortality Review Committee that there were 860 firearm deaths over the 15 or so years between 2000 and 2015—54 a year, on average. About 75 percent of those firearms deaths are suicides. Better control of firearms will reduce our suicide rates.

The Public Health Association of New Zealand supported having a five-year licence. Why? Because data shows that of those aged 16 to 19 when first issued with a firearms licence, 31 percent had been convicted of an offence by the time they were 20. By the time they were 30, 45 percent of them had been convicted of an offence. That five-year period is worth having.

And why should we support this bill? The words of someone who calls themselves an ordinary citizen, a parent, a grandparent. This person said—and, actually, I can’t tell whether this is a man or a woman. It just says, “I have been moved to make this submission because I am concerned that the opposition to the proposals comes largely from arms item-holders.”—that’s firearms holders.

While the view of all affected parties is important, as in all legislation, this legislation also needs to consider the view of New Zealanders who are not firearms holders—the majority of the population. And what is that view? Well, we have that view from survey research. We know that 70 percent of New Zealanders support strengthening New Zealand’s existing gun laws. The great majority of New Zealanders support this bill. We have made sensible moves in response to the submissions we have received, but we have retained the register. We have retained greater control over firearms. We retained the core of this bill: that owning and using firearms is a privilege, not a right, and it’s a privilege we extend to our law-abiding citizens. I support this bill.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s an honour to take a call in this very important bill this evening. I’m from a partly rural electorate, and a farmer myself, and, indeed, a keen hunter, and I’ve been brought up around firearms since I was very, very young. Indeed, I’m a licensed gun-holder, and now I’m enjoying educating my children about the safety of a firearm. Typically, farmers in New Zealand have a .22 rifle or a shotgun, and they may have more than that, but that’s typically what farmers have for pest control. I’m curious with this bill this evening—that it goes further in a lot of aspects than we on this side of the House are comfortable with, and I wish to address those this evening.

While the Government talks positively about a firearms register, I think what they don’t quite realise is that it’s failed in Canada. It cost over a billion dollars—

David Seymour: Two billion.

Hon NATHAN GUY: —two billion, Mr Seymour mentions—and the Canadian authorities have backed away from it. What we hear from the Government this evening is that they seem to believe that a register is going to reduce criminal activity. Well, just have a look across the Tasman, over in Australia. For 90 percent of criminal activity involving firearms, those weapons are not in a register. So this register is going to be extremely costly, and I have some real grave—what’s the word?—

Hon Members: Concerns.

Hon NATHAN GUY: —concerns that this register will cost an absolute arm and a leg and more and won’t stop criminal activity. Also, the licence time frame, from 10 years to five years—well, we have thrashed that out hard in the select committee, and we know that that is going to cost more for law-abiding gun owners than it does currently now. That is a concern that we raised in the select committee process, but often that fell on deaf ears.

I want to also talk, as I did in my introductory remarks, about pest control. That is a massive issue for rural communities and farmers, and we pushed hard in the select committee to say that, surely, farmers and their employees, if they are licensed firearm owners, should be allowed to go out and exterminate possums, rabbits, wallabies—the list goes on—Canadian geese, deer that are ravaging a crop. The Government seemed to sit through the submissions with very much earmuffs on, and then they’ve come up with this sort of a workaround whereby they are now proposing in regulation to allow farmers to set up a commercial pest control company. We think that while that may indeed work, it is a workaround that has come too late and should indeed have been in the primary legislation.

Then we come to something that is extremely topical, and that is gangs that are growing in this country—1,600 more patched members under this Government’s watch. It was curious to hear Stuart Nash, the Minister of Police, stand up and be holier than thou and say, “We’re doing all these wonderful things.”, and yet gangs are running rampant in his electorate. The Government once again have their earmuffs on with our proposal of a firearms prohibition order, which will get tougher on criminal activity that involves firearms, and also on gangs. I know that the Greens are against this, and they have stopped the Government being tougher on criminal activity involving gangs and firearms. That is a crying shame, and that is playing out in communities right now, whether it’s in Hawke’s Bay, whether it’s in Tauranga, or whether it’s in other communities around the country.

Hon Clare Curran: You’re hurting my ears.

Hon NATHAN GUY: So what is good about the firearms prohibition order—Clare Curran won’t need to put up with me too much longer; she’ll be leaving this place, like me, and I wish her well.

What is exciting is that Mr Hudson here, our police spokesman, has had the luckiest day in his political life in this place. He has had, last week, the Arms (Firearms Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill (No 2) drawn out of the biscuit tin. So what is going to happen now with the votes in the Parliament? Are New Zealand First going to stand up and support Mr Hudson’s bill to get tough on gangs? They didn’t the last time. We’ve tabled it numerous times over the last 12 to 18 months. It’s been voted down. Now it’s going to come into this House. Mr Hudson has got a real opportunity to stand up on behalf of New Zealanders that are worried about their safety in their own homes, with gangs running rampant under this Government—1,600 more gang members under this soft-on-crime Government is a hell of an embarrassment.

What is also a concern to us are these regulations involving clubs and ranges that are going to be burdensome. Also, when we think about Pistol New Zealand—and they work with the rifle guys, the clubs that are involved with shotguns, and, of course, the pistols called 3-gun, and that has a strong set of rules. They came in and made very passionate submissions to the select committee and said that we are, effectively, an international body. So if someone abides by the 3-gun rules that are common throughout the world, why on earth would you want to be going and regulating the hell out of these 3-gun clubs? That is something that we can’t fathom.

So in summary, we have some concerns. If we are lucky enough to be in Government after 19 September, we will be making the necessary changes. We came into the select committee process and said, “We think that this bill should be strengthened with 13 changes.” We’ve been lucky enough to get two of those changes accepted. We’ll be fighting through the select committee process, with Supplementary Order Papers, to see if New Zealand First can come around to our way of thinking and get a hell of a lot tougher on these gangs. There is an opportunity for the Parliament to send a message right now to gangs that we’ve had enough. We want to crack down on them, and yet, unfortunately, our speeches, our messages, have been falling on deaf ears. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Arms Legislation Bill. Can I acknowledge that 15 March 2018 absolutely changed this country in terms of what took place down in Christchurch, and it required real leadership, and we got that through our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who stepped up and made a commitment to making our communities a lot safer—of course, with the Minister himself, and I want to acknowledge the work that the Minister Stu Nash has done in bringing this bill to the House.

I want to acknowledge the work of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. You see, I come from a rural community. I’m proud to be a member representing Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and the Tai Rāwhiti and Hastings, and, yes, many of my constituents are farmers as well as rural people. They too have said they want a safe community—and this is what this bill is addressing. It’s acknowledging the rightful use of guns; they are acknowledging that for many of my community who have raised up and used the weapons and the guns safely. But it’s around removing guns from those that commit harm, and this is what this bill is attempting to do.

So I do want to acknowledge the work of the select committee in bringing a much better bill. Essentially, the significant change that the committee has recommended and the Minister addressed in his opening speech is the introduction of a firearms register. Who would argue with that? It also talks about the terms of the firearms licences. We also talk about the amendment to the fit and proper person criteria, to ensure that those that are owning a gun are both fit and proper, and, of course, it creates new offences and penalties. The bill, ultimately, helps keep guns out of criminals’ hands. It’s a simple bill. I think all members of this House should support it. I commend it to this House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on the Arms Legislation Bill at this, the second reading. I did not have the benefit of attending the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I acknowledge that others in the House spent much more time than me, therefore, considering those particular submissions. But I do want to place on record that I’ve received a large volume of correspondence and had many discussions with constituents in my electorate on this and, indeed, other firearms law - related matters. I promised those constituents that I would consider the Government’s proposals in good faith and arrive at a conclusion, along with my colleagues in the caucus of the National Party, that reflected what we thought would be in the best interests of New Zealanders and their safety.

With that background, I have, of course, considered, again, along with fellow members of the National Party caucus, a couple of key distinctions when considering the bill. One is the provisions that are in the bill, and one is the provisions that are not in the bill but might be usefully added. I’m foreshadowing a number of conditions of National Party support that have been highlighted and, indeed, explained pretty clearly, I think, already by our police spokesperson, Brett Hudson. We make a distinction, too, between that which looks good and that which does good. Of course, it’s possible for a thing to do both, but in the case of some of the provisions of this bill, it appears clear that the intentions and, indeed, as I say, the look of the thing may be good, but the effect is not necessarily one that is beneficial overall for the purposes of maintaining the safety of our population—firearms owners and others alike.

So it is that I turn my attention to the conditions that we’ve set out. Alternatively, we might think of these as proposals to change the law for the better, such that the National Party would be in a position to be able to support them. Before I do, I’d like to give an example of what I meant by the difference between that which looks good and that which does good. A spreadsheet isn’t going to stop a bullet, obviously, unless it’s particularly long and printed out and particularly cleverly placed at the time, and so it is that the firearms register proposal should be seen as a measure that is potentially useful but in practice may fall short of the mark for which it is intended.

Looking, then, at the first of the conditions that the National Party has set out by way of proposed changes: the first is to require that police be notified of the existence of a club or range. This seems to me a very sensible, practical approach, understanding and recognising the value that clubs, as collections of firearms users—indeed, members of the club—are able to provide in assisting the State to understand the potential dangers, I suppose, of any of its members and, of course, conversely, to frame the proposition in a more positive light, the members who are clearly law-abiding, honest, hard-working folk, notwithstanding that they enjoy the activity of shooting in a controlled and safe environment from time to time.

I don’t want to overstate the case, but I believe there’s an ideological difference between the two sides of the House in this matter: comparing the approach whereby, on the one hand, we favour bringing on board the clubs, communities of interest within our communities more broadly, and expecting and hoping that we would be able to gain some value from understanding on the ground what the situation is with regard to members, and on the other hand, and across the side of the House that is currently in Government, a belief, rather, in the power of the State to understand and to record and to be able to control better than the citizenry can its members, and to understand the dangers that are posed. For that reason, I contrast directly the proposal by the Government in relation to creating a register, which would be envisaged to be omniscient and therefore can be regarded as worthy of omnipotence, as compared with we on this side of the House, who believe that it’s more valuable to be able to understand from a practical perspective what those who belong to these clubs are actually all about.

A couple of other matters, and these are of particular moment to those in the rural parts of the Helensville electorate, and I make no apology for emphasising their advocacy to me in particular. One is exemptions for those involved in pest control, a practical matter in some parts of New Zealand, as I say, including the part of New Zealand that I’m privileged to represent currently, and also exemptions for those involved in sport shooting, those exhibiting the discipline and the rigour of that particular activity, whether they represent a region, perhaps, of New Zealand or New Zealand itself on the world stage, or perhaps take a less ambitious approach but, none the less, a disciplined approach and, indeed, a safe approach—the safety being the element that I’d really like to emphasise in relation to those involved in sport shooting. Again, I think, as with the pest control, we have a very good argument that has been made through a number of submissions to the select committee process and by way of approach to many members of Parliament, and I support those exemptions as a very sensible, practical measure.

I’ve already mentioned an ideological difficulty with the register, but more importantly, perhaps, in practice, the reality is that what we will trade off for the intended benefits of having such a register is a false sense of security. Of course, the information in such a document is only going to be as good as each data point within it, in the same way that a chain is obviously only as strong as its weakest link, and other similar metaphors. And so it is—and I’ll sanitise the expression somewhat, but it’s a case of “stuff in, stuff out.” Obviously, if we’re not fully able to rely upon a register as being 100 percent accurate, then it will be of limited value accordingly, notwithstanding the fact that we would of course like instinctively to be able to rely upon its contents absolutely.

A related point, although one, I concede, probably of lesser strength, is that the existence of a large amount of data held by the State is, of course—in this case, data that’s very valuable, in particular to the personal security of those who are on it—liable to be lost, is liable to be breached or leaked or somehow otherwise not controlled in the way that we would expect. So the privacy, but again, as I say, probably more importantly the security of those on the register is something for which we should have grave concerns, and I do hope that if the Government is successful in passing the law, including the register, every effort will be made to protect those whose names are on it against the loss, inadvertent or malicious, of that data, because that would represent one of the most serious data breaches, and this country has not been immune from those from various Government systems. It seems inevitable, in fact. I hope to be proven wrong on this point in relation to the firearms register that is being proposed. That would be a dark day indeed for New Zealand, providing, as it would, a veritable shopping list for those who would do ill to others.

The regulation powers within the bill that the Office of the Clerk, I understand, recommended the removal of: from a constitutional point of view, the desire for executive exigency I don’t think is strong enough to outweigh the desirability of lawmaking that is more robust simply than providing for regulations in such key areas as this. The Parliament has proven, for better or worse, that it is capable of passing laws in very short order in relation to this space, and so it could surely do the same again in future, whereby the subject of the regulations, as envisaged by the bill at the moment, could, in fact, be the matter of Parliament made law, now and in the future.

The requirement for practitioners to notify police if they sense that there is a threat to individual or public safety: again, very well-meaning, but going back to that crucial distinction between that which looks good and that which does good, I think it’s necessary we turn our mind to the possibility of an unintended consequence whereby a person, perhaps who is a firearms owner and perhaps has some sort of mental health difficulty, might feel a chilling effect whereby they are less forthright about coming forward about the difficulties they are facing. So the National Party proposal is to strengthen that to require in particular urgent situations.

E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand and speak on the Arms Legislation Bill, having just read the select committee report. I unfortunately wasn’t able to sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee hearings for this legislation, but I was involved with members across the House in the urgent and timely response that we had after the terrorist attack on 15 March, where we heard from a huge range of the general public and those who were immediately impacted, and stakeholders from the gun sector and otherwise, about the reforms that were proposed in tranche one. I want to extend the Green Party’s thanks to those from across the House who’ve engaged in this process so constructively, particularly to the honourable Minister Stuart Nash for his work in leading this.

What we are happiest with in this Arms Legislation Bill, tranche two of these reforms, is the online registry. It is, of course, a privilege to own a gun in this country. We aren’t the likes of America, where it is enshrined in a constitution. In much the same way, I think, that many New Zealanders would think that it isn’t necessarily a right to own and utilise or operate a vehicle, that same approach I think we should be applying to guns.

So it is the case that what we’re proposing here in the Arms Legislation Bill is a register that has some similarities with a motor vehicles register as operated by the New Zealand Transport Agency. I would note that there’s been a number of those who have seemed to oppose it because of the seeming cost or administrative burden or otherwise that they’re talking about, but as far as I’m concerned, if you were to follow the input from those who have experience within police organisations—in fact, those who were in Parliament in the 1990s around the response that we had to Aramoana and the tragedy therein, and those who responded to the 1997 Thorp report. At this point in time, it’s approximated that we have around 1.5 million guns in New Zealand, but it’s impossible to know because we don’t have a gun registry. If we were in 1997, in response to the Thorp report, as was recommended, to have implemented the gun registry, we might have a grasp on that.

So I just really want to reach across the aisle and speak to the point that was raised by my colleague Chris Penk, who stated that limited data is of limited value. Look, we agree with that, but in that same vein of thought, it is really important to recognise that the more time that we allow for the accumulation of that data, the greater value it offers for solving crimes, for pre-empting and stopping crimes from happening in the first place, and had we done this over 20 years ago, then we may be in a much better position than we are now with the unknown 1.5 million - odd guns out there at present.

It’s really important as well to speak to the changes that have been put forward around licensing and also around the fit and proper person criteria. I find it quite interesting that the Opposition seems to oppose the notion of there being checks and balances, or, rather, the notification of people who have mental ill health. I would state that the Greens are often the ones who are speaking about the stigmatisation of those with mental ill health, but on this point, in particular, I find the inconsistency fascinating in that the National Party seems to be unhappy with the notification of something like mental ill health but is really happy to talk about people’s connections to the likes of organised gangs or otherwise. Surely, we should be applying the same tests to the both of them—surely, we should be applying the same tests to the both of them.

I also want to speak to what has been raised by a number of members throughout the process that we have gone through, and I want to actually applaud the Opposition for their work constructively with the Government on passing the first tranche of gun regulation and changes. I also really want to applaud the frontbencher for the Nats the Hon Judith Collins, who at the point in time, post - 15 March, said, and I quote, “Bugger off!” to the gun lobby, and said at that point in time that she thought, if my understanding is correct, that a gun register is essential. So I am really interested to hear what that former Minister has to say.

I also think that it is—

Hon Member: And Chris Bishop?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Yeah, it is going to be really interesting to hear from other members, such as Chris Bishop about his position, because it seems to have ebbed and flowed. I do wonder who has been in his ear, and I’d love to hear his rationale for now falling in behind the rank and file of the National Party.

It’s also the case that this legislation, as proposed and as has gone through the Finance and Expenditure Committee, creates new offences and penalties. This is something that the Greens take really seriously, when we’re talking about creating those new offences and penalties: that, on balance, when it comes to the real challenge of making sure that our communities are safer and that we are regulating effectively, that we have struck that balance here.

There are a few bits and pieces that we look forward to continuing work with, with our Government partners, and hope that there is continued constructive engagement from the Opposition. I’m looking forward to the committee of the whole House stage and to eventually passing this bill in its full and final form, creating that registry that should have been created well over 20 years ago, and putting a few things right. The Green Party is proud to support this bill.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member who just resumed her seat, Chlöe Swarbrick, in her speech imputed improper motives to another member Chris Bishop for the positions he takes. Now, in Standing Order 120, I think, it is very clear that that’s unparliamentary, and I think she should withdraw and apologise for that. I find it quite offensive.

I didn’t take that inference from that.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, Madam Speaker, she said that his position had changed inexplicably and she wondered who had been in his ear. I think that’s quite an improper inference.

No, that’s not unparliamentary. I think if you’re—there’s a different type of influence. Being persuaded by something, that’s different than being influenced, in the way that the Standing Orders refer to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My word, I have reached the pinnacle of my political career, when I, a boomer—

David Seymour: It’s just beginning.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yeah, well, actually, the member is quite right, it is only just beginning; I would have thought, halfway—when I, a mere boomer, am praised by the great Chlöe Swarbrick, my word! Am I good or what? So thank you so much, Miss Swarbrick. I take your praise—with a grain of salt, but I take every bit of praise I can get, because I am not so proud that I can disdain any compliment.

Now, let’s get back to business, shall we? We supported, wholeheartedly, the first tranche of work on this, and we are finding ourselves disappointed to have to say that, actually, the second tranche, this bill, has not come up to the mark that we would expect. I have been, like many other MPs, spoken to by many constituents, and my constituents know that I always take their advice and then I make my own mind up. I am fully in support of the first piece of legislation that we passed. This legislation, however, does have some issues that I think could be addressed, hopefully in the committee of the whole House, but which the current bill is not actually addressing.

One of those is the issue around a firearms register. I don’t have a problem with the concept at all, and I know the National Party doesn’t have a problem at all with the concept of a firearms register. The issue is in its implementation and the fact that it will only be a register of firearms of those people who legally own their firearms and who therefore put their firearms or their names forward to be included. If this Government that we’re dealing with on the other side of the House was so concerned about the illegal use of firearms, then they would have been adopting the firearm prohibition orders that our party tried to bring in when we were in Government and couldn’t get enough support in Parliament to get that done, because parties that we relied on to work with us on that would not support it. What these firearm prohibition orders do is, if someone is a gang or organised crime member and they have access to firearms or they have some connections with them, then they are in a position where they can’t hold firearms licences and own firearms—not legally anyway.

We have a situation in New Zealand where we have a lot of gang members, and they seem to have been growing: about 15—

Hon Nathan Guy: 1,600.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —1,600 extra gang members—

Hon Nathan Guy: Last 2½ years.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —just in the last 2½ years. And what that tells us is that they’re growing—

Brett Hudson: That was the year of delivery, all right!

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —in the year of delivery, under the current Government. How many of these 1,600 extra—I think we’ve now got about 10,000 gang members in New Zealand, something like that? About as many as we have cells for them. About 10,000 people are not going to voluntarily put their hands up to owning firearms that they’ve stolen or they’ve bought on the black market or they’ve come by in some other way. They’re not going to do that. It’s going to be Joe and Janet Farmer who are going to tell the police which firearms they’ve got. And what we know is that registers—electronic registers, hardcopy registers; though this would be electronic—can be hacked, can be accessed by people who are criminals, who are involved in organised crime, and who will have then a list of the law-abiding people who have firearms, and what firearms they have. And that is, I think, a problem.

So we don’t have a problem with the concept of a register, because we understand that these are dangerous weapons whose purpose is to kill. We understand that. But we also understand that the people who will be complying with the law are those who always comply with the law, and that the people that we’re most concerned about are the people who almost never comply with the law, and who this Government can’t be bothered dealing with. Maybe it’s because they think that they won’t do as they’re told. Well, obviously, a lot of people are not doing as they’re told, because—what, there’s 56,000 firearms handed in, is that right? Out of, what, 1.25 million that’s estimated? Not all of those firearms, of course, have been handed in, and there will be ones that are now declared illegal. And some of them, many of them, will be. But there will be other firearms that haven’t been.

One of the areas that we’ve been concerned about in our party, and certainly in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, has been people such as the shooting associations, the competition shooters, who have said to us that now they can’t own the firearms that they use in international competition. When I suggested that maybe they could take those firearms overseas and leave them overseas, well, no, they can’t, because that’s also a breach of it. They need an export licence to do that, and they can’t do that either.

So we’re actually, with this legislation, taking away not only the possibility of people being killed with these weapons but, actually, the very legitimate sporting activities of people who’ve never shown any inclination at all to break any law, ever, and who have been trying very much to work within it. So I think these are things that could have been addressed. I particularly note the submissions from the pistol shooting association, who had very good solutions for how we could deal with this, because they have had a very strict regime since the 1980s, which works really, really well. I can’t understand why the Government hasn’t accepted that—and for some reason they haven’t.

We also have some concerns around the shifting of a firearms licence from five years to 10 years. Now, I don’t understand that, because—I mean, I understand that a firearms licence is an important document, but this is at the same time that we’ve shifted the passport from five years to 10 years. I would have thought a passport was a pretty important document. It is actually a primary method by which people prove their identity. To be going from a five-year to a 10-year licence in that, but a 10-year to a five-year licence in a firearms licence, doesn’t make sense, does it? It just sounds like it’s punitive, and it’s all about whacking around people who own firearms.

I understand a lot of farmers own firearms, but there’s no reason for this Government to punish them just because they’re farmers. They do enough damage to our poor farming and farming families as it is now; don’t need to do any more.

And then there are the issues around collectors. Well, some of us have family members who are collectors, and they’re finding they’re really upset because their collections that they’ve built up over the years—of World War II things and various other things—just get destroyed. It’s all very well to say, “Oh, they can have these guns decommissioned and basically destroyed in front of them.”, and that will suddenly make them right, but these are silly, silly rules.

And then we’ve got sporting ranges. Well, they want shooting ranges in this bill to have a similar certification process to clubs, but they must also have public liability insurance. What’s the insurance got to do with anything, with safety? Insurance has got nothing to do with safety. How many people are being shot on these ranges? None, that’s how many—none, zero, zip, none. So what’s going on here? And then you see that the certification lasts only for—guess what!—five years, compared to clubs, which are indefinite. So what’s the point of that? And then we recommend amending the bill to require notification to police at a shooting range rather than certification. Well, you know, it just seems weird to me. So there’s a lot of stuff that actually seems extremely punitive and doesn’t need to be like that.

I think the first Act that we brought through with such acclaim within Parliament was sensible; this, however, is going too far. This is overreaching. This is actually treating with contempt people who are law-abiding people, who have a reason to own firearms—whether it’s for sporting activity, shooting pests, or on a farm because you need to have a firearm with which to put down an animal that is suffering. These are things that actually exist in the real world, not in Parliament. I think this is a lost opportunity, so I’m hopeful that the Government will listen and will consider changes, because I would have thought New Zealand First would want to bring about changes. I would have thought New Zealand First would want to be able to say something that they’ve achieved, which is to help work with us to bring about these changes. Thank you. Madam Speaker.

The following call is a split call—Jo Luxton.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Firstly, I want to acknowledge the leadership that our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has shown and the Hon Stuart Nash has shown by bringing this piece of legislation to the House. [Interruption] Thank you. Thank you for that cheer. I see you’re all in agreeance.

I grew up in a little place—spent time for a few years on a farm in a little place—called Ngakuru; I don’t know if any of you are familiar with that. My dad worked on a sheep farm there. My husband is a keen hunter. He may not be that great, but, hopefully, he’s not watching this evening to hear that about his hunting skills. I have sons who are avid hunters, and the one thing I know—and the one thing that we’ve all talked about—is that owning a firearm, having a firearms licence, is a privilege, not a right.

Now, I have not been a permanent member of this select committee. I have sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee maybe once or twice. When I sat in on that select committee, there were some actually really good arguments brought about by people that were submitting. I’m really pleased to see some of the things that they talked about have been brought about in this legislation, one of them being around the dealer regime whereby people who are from clubs who sell firearms for the benefit of the club, hunting guides, or operating on a small scale are exempt from that dealer regime. To me, I think that makes perfect sense. I also live in a rural, provincial area of New Zealand where there’s lots of farming, lots of areas where people can go hunting.

Ultimately, this piece of legislation is about making New Zealand safer. And I heard the argument before about targeting gangs, etc., etc., but actually quite often many people, not just here but around the world, who go out and use a firearm in a crime have never had a criminal record. Something has happened to them within their lives and they’ve just decided to go out and commit a crime of some sort with a firearm.

We can no longer sit and continue to wait for things to happen. Situations like we saw in March happen before we act. We have to act now. We can’t allow tragedies to happen again and again and again. So I just want to say that I commend this bill to the House. I commend the Minister and the Prime Minister for their leadership on this.

I call Ian McKelvie—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ve listened to a few speeches today and I suppose the thing that concerns me, or disappoints me, most is that I’ve spent a fair bit of time listening to the Government telling us how we think, and that’s extremely frustrating for me. As Judith Collins said, we supported the first piece of this legislation wholeheartedly. Some changes were then made to that legislation through regulation, which certainly didn’t help the piece of legislation and didn’t help our people. But since then, we’ve gone through a select committee stage on the second piece of legislation, which I think there are many gaps in.

The reason I think there are gaps in it—because if you look at what happened with the first piece of legislation, we were given a whole lot of recommendations and information by the New Zealand Police. Some of that information was about the number of firearms that were out there, and they estimated there were some 240,000 firearms that should have been destroyed; in fact, they destroyed 56,250. So if that’s the best information we’ve been given on this whole firearms piece of legislation, I think it’s hugely unlikely that when we get to implementing the register we’re going to have anything like accurate figures or accurate information to run that register to buy.

So I think the problem that I have with this legislation—I’ve got to say, I fully support gun regulation that’s reasonable and puts rules in place or legislation in place that controls what happens with guns. This legislation badly fails to do that. One of the reasons it badly fails to do it is because of the haste it’s been introduced with. I’ve been around this Parliament a while now and sat on the arms inquiry—I think it was in 2016-17—where we learnt an awful lot about guns. We visited gun clubs, we visited ranges, we visited police armouries, and we visited the place where the police keep the guns that they’ve confiscated. We even inspected some of the guns that had been confiscated and there are some pretty dramatic, sort of, homemade guns they’d picked up in their time. So we could see at that time, and I still support the fact, that there’s certainly a need for legislation to manage the way these guns are out and about in our community.

A problem with this legislation is it does nothing to take guns off the people that we wanted to take the guns off, and the 2016 inquiry was entirely around trying to establish how guns got into the hands of criminals, gangs and other people that don’t need to have guns in their hands. We’ve achieved absolutely nothing in five years, in my time, looking at this gun legislation, by the legislation that we’re passing today. It’s hugely disappointing, I think, to have got to this point and achieved very little to make New Zealand and New Zealanders safer in what they do. That’s the reason that we oppose this legislation; not because we don’t think, as the National Party, that we need to be in a much better space with respect to firearms in New Zealand.

I think the other thing that occurs to me is when you put legislation in place in a hurry—and we’ve seen quite a lot of legislation put in place in a hurry, including the last round of the gun legislation—then it inevitably leaves the shortcomings in the legislation and it’s found later to be inadequate and fails. There’s no question this legislation will have to be reviewed when we move forward. One, because the gun register in its form that they’ve proposed—and it’s not complete—won’t work, and the other is because some of this stuff is rushed and will not work.

I think, with respect to the register, the security around the register is hugely daunting and challenging for all gun owners, because, effectively, you end up with what’s sitting in your house, sitting on a register that’s clearly been shown already not to be secure. I think that’s one of the great concerns the gun people had.

There’s a couple of other things I want to very briefly touch on, because I don’t have long to do it. And that’s where, I think, there are shortcomings in this legislation that may well criminalise people who have certainly no intent of being a criminal. I put myself in that place, to some extent, having recently shifted house. I had no idea, or didn’t think, I guess, to inform the police I had shifted house. Frankly, I don’t have a gun in my house, but that’s the other irony of this piece of legislation. I have a licence but I don’t have a gun, but because I have a licence, I have to have a place to store a gun in my house—pretty extraordinary. I didn’t know that either. So, effectively, you could end up—there’s a lot of things that are going to be very untidy as this piece of—

David Seymour: Lucky the member’s in Parliament. He might not know otherwise.

IAN McKELVIE: Ha, ha! Yes—legislation gets implemented; I think it’s going to take a long time for the dust to settle on it. I hope it gets implemented in a rational manner that doesn’t end up criminalising a whole lot of people that shouldn’t be criminalised, and a whole lot of people who are innocent, and very solid New Zealanders. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

This is a split call. I call David Seymour—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT, to oppose the Arms Legislation Bill. Let me acknowledge the public who presented to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. As a member of that committee, I heard them. They often received a hostile reception from the chair, whose salary they pay, but they persevered.

One analysis found there were 3,841 individual submissions—90 percent opposed, 7 percent in favour, 3 percent weren’t sure. Opposition to the bill, I have to say, was overwhelmingly rational, polite, and drawn from practical experience. Those people gave five key reasons why the Arms Legislation Bill should not be passed by this Parliament.

Number one: it invades the doctor-patient relationship. We heard from people who were facing or had faced mental health challenges. Our country is on a journey with mental health where it’s becoming more acceptable to talk about it. Doctors can already legally report on their patients if they believe there is a danger to that individual or to the public. But what is this Government doing? Well, it’s passing a law that says that the police must tell your doctor if you have a firearm licence, and doctors are encouraged to report on you. I can’t believe that this Government, of all Governments, would actually undermine mental health, of all issues. We heard from people who said they’d be less likely to seek help because of this legislation. At the committee of the whole House stage, ACT will challenge National and New Zealand First to support amendments removing the invasion of the doctor-patient relationship.

The register—number two—is not just useless, it is a disaster waiting to happen. The bill originally said you had to update the register in real time. Sensible people came to the committee and said not every hunting spot has Wi-Fi or a cellphone coverage area. They said, “OK, maybe you only have to update the register every 30 days.” Then it was pointed out that 30 days is enough time to commit a crime. So if the register doesn’t stop crime, what’s the point, especially when it’s a disaster waiting to happen?

Even while the committee was considering the bill, the police managed to lose data in relation to firearms. A register in the hands of the New Zealand Police—

Hon Stuart Nash: No, they did not. Fake news—fake news.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —is one leak away—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! Sorry to interrupt the member, I apologise. Mr Nash, you do not sit on the cross benches and interject, and you do not change seats in order to better interject.

DAVID SEYMOUR: I’ve never seen a Minister responsible for a bill come to this House on such a defensive, and so he should be ashamed of his role in this legislation. ACT will challenge National and New Zealand First to support an amendment removing the register from this legislation.

Number three: the regulations on clubs will make us less safe. Voluntary organisations in this country usually have two or three people who do everything. If those people melt away because of the onerous restrictions placed on running a club by this bill, we’ll have fewer people shooting with the support and supervision of a club, and we will be less safe. You see the irony. Every time this Government, through this bill, tries to make us safer, they make things worse. ACT will be challenging National and New Zealand First to support amendments to remove the onerous restrictions placed on clubs by this bill.

The real problem that’s been outlined by speakers can be summed up as the fact that this bill does not punish criminals. It makes criminals of people trying to follow the law. That is the travesty of this bill. All of the requirements go on people who are trying to follow the law. It is the worst kind of chimpanzee politics where this Government attempts to punish a group of people it thinks are politically unpopular. Don’t we see that coming through in the attitudes of the chair of the select committee and Labour members towards the licensed firearm community?

But, finally, let’s talk about the timing. A Government that was truly constructive and inclusive would have waited for the royal commission to define the problem before they tried to solve the problem, and what have they done? They haven’t waited for the royal commission. They shortened the select committee’s time for this bill to five months from the usual six. Why just five? Well, so that the Prime Minister could announce, before the 15 March anniversary, that she’d passed another bill. It is political theatrics masquerading as public safety, and that is the greatest shame of all. It is, in fact, to borrow a term from across the Chamber, an absolutely despicable piece of lawmaking. This bill must be opposed, and if it passes, the worst of it must be changed by the next Parliament. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The sad part of politics, sometimes, is that people, in desperation for the saving of their party or their own seat, must take, sometimes, extreme views. We’ve seen that just now. You know, what we had was an opportunity for this Parliament to get together and support a bill that actually is a fair and rational approach to gun control.

I point the other side of the House very quickly to the fact that in their time in Government, they had an opportunity to adhere to recommendations for gun safety. They only took seven. When asked why, they said, “That was then; this is now. We’re going to look at this; we’re going to work constructively.” But then came along the election, and everything changed, because they realised that, actually, they feel there are votes to gain in this. I think that’s sad.

When you look at the previous record of Judith Collins as former police Minister, who expressed support for these sorts of measures; now they are against it. When you look at the views of former National police Minister John Banks, who says his greatest regret was that he did not act more strongly after the terrible massacre in Aramoana. The fact is, and I think this is regrettable, that there are politics at play here, when there is an opportunity for this Parliament to take a lead.

This bill will not stop me hunting. This bill will not stop the gun clubs in Wairarapa and across the region doing what they do best in showing leadership in regional areas, teaching gun safety and discipline. I have absolutely no hesitancy as a member of this Government, as a resident of a rural area, and as a keen hunter, to support this bill. I commend it, and I commend the Minister and his officials for the work on this bill.

This bill is a classic case of overreach. We oppose this bill, and for good reason. That’s not to say we don’t support firearms reform, and we did in the first bill that went through this House.

I, as a firearm owner and licence holder, was concerned about the proliferation of large magazine semi-automatic weapons that were available for sale, and much of that was dealt with in the first firearms bill. However, the thing that most worries me about the first bill was the significant delay in publishing the remuneration terms for the buy-back. That was a case of very poor implementation by the Government, and that led to an appallingly low level of people handing in their rifles.

We all talk about—we’ve collected 56,000 weapons, and we all think we’re much safer, but the reality is that we are not. We don’t know how many weapons there are. It’s anywhere between 1.1 and maybe 1.5, even though the police have been issuing import licences for these types of weapons coming in since 1983, but somehow we don’t know the figure.

But I can guarantee you that there will be thousands of these weapons that are wanted and should have been brought in and handed back, but because of the poor implementation of the first round, they have not. This has led to a case where we might feel we are safer, but in fact, we’re not safer. That’s my first issue with the way that this process has worked.

In terms of this bill, we did have two wins. National played an instrumental part in making sure that the licence duration changed. When the bill was introduced, there was a requirement that there would be a five-year rollover of the licence period. We in the National Party fought that because that is not required. The statistics said, and the argument was, that you should be looking at and assessing new gun owners, and we agreed that in the first rollover that’s when you should be doing it in a five-year period. But, thereafter, people by that stage often get married and move into stable relationships, don’t move home so much, and the 10-year period was deemed to be sufficient. That was the success that the National Party brought to this bill, to reduce the initial period to five years but thereafter maintain it at 10 years.

The other area that we had success on is the issue around dealer licences. We were concerned about guides going out—and we talked about hunting guides going out and taking people out in controlled situations and being captured by the dealer licensing requirements. We also talked about film armourers. Thankfully, the committee listened to our protestations about those requirements in the proposed bill, and the amendments got changed thanks to National.

But there are so many things that we did not get through in this bill, and it is to my great regret that we didn’t. The first is around the regulation of clubs. Many of us MPs—and we all claim to represent a lot of urban electorates, but those who have actually gone out and visited the pistol clubs, the gun clubs in their electorate, will find that in the main they are incredibly well organised, they are very careful about safety, they monitor people very well, they do all the sort of things that every New Zealander would hope that they would be doing, and, best of all, they teach young New Zealanders how to use the firearm safely. But this bill has now imposed stringent regulations on those clubs, and I think that’s wrong because if any of the organisations in New Zealand will help create a more safe environment and create an environment where young New Zealanders can use weapons in a safe manner, the clubs of New Zealand are the very places where that should and does take place. Yet this bill cuts the core of them.

It didn’t just stop there. Our Government people wanted to make sure that the sporting clubs were also captured. So these are the gun ranges and all those sorts of things. We wanted notification of the gun ranges and the sporting clubs, but, no, we’ve now got a certification regime, and that is far more onerous. Also, there’s now a requirement for public liability. And as we heard from many of the speakers, that puts an added financial cost and pressure on those types of organisations. In many cases, many of them are going to choose not to carry on—and, again, that is a travesty.

The sporting shooters: this is an area that we traversed widely in the first bill that got passed through this House. Again, this is a small group of individuals who do competition shooting both domestically and internationally. They have expensive firearms. They are the ones that will be least keen to see their weapons burgled, because their rifles, their weapons, will be the most precise and set up for their own situations so that they can compete. And, hey presto! We had a Government who didn’t see that they had a valid right, that they were a very, very safe category—probably the most safe category—because when they are competing internationally, or even domestically, they are subject to some of the rules that are the most stringent around safety, and yet we could not get that through. And where was New Zealand First on that? Nowhere—nowhere.

Then we had the collectors, already subject to huge restrictions. Collectors have to have special-sized safes, much thicker than the ordinary licence holder has, like I do at home. They are subject to, again, a lot of scrutiny; checked every year. But hey presto! That wasn’t enough. Even though we haven’t had issues with collectors, here we have a bill that places more restrictions on them. The requirement for storing parts off site and other areas—probably in less secure areas—again, just overreach of compliance.

Then we had the issue around pest control. Again, many of us in this House come from farms, own farms, and know about it. What we’re talking about is the legitimate destruction of pests that cause a lot of mayhem in New Zealand: goats, deer, pigs, geese, and paradise ducks are examples of this. There was this view that prevailed in the committee with certain members who thought that that was not a legitimate cause for farmers to be able to look after their land, to make sure that these pests didn’t ruin the natural habitat of New Zealand, and yet weren’t safe enough to be able to have weapons and to be able to go and shoot these animals when required. So we came up with this long-winded process that you’ve now got to form a company and it will have to be specially certified by the police and all that sort of stuff, and the intent of it and all that sort of stuff. Of course, there’s this overriding impractical, illogical view that you’ll just be able to pick up the phone to a company and say, “Come and shoot my pest right now”. But there are certain of those animals—birds, for instance, paradise ducks—that you only shoot when they’ve got young fledglings because at other times you can’t get near them. But yet there was this incomprehensible lack of understanding about how you go about doing that. Where was New Zealand First in that argument? Nowhere.

Again, there was an issue of licensing of firearms. We have had a licensing arrangement in New Zealand before—we’ve had it before. We had it, and we’ve heard about the Canadian examples and other jurisdictions. The issue with the licensing is that it has got to be accurate to be useful. We heard, already, from that small category of E-Cat firearm owners who are subject to the most stringent controls and are checked every year. They said, even then, that police couldn’t keep their records about the number of firearms and all the registration around that accurate. Yet we’re talking about going out and trying to register 250,000 people and over a million rifles. It’s not going to work—it’s not going to work.

I think this is one of the biggest issues, the jurisdiction that this will impose on the police, because this is a significant burden that they are now going to have to undertake. There was no consideration about how you might practically do that in the future.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it falls to me to stand and speak on behalf of the New Zealand First caucus on this Arms Legislation Bill before the House. As I start, I want to do a couple of things. Firstly, I want to acknowledge all those New Zealanders who made submissions.

I want to acknowledge the feeling of hunters and shooters who have always been law-abiding citizens of this country, who have never transgressed, who have always demonstrated absolute responsibility as they’ve participated in their chosen sport: be that service rifle; be that deer stalking; be that duck shooting; be that trap, down the line, skeet, whatever—all of which I myself have participated in.

I want to acknowledge that those law-abiding New Zealanders who have been declared fit and proper people for a long time were just as horrified by the events of 15 March as anyone else in this House. For many, it was the nightmare that they feared might happen one day. I want to acknowledge that most of those people also share the same objective of wanting the Government of the day to ensure that our streets are safe and that we have laws and restrictions and constraints in place, around access to firearms, that do keep people safe.

I want to acknowledge the Cabinet decision to remove military-style assault rifles from the hands of category A licence holders. That’s a deliberate decision made by the Cabinet and advanced with police recommendations in the form of this bill.

I want to acknowledge the fair and reasonable concerns raised of those who would have preferred to have seen the royal commission report before legislation went through. The New Zealand First caucus understands their view.

I want to acknowledge the Finance and Expenditure Committee for the improvements they have made to the bill and for demonstrating through the amendments that they have agreed to—and this is by majority—that a number of the propositions being put forward in the legislation under the recommendations of New Zealand Police were unnecessary and even, as stated by the committee itself, deemed to be unsound. I want to acknowledge the Minister of Police for accepting those recommended changes to the legislation.

I have to acknowledge that there are quite substantial changes being put forward by the committee, and I won’t rotary hoe that paddock because I know we’re going to get to the committee of the whole House and those amendments will be debated, I know, very strongly. So I won’t go through them, but I think it’s fair to say that the New Zealand First caucus has some reservations. Indeed our leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, did say on 19 October 2019, when we were in Christchurch and we went out to listen to and speak to some firearms owners who held a very orderly, almost family picnic-type protest in Latimer Square, to quote him, New Zealand First was going into this process with open ears. We did not have, in his words, tin ears—that we had asked them to express their views, their concerns, make their points during the select committee process, and that we would listen, that the New Zealand First caucus would listen.

Indeed, on 7 February, Clayton Mitchell, who is the New Zealand First spokesperson for sport and recreation and has been attending select committee hearings on this bill, tweeted and said, “NZ First looks forward to continuing to work constructively with Minister Nash over the Arms Legislation, to get the optimal balance between legal gun use and compliance, as well as restating our Party’s views that police should be targeting criminals not law abiding gun owners.” Mr Clayton Mitchell MP has been firm and resolute in that and has been supported by the caucus as a whole. Those things have not changed. The New Zealand First caucus have always said that they’ll work constructively towards sensible legislation that is pragmatic, that achieves the purpose of the bill, improving safety, is fair, and is reasonable.

Much has been made in this debate and during the course of the passage of the bill through select committee about gangs and the threats that they pose, and how this is going to resolve that. I just want to point out that I’ve been in this House a wee while and I’ve heard this debate when National’s been on this side of the House and Labour on that side; propositions by the late Rt Hon Mike Moore when he fought against gangs, for tougher legislation on gangs when he was part of Labour in Opposition and he met with a tin ear from National. I have been on those benches myself proposing a suppression of gangs bill and having it turned down by the same Labour Party because they thought it was too tough. Then I have sat there and watched the National Party join with Mr Stuart Nash when he was in Opposition and support a select committee inquiry that, of all things, recommended a registration system of firearms, and all of this in the name of reducing gang violence.

I’d say I’m probably the only father in the House who’s actually had a daughter sitting in a car beside another car where a woman was shot through the chest by a gang member in a drive-by shooting. I also have a son who’s a front-line police officer who tells me: “Dad, every day of every week we’re picking up firearms off of gangs, and something has to be done about it.” New Zealand First is looking for a pragmatic way through that also protects, as far as we possibly can, the rights and privileges of legitimate firearms owners and firearms users.

I want to conclude by saying two things. The committee of the whole House is a place where this debate will be worked through. Mr Mitchell has already made it clear, and I’m talking with Minister Nash about some things that we just want to settle in our head. One of those things is resolving the question—and it was discussed in the select committee’s deliberations—around the proposal to instate, and Chlöe Swarbrick raised this issue, the question as to whether or not police should continue to administer firearms law; the question as to whether it’s appropriate to have an entity that is the enforcer of the law and the writer of the law, where the separation of powers is blurred.

Right now it is of concern to me and to New Zealand First that the confidence of firearms owners in police has been undermined. New Zealand First has all along said there is need here for a conversation about an arms authority that takes that statutory responsibility, thus leaving the police to one side to simply enforce the law, just as New Zealand Transport Authority issue the drivers licences, determine the testing regime, decide who is fit and proper to have a drivers licence. So too there is a strong argument, we would contest, for a separate body doing that, leaving the police not to write the law, or rewrite it through regulation, according to what they wish, but leaving them just to enforce the law.

So I think this conversation has to go on. I think there was a further conversation to be had around farmers who have serious problems with pest control. There is a serious conversation to be had around sporting shooters, and there’s also some recognition due to COLFO. It hurts me to hear people labelling an organisation, the Council of Licenced Firearms Owners, as a gun lobby or equivalent to the National Rifle Association.

Brett Hudson: Well, that’s your Minister, Mr Mark.

Hon RON MARK: That hurts me, Mr Hudson, because something that I don’t think members of this House do realise or understand is that certain people in this country, by virtue of the endorsements they hold, are muted and have their hands tied behind their back. If they come forward to make a submission, they immediately identify themselves in public as being a collector or a restricted firearms owner, which opens their home up to being a target for gangs seeking access to these types of firearms. They are never going to jeopardise their personal safety by coming along and publicly identifying. These people are lawyers, doctors, professionals—I know one who’s an economist. I know many of these people are schoolteachers. They are very responsible, law-abiding New Zealanders, and they need an organisation like COLFO to represent their concerns because they cannot for fear of identifying themselves and putting their family’s safety at risk. So we acknowledge that, and we will do our very best to represent their interests. Thank you, and I say to the committee—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Finance and Expenditure Committee by majority be agreed to.