Arms (Firearms Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Arms (Firearms Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

This is a member’s bill in my name to amend the Arms Act 1983 to provide new powers for police to prevent the most dangerous gang members in our communities from possessing firearms, whilst recognising the need to not put unnecessary restrictions on legal gun owners. The bill provides strong new powers for our New Zealand Police to make sure that dangerous gang members in our communities do not have access to, or control of, firearms. The legislation does this by establishing firearms prohibition orders, which will apply to the toughest gang members who hold multiple criminal convictions and who have a history of serious offending.

Firearms prohibition orders and gang member restrictions on licences were recommendations of the Law and Order Committee report on the inquiry into issues relating to the illegal possession of firearms in New Zealand in the last Parliament. They were also endorsed by the then Government in its response to the report. The police briefing for the incoming Minister, the Hon Stuart Nash, provides support for firearms prohibition orders and the briefing offers, on behalf of the police, to brief the Minister on the possibility of implementing firearms prohibition orders. These orders have been introduced in three states in Australia, and are used to proactively manage high-risk individuals and their possession of firearms. This bill that we’re debating tonight is modelled closely on the New South Wales version of firearms prohibition orders.

I’m sure all members in the House would find it concerning to read daily stories of the increasing firearms activity undertaken by those involved with gangs in New Zealand. Cases that immediately spring to mind are the multiple homicides across Whanganui, Hamilton, the wider Hamilton region, and the Bay of Plenty, which police have said are linked to gang activities.

Gangs exist to intimidate, and when armed with a firearm or weapon, that concern is magnified. Too many firearms are ending up in the hands of violent, criminal gang members—that has to change. Under this bill, if you are a gang member, you won’t be allowed to own or possess a firearm, end of story. The bill reflects the fact that the vast majority of Kiwi hunters, farmers, and recreational shooters are law-abiding and responsible. They should not be treated the same as gang members who illegally obtain firearms and stow them away to cause harm to our families.

I want to assure those who are responsible firearm owners that this bill means onerous, unnecessary restrictions will not be placed on them. The bill does not target legal firearm owners and won’t impinge on their freedoms. However, firearms prohibition orders, similar to what they have in New South Wales, will widen the powers available to police to search the homes and cars of serious violent gang members for firearms at any time. They will only apply to a very small group of the most dangerous gang offenders who have convictions of firearms offences and serious violence records.

The pool of eligible people is based on criteria set out in this legislation in a newly inserted section 59A. This specifies that if someone is a member of a gang and within the last 10 years has been convicted of an offence under the Arms Act, the Domestic Violence Act, or a serious violent offence in the Sentencing Act, the commissioner may put in place a firearms prohibition order. The offending history and the profile of these gang members make it reasonable for police to be able to check that they do not have access to guns, ammunition, or firearms parts.

It’s estimated that around 600 gang members will be eligible for a firearms prohibition order, but it will be up to the Police Commissioner to determine how to prioritise the most serious offenders within that group. These people may pay no attention to needing a firearms licence, so we need to be able to search them to ensure that they don’t have access to illegal firearms. The Commissioner of Police will have the power to make an order in respect of these offenders, and any decision to make an order will be reviewable by the District Court. That’s very important—there is the oversight of the District Court and the judicial system.

The Police Commissioner will have to personally sign off each order, and any person subject to an order will have the ability to challenge this in court. Currently, all warrantless searches require specialist internal reporting and police would be expected to continue reporting searches of persons, vehicles, and premises under this regime.

In the event of a breach of a firearms prohibition order, a person who contravenes section 59B(1) in clause 7, will be liable for a term of imprisonment not exceeding five years, or, in the case where the firearm is a pistol or restricted weapon, to a term not exceeding 14 years. In addition to the prohibition on possessing firearms, persons must not acquire or possess ammunition. Doing so will ensure they are liable upon conviction for a term of imprisonment not exceeding five years. If a firearms prohibition order has been placed on an individual, they’re unable to reside at premises where firearms, parts, or ammunitions are present, and contravening this will also see them liable for conviction under the legislation.

The violence of gangs, illustrated in their intimidation tactics and heightened through their use and possession of firearms, is simply not acceptable in New Zealand. Gangs intimidate and incite fear. We want people to feel safe in their communities. Police have said these changes would enhance their ability to control illegal firearms, and they have requested stronger safeguards to protect New Zealanders from illegal firearm possession. This bill and the creation of a firearms prohibition order go some way to mitigating the harm caused to our communities by gangs.

I note that when this bill was pulled from the ballot earlier in the year the reception from many parts of the community was very warm. It was pleasing to have the support of the Police Association President Chris Cahill and many other people in our community, who acknowledged this is a good and sensible amendment to the Arms Act. This is a bill that was recommended by the police and supported by the Police Association. It was recommended by the cross-party select committee that did the extensive inquiry into illegal firearms in the last Parliament. So this is a bill that seeks to implement what the previous parliamentary select committee recommended, something that’s supported by the Police Association and also by the police. I commend the bill to the House.

In New South Wales, where they implemented similar legislation, as we’ve just heard from the member Chris Bishop, an ombudsman’s review found multiple failings in this approach, including, in practice, where no firearms were located in over 600 searches. The bill itself sounds well-intentioned, but in fact it’s actually ill-advised and doesn’t address the issue—the key issue—of how police ensure only fit and proper people hold a firearms licence or have access to firearms. I’m sure everyone in this House is wondering why—why—if this is so important, the National Government, who’ve only been out of office for one year, didn’t do something to address this over their nine years here on this side of the House.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: How long were they in Government?

They were here for nine years, and certainly the statistics I’ve seen suggest that gun violence has been pretty static over that most recent five-year period. It doesn’t seem to be a big issue, but suddenly it has become a big issue when the politics have changed. This is a knee-jerk reaction. It’s actually about enabling the extension of searches without warrants—plain and simple.

This is a bill that undermines human rights principles and enables the extension of searches without warrants. In fact, it puts the police in an invidious position. They’ve recommended the Government not support this bill. The bill, they say, has serious flaws and will not deliver on the intent as outlined in the general policy statement. That’s from the police—the people the member purports to want to be supporting here. The fit and proper person test already, effectively, bans gang members and prospects from holding firearms licences. The way the law is drafted now has restrictions around who can hold a firearms licence, and this does nothing except promote searches without warrants. Concerns have been raised about police accountability, and, of course, human rights legislation where searches can be made on subjective reasoning rather than on sufficient facts.

Here’s the kicker—here’s the kicker: there’s a National Party member who said not so long ago that the National Party firmly believes, or this person firmly believes, that searches should not be enforced without warrants, apparently in complete contradiction to the bill’s intent. And who do we think it was who said out there, publicly, that searches should not be enforced without warrants? Well, it was none other than the National Party leader. The National Party leader doesn’t seem to support the intent of this bill. Here is a member trying to put through something that he popped in the biscuit tin because he thought it would be popular—actually, it undermines human rights. All it does is extend searches without warrants. I bet that member’s feeling a bit awkward right now, because what this bill does and doesn’t do will be laid completely bare in this debate that we’re having now.

What we actually need is a more solid piece of work, and I trust the honourable member Stuart Nash to do that piece of work. In fact, I know that he has work under way to make sure that we in this House receive a bill that actually addresses the wider issues in this area, that looks at the fit and proper person test, and looks at how we can make sure that we have a strategy to deal with gangs generally—a proper plan, rather than a piecemeal approach that looks simplistically at what can be done, and that looks across the Tasman at a piece of legislation that their ombudsman has pointed to multiple failings in. We recognise that the existence of gangs may be symptomatic of a deeper structural issue we have in society, and it needs to be dealt with in a more sophisticated manner. There need to be cohesive and sensible decisions made if we are to effectively take action against organised crime.

So what I’m saying and what I’m arguing is that this bill would not make New Zealand safer. Where it’s been implemented in similar cases overseas, we have seen that these weapons have not been found. Warrantless searches may also increase hostility toward police. Those who have been securing firearms illegally and don’t hold a firearms licence are the ones most likely to commit gun crime, and they are hardly going to change their behaviour in response to this threat. It is likely, also, to be costly for the taxpayer, as each of these firearms prohibition orders must be signed off individually and may be challenged in the courts. This bill would demand more administration resources from police and the courts, so not only is it likely to be ineffective and likely to undermine human rights principles, it is likely to be costly.

At this point, I should reveal my hand and say that we on this side of the House in the Labour Party will not be supporting this bill. We don’t support legislation that’s ineffective, that undermines human rights, and that costs the taxpayer money to be ineffective. It is a crazy piece of legislation. What we need is a more comprehensive response that actually gets to the nub of the issue and looks at how we can ensure that fit and proper people have access to firearms and that those that are not, do not.

As I say, currently an applicant must be able to be deemed fit and proper to possess or use firearms. Set criteria are used to determine that, so affiliation with a criminal group is already listed as making a person ineligible for a firearms licence. Some statistics here: in 2014, 3,969 patched members of gangs were analysed in relation to firearms offences. Of those, 44 percent had been charged for an offence involving a firearm, 9 percent had been charged five or more times over their lifetime, and less than 1 percent—less than 1 percent of those surveyed—held a firearms licence at the time of the survey. So it’s not like these are people trying to comply. It’s not like these are people who are going to be affected by searches and so on. In fact, if guns ever are found, as they were not in New South Wales, it’s likely that those who have criminal intent may, if weapons are seized, go and take more.

It’s not likely to be effective legislation. It leaves the police open to allegations of bias. It leaves legal action open, that’s likely to be costly. And the law already restricts firearms licence holders and says that firearms won’t be issued to someone known to have convictions for violent offences. So we already have protections in place. We already have restrictions in place.

One more point I wanted to make was that firearms offences are on the rise but the number of firearms stolen has actually remained relatively consistent over the last five years. If National feels it is an issue—and I did say this earlier—we would wonder why they didn’t do something about this earlier if it really was something they thought was consistent. But gun-related incidents per 100,000 people have been tracking down since the 1980s more broadly. This seems to be an issue motivated by politics and one that will not produce the solution that the member purports to do. When the police say this is something that isn’t going to work, we need to listen to them. When they say this is something that they’re worried about, they’ve got concerns about, we need to listen. On this side of the House we will and the Labour Party will.

I think the other thing that really is concerning is a general view that we’ve heard from that side of the House that some people have fewer human rights than others. One wonders whether that’s something that’s at play again here. That’s something that Paula Bennett has previously said. Well, the Labour Party doesn’t agree with that. We think human rights—fair ways of judging whether someone is fit to hold a firearms licence should apply; not subjective tests that put police at risk, put police in an awkward position, are unlikely to be effective, and are very likely to be costly to the taxpayer because they can be disputed and they involve creating a whole new bureaucracy.

What we need to do, of course, is enforce the current restrictions—they will be sufficient for ensuring that those who should not be issued with a firearms licence are not—and have a broader piece of work that looks at the broader societal issues and is more sophisticated in its response; not a political knee-jerk reaction.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Minister in his reply said that the Government had been advised by the police that they were opposed to this bill. He’s quoting from an official document, and under Standing Order 376 I ask him to table that official advice.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Will you seek leave for that purpose?

Speaking to the point of order, I don’t have the official document with me. I’ve got my own notes taken down, so I’m afraid the member’s a little misguided in that.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise. You were making a point—you were speaking to the point of order?

Sorry, I’m just saying I don’t have an official document with me. I have my own speaking notes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): You are quoting from an official document?

I was quoting from some papers I read earlier.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. If the Minister is not quoting from an official document, he’s not required to table it.

Speaking to the point of order, Standing Order 376 is quite clear: “[When] a Minister quotes from a document relating to public affairs a member may, on a point of order, require the Minister to table the document.”

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): It’s not an official document. That’s the point.

Speaking to the point of order, under that Standing Order there is no specification around an official document. It simply states “a document”. So if you are providing a new ruling, it would be fantastic to get that clarification, but under that Standing Order it does not require it to be an official document but simply a document relating to public affairs, which this document would clearly be.

I thank the member for your contribution. I’ve just taken some advice. The Minister has been quoting from his speaking notes. Now, within that was contained some information that was provided to the House. He is not required to table his speaking notes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. In light of that, I would ask the Minister of Health to go away and to provide to the Opposition the briefing notes and the papers from the police that, he stated in the House tonight, say that they do not support this bill and say that this bill is going to be counterintuitive, because the Opposition does not have those briefing notes. We have not received that information. We will go back and check the Hansard, but I’m sure that Minister has taken a call tonight in the House and quoted from a report and official documents that were provided by the New Zealand Police. So I would ask the Minister or someone or another Labour member that’s going to take a call to go and get those documents and please table them for us so the Opposition are able to take that advice and look at the information, because we have not seen those briefings.

I just want to come back very quickly to the New Zealand Police Association, because they do always genuinely have a very good feel for what is happening, and especially in relation to legislation like this. Bearing in mind and addressing the issue about why this was not brought to the House when the National Party was in Government, this is a member’s bill. This is a bill that the member felt strongly about that was put in the ballot and was drawn from the ballot. It was actually a bill that was driven out of a select committee process that was under way. So that’s why the bill is in the House.

I just want to go back to some comments that Chris Cahill made—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I will not have the two of you debating across the Chamber.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, Chris Cahill is the President of the New Zealand Police Association. I was reading an editorial or a report that he wrote just yesterday, and one of the issues that he was raising—there is a real concern about in modern policing today—is the fact that there is a rise in organised gangs and crime and that the young police officers coming out the college now are, within two or three weeks, having firearms presented at them and having had to deal with the threat of firearms.

💬 Matt King: It happened in Kaitāia.

Just recently it happened in Kaitāia, apparently. Normally, the firearms are in the hands of violent gang members, and this is a bill that’s been brought to this House to give the police the power—those young police officers that are going out on to the street and putting themselves at risk—to be able to actually level the playing field a bit and to mitigate that risk. And we’ve got the Government standing in opposition to this bill.

When you’ve got the police Minister, who seems to be missing tonight—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! You will not refer to a member that’s not in the Chamber.

Sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker; you’re right. The police Minister has been a strong advocate, and at every given chance he has been very vocal about the fact that he’s taking strong steps against gangs and organised crime. What’s his position on this? What’s his feeling about this—about a bill that’s actually going to give the police service the ability to be able to go in there—

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: He says it’s piecemeal.

Don’t give us part of the information, Minister. Don’t give us part of the information—600 searches; give us all the information. Give us the whole picture because you seem to be cherry-picking at the moment to be able to make an argument against a bill that we see as being very effective in allowing our police force, our police service, to actually take steps against organised crime and criminal gangs.

I find it ironic that we were in the House before the last recess debating the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill, where it was OK for the Government to bring a bill to the House to say that you could have warrantless searches when it related to dairy cows. But now they’re saying it’s not OK to have a warrantless search when it relates to firearms in the hands of criminals and gang members. That to me is sending a very, very poor message to the people of New Zealand.

Just let me give you a very quick example: the police service in Kaitaia receives some information to say that there are some patched gang members that are getting organised to go down to the local BP station and commit an armed robbery using sawn-off shotguns—that information comes to the police. This bill here allows them to respond immediately. If they know they’re dealing with violent gang members that have got the prohibition attached to them around the ownership of firearms, it allows them to respond immediately. It allows them to go to that gang pad, it allows them to enter the property, and it allows them to search for weapons, similar to domestic violence orders.

So this is a very good bill. It’s a bill that is actually going to level the playing field a bit. It is going to allow our police officers to go into a violent gang member’s home and search and make sure that he’s not in possession of firearms. It’s going to help those young cops—

I apologise to the member, your time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I certainly want to congratulate the member Mr Chris Bishop on having his member’s bill drawn out from the ballot, and thank him for advancing the best case he possibly can.

I concur with Minister David Clark, who spoke earlier, and agree with the principle of the bill, because that is something we are working to achieve, but it’s a little bit simplistic because we will need to have a strategy on how we deal with gangs generally. As Minister Clark said in his contribution, this bill has serious flaws. I don’t need to table any documents because reading into this draft bill would draw a conclusion that this bill would not deliver on the intent as outlined in the general policy statement.

In the general policy statement it says that under this bill, “Gang members won’t be able to hold firearms licences.” First of all, gang members are not able to hold firearms licences anyway because gang members, as defined under this bill, do not meet the criteria under the current licensing regime.

Secondly, all those legal and legitimate owners of firearms will agree with me that firearms licences, per se, are not the problem; it is the illegal firearm possession that is the problem, but this bill does little or nothing to address the problem. As the actual number of stolen guns in circulation is unknown, the Thorp report, commissioned by the National - New Zealand First coalition Government in 1996, continues to be quoted. It estimated that 10 to 14 percent of guns are held by unlicensed owners, and 25 percent of those are held by criminals. Between 2010 and 2014, about 2,200 firearms were reported stolen in burglaries. In the same period, 17,429 firearms offences were committed.

Thirdly, searches without warrants may themselves create New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues, as Minister Clark just said in his earlier contribution. The National leader, the Hon Simon Bridges, was quoted as saying—as recently as May 2018—that searches should not be enforced without warrants. The intent of this bill and Mr Bridges’ statement seem to contradict each other.

Fourthly, this is a costly piece of legislation to the taxpayer, as each FPO, or firearms prohibition order, must be signed off individually, and is likely to get challenged. Therefore, this bill would demand more administration resources from police and the court—both already under-resourced by the previous National Government over the last nine years.

Lastly, the bill was structured on the New South Wales model, but gang dynamics in Australia are very different to New Zealand. We need to have solutions to gang problems that are specific to our own environment. The existence of gangs may be just a symptom of much deeper structural problems in our society that must be dealt with through comprehensive approaches.

To conclude, this bill would not make New Zealand safer. We cannot support this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Well, it gives me great pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to indicate to the House that we will not be supporting this bill. To give some reasons and some rationale behind it, let me take a moment to traverse a little bit of firearms legislative history so that we have a better understanding of what this is about and why New Zealand First objects to it.

When I first came to this House in 1996, there was an Arms Amendment Bill (No 2) on the floor. That sought to impose, through various mechanisms—under the guise of keeping New Zealanders safer and protecting them from gangs—to actually restrict the rights of legitimate firearms owners who were fit and proper people, who had been investigated by the police and deemed by the police to be fit and proper people. Many of these people were international shooters who represented this nation honourably and with distinction. That bill was finally trashed by the select committee after a lot of hard work by New Zealand First, supported by—and I will give credit to—the then ACT MP Stephen Franks.

In 2005 or around that period, we had the Arms Amendment Bill (No 3) brought up by the then Labour Government. Working with Simon Power from National, we managed—New Zealand First—to keep that bill off the floor of this House for three years. Why? Because the bill was rubbish.

After all the rhetoric over 2005 and 2008, when National Government came into Government what did they do? They passed it. Still, to this day, legitimate firearms owners are crying foul as to the impact that it had on them. Was National interested? No—totally disinterested. In 2008, National came into power and passed it. Between 2008 and 2017, police, under National, were allowed to exercise unprecedented judgment of their own right on regulations associated with all manner of things pertaining to firearms licensing, storage, and importation. Many of these changes, implemented carte blanche by police, were once again decried by the legitimate firearms community as afoul.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can the member please address the bill in front of the House. Interesting history—

Yes. As I said—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: An interesting history, Mr Mark—

Point of order.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no. I am actually speaking. Could you come to the topic of the bill.

Yeah, I’m coming to that, Madam Deputy Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good.

The point is that we have had successive pieces of legislation and this bill reflects the same misguided nonsense, where the speaker proposing the bill proclaims to be doing so to protect the public at large, but when one delves into the bill, one sees first that this has unintended consequences on legitimate firearms owners.

I’ll give you an example. So this bill makes it an offence by “Uncle Ron”, who takes into his charge a nephew who has been involved with a gang in a city—because the whānau decide that they’re going to send the nephew to live with “Uncle Ron”, who’s going to take him out deerstalking and pig hunting, teach him about firearms, get him into mountain climbing, get him into tramping to turn his life around. But because this bill makes it an offence for “Uncle Ron” to allow the young man to hold a .303 and shoot a deer, “Uncle Ron” won’t do it.

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: Don’t send him to “Uncle Ron”.

We have many, many—ironically, Mr Mitchell—good programmes championed by the former Government in that space that actually sought to decriminalise and get young men out of that lifestyle of crime and into doing something productive and something constructive, and adjusting the way in which they see life and adjusting their respect for firearms and firearms law, and eventually getting them licensed as firearms owners. This bill seeks to make a criminal out of those instructors—many of whom are ex-police, Mr Mitchell; ex-police and ex-military—who have every reason and every qualification to be involved with these young people. But, oh no! These people are beyond redemption!

This bill, Mr Mitchell, does not attack the most dangerous; it attacks everybody. Worst of all, Mr Mitchell, when I hear the assurances that the police commissioner will sign off on a warrant or on a search of a house without a warrant, I only have to point to one thing. I was one of the MPs who stood up in this House and stood by the police decision in the Ureweras, because I trusted the police. I trusted the police to do their job properly. What did I see in the last term of the National Government? The National Government Ministers apologising to Māori for the raid on the Ureweras. So, Mr Mitchell, how do I, as a New Zealand First MP—

The member’s time has expired—the time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. What a ridiculous diatribe we just heard from that member who has just resumed his seat, Ron Mark. I apologise, from this side of the House, to the unfortunate people who were witnessing it—it’s bad enough to be in its presence. People with anger management issues—“Uncle Ron”—ought not to have a gun. The less said, the better. The Arms (Firearms Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill, however, there’s a lot to be said about.

I rise with pleasure to speak about this bill, which I think is a useful bill. I think that unlike some members opposite, on this side of the House we’re very well aware of people who have anger management issues—don’t look too far for those. But also, we have dangerous people in this country—600 of them alone would be eligible immediately for these firearms prohibition orders (FPOs)—because there are people who see themselves as beyond the law. They see themselves as not needing licences. These are people who have caused inestimable damage to homes, to families, to communities in New Zealand, and this bill is sensible. It’s a sensible amendment to the Arms Act. It involves provisions for scrutiny, including by the Commissioner of Police and also, beyond that, the courts. So the idea that it’s going to be misused somehow, or affect people who are innocent parties, I think, is an incorrect assessment, to put it mildly.

We were told by Minister Clark, who spoke earlier, that Minister Stuart Nash was working on a more holistic approach to organised crime. Now, what’s that? Labour-speak for another working group—another group of people who will sit back for several years and have a big talkfest and a big thinktank and then come up with absolutely nothing, and will have done nothing while bad people continue to roam the land with powerful firearms, terrorising communities. So we take a comprehensive approach with this bill, as a starting point—and I think it is a very good starting point—rather than looking at the never-never plans that the members opposite are involved with.

It’s very difficult to make any kind of sense of the angry individual that resumed his seat before. I guess one of the points that he was making was that the police didn’t want it, but we have heard from the sponsor of this bill that the Police Association are very much in favour of it. And, of course, Chris Bishop, who is the sponsor of this bill, was in the select committee inquiry into illegal firearms, and there were a number of issues, that he has been told about as a result of that inquiry, that have informed this bill. As the case has been made—and the point has been made by my other colleagues—the members opposite rail against the idea that there should be any diminution of the ability to get search warrants for these things, whereas they allowed it, happily, for National Animal Identification and Tracing tags not so long ago. So they’re prepared to make compromises, exceptions, contradictions completely—

💬 Matt King: Tags but not guns!

Tags but not guns, exactly, as my colleague Matt has said.

So when we look at the provisions of this bill and the changes that will have to occur, we have to have a Police Commissioner personally signing off on each order. These are the kinds of situations which are not going to be done on a whim and a fancy; they’re going to have to be very carefully thought through. And the ability to challenge it in the court, I think, gives us peace of mind that there will not be unintended consequences. I think that we’ve seen a lot of politics, really, emerge from the parties that have spoken so far about this in opposition to this bill—and it is politics. They haven’t got their own policies ready, they haven’t got their own legislation ready, and they are knocking a piece of legislation back in the hope that they can try and claim the whole ground on this, and they are letting opportunities pass them by.

This is a sensible measure. The 20 recommendations that were made by the select committee inquiry into illegal firearms have been carefully considered by Chris Bishop. The stand-down periods and so forth—implementing a 12-month stand-down period after a licence revocation rather than a blanket revocation—are a useful thing, and this is a recommendation that has been accepted and implemented. Reviewing the penalties of the Arms Act—it was as a result of that select committee inquiry and a result of reviewing the penalties that this bill has emerged. Determining appropriate security categories and standards for A licences is another important element that comes into play here.

So there is some very good, thoughtful reasoning that has gone in behind this bill. I think clarifying and publicising the extent of amnesty provisions in the Arms Act as well, and the police being able to improve the consultative processes with the firearms communities, are also measures that the select committee found that will be helped and enhanced by this bill. I think that the FPOs are long overdue. I think that they would be very useful, and that is why I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise, and I will congratulate the member who’s had his bill pulled from the ballot. I’m sure it’s very exciting, but I do have to note that—

💬 Chris Bishop: It is. It’s happened three times now—it’s great.

Well, congratulations, Mr Bishop. It’s been three times. Unfortunately, this particular time—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: We always thought you were a jammy prick!

Ha, ha! Unfortunately, on this particular occasion, the bill does seem to be seeking to solve or address a problem that’s near non-existent based on the stats, and based on my 12 years working in the criminal justice system, at the front lines of the system that this bill will go on to be implemented in.

The police say that the instances of patched gang members being issued a firearms licence are “very rare”, and I do have to start with—and we should all come back to—the Arms Act 1983, which actually gives the power to any commissioned police officer to decline or revoke firearms licences if they are of the opinion that the person is not a fit and proper person to hold that licence. That includes looking at their previous convictions and other indications that they may be violent or erratic or improper, as the Act says, to hold a firearms licence.

So what are we adding here? What are we adding by talking about gangs? Could it be that we are just adding a little bit of what our justice system has been built on over the past nine years, which is knee-jerk reactions, oversimplifications, and drawing on a whole lot of prejudice? We’re not basing this justice policy on evidence. We’re not basing it on any actual need, even. We’re costing the taxpayer a whole lot more money in implementing this, whilst we should actually stop and admit that all this does is broaden the scope of instances where police can search someone without a warrant.

Warrantless searches—it’s a slippery slope, right? We already have a standard for assessing whether or not someone is a fit and proper person to hold a firearms licence. What we’re doing now is we’re saying that police can stop people based on a mere suspicion, without having to get any judicial oversight, without having to meet the standards of our normal search warrants, which we have in our justice system because we believe in due process and we believe in people’s rights to be free from arbitrary search and seizure. We’re doing away with that, for what? Because in very rare instances, based on the police’s own report, there may be a patched gang member that holds a firearms licence.

Well, we all know that there are demographics attached to the kinds of people that get stopped and arbitrarily searched, the kinds of people who then get charged, the kinds of people who are sentenced to lengthy periods of imprisonment, and we have to look at who our criminal justice system targets disproportionately in that way—and it is young Māori men. So we’re making a marginalised group who’s already suffering—disproportionately imprisoned, disproportionately not accessing the kinds of things that they need to stay crime-free—more vulnerable to warrantless searches by the police, to arbitrarily being stopped and searched by association.

We don’t have guilt by association in New Zealand, for good reason, and it’s laws like this, it’s justice policies like this, that open up our communities to prejudice. Nothing in this bill will actually solve a problem that exists. Nothing in this bill will actually stop crime, committed by way of firearms or not. We’re just adding more knee-jerk reaction types of baseless justice policy to our system.

We on this side of the House are committed to bringing down the prison population, to actually addressing crime, to putting in funding not to stop people, not to constantly harass people on the street, not to make ourselves look tough on crime, but actually to address the causes of offending by putting that money into drug and alcohol addiction services, mental health services, and by investing in jobs, houses, and the stability of our communities. So the Green Party won’t be supporting this bill, because it really doesn’t address a live problem in our justice system; it creates more. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I’d like to start by congratulating the member Chris Bishop not only for drawing this bill but for actually bringing this bill in the first place, because I think it’s a very timely bill. While, obviously, I think the bill itself, in its make-up, may be lacking, the ideas and the issues that it brings to the fore are very timely.

What it does bring to the fore are two major issues, which not only affect law and order but affect New Zealand and, potentially, the future of many New Zealanders, and that’s the issue of firearms and the issue of organised crime. They come together, and this bill vaguely touches on both, but it actually highlights both.

I acknowledge my two fellow police officers over there, the Hon Mark Mitchell and, of course, Matt King, who is not yet “Hon”, but I’m sure it will happen one day. We all, as police officers, have seen the rise of gangs. We are all relatively the same age, and we saw those gangs start out as a group of thugs that were pretty disorganised and relatively unsophisticated and they terrorised. Their sphere of intimidation, as I like to call it, was relatively small. Their sphere of intimidation was in the area of if you wouldn’t report an offence they committed against you to the police, you were, essentially, within their sphere of intimidation. Unfortunately, that sphere of intimidation has increased considerably. It has increased considerably, mostly on the back of P.

So what we now have—and a piece of legislation like this may have been relevant when the two members opposite and myself were policing. It may have been useful when our gang members were the larrikins who were running around—although I do have to say that firearms in those days were quite tightly held because they were hard to get hold of. If you did have one, it was something of a prestige and you didn’t want to lose it, so you were unlikely to use it.

That situation has changed considerably, because as gangs grew in their sphere of intimidation to the sophistication we have today, where their sphere of intimidation is not only national but international—I could talk a lot longer about that, particularly with the rise of the Comanchero gang, which is mostly made up of deportees from Australia, who have added a whole ’nother dimension to gang offending in New Zealand.

But while that was happening, we also had something else that was happening. We had the Arms Act and the police who were supposed to be policing that Act, and, again, as both of those members will know, the police took their eye off the ball. They weren’t investing in policing that Act and, as a result, we have the proliferation of firearms we are seeing, where virtually every search warrant today results in a military-style semi-automatic (MSSA), and not just with gangs but with pretty much anyone connected with any sort of crime at all. So we’ve now got the clash of these two things coming together, and, again, that’s why I reflect on the fact that the bill does acknowledge that.

However, this bill is insufficient, and it won’t actually go anyway towards doing that, because that degree of sophistication has meant that the very people that it’s supposed to fix—I’ll just give you an example. I’m well aware that one of the major gangs in New Zealand, the Head Hunters, are seriously considering de-patching. They’re seriously considering making it so that they will not be known in the community. It will be very difficult to ascertain whether or not they are gang members, and that is a business decision. That is because, currently, it is actually bad for business to be seen to be intimidating, so the very bling that attracted, which actually was that intimidation factor—now, it is so inherent that they actually don’t need it. So whereas it may have been useful for those gangies, the gang-bangers that we used to chase around—it may have been effective in that day, but it will not be effective now.

So I will actually be opposing this, because the fear I have is that we’ll pass this piece of legislation and think we’ve actually done something that will make a difference. It won’t. It won’t make any difference at all, and, more importantly, what it will do is prevent us from doing what we must do. We’ve got to take some action. There are some ridiculously easy ways to get firearms.

Just today, in research for this, I found out that you get students who can go and join a pistol club in Auckland, who do the thing and go monthly, get a firearm, leave New Zealand after a year, and no one knows where the Glocks went. That’s the sort of thing that’s happening. That’s the sort of opportunity we missed a fix on. We had an inquiry into this in the last term—it will have to be fixed.

The other thing is there are people who come into New Zealand who buy a firearm and pay $25 for a licence with any documentation that proves they had some firearms licence in another country, which we can’t check. That person will actually then have a firearm. They leave the country a month later, and no one knows what’s happened to the firearm. This is the sort of thing we’ve got to fix.

So while, again, I congratulate the member for bringing this to the House, it is not enough and it is too late. We’re going to have to look at things much more deeply. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I call—I’m just going to make sure I get your full name correct—

💬 Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi.

—Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak and contribute on this very important bill. First of all, I would like to congratulate Chris Bishop for drawing his third bill within a very short period of time. There are members who have been waiting for a long, long time for their bill to be drawn, but he has got his third bill being debated.

This is a very important bill because the National Party always believes in law and order and is tough on law and order. We have done a lot in that area. I would like to touch, first of all—as the Minister speaking in reply, David Clark, mentioned—on the inquiry, and Chris Bishop also mentioned about the inquiry which was held in the last term of Parliament. I would like to read the recommendation which was made by the Law and Order Committee. It was: we recommend to the Government “that the Arms Act 1983 be amended to clearly state that a gang member or prospect must not be considered a fit and proper person to possess firearms and therefore must not hold a firearms licence.” So that was the recommendation. The majority of the recommendations made in that inquiry, the Government accepted.

The report back was done in April 2017, and the minority view by New Zealand First said, “Whilst the report recommends law changes to prohibit gangs from legally owning firearms, it does not provide information or recommendations on the adequacy of sentences given to a gang member and other criminals who commit offences involving illicit firearms.”

So that was a clear indication of what that inquiry did. I remember talking to the previous President of the Police Association, Greg O’Connor, and he was very concerned about this issue. Today, what we are hearing is that the Labour Party—and two of the members who were present in the inquiry were the Hon Stuart Nash and the Hon Ron Mark, who was speaking before a few other speakers, and who was angrily trying to narrate the history of what had happened. But they were part of this inquiry. They mentioned this, and this was the recommendation of the inquiry to the Government of the day—that they should consider this aspect.

Unfortunately, we were not the Government later on, but the Minister of Police at that time, the Hon Paula Bennett, accepted the majority of the recommendations, and they were to be implemented. But I congratulate, once again, Chris Bishop for picking up from that inquiry the one issue that was raised by the select committee and for bringing this bill to the House, and this bill was drawn. I can assure you that there was a lot of concern about the gangs having firearms, and that issue was raised not only by the Police Association but by some of the other people who were involved.

Here, I would also like to acknowledge the people who legally own the firearms. They are the law-abiding citizens, and the inquiry clearly mentioned that we are not trying to target the people who legally own the firearms or who are the licence holders. There are about 250,000 people who legally have got licences, and they are not the people to be targeted.

So I think this bill is very important. We should have this sent to the select committee, and I don’t know why there is opposition. We had another bill recently pass through this House, the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill, in which we gave the authority for a fisheries officer to do a search. Today, we are hearing from the Green Party and the Labour Party that we should not be giving any authority to the Commissioner of Police, who can authorise his officers to go and do a search. So how contrary it is that a fisheries officer can go and do any search, whereas, for a person who is holding firearms, we are not allowed to go and search their premises.

So I think this is totally hypocrisy of the Government, and they are not thinking it through seriously. I hope that they may consider supporting this bill.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the honourable member. I’ve just heard a statement. I seek leave to make a personal statement.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think you need to give the House a bit of an indication of what that might be about.

The personal statement is in relation to a comment to statements made by the former speaker Mr Bakshi about what I did on that select committee, which are totally inaccurate.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is seeking leave to make a personal statement about his actions on a select committee inquiry. Any objection to that?

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Just for the record, the honourable member Mr Bakshi has just made a statement that I was on that select committee inquiry and, by dint, that I supported the recommendations. What the member did not say was that I voted against the findings of that inquiry and against the overwhelming majority of its recommendations because I and New Zealand First thought they were stupid.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: You can certainly take a point of order, but we’re not going to have an argument. The member’s sought leave to make a personal statement; he’s made that. That’s where the matter rests.

I said that there was a minority view of New Zealand First. A minority view is normally against the report, so that was my—

That’s right. That’s finished.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Congratulations to Mr Bishop for having this bill drawn. Unfortunately, it really is a low-calibre bill. If you want to see a report that has some merit to it, have a look at the Attorney-General’s report.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: That’s right—a law professor.

That’s exactly right. This report tells us why we should not support this bill. This Government is absolutely targeting crime—crime is in our sights—but we won’t be doing it by trammelling the rights of other people. Now, this makes it quite clear that there are two fundamental rights which this bill does not respect. And it’s not that they’re trammelled a little bit; they’re absolutely overridden. Firstly: freedom of association. Now, no one’s suggesting that we shouldn’t be hard on gangs, but this half-cocked response doesn’t work. What we have here is an approach which utterly undermines the freedom of association in an entirely disproportionate way by having a presumption, and an ability of the police to swoop in without notice. And—not me—the Attorney-General, the chief law officer of the Crown, tells us that it’s an unjustified infringement of human rights.

So it’s time that we bite the bullet and we recognise that this is not an appropriate piece of legislation. And what’s more, much more concerning is the erosion of the presumption of innocence, because as we all know—or as Mr Bishop, at least, should know, straight-shooter that he is—that in the principal Act, there’s a presumption that a weapon on a premises is in the possession of any person on that premises. Along with this piece of legislation, this has an imprisonment term of up to 14 years, leads to a presumption of guilt, of a breach of a firearm prohibition order. That kind of reversal of onus is utterly, utterly wrong; especially when it’s got a serious penalty such as that. This is really just a shot in the dark. Mr Bishop should have kept his powder dry and waited for another day.

The fact of the matter is that there is already a rigorous screening application for any applicant for a firearms licence. We have here prohibition orders where people have been found guilty of domestic violence offences. Well, that is already part of the screening process. The fact of the matter is that this bill is not needed. It’s entirely disproportionate. It isn’t a silver bullet for a problem. It targets people and gives unwarranted powers. It really is just a shot in the dark, a hair-trigger response.

So what we should be doing is a careful review of the Arms Act, yes—but not just shooting from the hip with this short response, which really targets people quite inappropriately. If we look at the Act itself, we’ll see that it rests largely on the opinions of commissioned officers. And that’s not of commissioned officers of the police. We don’t want unfettered discretion, and the police don’t want unfettered discretion. What they want are clear rules.

So the fact of the matter is that this piece of legislation, whilst well intentioned, is poorly thought-out. Absolutely, we want to be hard on gangs. We want to make sure that in so far as they are a vehicle for criminal offending, we want to address that. We absolutely want to control where—as my friend Greg O’Connor identified, we want to identify where arms are, and we want to control their use. But this bill is not how we go about it. It’s disproportionate; it’s poorly thought-out; and there’s no rational connection between what is does and the effect it seeks to achieve. And that is why we should get rid of it, lock, stock, and barrel.

Before I call the next speaker, I’m going to award you the prize for the greatest puns.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, they were very good puns, but that was a truly terrible speech by Dr Duncan Webb. In fact, the performance of the Government members in the House tonight so far has been lamentable, absolutely lamentable. We have a Government party or Government members who have a police Minister who talks up and down the country about smashing the gangs, and when the National Opposition puts up a sensible bill supported by the police, by a parliamentary select committee, and supported by the New Zealand Police Association, what do we have? Well, we hear nothing but opposition. It is absolutely disgraceful.

Let’s go through the grab-bag of reasons that the members opposite have offered up so far. First of all, we hear “Well, the police don’t support it.” Well, it was interesting, because I asked David Clark, who was standing in for Stuart Nash, to table that, and he refused. So we’ll just wait and see. We’ll send an Official Information Act request in. We’ll have a look at that as to whether or not the police really did advise him to vote against this bill, because we know the police actually recommended to the incoming Minister, Stuart Nash, that a firearms prohibition order regime be developed. They may have a few issues with the wording around this. That’s why you send bills to select committee—to tidy them up. So that deals with that.

Then we have this issue with warrantless searches, and I’ve got to say that we on this side of the House find this comical, because it was only a month ago that the Government turned up here and rammed a bill through all stages under urgency, to put in place warrantless searches on farms. So let’s get this straight: warrantless searches are OK to check cows on farms, but beyond the pale when it comes to going into gang members’ houses and checking whether or not they have illegal sawn-off shotguns. Let’s just say that again. Warrantless searches: all good for cows on farms in rural New Zealand. But for police going into houses occupied by violent gang members to check whether or not they’ve got illegal firearms: beyond the pale, a breach of the human rights, we couldn’t possibly countenance this. Good to know where Labour’s priorities are. Warrantless searches for cows, not for gang members.

Then we have this argument that we need a holistic approach. I love this holistic approach. Let me tell you how the holistic approach to the firearms review is going. Stuart Nash said, after he became the Minister, “There will be a review.” Then in March he said, “I’ve started a review.” We’re in September, and guess what? The scope of the review has not yet been clarified—six months later. This is a guy totally out of his depth in the portfolio. We’re a year in. They’re doing a review. Greg O’Connor talked about it. Duncan Webb said it’s the panacea—it’s the answer to everything. They haven’t even started the review yet. Well, we on this side of the House wait with bated breath to see how the review goes. But you can’t just say we need a holistic approach and deny good ideas on that basis.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Ginny Andersen wanted it.

That’s right; Ginny Andersen wanted it apparently, according to Judith. I want to talk about “Uncle Ron’s” speech, because I have never heard such a diatribe of rubbish in Parliament. It was literally like “Uncle Ron” turns up and, you know, “I’ve been in Parliament since 1996, and I’m ‘Mr Firearms-lover’, and, you know, I know everything there is to know about firearms, and I’m going to spend four minutes talking about all the various attempts to reform the Arms Act.” He could not mount an argument against the bill. He wanted to talk a lot about how he is the friend of the firearms lobby. Good for him. It was just a rant. It was embarrassing.

Then on the counter we have Golriz Ghahraman, who said, “There’s no problem here. Why are we even talking about this? There’s no issue with illegal firearms in New Zealand. There’s no problem with gang members having access to illegal firearms and using them to create terror out on the streets of New Zealand.” In Golriz Ghahraman’s world—you know, frankly, it’s a pretty strange world, but in her world there’s no issue, nothing to see here, move along, there’s no need for this bill. To be fair, we did not hear that from Greg O’Connor. He’s got his head screwed on slightly more straight than Golriz Ghahraman.

So, look, the reality is very simple. There is a problem with illegal firearms out there in society. In fact, there was a two-year select committee inquiry, which my friend Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi chaired, which found exactly that. So I suggest to the honourable member from the Greens that she go and read that report.

This is a good bill. It is not perfect. No bills at first reading are. It should go to a select committee. I never thought I would see the day that Mr Stuart “Smash the Gangs” Nash would vote against a bill to actually do just that.