Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by Monday, 8 April 2019 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week where there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, 194(1)(b) and (c).

As we meet today, New Zealand is under a terror threat level of “high”. As we meet today, police are routinely carrying firearms—Bushmaster rifles and Glock pistols—in a significant departure from normal practice. As we meet today, mosques around the country require heightened security measures and a visible police presence to ensure the safety of worshippers. As we meet today, the largest criminal investigation in New Zealand history is under way. Dozens of specialist police investigators, supported by Australian federal and state police, are following up concerns about a number of high-risk individuals. As we meet today, a number of people are before the courts for trying to promote hateful publications and videos of death, for unlawfully possessing weapons, for making threats against our citizens, and for murder.

As we meet today, we are driven by one objective. We are driven by the need to ensure public safety is as strong as it can be. We are also driven by the memory of 50 men, women, and children who were taken from their loved ones on 15 March. Their memory is our responsibility. We don’t ever want to see an attack like this in our country again. We are compelled to act quickly. The Prime Minister announced the morning after the attacks that gun laws must change. That now falls on us as individual MPs and the whole Parliament.

I am grateful for the support of colleagues from across the Chamber, because the attacks in Christchurch exposed a considerable weakness in our current firearms law. The most critical weakness in our firearms law is that too many people have legal access to too many semi-automatic firearms capable of causing significant harm.

The current Arms Act has a legal definition for military-style semi-automatics—or MSSAs, as they are called—that is easily circumvented and is difficult in practice to apply. There are 7,500 firearms licence holders, who between them possess approximately 14,000 MSSA firearms. Many more have semi-automatic firearms in a so-called sporting configuration, and they are easily converted into an MSSA. Far too many people in this country have access to these dangerous firearms for no legitimate purpose but at significant risk to the public. However, more broadly than this, too many people have legal access to the parts and magazines that, in a single change, can easily convert a semi-automatic firearm into a lethal MSSA, which then has the capacity to kill many people very quickly. So, today, we are debating legislation that will substantially tighten the current open and easy access to semi-automatic firearms, to make our country a safer place.

Our current firearms legislation came into force 35 years ago. It dates from the 1980s, a time when New Zealand was more isolated from the rest of the world. There were strong import controls and no internet market place or social media. Since that time, firearms technology has shifted. The weapons market has become global and they’re a significant online community and trading environment.

To bring firearms legislation more up to date and to substantially reduce loopholes and risk, major change is needed. This bill takes the first steps to modernise the Act. It will restrict access to the number of assault rifles and MSSAs, associated parts, and large-capacity magazines. We want to remove firearms that are capable of causing the death and devastation we witnessed on 15 March. We are also banning parts of prohibited firearms or any part that can enable a weapon to be fired as a semi-automatic or fully automatic firearm. It is important to reiterate that the legislation is not directed at law-abiding firearms owners who have legitimate uses for their guns. Our actions, instead, are directed at making sure March 15th never happens again.

Semi-automatic firearms which are commonly used for hunting, pest control, stock management on farms, and duck shooting will not be affected. People can still use a .22 calibre rifle with a maximum 10-round magazine, and a semi-automatic and pump-action shotgun with a maximum five-round magazine. These firearms are widely and safely used amongst our farming and hunting communities. Indeed, today, the Game Animal Council has confirmed that recreational and commercial hunting of large game animals such as deer, pig, and tahr will largely be unaffected. MSSAs and assault rifles are not needed for hunting or stock management.

There will be a small number of tightly controlled exemptions for professional animal cullers and licensed firearms dealers. Those groups or individuals identified as management agencies under section 100 of the Biosecurity Act can apply to the Commissioner of Police for a permit to possess a prohibited firearm. This will include the sort of pest control work undertaken by contractors for the Department of Conservation or a local council. Those applying will need to demonstrate that they will use the firearm only for the purpose stated and must demonstrate that they cannot do the work with any other firearm. I already know that Federated Farmers and professional animal control groups would like to ensure that this applies to pest control on private land, and the select committee will take advice on this. While these types of semi-automatics do not present the same level of risk to the public as MSSAs, nevertheless, they can cause harm. We have already signalled that we will be doing further work on strengthening the Arms Act in a future amendment bill, including the criteria around who can get a firearms licence.

The bill also proposes an exemption for bona fide collectors including museums and for film and theatre companies. They must take steps to disable the weapon and follow other guidelines around security and safety, including storage. The exemptions I have described come with considerable checks and balances around them.

Let us be clear: owning a firearm is a privilege not a right in this country. We need to remove the most dangerous weapons from our communities. The bill proposes the introduction of a number of new offences. This includes possessing, using, presenting, supplying, selling, manufacturing, and assembling a banned firearm. The offences attract penalties ranging from up to three years’ imprisonment to 10 years’ imprisonment depending on the nature and seriousness of the offence. We know this law change will have an impact on law-abiding firearms licence holders. That’s why we have confirmed details of the amnesty and are working on fair and reasonable compensation through a buy-back scheme.

There are good people in all of our communities who will find themselves in possession of banned firearms, parts, and magazines. This is because we are changing the law; not because these people have done anything wrong. Given this, the Government is putting an amnesty in place. This will allow people to let the police know if they are in possession of a newly banned firearm, part, or magazine. The amnesty also means that other firearms, parts, and magazines, and ammunition not affected by the ban can also be handed over. Police are already working with the New Zealand Defence Force around storage and transport and safe destruction of these weapons. The Government recognises that people have invested money in these firearms. Running alongside the amnesty, the Government will implement a buy-back scheme for the newly banned firearms which are surrendered.

The primary role of Government is to ensure the safety and well-being of its citizens and to allow them the ability to go about their lives free from harm and free from the fear of harm. The select committee process will be used to ensure we have got the balance right between the legitimate use of firearms and tightening gun laws to improve the safety and security of all New Zealanders. Just before I close, I want to pay tribute to the brave and compassionate and dedicated women and men of the New Zealand police service. Over the past few weeks, they have shown our country why we have one of the best police services in the world. Our thoughts remain with our Muslim communities and the people of Christchurch. We are doing this for them. We are doing this for our future generations. It is our responsibility. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Can I begin my contribution to the debate and the National Party’s contribution to this debate by starting off where the Minister of Police finished, which is by paying tribute to the hard-working men and women of the New Zealand police force. As the Minister has commented very appropriately, we have seen the best of the police in the last two weeks. We have seen their swift action on the afternoon of Friday, 15 March in the apprehension of the suspect involved, and we have seen our police out and about in the community in a way that New Zealanders have come to expect but is no less noteworthy for that. We have seen them armed—and that has shocked many people—but we have seen them engaging at our mosques, and at our various vigils and memorial services in our parks and our schools, and outside our Parliament, and they have done a superb job, as I know they will continue to do; so I’d like to start by echoing the words of the Minister.

The last two and a bit weeks for New Zealand have been about grieving and have been about mourning, and now the Parliament has to turn its attention to the legislative response to the events of Friday, 15 March. The first phase is firearms law reform and, as the National Party leader and Leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges, has said, the National Party intends to be constructive and work with the Government to make sure that we get this legislation into place quickly but also make sure we get the legislation right.

Phases two and three and four will be about social media, about hate speech and hate activity, and I think New Zealanders are going to have an inevitable debate about the balance between security and privacy, the balance between free speech and hate speech, and about some of the activities that led up to Friday, 15 March. But, for now, we are talking about firearms.

The public has made it very clear over the last two weeks that they expect the Parliament to act. They have made it very clear, in my mind, that the time has come for quite substantial reform of our firearms regime. Parliament, therefore, has an obligation and a duty to act, and today we start that process. That’s the first point I want to make: that Parliament hears the call of the public that they expect action. It was very humbling for me to stand on behalf of the National Party and accept a petition run through ActionStation alongside Grant Robertson, and James Shaw of the Green Party, calling for a ban on semi-automatics and military-style semi-automatics.

💬 Louisa Wall: What about you and me, Jan?

That petition—oh, sorry, to you and Ms Wall—numbered some, from memory, 40,000–plus people collected in only a matter of days, which I think gives you a sense of the public mood around this issue. So that’s the first point I want to make: that Parliament has heard those messages. We will act.

The second point I want to make is that I think this bill strikes an appropriate balance, as the Minister has said, between protecting legitimate law-abiding licensed firearm owners—our hunters, our shooters, those in our farming community—whilst also making sure that the public don’t have access to things like military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. The harm from those is the sheer lethality that exists within them that the Minister has rightly pointed out. I think it is appropriate that small calibre rim fire semi-automatics and lesser capacity shotguns are excluded from the prohibition that the Minister is advancing in the legislation.

A third point I want to make is to say that I think the general exclusions from the new prohibitions are also appropriate. Many members of the House will have been contacted by collectors in the last few days, and I see there is an exemption, which we’ll explore properly in the select committee, for bona fide collectors of historical antique weapons from the past. We would not want to give up that history as a result of this legislation and nor should we. I see there are also exemptions in the regime for museums as well. We’re going to explore the precise balance of those at the select committee in the short amount of time that we have.

I believe even those in the licensed firearm community who are opposed to some of the measures in the legislation—members will be aware of their email inboxes filling up—will welcome the new penalties but also the strengthening of the existing penalties as well. This is something that many people have been calling for for a long time as part of a general update to the Arms Act 1983, which, as the Minister rightly notes, is now very out of date. I think the new penalty regime will be widely welcomed by many people in the community. For those who are licensed and legitimate firearm owners, who store them safely and store them in the correct way, use them in the correct way, and would never dream of committing a crime, it does bug and grate on them when they see people abusing firearms or not storing them properly or not complying with the terms of their various endorsements or licences. It does grate when those penalties are not enforced, and I know that members of the community will welcome those. That’s the fourth point I wanted to make.

Finally, I want to fifthly cover the amnesty and the buy-back regime. We do welcome this. I’m interested in exploring in the select committee exactly how expensive it will be. There seems to be a range of estimates on the table, anywhere from $100 million to $200 million and all the way up to $300 million that the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, has mentioned recently. I’m aware of some estimates out there that it could be up to a billion dollars to buy back the various weapons. I urge the Government to move expeditiously on the details of the buy-back regime. Many members of the community are awaiting those details, and I think it would be good grace and acting in good faith to provide those details as quickly as possible. I acknowledge it takes time to work out the details. We in the National Party stand ready to work with the Government on those details, but we do need to know exactly how it will work.

I want to put on the record now that there needs to be an answer to how dealers will be dealt with through the buy-back regime. I have seen some comments from the Minister that they will not be touched, that they will not be part of the buy-back regime. There are licensed firearm dealers out there in the community, some of whom have large amounts of stock—thousands of dollars and in some cases tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock—that they have brought into the country in good faith to sell. Once this legislation passes they will unable to do that. There may be circumstances in which they are unable to return that to their particular supplier. They will be out of pocket through no fault of their own, and we will need to work that through, and I’m just encouraging the Minister to work that through with us, as well as working it through the select committee.

This is a substantial piece of legislation. As I’ve commented publicly, the devil is in the detail when it comes to firearms law. I’m aware of some comments from the community already about the misapplication of a variety of definitions. The wording may not be right but we have some time over the next week or so in the select committee to really get down to the nuts and bolts of this legislation. We will work in good faith with the Government to make sure that we reform the law properly and get it as good as we possibly can.

Parliament is now turning its mind away from grief and mourning towards a proper legislative response to the horrific events of 15 March. We in the National Party are looking forward to working with the Government to make sure that our response when it comes to firearms is fit for purpose and right, and we will engage in good faith with them as we continue to do that. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. Tuatahi māku e tautokongia ana ngā kupu o tērā o ngā mema arā ko te Pīhopa, wāna kupu e mea ana mō ngā wiki e rua kua pahure ake nei kua tangi te motu. Engari kua tae te wā kia puta atu i te ao pōuri ki roto i te ao mārama kia tahurihia ai ō mātou hinengaro kia whakapakari ai i ngā ture e pā ana ki ngā pū, kia kore anō tēnei āhuatanga e pā mai ki a tātou kei roto i Aotearoa.

[Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Firstly, for me, I support the words of the other member, namely Mr Bishop. He said that for the past two weeks the country has been in mourning. However, it has come to the time to emerge from the world of darkness into the world of light, and to turn our minds to strengthening the laws pertaining to guns so that this type of thing doesn’t happen again to us in New Zealand.]

I’d just like to acknowledge the words of the honourable member Chris Bishop, who said that although we’ve been in a period of mourning and we still do mourn for those who lost their lives in the events of 15 March, it is time for us to turn our attention now to strengthening these laws, the legislation, so that we never have this sort of event occur again here in New Zealand. So I’m proud to stand and support this bill, the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill, and proud to support the Government and, dare I say, the whole Parliament that’s taking action in response to the March 15th terrorist attack so that we do protect all New Zealanders and keep us all safe.

Can I just acknowledge my colleague the Hon Stuart Nash. I know that, within about 36 hours of the attack, he had already turned his attention to law changes that needed to be made in this regard. I’d just like to also acknowledge his words and our gratitude to the New Zealand police force for the sterling job they did on that day and subsequently since then. He also made the comment that the reason we are doing this is that public safety needs to be as strong as it can be. So I’d just like to acknowledge Stuart Nash.

In the aftermath of the Christchurch terror attack, New Zealanders were asking ourselves many difficult questions, such as why has this happened in Aotearoa, how could we help the victims, how could we heal as a nation, and are we safe? New Zealanders around the country have come together to express our grief and to show our solidarity with the Muslim community. We have united to reject the hateful ideology that inspired this attack, and we have begun the long journey of healing. We’re strongly affirming our values of compassion, tolerance, and manaakitanga, and that’s crucial—it’s a crucial way we can make sure New Zealand is safe for everyone.

The Government is taking every action to ensure the safety of New Zealanders. We’ve agreed to hold a royal commission of inquiry into the Christchurch attack. We need to get to the bottom of how the terrorist was able to do what he did and understand what we need to do to make sure it never reoccurs. We’ve been asking tough questions about the role social media has played in the attacks, and we know New Zealand will be a leading part of the global conversation on stopping the spread of hate on social media. We’ve maintained a high level of vigilance in the aftermath of the attack. Our threat alert level remains high, meaning that the police and security services will provide extra protection at the border and in public places.

A crucially important way to protect New Zealand is to make sure we have safe and effective gun laws. That’s why, six days after the attack, the Government announced the ban on military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. We need gun reform now. Any move to slow down the process is a move to stop it, and that is the same rhetoric used overseas to stop gun law changes. For example, the American organisation the National Rifle Association—it’s straight out of their playbook. They claim the legislation is being rushed and they throw out mistruths, they muddy the waters, they create anger and confusion. If we don’t act now, how many further attacks will we tolerate in this country before we will do something, or will we become like the United States, where deaths through use of guns occur so often that they almost rarely rate a mention now?

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope the member is not reading his speech. He’s an experienced member and he knows that he doesn’t read speeches.

OK. So we are banning all military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles that are designed to kill people, to make our country a safer place. There is no reason for us to have military-style semi-automatics here in New Zealand. I don’t mind doing a bit of deer shooting. Deer shooting, pig hunting, shooting tahr—they can all be achieved through bolt-action rifles. We don’t need semi-automatics to do it. In fact, there’s very little point of a semi-automatic. If you fire at a deer and you miss it, it disappears, and you’d have to be spraying bullets around in a pretty outrageous way, and even then the chances of you hitting one are pretty slim.

So the legislation is not directed at the vast bulk of law-abiding gun owners, especially those in rural communities who use .22s and shotguns with limited ammunition capacity for farm work and hunting. This move is widely supported. It’s got the full support of the Government parties: New Zealand First, the Greens. It’s also got the support of the National Party. Federated Farmers, Fish & Game, TradeMe, Hunting & Fishing, and others have all come out in support of the ban. That’s because, as I’ve said, we all know that in order to hunt deer or tahr or pigs, you don’t need military-style semi-automatics.

It’s also no secret that I handed in my own gun to the police—I think it was the Tuesday after the attack. I had a .22 calibre semi-automatic rifle with a 15-round magazine. I had no qualms about handing it in. I used it to shoot pests when I lived out in the rural areas. I haven’t had much chance to use it since I’ve been in Parliament. The reality is that when I’m no longer in Parliament and I feel the need to go and shoot the possum in the apple tree in the orchard, I’ll just go and buy another .22 bolt-action, and I can achieve the same thing. There is a joke in the family that the largest thing I’ve ever shot is a tree. I was aiming for the possum, but that says more about me than the gun. The point is that the safety of New Zealanders is more important than my need or my right to own a semi-automatic .22 with the magazine or the capacity that I explained.

So we want to reiterate that our actions are directed at making sure that this act of terror never happens again. We strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest, and most people will take these changes in their stride—just as they did in Australia when they made similar changes some years ago.

No one is being criminalised overnight. In fact, an amnesty will be put in place for weapons, and, in fact, those people who currently have illegal weapons can hand those in under the current amnesty. They will not be criminalised for handing those in. This is actually an opportunity for those law-abiding New Zealanders to actually go and hand the guns in. Those guns that are illegal—that will become illegal—just go and hand them in. This is what we can do to make New Zealand a much safer place. So our focus is on getting these guns out of the community. Like I say, I was a gun owner—well, I still am a gun owner: I’ve got a slug gun left in the safe now. We need to get these out of the community, and we will work with owners to make sure that that does happen in an orderly way.

So there will be a fair buy-back scheme. We’re committed to that. The exact details are still being worked through, but it will be similar to the Australian scheme that they implemented, and people did receive a fair price for the guns that they handed in. We can’t say with certainty what the cost of the buy-back will be. It’ll be somewhere between $150 million to $300 million—we’re not exactly sure. But then again, what’s the cost of an event like we saw on 15 March?

The public will have a say. We encourage them to submit to the select committee. The select committee will be meeting over the next week. We’re open to hearing the technical issues. We’re open to hearing that the legislation gets finessed and gets made right. This is the first tranche of changes; there will be more legislation to come. So I commend this legislation to the House, and I just again would like to express my condolences to all those who perished.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to join too in speaking in support of this arms amendment legislation and join with other members of the House in recording both our thanks to the New Zealand Police and also our condolences to all of the victims and their families.

When I spoke in this House on the condolence motion on Wednesday of the week following the attack, I said there were two questions that really continue to occupy our thinking. One was: how did this happen? And the second was: how do we stop it happening again? This bill is very much around the second of those questions—how we stop an event like this, of this scale, and a tragedy of this scale, happening again.

I think it’s fair to say that over the last 18 days, in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack, a lot of us have learnt so much more around gun rules in New Zealand: what is possible, what is practical, what is legal, and what can be done quite easily. One of the things that we have learnt in the most awful of ways is the utter and devastating lethality of these fast-firing self-loading weapons. The ability of the gunman to go into Al Noor Mosque and, in a matter of just a small number of minutes, shoot more than 70 people before getting in his car and heading off to attack the Linwood mosque tells us so much about the damage that can be done by any gun, admittedly, but by these military-style semi-automatics and semi-automatics that can be amended, adapted, and loaded to create such devastating strike force.

For those of us who hadn’t previously been deeply involved in gun legislation, when we started to understand the, I would say, failings in the current law that came about after Aramoana and the way they were eventually amended before being passed into law, we saw that there are so many gaps and deficiencies that allow a person with a category A gun licence—so that’s a normal garden-variety gun licence—to buy a weapon without any of the oversight and checks that would go with the category E licence and to buy, equally lawfully, high-capacity magazines and the like and yet put them together in a way that creates a gun that, frankly, has no place on the streets of New Zealand and can cause the damages that it’s caused. Now, knowing that, no one in this House can ever now unknow those problems, and none of us can sit here, I believe, and continue to allow the sales of the weaponry of the capacity and the ability that can be created from it with the system we currently have.

I want to just take a moment to reflect on one of the challenges that is raised a lot, which is “Well, that’s fine. You’re going to make it tougher for law-abiding gun owners, but you’ll never do anything about the illegal guns in society.” To a point, that may well be true. There will continue to be illegal and illegally owned guns, I’m sure. But it doesn’t in any way lessen the requirement and the obligation on us and on this House to ensure that our gun laws are fit for purpose. So we may not be able to guarantee that no gun will ever be used in a way that hurts someone or that every gun will be lawful, but we can absolutely make sure that our gun laws require a standard of care of our police and of our gun dealers and of our gun owners that we expect. That’s certainly what this legislation sets out to do.

Now, I do obviously have some concerns that, as we are taking it through in a very truncated period of time, there isn’t going to be the ability to, as the last speaker, Kelvin Davis, commented, finesse the law in the way that a select committee normally would. However, I think the circumstances and the urgency that we’re facing means that in this case we should none the less proceed with what have been well-signalled changes to the gun legislation and then take our time to return back to the issue in a more fulsome way as required.

There’s one final point I do want also to put on record, which is simply in relation to the timing of what we know about the buy-back scheme that the Government has said they will offer and the legislation which they intend to pass approximately a week from now. The Government has said repeatedly—and I thank them for their assurance; it’s certainly the right thing to do—that there will be a fair buy-back scheme operating to properly compensate gun owners in a way that’s similar to the ones we saw in Australia. All of that is good, but I’ve got to say that I’m far less concerned about what the total ultimate cost of that will be, because I accept what the Government is saying, that it’s almost impossible to know; what I’m far more interested in, though, is a bit more clarity from them on how that buy-back scheme will work so that the gun owners that we are about to deprive of their lawfully held possessions—and, in a way, I support—how they are going to be compensated: when, under what schedule, what they can expect.

I don’t like as a matter of practice passing legislation and saying, “Don’t worry; we’ll compensate you for all that, but we’ll tell you what the compensation looks like later.” I think the public of New Zealand deserve to know a little bit more about how that will work, and, frankly, this House should know more about it as part of passing the legislation. So, to me, that piece is the piece about which there are far more questions to be answered sooner from the Government. The total bill will be what the total bill will be, but I certainly hope that, before next Tuesday, when the legislation is passed by this House, the Government sees its way clear to give us more information on that.

Coming back to where I started, we will never be the same as we were before 1.40-odd p.m. on 15 March and, as a result of that, New Zealand expects and demands, and I think rightly so, that this Parliament acts quickly and thoroughly to address what are now very clear deficiencies in our gun legislation, and for that reason I’m proud to support the bill.

I rise to confirm New Zealand First’s support for this arms amendment bill. As our leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, said at the time, at 1.30 p.m. on 15 March our world changed for ever and so will our gun laws. The gravity of this situation is not lost on anyone in this House: the murder of 50 of our citizens in cold blood. But the reality of that is that this gunman was operating legitimately on an A class gun licence, with a military-style semi-automatic weapon legitimately purchased through a retail outlet. Quite frankly, he has exposed the gaping holes in our legislation. The system has been found wanting. We have not learnt the lessons of Aramoana and the lessons, frankly, from the likes of Port Arthur and other international incidents. We have been naive, and we have paid the price. We have failed to act, and I think we have all acknowledged that, but I would also acknowledge that we have acknowledged that and, across parties, we are looking to act decisively to remediate that situation.

Of course, this is the first part of the response, dealing with the availability of these military-style semi-automatic weapons, and it’s required. We need to give the public some semblance of safety and decisiveness of action by taking these weapons out of circulation as soon as practicably possible. It is also required to give certainty to the users of these weapons—the owners, the dealers, etc.—who need to know what the implications are for them. We note the buy-back and the figures that have been bandied around, but it will cost what it costs. It’s important that it is fair. These legitimate gun owners have, through no fault of their own, been caught up in this situation, and we must be fair to them. I trust that Cabinet and the Parliament will recommend that course of action.

We also note that, being the first part of this response, there is much else to do—of course, the royal commission that will come in behind this and look at things like a register of all firearms, police vetting and how this individual was allowed to get a licence in the first place, and the holes in that system and how we need to tighten it up, around storage, and, of course, there are those wider social issues around freedom of speech, which we are all going to have to grapple with, certainly in light of this new world that we find ourselves in with social media, etc.

New Zealand First have been strong supporters of recreational hunters and legitimate users, and we note that the likes of farmers legitimately need firearms to euthanise stock and for pest control. And recreational hunters—that is something that we value in this country: the right to be able to go out and hunt for deer or tahr or whatever it might be. That is a legitimate use, and, of course, there are some quite sizeable businesses around this—tourism businesses and the like, and legitimate pest-control businesses. So we have to move, in terms of certainty, to give these people the certainty of what will be available to them but also to acknowledge that they are legitimate users and, where there needs to be exemptions, we will look, through the select committee process, as truncated as it might be, to make sure that their views are heard. We do note the likes of Federated Farmers and the Game Animal Council have engaged willingly and supportively to date, and there is still the .22 calibre up to 10-shot mags, and five-shot shotguns, as the Hon Kelvin Davis said. They still have legitimate firepower that is capable of doing the roles for which they could legitimately be expected to be used.

We note that there is no exception at this point for international sport, and that’s something that will have to be looked upon in the second tranche, and we do also encourage the penalty provisions. This is a serious buy-back; this is not a voluntary situation. We are acting decisively and we do need the penalties for not complying to be significant, and they will be. As Minister Nash said in his introduction of the bill, owning a firearm in this country is a privilege; it is not a right. We must strike the balance through legitimate use, but the actions that we are taking as a Parliament we are doing quite simply because it is, in this circumstance, the right thing to do. So New Zealand First will be supporting this legislation and participating actively in the truncated select committee process. Thank you.

I’ve been really proud of Parliament and the way in which we have dealt with this very difficult issue. I think it’s important for us to remember that most people in New Zealand do not own firearms but many who do own firearms need to own firearms either for farming purposes or for their hunting or even for sporting activities.

We have a very low homicide rate in New Zealand. We have 0.9 homicides per 100,000 people. If you put that against Australia, they’re one per 100,000 people—very close to that. The United States is at 4.7. So we are, essentially, four times less likely to be killed in New Zealand, when it comes to homicide rates, than in the United States. I looked at some figures produced by New Zealand Police: 15 people committed murder with a firearm in the 10 years before the Christchurch massacre, and those people had firearms licences. Many other murders were committed by people without firearms licences but who did have firearms.

In 2016, when I was Minister of Police, we asked the Law and Order Committee, here in Parliament, to look at how gang members and other criminals were accessing firearms. One of the ways that came out is that they were stolen. Because there’s no firearms register in New Zealand, there’s no obligation on anyone to advise the police of a stolen firearm and there’s no obligation to keep serial numbers—unless it’s a category E type firearm. The other way that they were getting firearms is that they were buying them, or someone else was buying them for them and passing them on, because, again, there is no obligation to pass on that information. That select committee came back with 20 recommendations. Some were accepted by the Government, but then there was a change of Government.

One of the things I thought was most important was the issue around firearm prohibition orders to enable police to go into gang houses and seize firearms whether they know for certain they’re there or not. Now, one of the opportunities for this new legislation is to think about, in the second tranche, bringing in that firearm prohibition order. My colleague Chris Bishop, who’s spoken today, had a member’s bill last year around this, and it was defeated in Parliament. I would hope that, given another chance, it would be successful. I say this because we have all seen the way in which New Zealand has come together around this terrible massacre in Christchurch, but we also saw people like gang members—patched gang members—coming out and saying they were here with the people of Christchurch, they were with the Muslim New Zealanders, and they were going to help protect them. Then someone asked them the question: “And what about giving up your illegal firearms?” Oh no, they didn’t want to do that. Well, I’ll tell you what: the best way forward is to give the police the powers, give them the firepower to do it, and get on and take them. I’m sick and tired of listening to people emoting about how they’re feeling sorry but they’re not going to give up their firearms.

Do you know our lowest rate for homicides in New Zealand, that I can find, was in 2017, when we had 48 people murdered. In 2016, it was 58. We’d had a steady drop over the years, and we also have now got 50 people murdered in one day. So that should give us all some perspective—a little country with a population smaller than Melbourne, Australia with 50 people dead in one day.

The buy-back for the legally held firearms is absolutely crucial. It’s also important for people to hand in their firearms which they hold illegally, and they can hand those in to dealers or to the police. That buy-back has been estimated to cost, from the Minister of Police, $100 million. The Deputy Prime Minister said, this morning, it could be $300 million. I think it could be anything—it could be $500 million. The fact is it will cost what it costs. The point is it has to be successful, and I think that is really important.

One of the things I think that we need to think about here is the education of people who are otherwise law abiding New Zealanders who own firearms legally. A lot of those people are telling us that they are frightened, they are worried, they are upset, they are concerned, and they feel that they have been demonised by this mass killer who came to our shores and did what he did. Of course, it’s not right for us to demonise people who have legally bought firearms and use them legally, but it is important that everyone understands that everything has changed now in New Zealand.

The Thorp report was a good place to start—that was 1997, from memory. That ended up going nowhere. All sorts of other inquiries and reports—we’ve never really had an urgency ever since Aramoana to actually deal with this situation. I think that the general population that owns firearms acts extremely responsibly and, by the way, will not even be affected by this legislation. There is, however—in my experience as a former Minister of Police—a small group, particularly around some dealers, who will, in fact, rark-up people and get them to think that they are going to be demonised. I heard this morning on Morning Report on Radio New Zealand one of those people referring to this legislation as criminalising the 240,000 New Zealanders who own firearms. That is totally wrong, totally unfair, and absolutely about rarking-up and, no doubt, getting themselves membership. That’s what I consider totally irresponsible, and it will set people thinking that they are going to be picked on or somehow have their rights taken away from them.

There needs to be a register, and this bill does not deal with that register, but there needs to be a firearms register. I’m not naive enough—as some will be—to think that if there’s a register, that will show every firearm that there is. No, but what it will do is that when a firearm is sold or a firearm is lost or a firearm is stolen, there will be an obligation to advise the police and for that to be noted. I have to register my car. I have to register my little 16-year-old Jack Russell terrier, Holly. She is not a dangerous animal. She can, however, sort out a rat still—but she takes about 10 days to get over it. But, having said that, if I have to register my dog, why would I not have to register a gun? Even my little Jack Russell terrier—if I had a little bichon frise or, heaven forbid, a Maltese terrier, which is like knee high to a grasshopper, I’d have to register that—but, apparently, not a gun. That seems, to me, totally crazy.

We’ve heard some scaremongering about, “In Canada they tried to do this and it took a billion dollars, and it was not particularly successful.” They’re a much bigger country than us. We pretty much either know each other or are probably related to each other somehow, and, if not now, probably in the future. So, you know, I don’t think it’s that hard. Also, we have entirely different software applications and mobile phones. Police have smartphones. They can take pictures of serial numbers. You can have apps set up. People in software development can do all sorts of things.

We could do this as a nation if we wanted to, but we need to understand why we should do it, which is where the education comes in. My plea to the Government, from the time that this legislation is passed to the time when the buy-back finishes and when all this legislation comes into being, is to start a very clear education programme so that New Zealanders who do love their guns, do have their guns, and have always been law abiding understand how it affects them.

I’ve said to some of those New Zealanders who have raised it with me: “I don’t get why you need 30 rounds in a magazine. What are you trying to do? Are you a really bad shot?” Then the answer to me, from a person quite close to me who told me this, was actually—he said, “Judith, you can get them with 70 rounds.” And then I told someone else who was ex-military and he said to me “Now”, he said, “you can get 140 rounds in a magazine.” They’re like a round thing, like a Gatling gun. That stuff being sold? No, Madam Deputy Speaker, that’s not OK for New Zealand, and we will stand against it.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Kia hora te marino, kia whakapapa pounamu te moana, aroha atu, aroha mai, tātou i a tātou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[May the calm be widespread, may the sea lie flat like greenstone, love and be loved, all of us together, greetings to all.]

I rise again in remembrance and with deep sorrow for the victims of the terror attack against our Muslim community in Christchurch on 15 March. The weeks since that harrowing tragedy have been filled with grief and shock for our entire nation and for the affected communities. For our migrant, our Muslim, our refugee communities, they have also been filled with very real fear. So it is a great comfort to see today that our Government is not only committed to standing with those victims and with the communities directly affected in their grief but also committed to making all the necessary hard changes that are needed to make New Zealand safe. To amplify the voices from within that community, I want to note the words of Saeed Ahmed, president of the Hawke’s Bay Islamic centre, who said just a couple of days after the terrorist attack, “Many of our brothers and sisters have been scared of more attacks happening, but the sense of community of locals and Government action on gun law reform has put many of us at ease.”

We are all grieving for what we lost over the past weeks. Tighter gun laws honour the victims, because our previous laws failed them. The cost of doing nothing has been too high. Too many people have been hurt, and today we draw a line in the sand. Fixing our gun laws is just the beginning, but it is an urgent and necessary first step, one that was tragically overlooked though repeatedly recommended before now. This is the beginning of the change needed to make New Zealand a place where we all feel safe and truly at home.

I want to acknowledge too that this change comes as a result of people power. Just a day or so after this tragedy, Nik Green, Brad Knewstubb, and Hannah Clarke were all looking for what they could do to change things. They all separately started petitions to ban semi-automatic weapons and for stronger gun advertising laws. ActionStation got involved and within five days of the terror attack a petition of around 70,000 signatures was presented on the steps of this House. New Zealanders want this change. They want it now, and with that strong mandate we are making the change today. We don’t need special interest lobby groups with big money influencing our nation’s gun laws. People power is driving this legislation today.

This bill is in the House just over two weeks since the terror attack. It will ban all military—well, most military-style—semi-automatic firearms and modifications that make legal guns act like semi-automatics; essentially, banning weapons that have no place in civil society, weapons that allow massive harm. They maximise harm and they allow mass crimes like the terror attack that happened in Christchurch. This legislation creates new definitions of prohibited firearms, magazines, parts, and ammunition. It will also establish an amnesty for firearms owners who take steps to hand over their firearms lawfully, their parts, their magazines, their ammunition to the police by 30 September. Establishing an amnesty is the right thing to do. I call on all gun owners to re-evaluate their need for semi-automatic weapons and to hand in their weapons now or as part of the amnesty. Urgency in the House is appropriate on this to address the fears and the shock of the New Zealand public, who didn’t even know, mostly, that this kind of weapon, this kind of military-style weapon for mass crime, was actually out there on the streets.

The Green Party has a longstanding policy to better regulate gun ownership in New Zealand. It is a privilege not a right. Our policy to ban all semi-automatics and reform gun laws to restrict violence is part of our founding charter principle of non-violence and our commitment to peace. The Green Party was formed from anti-war movements. Building a society for peace means taking action on guns. It means coming together and answering those lingering questions about violence, this type of violence, and why it took place in New Zealand today.

I’m uplifted. I’ve been so uplifted over the past couple of weeks in seeing the difficult conversations that are taking place all over New Zealand. People are reflecting. People are reflecting on our violent history and colonisation, on the rise of white supremacy here and around the world, online. We’re having those difficult conversations and people who might not have previously considered these uncomfortable truths are now joining the calls for a more peaceful and inclusive Aotearoa.

We must address these issues by putting our guns away and talking with each other, listening to our diverse communities, who have been raising alarm bells for some time. Our culture must take steps to build peace, to address the hate festering in pockets in our communities in a constructive manner. Taking action on gun control will benefit many New Zealanders, from our migrant communities, other minority communities at the receiving end of the hate to domestic violence victims and their families, and let’s not forget our record-breaking rates of domestic and gender-based violence. This will go some way towards keeping those victims safe as well.

The first steps introduced today pave the way for further action, which the Green Party looks forward to wholeheartedly supporting, in gun law reform, in restricting the way that licensing works, in creating a register, and we also look forward to the findings of the royal commission, which will look more specifically at the environment, at the response, at the circumstances that led to this specific terror attack against the mosques in Christchurch. We need to look at all the things that we need to change, to bravely shine a light on the pockets of hate, and on all that we can do that’s more in our laws, including law enforcement, our intelligence agencies, on hate speech, on hate crimes.

In gun control we look forward to supporting future legislation that will introduce a gun registry, which is long overdue. Today, New Zealand is proudly joining the modern world in adopting much needed and appropriate gun control laws; so I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Before I start, I just want to pay homage to the 50 people who were killed in Christchurch and, obviously, to their families, who will still be grieving and troubled by the events of 15 March, and that process will go on for quite some time. Whilst the matter of the despicable event may be coming off the headlines in New Zealand, I don’t think for a moment that this issue is ever going to be dismissed from the consciousness of New Zealanders, as it’s one that’s going to be deeply ingrained in the psyche of New Zealand in the way that we regard ourselves here in this beautiful land. But the time is right, now, to consider how we best respond to this issue and how this event actually occurred.

The first point I want to make is that I think we should acknowledge that New Zealanders are entitled to own firearms, provided they do it in a proper and legitimate manner and they act in a safe manner as well. And those rights are very important to all of us in New Zealand and particularly to the firearms owners. I think we also need to recognise that there are sometimes very legitimate reasons for having firearms, such as pest control for farmers but also for people who wish to go out hunting and for bona fide collectors.

All of those people have a right to own firearms and should have to go through the right processes to have that right. No one ever should dispute that, and that’s important. But I think the big issue that Christchurch has made us all realise is whether military-style semi-automatic (MSSAs) and semi-automatic guns should have a rightful place in New Zealand. I think witnessing today what’s happening in Parliament—and sometimes it’s a real privilege to actually hear people and see what’s happening today first-hand—is to see how Parliament is coming together on that very issue. I think that is the answer today—and we will see it over the next week or so as we work our way through the elements of this bill—that we do not believe that MSSAs and semi-automatic guns have a rightful place to play in New Zealand.

The only issue—and I heard New Zealand First acknowledge it before—is where competition elements may be referred to, and it’s something that’ll be, obviously, dealt with in the second stage of the reforms. But, in the main, there is no need for any MSSA or semi-automatic rifle, particularly in the context of hunting or whatever.

I think also the issue is that if we, as a Government, are forcing people to surrender these weapons, which they’ve acquired under legitimate purposes, I think it’s very important that the compensation provisions are fair and equitable, because, after all, these rifles were bought under a previous regime that meant that they were legitimate. So the lack of detail around the reimbursement of firearms is very, very important. I think, upon passing this bill over the next week, we’ll make it an absolute requirement that these guns are surrendered. It’s absolutely essential also that the fair terms of those are made known to those people as early as possible, so that everyone understands what it means if you do surrender those weapons, so we get everyone surrendering them voluntarily, and that means it needs to be fair representation and fair payment for them.

The other thing is that this legislation deals with the issue of the sale of large-scale magazines and accessories, and I think that’s a very important component. The ability to scale up a semi-automatic machine by putting on it a large magazine is one that should have been addressed and has been addressed in this bill, and it’s a very important aspect. But I think, in supporting this bill, it’s important to note that this is only a first step towards addressing this issue in New Zealand. The next stages of working through after this initial bit are around making sure that we’ve got a framework that’s fit for purpose in New Zealand and that protects New Zealanders in general but that also affords some protections to rightful and legitimate gun owners to own a rifle and to be able to conduct their use of that rifle in a safe manner—it’s very, very important. To get that framework, there’s a lot more work to be worked through, and I think we will, as a Parliament, get to that point, and I look forward to participating in that debate.

So this next call is a split call, five minutes each. I call the Hon Damien O’Connor.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s indeed an honour to be in Parliament, and, from time to time, one feels very proud to be a Kiwi and to be in Parliament. I’m proud, in spite of the terrible tragedy that this country has faced, in the way we as Kiwis have reacted to that. I want to acknowledge the Muslim community and the terrible loss to not just the 50 families who lost loved ones but those who are, of course, affected by injury.

Can I say that I’m proud of the way that we rejected the attempt, through that terrible tragedy, to brand this country as a place where kindness is not at the forefront and where bigotry and prejudice and hate are considered to be part of our society. I’m proud that we rejected that and are moving forward in a way that says we want to be an inclusive society and we will be an inclusive society, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religious belief.

I’m also very proud to be part of a Parliament that has committed to change in the pace that we need to make it. That hasn’t always been the case, particularly around the world, when it’s come to similar situations. I’d like to acknowledge all members of Parliament who have committed to change law that we know is necessary to create a safer place in our country. As a representative for the rural communities and sectors in New Zealand, I am particularly proud with the response from people across New Zealand—with very few exceptions, I have to say—by way of email, all of them supportive of the changes that this Parliament is considering through this piece of legislation. Rural people do use guns. Guns are used to kill. Most, if not all, rural people use them in the way that they were intended: for pest control, for humane animal welfare issues, and also for recreational hunting. Nothing that we are changing here will make a change to the way that those decent New Zealanders have utilised guns.

But we must take from those few people who will choose, from time to time, to be completely unreasonable, irrational, and, indeed, descriptive in words that I won’t use in this Parliament. They are not the Kiwis whom this Parliament should represent or should work to uphold rights for. We are here to represent the vast majority of New Zealanders, who want to respect the rights of each and every one of us, regardless of our race, our creed, our religious beliefs, or our pastimes or recreation. But what we are moving to do—and I acknowledge the work of my colleague Stuart Nash. I acknowledge the work of the Prime Minister. I must acknowledge her incredible leadership, international leadership that provides New Zealand with an opportunity to lead the world in better gun control.

What we are asking is that military-style semi-automatic guns be taken out of circulation. We are leaving in place guns for pest control. We’re leaving in place guns for recreational hunting and for appropriate animal welfare use. On the farms, most of those uses will be covered by 10-shot .22 calibre guns, or five-shot shotguns. I’d say to some people that if you can’t hit something or achieve your goal with either of those two types of weapons, then perhaps you should give up and give up your firearms licence.

Can I just say, look, there are issues, legitimate issues, around pest control in some private land that farmers are asking questions about: whether they should be, or are, able to have access. Wallabies are a new pest to this country, but they do need to be controlled, and those people in the rural communities are asking—and they will ask of the select committee—how can they legitimately have access for rightful pest control purposes to the firearms that we are otherwise banning. I trust the select committee process, as I trust this Parliament, to work through this legislation and to deliver to New Zealand a safer, more humane place—a place of kindness that doesn’t ban the utilisation of guns but bans the utilisation of dangerous weapons that were designed to do nothing more than kill unnecessarily. This Parliament should be applauded for what we are doing—each and every member of it—in bringing this piece of legislation into the House, and I ask that the select committee deal with it swiftly and bring it back so that we can pass it into law.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The events of Friday the 15th have shifted the mood of the Rangitīkei for ever, and I can only imagine the profound impact they’ve had on the people of Christchurch and, indeed, the rest of New Zealand.

I believe all of us probably wish we were not in a position of having to push a piece of legislation like this through the House in such a hurry, but I accept that we’re at this stage, and I think it’s necessary we do so. I want to commend Minister Nash on the speech he made at the introduction of this bill, because I thought it was a very good summation of where we’re at as a country and, indeed, as a Parliament. I’m proud to be part of a Parliament that can agree on something that’s as important as this—and as difficult as this, frankly—because this Parliament’s never been able to deal with this issue in an easy manner before. In fact, I’ve sat on the select committee that went through an inquiry into a similar issue as this a few years ago, and I can imagine many of those submissions will come back to the select committee in the next few days, and they will be dealt with in the manner they should be. I certainly support this bill and hope that the short select committee stage can ensure that a piece of legislation is produced that will deal with the manner in the best way we can given the short time frame we’ve got to do it in. But I note the Government is proposing to bring a further piece of legislation to the House at a later date, and I’m sure that will enable them to pick up any issues that, I guess, come out of the submissions to this bill that aren’t included in this bill.

I myself hold a firearms licence and went through what I thought was an onerous process of getting it. In fact, I’ve been through it a few times, actually, as you can probably tell. But it clearly isn’t enough, because the people that are committing these crimes have also had firearms licences, and so I agree with those who’ve said in the House today that it’s indeed a privilege to own a firearm, and I think it should be treated as that. I note there are nearly 250,000 other New Zealanders who have a firearms licence. There are also 7,500 New Zealanders who have what is known as an E-Cat licence. We also know there are about 14,200 E-Cat firearms owned in New Zealand. There’s a whole lot we don’t know about. The people that have got the licences—and we understand the types of guns they have—are not the problem here, but it’s the unknown number of owners and the unknown number of military-style semi-automatics and the associated parts that are the problem. However, in order to clean up the unknown, we must also tidy up the known, because, as has been mentioned a couple of times in the House already today, the unknown owners of these guns often acquire them from the known owners of the guns. That is the challenge that we face as a country.

I think that the evidence I’ve seen in my time in Parliament certainly points to the need for this piece of legislation. I don’t accept that we need these things for anything other than sporting activities, and I’m not sure that that’s required either. The problem we’ve got with them, even if they are used for sporting activities, is that the security of them is almost impossible to guarantee, and I think that’s the real challenge we have.

I want to just raise a couple of issues very briefly. One is the exemptions, and I think once we start in on exemptions, we’ve got to be very careful how we deal with that, because there are almost always loopholes in exemptions. So I think that’s an area that the select committee will need to pay very close attention to in the next few days.

The other area I think is hugely important is the buy-back proposition or provision. Whilst some of that stuff will become known as we go along, I think the sooner we have something definite here, the better, because to achieve a good result from an amnesty, we need to be certain of where we’re going, and I don’t think people will participate in that amnesty unless they are certain of where they’re going. The quicker the better, frankly. I also agree with the number of comments that have been made round those people who have firearms whom we have no record of. The sooner those are dealt with, and the more harshly we deal with them, the better off the country will be. I’m sure that the legitimate owners of firearms will be much more comfortable with this type of legislation if we clamp down very hard on those people who have no business owning or possessing these firearms.

So I commend the bill to the House. I think it’s been a good effort to get it this far, and I hope the select committee stage can iron out any little difficulties there might be with it. I look forward to it passing. Thank you.

I understand this is a split call. David Seymour, you have five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill, and let me start, as other members of the House have, by paying tribute to the victims of the Christchurch terror attacks only a couple of weeks ago. It is because of that incident that we are here. Let me acknowledge the will of New Zealanders to be safe, and let me acknowledge the very human urge, in times of crisis, when a group such as New Zealanders are under attack, to fall in behind and follow the leader who promises decisive action. That is human, that is normal, but that is not necessarily what is best for New Zealand.

We in this House have a different role, and that is to ensure that the laws that are made are made properly, with public consultation that is sincere and parliamentary scrutiny that irons out the ruts and the potential unintended consequences of the laws that we make for New Zealanders. That duty, if it’s important normally, hasn’t become less important by these circumstances. It’s not made less important by the fact that gun law is so critical. It is more important right now than ever. The fact of the matter is that we as parliamentarians have a greater duty to do due process and scrutinise laws than at any other time, because if gun control is important, then it’s important to do it right.

It’s the fact that the timing of this legislation is somewhat curious and it makes me, for one, somewhat sceptical, because right now, thanks to an Order in Council on 20 March the Thursday before last, this Government has ensured that semi-automatic weapons are all but on lockdown, only able to be possessed, used, traded, and imported by people with E Category licences. For everyone else, they are on de facto lockdown, and that Order in Council, that restriction from the Government, lasts till June next year. So we have a situation where there’s a moratorium on the dangerous stuff—a pretty sensible one—and the Government has a year plus to make sensible, thoughtful legislation, and the Government is indicating that it will do that as soon as this piece of legislation has been passed. So one has to wonder what exactly we are doing with this piece of legislation. It would appear that it is more about political theatre than public safety. This piece of legislation, were it completely harmless, might not matter in that regard, but it very well may be harmful.

Here’s a scenario of where this piece of legislation, that will barely be scrutinised by a select committee and that will barely be scrutinised by Parliament, could go wrong. What will the Government say come September when the amnesty period that the bill sets out is over and the estimates are that there are still tens of thousands of dangerous semi-automatic weapons unaccounted for that haven’t been bought back, that weren’t registered with E Category licence holders and that we have good reason to believe are out there? Well, that genuinely scares me. And, by the way, if this goes through the way the Government plans and the law-abiding gun owners, whom we need as allies, have been alienated by this process and its abruptness, then we’ve got a bigger problem than we’ve got now. What will happen if one of those weapons—by the way, it’s not just me saying that; it’s the New Zealand Police in their regulatory impact statement, saying that we risk forcing arms into the black market—is used for another tragedy? How smart will we feel then having been the leaders that rushed legislation through Parliament in only nine days?

So I urge caution. I urge public consultation. I urge that we do our job as a Parliament and truly honour the victims of this tragedy by defending our democracy and our due process of public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny and making good laws, because if gun control is important, it’s important to do it right, but doing it in nine days before we go on Easter break is not doing it right, and I can’t support this legislation at the first reading.

Kia ora koutou katoa. Assalamo alaikum. My electorate of Mt Roskill School is home to the largest Muslim community in New Zealand and the largest collection of multicultural communities in New Zealand, and over the last two weeks, as I’ve spent time with that community and at mosques and vigils all around Auckland and New Zealand, the beautiful people of New Zealand’s Muslim community, in amongst their extraordinary grace, forgiveness, and resilience, have actually asked New Zealand and our Government for very little. The one thing they have asked us for is that we take the required steps to make them as safe as possible.

We are here because on Friday, 15 March, 50 men, women, and children in Christchurch were murdered by a person with an evil ideology and armed with a modified military-style weapon that granted him the power to kill large numbers in mere moments, with a twitch of his hateful finger. That is why we are here. We are here in spite of the fact that, over 25 years, these issues have been canvassed in New Zealand’s public life. Recommendations were made after the Aramoana massacre. The 1995 Thorp report addressed these issues, and, of course, there was a very good select committee report from 2017. So my main message for anyone who says that this process is moving too fast is that it’s actually the reverse. If anything, this process has moved too slowly for New Zealand, but we are moving on it now. That is all that we can do as a Parliament: listen to those calls for safety and do what we can do now.

There is a movement for change in our communities and in this House. I want to pay tribute to some of the people who have led that movement for change. To our Prime Minister, who, I think, the day after the attacks—and I think it was without consulting polls or focus groups or testing it out—said that change will come because she knew it was the right thing to do; to our Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, who has worked assiduously over the last two weeks to bring together experts, the community, and legislation to mobilise around a legislative framework for change that I believe the vast majority of New Zealanders can support; and to parties all around this House—and I acknowledge Government support parties but especially the Opposition, who, I believe, have acted in an honourable way over the course of this issue and are doing the right thing in the way that they engage on an important issue for our country—I thank you. I thank all of those people in our communities who have done something that I think is really special.

One of my favourite quotes is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, shortly after his election, met a big room of his supporters, who had elected him into office on a radical agenda. He said to them, “I know what I have to do. Now, go out there and make me do it.” I feel like that’s what the people of New Zealand have been saying to us over the last couple of weeks. They know that we want to do the right thing, and they have said, “We’re going to support you to do that.” I want to acknowledge all of those people who have petitioned and emailed and spoken up so that we can have sensible and safe firearms laws in this country.

The changes sought in this bill are sensible changes. They are carefully thought through. They allow for most legitimate firearms activities that currently take place to continue taking place—for legitimate uses on farms, for people who hunt animals in our forests, for people on the rifle ranges to continue with those activities. It is only this extreme end of military-style assault weapons and rifles that we will be taking action on. I’m a licensed category A firearms owner. I own a single-shot rifle; so I’m not someone who instinctively is opposed to any person owning a gun or using it for lawful purposes. This is about keeping people safe.

I’m pleased that this bill is coming to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. On our committee over the next week, we will work assiduously on this bill. We will respond and listen to submissions in good faith. We will engage on the detail to make sure that the bill is as effective and fair as possible, and I want to emphasise that, on our committee, we have representation from every party in this House to ensure that the range of perspectives are heard. I know that all members will work in good faith to make this an effective bill and to make our country as safe as possible. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s an honour for me to stand and take a call in the House this afternoon, too. Can I take the opportunity again to pay tribute and send our thoughts to our Muslim community in Christchurch and those that are still trying to recover from their injuries. Can I acknowledge the Christchurch-based MPs as well who have stood up and provided enormous support and leadership at an extremely difficult time for us as a nation.

What tends to happen when there’s a tragedy like this, and we’ve seen it in our country, is the nation rallies and it comes around those that need support, but the real testing time is in the coming weeks and months. Can I just make a commitment to those in Christchurch, to our Muslim community, that this Parliament is going to remain 100 percent focused on making sure that we do everything that we can to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again in New Zealand.

Can I acknowledge the police Minister, the Hon Stuart Nash, and the work that he’s done in putting this legislation together as quickly as he could and bringing it to the House. Can I acknowledge him and the leadership that he’s provided as our Minister of Police through what’s been an extremely trying time for us as well.

I personally believe there is no need to have military-style weapons in New Zealand, other than for the exemptions that we’ll see. Obviously, for our law enforcement, our police, and our New Zealand Defence Force, it’s part of their equipment. It’s a tool that they need, but I just do not see the need for everyday Kiwis to have a military-style weapon in their house. I fully support the legislation and the intent behind this in making sure that we don’t have military-style weapons in our homes.

Can I just talk very quickly about the magazine capacity, because this is something that I felt very strongly about. The type of terror attack that we witnessed relies, basically, on two things. It relies on time—the person having as much time as possible to do as much damage as possible—and the capacity to do that. In an attack like this, the capacity to do that lies quite simply in the capacity or the number of rounds that can be passed through the weapon, and so restricting that capacity just makes perfect sense in terms of being able to restrict or prevent the type of tragedy with the number of casualties and the number of deaths that we witnessed in Christchurch.

An in-built magazine simply means that the person takes much longer to reload the weapon, and it’s restricted by the number of rounds that can actually be put into the weapon, whereas a detachable magazine can be bought online. You can buy—I think one of the previous speakers referred to it—a tumbler magazine with up to 120 rounds. So, basically, with a semi-automatic weapon, you can fire as many rounds as quickly as your finger can move. So I think that the intent of the bill around reducing and restricting magazine and load capacity is a very important part of this bill. I fully—100 percent—support it.

Just lastly, can I comment on the gangs, because it has been raised in the House today as well. Can I again acknowledge the Minister, who came out very strongly against gangs this week and the fact that they were flouting the authority that this Parliament has, that this country has, and that our police service has by saying that they’re not going to observe the legislation that this Parliament is passing. I 100 percent support taking the strongest possible line that we can against gangs. It’s no secret how I feel about gangs. I had a lot to do with them in my 14 years in law enforcement here, and another 10 years overseas. There is nothing good about gangs. There is no upside to being a member of a gang. There’s no upside for our community in which these gangs operate.

In my time, I saw men in gangs who did actually have some leadership capability, who actually weren’t completely evil—but why do they choose to wear a patch? A patch sends a message to the community of one thing: the fact that they’ve been prepared to commit violent crime to earn the right to wear that patch. I find it highly offensive. I think that as a nation, over decades we have tried the best that we can to take these gangs on. I think we have had some success at the fringes. For me personally, I’m hoping that this presents us with an opportunity now, as a Parliament and as a Government, with a Minister that’s showing that he’s willing to take a stand against them, to actually start dialling it up a bit, to actually start developing some legislation that will give the police the powers that they need to really go after these guys. Not just the military-style weapons but the sawn-off shotguns or the converted .22s or the handguns that they procure illegally—yep, there is an issue there, of course. The ones that are procured illegally and operate outside our regulations present a whole different challenge, but let’s go for it. Let’s start to put pressure on these guys. Let’s start to get meaningful. Let’s start to make sure that our police have got the equipment, they’ve got the intelligence, they’ve got the resources, and they’ve got the backing of this Parliament. They’ve got the backing of the Minister and Cabinet and the Prime Minister to actually start applying genuine, real pressure on organised crime in New Zealand.

I’ve had three people come to me in the last six weeks with video footage showing that the gangs are starting to control the Auckland CBD and that they’re carrying and using weapons more and more. It’s time to send a message to the gangs and say, “You don’t run the town. Actually, we do.”

Can I acknowledge my own police area commander, Mark Fergus, who was in my office a fortnight ago, for the regular contact that we have. You may know him. He also heads up the disaster victim identification unit.

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: I went to school with him.

Oh, you went to school with him, yeah? He’s an outstanding police area commander with a real heart for our community, and I want to acknowledge my local police service, who do an outstanding job.

We had a gang. Admittedly, it was a youth gang, but it was still dedicated to committing crime and creating havoc in the community. The police area commander decided that he’d use every resource available to him to apply pressure to them to make sure that they could disrupt, dismantle, and, effectively, drive the gang out—it was actually up on Whangaparāoa Peninsula—and that did mean using every tool available to him. It can be done.

So I just want to support the Minister of Police and the comments that he made in the last 48 hours around applying pressure to gangs. You’ve got our full support on that, but we want to go harder. We want to dial it up. We want to actually start making some meaningful change in terms of how we can start to reduce, drive out, and get rid of gangs and organised crime in New Zealand. Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker.

This is a bill I’m proud to rise in support of, but it is in circumstances that I would have given anything to avoid. The horrific attack on 15 March on two mosques in Christchurch has broken hearts and wounded spirits across the country. It has changed us. New Zealand has united in its grief, in its solidarity with those attacked, and in our determination to never let anything like this ever happen again. The bill that we begin passing today is a way of making that determination tangible.

Since 15 March, we have seen an outpouring of love and compassion and support for the victims who lost their lives, for families who lost loves ones, and for the Muslim community, who were targeted because of their faith. Our country’s response has filled me and, I think, everybody in this House with pride. We’ve seen rivers of flowers, the enormous crowds at the vigils, and the haka. All these acts of kindness and solidarity have been a powerful symbolic expression of the solidarity New Zealanders feel with the fact that, as our Prime Minister has said, they are us.

We have seen powerful expressions of that feeling from right across the country, but today is the day that we write that solidarity into our books of law. It is our role as legislators to ensure that these acts of kindness and compassion are not just symbolic, ephemeral tokens but are translated into lasting, practical change by this House. So, today, we take the concrete action to prevent attacks like this in the future. Today, we begin the process of banning the weapons used in that horrific attack. Today, we start to make our country a safer place for the future. This was a monstrous attack on innocent men, women, and children who were doing nothing more than going about their daily lives, as they expressed their faith and as they knelt in the silence and serenity in their place of worship. They should have been safe here.

The Al Noor Mosque is located on Deans Avenue in Riccarton, in my electorate of Wigram. I know this community well. This is a community that I have formed a relationship with over time. These are my neighbours. This is a community that has gone out of its way to welcome me and has only ever made me feel loved and accepted, a community that has welcomed me to their Eid prayers and to their celebrations, and to see this community so hatefully targeted on the basis of their religion with such shocking violence is evil.

Last week, I attended the burial of one of the victims. To stand by that grave alongside a family was hugely confronting. I will never forget the feelings of intensity of the grief and seeing the horrifying spectacle of mass graves as I did. I simply could not understand how someone could visit such hate and horror on innocent, loving people like this. But what I do understand is this: as legislators, we have a responsibility to keep this community and all New Zealanders safe. This is not too fast; this is what leadership looks like.

We have a responsibility to the 50 lives that were lost to make sure this country is a safer place for all New Zealanders in the future. We have a responsibility to the memory of people like Husna Ahmed, who escaped that mosque and was killed when she ran back to look for her husband, Farid—a couple who live only a few metres from my electorate office. We have a responsibility to the memory of 49 other human beings who were killed on 15 March; and we have a responsibility to everybody in this country. We have that responsibility, and I am proud that we are acting on it. With the passing of this bill, every weapon used by that terrorist will be banned. We are banning all military-style semi-automatics with assault rifles that are designed to kill people.

This legislation is not directed at the vast bulk of law-abiding gun owners, especially those in rural communities who use .22 calibre rifles for farm work and hunting. We are mindful that some guns serve legitimate purposes in our farming and rural communities and have, therefore, set out exemptions for .22 calibre rifles and shotguns commonly used for duck hunting. These will have limitations around their capacity.

It is entirely reasonable and proper that we should do this, but we are very clear that owning a gun in New Zealand is a privilege and not a right. We strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest and will take these changes in their stride, just as they did in Australia when similar changes were made there.

An amnesty will be put in place for weapons to be handed in, and people will have till the end of September to do so. Even people who have semi-automatics illegally will be covered by this amnesty. Our focus is simple: it is getting these guns out of the community, and we will work with the owners to make sure that that happens in an orderly way.

We have determined that it is only reasonable that people should have access to a fair buy-back scheme. There will definitely be a fair buy-back scheme—we are committed to that. The exact details are still being worked through, but it will be similar to the Australian scheme that saw people receive a fair price for their guns. I am pleased that this move is so widely accepted and supported.

I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my colleague the Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, for the speed with which he has worked on this legislation. I’d also like to acknowledge the leadership of our Prime Minister, who, only hours after the attack, was talking about the need for us to reform our gun laws. It is with the full support of the Government parties—Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens—joined by the National Party, Federated Farmers, Fish & Game, and hunters and fishers and others that have come to support this, and I would like to also acknowledge the Opposition. This is the kind of day when Parliament can be at its best, and we appreciate the support. The public will have a say. We encourage people to submit to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and we are open to hearing technical issues with the application of the legislation in order to iron out any problems that may be there.

So these changes that we are making today are reasonable. They are thought through and they are the right thing to do. These changes are also timely. These changes need to be made. These are changes needed to ensure that our communities are safer, that those who wish to cause New Zealanders harm cannot get their hands on weapons of war designed only to kill and maim, and that those that want to weaponise their hate cannot get their hands on these weapons of war.

These changes that we are beginning the process of making today will protect innocent people. They will change lives and they will save lives. The changes that we are making today are the most proper and fitting service that we can make to the memory of those who lost their lives on 15 March. This bill is the tangible expression of the sentiments of kindness and aroha and determination we have seen from our nation in the past two weeks. It is a promise on behalf of the people of New Zealand to our communities and to our future generations. The promise is this: together we will make New Zealand a kinder, safer country. This bill is an important part of doing that. I commend it to the House. Thank you.

I move, That the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by Monday, 8 April 2019, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day in which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week where there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

Motion agreed to.