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

I move, That the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

It is day 25 of the largest criminal investigation in New Zealand history. Not a day or a moment has been wasted as we respond to the atrocity that is testing us all. This is also true of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and I particularly acknowledge the members of the committee, who met under great time pressure to help speed this legislation through Parliament. I thank the chair, Michael Wood, and I thank the other MPs, who have all played their part.

I thank the 13,000 or so who made submissions and the tens of thousands of others who participated in this process by signing online petitions. I thank the expert police advisers and officials. I thank the teams of public servants and policy analysts from multiple Government agencies who assisted. At least 90 extra people were drafted into work in three times eight-hour shifts and through the weekend to consider, analyse, and report on submissions. But perhaps the biggest debt of all is owed to the families and friends of those who fell at the mosques. They came to Parliament to speak for those who could not. Their bravery and dignity, their grief and their despair carry meanings that no paper submission or petition can convey. Their eloquence and compelling truths gave weight to the memories of those we have lost.

There is one more submission I wish to single out and, in doing so, I mean no disrespect to others. The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons took us to a very confronting place. The family and friends of those who died gave us their memories; the surgeons gave us the bodily presence of those who survived. Specialist James McKay saw 48 terribly injured men, women, and children arrive in less than an hour at the Canterbury Hospital emergency department. At the select committee, his description of the injuries to their chests, lungs, abdomens, and their skin and tissue and bone, was quite simply horrifying.

Four hundred years ago, The Merchant of Venice also confronted the effects of religious and cultural intolerance for another group. If I could paraphrase for a moment, do we not have the same hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; are we not fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

We are hurt with weapons, but unlike that speech, we are not seeking revenge; we are seeking safety. We have to stop this happening again. There is a list of A to W Government agencies wrapped around the survivors and the bereaved—from ACC to Work and Income. We have a responsibility, too, here in this Chamber. This Parliament is acting near unanimously to take these firearms and associated parts out of circulation. They cause deadly harm. They are designed to kill quickly and at scale. There is no good reason to have them outside of an extremely tightly defined set of circumstances.

Firearms are an important tool to help prevent damage to the environment. There is an exemption in the bill for legitimate users to have access to prohibited firearms—semi-automatics—for the sole purpose of pest eradication. These commercial operators will need to demonstrate a genuine need for the firearm: that they cannot do the job with another type of weapon.

The committee heard a range of views about the place of semi-automatics on farms and large landholdings—for example, Rural Women New Zealand made a strong case that there was no need for assault rifles and military-style semi-automatics on farms. Members of the committee believed that the exemption for commercial wild animal control or animal pest-control businesses should be kept narrow. The exemption does allow commercial businesses specialising in pest control to use a prohibited item for such purposes on private land or non-conservation Crown land. This will allow private land owners to engage a legitimate pest-control business to assist in protecting the environment. I am aware there are some in the community who believe that this does not go far enough. The fact is that we must ensure we do not create gaping loopholes that can be exploited. The right balance must be struck, and I believe this provision does just that. The purpose of this measure is to remove as many of these weapons out of circulation to improve public safety.

The select committee has made a number of recommendations which I believe should be included in the bill. Earlier, I spoke of the need to ensure we get the balance right between protecting our communities and allowing the tools to effectively protect our environment. The select committee has given extensive consideration to the conditions placed upon bona fide collectors. Currently, collectors must remove a key component of a firearm, rendering it inoperable. The committee has recommended that the bill be amended to prescribe further precautions that must be taken to prevent the theft or misuse of these vital parts. The committee has also recommended the ability for people to apply for an endorsement on their licence to keep a prohibited firearm if that item is an heirloom or memento. This will, hopefully, reduce the risk of people continuing to unlawfully possess a prohibited firearm.

The committee has agreed with the Government that there is no need for an exemption for sporting competitors or competitions. No one competing in shooting disciplines at the Olympics or Commonwealth Games will be affected by this bill. In addition, people who compete in three-gun discipline will continue to be able to compete using a .22 or lower-calibre semi-automatic. The bill strikes the right balance.

Before concluding, I want to briefly touch on the process. In addition to 13,000 submissions, referred to in the committee’s report, there were petitions signed by thousands of others. For comparison, the comprehensive Thorp inquiry more than 20 years ago considered just under 3,000 submissions. Simon Mount QC, who was special counsel advising the Thorp inquiry in 1997, has supported this process. He made a submission stating, “There are exceptional circumstances that require swift action, and this is one.”

The arguments for immediate action seem compelling; the committee will be well aware of the main arguments for and against. The survivors and the bereaved have a lifetime of physical and emotional trauma ahead—for them, day 25 will blur into day 26 and day 27, and every day will be a struggle. We have the responsibility to make every moment count. That is why I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party to support the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge the Minister of Police for his second reading speech, and I also want to acknowledge the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who are present in the Chamber. It’s a blast from the past for me to return to the halcyon days of the Finance and Expenditure Committee that I was on in the last Parliament. It was a temporary substitution for me, but I miss that committee, and I want to acknowledge the chair, Michael Wood, who I thought did an outstanding job, actually, of chairing the committee. It was a heavy workload for the Finance and Expenditure Committee in the last week or so, and Mr Wood did a really good job of steering the bill through the committee and hearing all the submitters in a respectful way.

I want to acknowledge the process, because I think, actually, the last week or so has been the Parliament working really constructively and effectively. It shows, actually, what members can do when they put their minds to something. Even with the short amount of time, when members want to genuinely work in good faith in a bipartisan and constructive way—even with a short amount of time and with thousands of submissions to process and hear, it actually just shows what Parliament can do, and I think, in some ways, this is a really good example of Parliament doing a good job.

I’m not one who believes that you should look too closely at the weight of opinion one way or the other when it comes to submissions to a select committee. Frequently, you hear members say, “Well, 80 percent of submissions were opposed to a particular course of action. Therefore, we should do something.” They’re not scientific polls; they’re self-selecting by definition—it tends to be the people who choose to submit. In particular, when it comes to something like the End of Life Choice Bill—which I know the Parliament will be debating at some point—91 percent of submitters were opposed. Well, that’s all well and good, but, actually, that’s wildly divergent from public polls on the issue.

But I do note for the House that when it comes to this bill, you wouldn’t really know it from the media, but 60 percent of submissions were actually in support of the bill, and if you’d listened to the media and some of the wild comments in previous days, one would be forgiven for not actually thinking that, from some of the comments in the media. But, actually, the majority of submitters were in favour of the bill. Again, I don’t make the point as an argument as to why we should pass the bill, but I do note it for the House’s record because I do think it is interesting. It’s another example of where the public commentary is perhaps actually diverging from the public view.

We support the bill. We support the intentions laid out in the bill that the Minister has recognised. We have issued not a minority report, because in the National Party we’re supporting the bill, but we have issued a National Party statement—I suppose you would call it—in the commentary on the bill, in the select committee commentary that we put together collectively.

I want to outline a few issues where we think the committee could have come to a different view and where the House could come to a different view. The first is that we are concerned about the delegation of power to the executive to change the criminal law. There are quite wide, sweeping powers in this bill for the executive—for the Cabinet, in reality—to change through fiat the criminal law, and we in the National Party believe that is constitutionally inappropriate. To give you an example, the bill allows the executive to declare, by Order in Council, specific ammunition to be prohibited ammunition, and possession of that ammunition is a criminal offence, except the actual ammunition that is to be prohibited is not named in the bill. We received advice from the officials that things like armour-piercing bullets will be banned—well, that’s fine. That should be in the primary legislation—I mean, if the officials know that’s what they want to ban now, then it should be in the primary legislation. They talk about armour-piercing, incendiary, tracer, and other ancillary types of military ammunition. We think it should be in the bill.

Then there are the so-called “Henry VIII” clauses which allow the Government to amend the primary Act—the Arms Act—by regulation, and we received advice from the Regulations Review Committee about the concerns to do with that. We have recommended as a committee a tightening up of that particular provision in the bill, but the constitutional repugnance of that position remains. The executive should not have the power to change the criminal law through fiat. The criminal law should be changed through parliamentary action only. So we are concerned about that.

The other point I wanted to make is around international sporting competitions. Now, we went back and forth on this a lot. I can understand the argument of those who don’t support the carve-out and exemption for them—I can. We in the National Party have sympathy for the argument that those who compete in international sporting shooting competitions are going to be hard-done-by as a result of this bill.

I acknowledge what the Minister said, which was that no Olympic or Commonwealth Games sporting competitions will be affected by the bill, but that doesn’t really solve the problem, which is that many hundreds of people will be affected by this prohibition. I don’t believe it was beyond the wit of the committee or beyond our competence to design a regime similar to that of the pistol-shooting clubs and pistol-shooting competitions, which the officials acknowledged to us works really well. There are heavy restrictions around pistol-shooting, pistol-shooting competitions, and pistol-shooting clubs.

I believe it must be within the Parliament’s competence and ability to design a regime that allows for this very narrow class of people to compete in international competitions that involve what are now going to be prohibited weapons. I acknowledge those aren’t the Olympic Games, but they are international competitions and, actually, New Zealand competes really well on the world stage in those competitions. I think that under appropriate regulation and strict scrutiny we could do that, and the officials sort of signalled and the Government sort of signalled that we might be able to look at that as part of phase two of the reforms. We will certainly be advancing that position in the National Party, because we think it’s possible to design a regime.

I want to mention antiques and mementoes. We had some critical submissions from those who were very concerned that historical antiques and mementoes, family heirlooms, guns—you know, maybe World War I and World War II or Vietnam War guns passed down through the generations—may be affected. We’ve made it very clear as a committee that that is not the case and that with appropriate controls, they will be unaffected, and I think that is correct.

Likewise, too, the Airsoft people, described memorably by Ben Allen, the president of Airsoft Sports New Zealand, as just a bunch of geeks running around in the bush pretending to play soldiers—they will be unaffected as well. I think that is appropriate, and likewise paintball competitions. The committee, unfortunately, did not take up my suggestion of a press gallery versus Finance and Expenditure Committee paintball game. Maybe that’s something we can do once we’ve passed the third reading.

I want to draw the House’s attention also to the submission of Rapid Advanced Manufacturing of Tauranga. This is a high-tech, local, growing company—well, not local to here, but local to Tauranga. It is a growing company. They make firearm suppressors and other equipment using 3D metal manufacturing. It’s a very high-technology company. They export to the international market—to defence contractors and other countries and companies. They require semi-automatic weapons for testing. Obviously, no one is going to take their suppressors—which, I’m told, are extremely expensive and high-tech—unless they’ve been tested properly, so they require high-capacity magazines and they require semi-automatic weapons.

Now, we’ve been assured by the officials that through the transitional regulations, they will be allowed to continue doing what they’re doing. I would like to see a carve-out for them. I think it’s possible, and I want to signal now that we’ll be putting forward a Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House stage in order to make it very clear that they can carry on doing what they’re doing. Partly, some of these issues are to do with the speed at which the Parliament was considering it, but we have an opportunity in the committee of the whole House stage to make sure that groups like Rapid Advanced Manufacturing can be dealt with as well.

Finally, in my last 30 seconds, I want to make it very clear that we think the Government must come to the House soon and come to the public with details of the buy-back scheme and the amnesty and say how the buy-back will work. We want to make it clear that we think the buy-back should be at market rates for the valuations of weapons, and we also think that dealers should be included. There are some people out there who have tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock. They can’t return it to the supplier. They can’t sell it into the market, or they won’t be able to once tomorrow passes and the bill passes. They are going to be out of pocket through no fault of their own. We believe the buy-back should include dealers. I think the Government’s signalled it won’t.

This is a good bill. I commend it to the House.

I rise to support and commend the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill to the House on this second reading. As chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which has considered this bill, I wish to pass my acknowledgment on to both the Prime Minister and the Minister the Hon Stuart Nash who have led this legislative process. I wish to acknowledge fellow committee members from across the House, who worked constructively and in a spirit of good faith in the consideration of this bill over a constrained period of time. But, most importantly, in my remarks today I wish to pay tribute to the submitters and acknowledge the points they made to the committee in the hearings last week.

I can’t think of a better point to start than the words of Mustafa Farouq, the president of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, or FIANZ, who, when he came and presented to the committee, told us that he was there to represent those people who were not able to be with us on that day because they were dead, because they had been killed by one of the weapons that this legislation proposes to prohibit. And it was very clear throughout the course of his submission, and also the submission we heard from Anjum Rahman from the Islamic Women’s Council, that while we cannot undo the grief and the pain and the huge dislocation within our Muslim community that has occurred as a result of that terrorist attack, we can, in the words of Ms Rahman, provide some solace to the community if we as a House take action on this issue.

Those submissions and others reminded us strongly of why we are here; not simply because of that awful attack on 15 March but because of the fundamental failure of our society and this House to take action in the years before 15 March 2019. I have here a copy of the recommendations of the Thorp report in 1995, which said that we should take action and prohibit these weapons. We heard from submitters, some of whom I will mention later on, who told us again and again and again of the times in which these concerns were raised. I acknowledge Simon Mount QC, who did not appear before us but who submitted and was a contributor to the Thorp report and urged us on to action. I acknowledge the Police Association, who gave a very powerful submission and reminded us—and responded to some of the criticisms that this process may have gone too quickly—that in fact we have been too slow to act, and that the calls have been made by police, by the Police Association, and others for years. At this point I particularly want to acknowledge the men and women of the New Zealand Police, who have carried a huge load since 15 March in protecting our community, being a critical link, but also during this process of providing outstanding service to the Parliament and the select committee by way of advice to us to make good law.

We heard from Professor Alexander Gillespie of Waikato University, who is professor of law and terrorism. Professor Gillespie was one of those people who submitted to the select committee inquiry that produced a report in 2017 that recommended a range of actions in terms of firearms reform—some of which were actioned but some of which, sadly, were not. Professor Gillespie reminded us that after that hearing he spoke to media and he said that if there was not change in this area—this was in 2017—another Aramoana was possible and foreseeable.

Powerfully, we heard from Tim Ashton. Mr Tim Ashton served in the New Zealand Police for 18 years. He was a member of the armed offenders squad and the Special Tactics Group, and he was one of the officers who was involved at Aramoana in the apprehension of David Gray during that massacre, and he spoke to the repeated concerns that he has raised over the years, and the repeated calls for action to remove from general circulation military-style semi-automatic weapons (MSSAs).

As Minister Stuart Nash mentioned, we had a very powerful submission from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, and from James McKay, a general and trauma surgeon at Christchurch Hospital, who treated 48 men, women, and children who were victims on 15 March. He detailed the horrible impact of these weapons, their huge impact on the flesh and the bone of those people, and made a very powerful clarion call to our committee and to our Parliament not to let slip this opportunity to rid these weapons from general circulation.

I also wish to acknowledge all of those who submitted on behalf of the New Zealand firearms community. This was a wide range of people. I want to acknowledge that the vast majority of New Zealand firearms owners are decent and law-abiding people, that they are not the targets of this legislation. They are not bad people for owning firearms. This is a piece of legislation that aims to keep New Zealanders safe by minimising, as much as possible, the risk of serious, military-style semi-automatic weapons circulating in our society. I acknowledge submissions that were received from Federated Farmers, who support the general intention of the bill, notwithstanding some specific concerns they have around wild animal and pest control, which I will touch on shortly.

I wish to acknowledge the Mountain Safety Council, who have a special role in our system in terms of the training and education of firearms owners and who support the direction of this bill to remove these weapons from general circulation. They noted that there is some convenience in some people holding military-style semi-automatic weapons but they are not necessary in most cases. I wish to acknowledge Fish & Game, who confirmed to the Finance and Expenditure Committee on questioning that in nearly all cases these weapons are not required for hunting and said that “Military-style semi-automatics have no place in New Zealand. They never did”.

I especially wish to acknowledge the submission of Rural Women New Zealand. They made three very pithy points: that in most cases in rural New Zealand, these particular weapons are simply not needed. They made the point that rural women have raised concerns about these weapons over the years, and also that in the event of tragedies in rural communities, it is often women who are left to pick up the pieces. We heard the rural women of New Zealand.

In response to the submissions that were raised—both written and oral submissions—the select committee has made a number of changes to the bill, which I believe ensure that the bill, while keeping to its original purpose, will be as effective as possible and as fair as possible. We heard from Federated Farmers that there are some particular situations in rural New Zealand where specific pest species in certain types of situations may require the use of MSSAs. Their request was for an exemption for farmers to own these weapons in those situations. The select committee, on balance, did not—could not—see its way to supporting that exemption but has made a narrower change to ensure that commercial operators, who will be tightly regulated by the police, who would have had access to conservation land, will now also have access to non-Crown conservation land and private farmland for the purposes of this sort of wild animal and pest control. I believe that will go some way towards meeting that concern from Federated Farmers.

I also want to touch on the fact that the committee has not seen its way to recommending a more general exemption for sports shooters. In the end, often with bills like this, people support the general direction but want a particular carve out for their particular activity. That is understandable; there is nothing wrong with that position being presented. But the challenge the select committee had—whether it came to an exemption for farmers or an exemption for sports shooters—is that once you start making those exemptions, you run the risk of undermining the fundamental point, which is to remove as many of these weapons as possible from general circulation in our community. So we believe, fundamentally, that that would’ve undermined the core purpose of the bill.

The select committee heard submissions on the exemption that went to the committee for collectors, and some of the submissions outlined a concern that collectors may become a target, as they would be the owners of these weapons, and so the select committee has put forward a small change to the rules around collectors having an exemption for these weapons in certain cases, which will ensure that a vital part is stored not just separately from the core weapon but, actually, at a different address. We believe this will meet some of those concerns that were raised. As other speakers have raised, a very limited exemption for heirloom and memento weapons has also been included in the bill.

I want to acknowledge all select committee members for their role in this process. This was a process of the Parliament coming together to do something in the public good. The final word that I want to provide on this bill was from Her Worship Lianne Dalziel the Mayor of Christchurch, who presented to us at the end. She noted that her parliamentary colleague from the early 1990s the Hon John Banks had said that he was haunted by the failure of that Parliament to act on this issue. She urged us to seize this moment. I believe that we as a Parliament are seizing this moment. We should pass this bill with reverence for the victims, with conviction that we are doing the right thing, and hope that we will build a safer community for all of our people. I commend the bill with its amendments to the house. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a call on this very important bill, I think, for New Zealand, the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill, and I’ll touch on the parts a little later in the course of my address. I’d point out, at the beginning of this, that I am a licensed owner of a firearm. In other words, I have a licence, so I’ve got some competence.

But I want to touch briefly on the history of this process initially, because I sat through the previous inquiry into the acquisition of firearms by gangs, basically, in the last Parliament. The thing that I noticed about this bill was that the submissions to it were of a very different tone than the submissions some three years ago, and a lot of them were from the very same organisations. I think that points to a very good reason for this bill passing through the Parliament now. I think the country’s moved on, and we realise, as a country and as a Parliament, that action is needed.

The biggest risk, I think, in the course of this bill—and this was pointed out in the last inquiry as well—is that we’ll extract the guns from the law-abiding New Zealanders and not the rest. I think that’s a challenge that this Parliament and our police forces have got to address in the future, because it’s all very well to extract these dangerous firearms or unwanted firearms from those people who have throughout their history been law-abiding, but we’ve got to find a way of extracting the rest of those guns that are sitting out in New Zealand and that are highly illegal and highly dangerous. That view, of course, has been reinforced by one or two of those members in the last few weeks, and we need to take some action on that.

I want to, having got through that, comment on one or two other parts of the bill, and I know my colleague Chris Bishop has already commented on the amnesty. I’ve got some issues with the amnesty—not with the fact we’ve got an amnesty; I think it’s admirable, but more so with the buy-back and the time that we’ve got to initiate this in, which is, I understand, prior to 30 September. If we don’t get this into action very quickly, we’re going to struggle to get much action in the time that that amnesty has allowed, because I don’t think we’ll see many people handing guns in until they have some certainty around where that buy-back gets to and how those guns are actually stored and recorded until such time as they’re paid out for them. So I’d urge the Government to get this in place very quickly, as uncertainty will lead to a whole lot more challenges for this sector. I think if it’s not dealt with quickly, it could even lead to some guns going underground, and that’s the last thing we want to do. I also urge that that buy-back be extended to gun dealers, because there will be a large number of gun dealers in New Zealand who will be significantly out of pocket as a result of this bill, and we’ve got to understand that before this bill was instigated, they were perfectly legal, law-abiding business operators in this country. We can’t see them out of pocket as a result of a piece of legislation, however necessary, put through this Parliament, and I urge the Government to move quickly on that as well. The sporting use issue will be touched on by plenty of my colleagues, I’m sure.

I want to go now to the issue that Federated Farmers raised. I think it’s fair to say that this bill has gone through Parliament with breakneck or lightning speed, by any standard, and I wish to compliment the officials, the committee staff, and my colleagues on the Finance and Expenditure Committee for getting through such a large amount of work, and such a difficult and technical amount of work, in such a short time. The role and the method by which this bill was put through Parliament will inevitably lead to things, as they do when they’re done in a hurry, being missed out. There’ll be some misunderstandings, and there will inevitably be some mistakes made in the course of this. I was pleased to read today that the next tranche or next piece of legislation will not be far away from this Parliament, because that will give us an opportunity to review any omissions and matters that have inadvertently been misunderstood, and I think that’s a great opportunity for us to put right anything that we’ve currently got wrong.

But going back to the Federated Farmers issue, I think that they had an issue—as was pointed out by the previous speaker, Michael Wood—particularly in the high country of New Zealand, with species that are very difficult to control and very quick to escape when under threat. I think that it’s important that we think about this in a broader context in the future, because if you look at what happened with the Department of Conservation (DOC) the last time they were given an opportunity, I guess, to assist New Zealand in a cull, and you go back to the days of the initial TB outbreaks—and a lot of that TB came out of the conservation estate—we saw DOC very retardant in its duty, in my view, with respect to eliminating the country of that pest or helping to eliminate the country of those TB-infected stoats and possums, etc.

We could see the same thing in this case, because a large amount of privately held land is adjacent to DOC land, and while DOC have a licence to, effectively, cull and exterminate pests, the neighbours don’t, and if DOC don’t carry out their role in a reasonable manner, it’s going to inevitably spread into that country next door to them, and by the action we’ve taken in this bill, where it is not impossible for farmers to acquire contractors to assist them—they can do that, but they can’t do it themselves. I think that’s something that we’ll need to review in the future, but we also need to ensure that DOC and the regional councils and those agencies that are capable of carrying out pest control using these excluded weapons are able to do so in a manner that’s useful to the country and useful to their neighbours.

Our minority view also goes on to talk about the principles of the legislation and some issues that will inevitably be, I guess, traversed as we go a little further along. I want to touch on one of those, and that’s the firearms prohibition orders. Those were recommended both in the last report and in the course, I understand, of the full report. That would assist us with the issue that I raised earlier, and that is of the illegal guns that have gone underground and will be very difficult to, I guess, get out and eliminate from society. So we need to make sure that if that’s not included in the bill or included in future bills, it is certainly enforced by our law enforcement agencies, because it will create significant unrest in New Zealand society.

The other issue I want to touch on is one that I think will be a concern to all—and I’ve got a considerable concern about it—and that is the publicity given to the amnesty and the actual law changes themselves. As strange as it may seem, many New Zealanders take very little notice of what goes on in Parliament, and many New Zealanders take very little notice of the law we put in place until it affects them and they know it affects them. I’m talking now about things like magazines that are lying in drawers in people’s houses, because they inevitably will be, because there’s no compulsion to store them in locked, secure places. They’ll be lying around properties all over New Zealand, and people will inadvertently, unless we advertise and promote this law extensively and the amnesty extensively, find these things and they’ll be sitting in their properties, and under this law they could be subject to two to 10 years’ imprisonment—I think it’s 10—for that kind of possession. Now, I’m sure there’ll be a lot of people in New Zealand who inadvertently hold these things who certainly will hand the firearm in but won’t hand the magazine in, because they’ll have forgotten all about it. That’s just an example of what I think could happen.

So I’d urge the Government, when they get on to this in the next week or two, to make sure the promotion of the amnesty and the legislation and the pieces that are caught up in that legislation are broadly publicised, because there will be many gun owners in New Zealand who have pulled things to bits, whose family members have pulled things to bits, in the past and left them lying around in various places, and they certainly aren’t dangerous without the firearms to use them. I think it’s important that we make sure that’s well promoted and that information is made accessible to everyone. We were assured during the select committee stage that it would be put out through all sorts of gun agencies, firearms clubs, and things like that, and I hope it is.

I do want to congratulate all those who submitted on it. I had, like many of you, I guess, many people approach me in the last couple of weeks about this piece of legislation. Most of them, interestingly, whilst they were, I think, a little aggravated about what they believe to be some sort of human right being taken from them, were very satisfied with the fact that we actually were banning something they felt wasn’t necessary in New Zealand society at all. I think it’s just the principle of this thing that gets people’s backs up a little, initially. I think they will mostly get over it. So I want to congratulate the select committee. I want to congratulate the Parliament on where we’ve got to with this, and there will be some more discussion in the next couple of days before it passes into law. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is an honour, actually, to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and speak on this Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill, such a significant piece of legislation that we are bringing through with some urgency because of an extraordinary event. It was actually a privilege to sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and to be subbed on for this process. I think all of us on there felt the responsibility that we were under. I would like to commend the Minister of Police for his leadership and decisiveness in bringing this bill forward in such a timely manner. I would also like to commend the chairman, Michael Wood, who I think demonstrated, actually, a master class in chairing select committee. He was clear, he was accurate, he was fair, and he displayed a very high level of competence.

I would like to also just commend the colleagues across the House. This was a collective sense of purpose that we had. We were all there to achieve the same end, and while I note in the report the other parties’ minority views, they were all, essentially, around the margins. The tenor of what we’re trying to do is totally supported across the House, and it was, as Chris Bishop said, a fine example of the Parliament working together.

Because it was such a herculean effort from the officials—I think at one stage they had officials from 10 departments seconded on to this bill, with the weight of the 13,000 submissions coming in within 48 hours—it behoves me to mention Steven Mitchell, Tara Elmes, and Siobhan Coffey, who fronted that for the officials. Also, I’d like to commend Assistant Commissioner Tusha Penny for the way that she represented the New Zealand Police and the important role that they played in shaping this legislation.

There has been some criticism of the process. It has been very truncated, but, as we have heard, this is an issue that’s been well traversed in the past. We were here in 1992, and we were here in 1995 with the Thorp report. We couldn’t get Matt Robson’s member’s bill—which that could have been picked up with the incoming Labour Government in 2005—over the line, and we failed to act on the select committee report of 2017. So any criticism that we are not over this issue and that we are not fully aware of the implications is, I believe, unfounded.

I also felt that though we were given a limited number of oral submissions, the ones we got reflected a huge spectrum of this debate. As mentioned, we had the widest social context come in from the likes of the Muslim community and from the likes of Mayor Lianne Dalziel. We had the gun interests represented. There was a spectrum there, including the colourful Mr Loder, who seemed to have quite a relationship with Ms Collins, and David Tipple, of course, who turned it into a little bit of a media sideshow, which actually was a bit of a pity, because this at its heart is a very technical bill about hardware and firearms that are going to be either in or out of the scope of use for people with an A category licence. He, of all people, had probably the most knowledge of anyone in New Zealand as to what was out there, and he could have helped us draw that line. I felt that was a missed opportunity during the submissions.

Of course, we also had the one I really want to touch on—which is pretty pertinent—which was the Federated Farmers’ submission. First of all, one of the things we have done in this iteration of the bill is to expand the use of restricted semi-automatic weapons on private land. As it was first drafted, it was only going to be able to be on conservation land, which is totally untenable. There’s 5 million hectares of hill country out there that is challenged by pests and wild animals, so we needed to broaden that, and so we have done that.

Federated Farmers did want us to provide an exemption for farmers, under very restricted conditions, to get access to some of these higher-spectrum rifles. The committee considered that long and hard. We came down on the side of keeping it within professional pest control companies and to not widen the scope too much at this stage. But I agree with Ian McKelvie in his previous contribution, and I think we may have to revisit that. I think that we need to keep it tight at the start, and New Zealand First fully supports that.

But there are significant challenges on our farms. It’s not just rabbits and possums, but you’re looking at wallabies, tahr, goats, and deer, and, of course, deer pose a TB threat as well as a threat to pasture and crops. There are geese too, of course, which sort of fall in between the cracks in some of the statutory organisations. But they are also a considerable pest and they eat a lot of grass, so we need to probably go back and look at that. I note that it must have been Miles Anderson, the spokesperson for Federated Farmers, who must have been going through his “Shane Jones’ Book of Rhetoric”, because he’s described this drafting of the bill as giving farmers the equivalent of a toothbrush to paint the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which I think is not being totally fair.

We need to keep this clear: farmers and hunters still have access to semi-automatic weapons—a .22 with up to 10 mags, and semi-automatic shotguns with up to five rounds. Pistols are unaffected by this particular clause—they’re already very tightly restricted, as we have already heard—and there are still, of course, higher-calibre weapons available in bulk action. So for the vast majority of people, this is not going to affect them. There is a small subgroup—Federated Farmers consider it to be in the low hundreds—that may need some weapons, but I think we need more time to consider where we’re going to draw the line there.

In terms of some of the others issues raised, with regard to the professional sports shooting, New Zealand First had some sympathy, as well, for that subgroup of people who are disadvantaged. There’s no doubt that they will be disadvantaged by it, but it’s around the proportions, and it’s around the intent of taking these weapons out of circulation and the determination of this Parliament to do so. I think what concerns us as a committee, and, certainly, as New Zealand First, is that it actually does give a pathway. While it’s a very narrow sport at the moment, it does then provide a pathway for individuals to get involved in this sport and to get access to these guns, and I think that’s something that we really need to think long and hard about before we grant any exemptions in that direction.

The other thing that came up at the eleventh hour was the manufacturers. It appears we have a small arms industry, or an accessories industry rather than arms, and some quite successful small, niche businesses. We as a committee were determined not to put their businesses out of business by putting in place, essentially, a law that would have made their operations unlawful. So we have got a little carve-out for them. There’s a temporary ability to put some regulations in to protect their interests so that they’ve got access to some guns to test their scopes and their accessories where they have formed a niche for themselves.

But we’ve got to go back and think why we’re doing this. You know, with all these exemptions and all the submissions that are coming to us, we’re doing this because there are far too many weapons out there. There was the gunman in Christchurch who had an A category licence, with a legal firearm purchased through a retail outlet. He drove a gaping hole through our licensing and arms regulations, and we have been found wanting. We’ve been warned so many times in the past. Lianne Dalziel told us with genuine emotion that she had been there in 1992. She had sat where we sit. She had had the chance to do what we now have the chance to do, and it is time for us to finish the job. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I often say that select committees are where Parliament is at its best, and I think that the work that we have done on the Finance and Expenditure Committee on this particular bill has been Parliament at its best that I have seen in my time at Parliament. That was because there was very much a common purpose, and there was a common purpose also that enabled each party and each member of that committee to voice their views and for each to feel—and I certainly felt, and I’m sure my colleagues from the National Party did—that our views were heard, and even when we were not successful in promoting everything we thought should go in the bill, we were given an opportunity to voice those and to have them recorded in our National Party view on the bill.

This bill is not going to solve every issue around firearms. It is not going to stop someone being murdered with a firearm. But what it does do is it severely limits the ability of someone with murderous intent to go out and to get a military-style semi-automatic or a semi-automatic with a capacity to hold more than five rounds in it to then do damage. There is one reason to shoot a gun other than, obviously, target practice: the gun is designed to kill. The gun is not designed for anything else. It can kill animals, it can kill people—that’s what it does.

And so, from my point of view, I look at the gun from the point of view of growing up on a farm, on a dairy farm. My father had been a very keen hunter before World War II, but, as he said to me when he came back from World War II, he didn’t want to go hunting any more, and I can understand that. But it was certainly something that was encouraged for my brothers on the farm, and I have a brother who is a very keen collector and hunter and, obviously, many relatives like that. They are going to have what they have been able to do severely restricted, and that is because Parliament has taken the stance that we do want to restrict access to guns that don’t just kill but can kill a lot of people in a very short period of time. I think that is the big difference. We can certainly understand that firearms of any sort can kill, but the big difference is a large number of people killed in a very short period of time without any opportunity for there to be a reaction or, let’s say, an interruption in what they’re trying to do.

I don’t see any reason why we need military-style semi-automatics or semi-automatics with very large cartridges in a country like New Zealand. Yes, we do have pests. Yes, we do have people who need to be able to shoot them, but all the people that I’m aware of who shoot for hunting purposes tend to know how to aim and to shoot and to get their target. I’m sure they don’t need 30 rounds to kill a deer. I’m sure they don’t need 30 rounds to do anything. And the fact is that having the access to firearms at that level of lethality is simply totally unnecessary in a country like New Zealand. We are not a war zone and we do not wish to become a war zone. We are, in fact, a peaceful country and our peaceful life has been completely destroyed—or certainly interrupted—by someone with murderous intent, and that is why we have had the opportunity to come to this bill.

We’ve known for a long time that we have far too many high-capacity guns in New Zealand. Various reports—the Thorp report, as an example, was one entered into in 1997-98. Efforts were made and stopped: too hard, too difficult, too many people to be upset—all of these things. We also had various other attempts over the years, and I certainly had various attempts to bring about law changes, and two pretty minor law changes were able to be got through. Anything to do with firearms has always been met with a tremendous lobby from a group in the firearms community that I do not believe for a moment represent most firearm owners. When you’ve got 240,000 New Zealanders who are licensed firearm users, those people are not all part of the groups who think that they should have very high capacity semi-automatic weapons.

We think it’s important to look at a few things that are also not in the current bill, and we in the National Party view this as an opportunity with the promised second tranche of legislation and more detail to come to address some of those. We are concerned at the delegation of power to the executive in charge of criminal law around what can be banned in the future. We know that this is something that may have to happen, but then we are also very concerned that there needs to be a flow-on effect in terms of this House getting to change the law permanently.

We are also concerned about no exemption for international sporting competitions. Our concern there is that we know that there is a regime that works very, very well around weapons, and that is around pistols. I was most impressed—and I think many on the committee were most impressed—with the submission from the Pistol Association and also around the regime that’s been in place since the 1980s around who can own a pistol and how many times they have to turn up to a pistol club, what their vetting is. It is thorough. It is so much more thorough than for any other weapon, and there’s a reason that it’s thorough, because of course pistols can be much easier to hide, to be able to use without people knowing someone’s got them in the first place. But the other thing with pistols, though—they’re not talking at the moment about having the sorts of massive magazines that some of these semi-automatic weapons have had in the past. So I’m concerned to make sure that we do help people in the international sporting competitions but that we do so in a very careful and very deliberate way.

I am also concerned that there is no detail, really, on the amnesty and buy-back scheme. I think that this whole piece of legislation will work—what it will be based on is whether or not the buy-back scheme works. That is crucial, otherwise why bother? We do not want to be party to criminalising 240,000 New Zealanders—and of course we’re not—and we do not want to be party to criminalising people who have legally purchased weapons that Parliament has previously said they could. So we expect those people to have a very good and thorough amnesty and buy-back scheme. There are questions around parts—whether or not there will be a buy-back on them—and there are questions around dealers. I think that the Government needs to come up with a thorough scheme that works on the basis of the fair price rather than a set price. I think anything less than a fair price is going to be met with resistance that we should not want to have.

I also think this is an opportunity for the Government to revisit its previous opposition to firearms prohibition orders, that were very much supported by the Law and Order Committee that met through 2016 and reported in 2017. Those will enable the Commissioner of Police to designate a gang member who had serious violent and firearms offences as someone with a firearms prohibition order. That would be able to be reviewed by the District Court and it would be something that would enable police, when they suspected that there were firearms being kept by that person, to be able to search the property. I would have thought that was a smart thing to do. It’s the sort of thing that is available in some of the Australian states where they have very similar legislation to what we’re talking about.

The other thing with that is that we have some gang members who have come out and said that they’re not going to give up their firearms. It is important for law-abiding New Zealanders with firearms—those firearms that are not subject to an exemption under this bill—that they know that those people who are not law-abiding New Zealanders, who have stolen weapons or have weapons they should not have, are giving up theirs too. They will want to know that the law is being fairly applied and that they’re not treated as though they are the criminals when they’re not the criminals.

I think it’s really important that Parliament overwhelmingly and, hopefully, unanimously—I cross my fingers as I say this—supports this bill. It is really important for us to do this and it is really important that when this becomes law, we get in behind and help the Government to come up with some good decisions, particularly around the amnesty and buy-back scheme, and also the exemptions around sporting competitions. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this bill, Mr Assistant 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 once again rise in remembrance of, and with deep sorrow for, the victims of the terror attack at the two Christchurch mosques on 15 March. Fifty lives were lost that day and others were unimaginably injured with injuries that they will likely suffer from for the rest of their lives. So just over three weeks after that atrocity took place, I am so proud that this House has come together, that the Government has come together, that all across the benches of this House of Representatives we have stood together to begin the change that’s necessary in making New Zealand safe.

We are committed to standing together with the victims in their grief and shock across this country, but we are also committed to making real change. Part of that is to acknowledge that for the affected communities—for Christchurch and for our Muslim, for our migrant, and for our refugee communities right around the country—that grief and that sorrow comes with very real fear as they walk their kids to school every day; as they gather at places of worship; as they send their elderly, their nanas, and their grandads off to the shops; and as teenagers catch buses at night and still face, let’s admit it, a little bit of abuse, too. We’ve had all of that reported, as well. Now that doesn’t just feel degrading and unsettling; it comes with terror. For them, their lives are now touched by this ongoing fear. That’s what terror intends to do, and it is our job to make sure everyone in New Zealand and everyone in our communities feels safe. That’s what this change is about.

In fact, the people in those affected communities have come to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and they’ve let us know what this means to them. We’ve had Mustafa Farouk, the president of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, and we’ve had members of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand come to select committee and ask for this change, some speaking on behalf of the victims who can’t speak for themselves. We heard from that community in the wake of this tragedy, even in the days following it, saying, as Saeed Ahmed did—the president of the Hawke’s Bay Islamic centre—that while the fear was ongoing, the love and the unity in New Zealand really helped. What also helped was knowing that the Government had committed to taking action on gun control.

Let’s also remember that other communities, other victims, will benefit from this new law. We have some of the world’s highest rates of domestic and sexual violence, and we know that domestic violence victims and their families and whānau will benefit from knowing that the very, very maximised kind of harm that this kind of weapon is designed to cause is no longer going to be something that they have to face as a legal part of our gun ownership scheme.

I want to acknowledge the incredible hard work of that select committee. They came together at short notice. They dropped everything, sat late at night, and began early in the morning. They brought their collective wisdom and they did that mahi together. It was a mammoth task, but it showed, again, the strength and the commitment across this House to taking real action.

Let’s acknowledge that this bill is long overdue. The cost of doing nothing has been too high. Too many people have been hurt. It has been recommended that we do this time and again by the Police Association, by experts commissioned to recommend changes on our gun laws, and by community members, and their recommendations have been ignored. It is time to make this change. I think I want to acknowledge also, at this point, that it is change that comes to this House—in part, at least—through people power, because let’s not forget that some 70,000 New Zealanders signed a petition that was presented on the steps of this House only five days after the atrocity in Christchurch happened. Over 60 percent of the submitters to the select committee wanted this change. So New Zealand wants this change. They want it now, and we have that strong mandate to carry forward the change that they want, to make our communities safe, to acknowledge that many out there were actually shocked to find that military-style semi-automatics were so easy to obtain in New Zealand.

This bill, as it came to us last week, will ban military-style semi-automatic firearms and any parts or modifications that would make an ordinarily legal weapon behave like a semi-automatic weapon—essentially, banning weapons that do maximise harm and allow for the kind of mass killing that we saw in Christchurch. These are weapons that have no place in civilised society. The legislation will create new definitions for firearms, magazines, parts, and ammunition, and it will create an amnesty for those who already own them. I think the amnesty is the right thing to do, and I would urge all firearms owners who own any of the affected parts or firearms to consider whether they really need those and to hand them in now or as part of the amnesty. The expedited process that we’ve taken has been appropriate in assuring members of the public, who actually were shocked that we live in a community where this type of military-style weapon was so easy to obtain, that actually change is coming and it’s being done now.

The select committee process and the report have resulted in recommendations changing the bill so that pest controllers can use semi-automatic rifles on private land as well as Department of Conservation land. It has also called—and this is where the Green Party does diverge from the recommendations—for exemptions allowing owners of heirloom firearms, or what are called “bona fide collectors”, to hold the soon-to-be-banned firearms if parts are kept in a separate location from the firearms themselves. Now, the Green Party considers that this exemption is at odds with the purpose of the amendment, and we call for collectors’ firearms to be made permanently inoperable rather than just, essentially, separated into parts that can then be reassembled, giving the weapon life again in a way that the bill does not intend. We stand on that position with a number of submitters who felt that the exemption should actually be removed, or that at least the weapons should be required to be made inoperable. In fact, we agree with the Police Association in its submission to the committee, who expressed concern and said that the collectors category was at risk of expanding significantly in order to make allowance for that type of weapon to be held.

We do support this change wholeheartedly, though, as the Green Party has, over many years, called for a tightening of our gun laws. That comes as part of our charter principle of non-violence and being born of the peace movement. We’ve called numerous times for New Zealand to commit to building a peaceful society. I am so heartened at the community conversations that come from the atrocity in Christchurch. More than gun control, we are having conversations about the kind of inclusive, equal society that we want to be. People who have never before necessarily faced some of those hard conversations and hard truths are now facing the history we’ve had with not gun violence, per se, but all of the underlying causes of violence, whether that’s our colonial history, whether that’s ongoing racism that we see on the rise today both online and out there on our streets.

We are going to change our culture to reclaim our values of inclusion and equality. We are doing this, making this first step in that change, to honour the victims. It is a long-overdue change, and it’s not where we’re going to stop. Further gun law changes will come down the track, in a longer process, and we look forward to working together on establishing, finally, a gun registry and making other changes that will make tighter the regulation of our gun laws and our licensing standards. So we’re making all of these changes, we’re facing those hard truths, we’re addressing the underlying causes of violence, and we’re taking the worst of the weapons off our streets for the victims but also because that’s what a responsible, compassionate society would do. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is a privilege to be talking on the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill. Sometimes it’s important that Parliament comes together to make changes, and this is such a time. But in doing so with this particular bill, there’s a fine line to protect New Zealanders from the unlawful use of military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs) and SAs, or semi-automatics, and yet the need to recognise the rights of law-abiding citizens to own guns and to use them safely. This bill is about striking that balance.

Before just talking about certain elements, I just want to acknowledge other members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and also the officials that worked with us over the long weekend, particularly the officials from the New Zealand Police, who did a wonderful job in helping us to get through this process.

Firstly, I’d just like to talk about some of the progress that was made with the bill. The first bit was around the issue of heirloom and memento firearms. This is one change that the committee didn’t make: to provide a narrow exemption to allow those people who possess firearms and magazines that would normally be prohibited under this Act—bill, at the moment—that has special significance for that person or perhaps the family. It should be noted that the Arms Act at present provides for this dispensation.

In looking at this, we were persuaded that this is a category that needed to be protected but have put in place some specific rules around it—namely, when the police came to assess an application under this category, first of all, what type of firearm was deemed to be of heirloom or memento; secondly, the nature of the applicant themselves; and, thirdly, the significance of the event that they were claiming was important to make it an heirloom or a memento. But we also added another test—a general test—which was one around the reasonableness clause: was it reasonable, or is that application in the particular case reasonable? And I think those bits together provided a good exemption in the power for the police to have regard and be sensitive to the needs of family but also to be able to decline people if they thought they were inappropriate.

The other issue was around the issue of pest control. This was an issue that was widely discussed by the committee. The initial thought was that pest control and the use of semi-automatics should be dealt with on conservation land, and we’re talking specifically about pests such as tahr, as an example, or Canadian geese. At one stage, it was thought that maybe this provision should be extended to farmers, many of who are on high country farms, who have the problem of large-scale pests. We looked at the option of whether, in fact, some of those farmers should have a specific dispensation. But the committee in the end backed away from that, and the proposed approach, which is now incorporated in the bill, is that only an agency whose primary objective is in the business of undertaking pest control services should have the right to use semi-automatics to deal with those pests.

Now, there’s still the issue of farmers, and I noted the Minister of Police in his opening address on this bill noted this as a possible area where it might be reconsidered in the second round of change. But I would note that one of the arguments that we did discuss was that relying on pest agencies to undertake this operation is impractical if it’s merely relying on a few agencies to do that work, because, often, there’s only a very small critical period of time when those activities can be undertaken. But it doesn’t preclude farmers actually joining together and creating such an entity that might work in a collaborative way but still be subject to the stringent tests and criteria in order to be able to be granted an exemption under this bill.

Where we were unsuccessful—and I say that from a National Party perspective—is around the issue of competition shooters to use semi-automatics as part of their competitions. Personally, I disagreed with where the committee has ended up. The submissions by Pistol New Zealand and Sport New Zealand were very, very comprehensive. I think people don’t realise and probably don’t have proper appreciation of the requirements to be able to get a pistol licence—namely, that it requires an applicant to attend a pistol club for at least six months before they are even allowed to have a pistol and to thereafter be subject to a minimum of 12 months visiting a pistol club and to be subject to stringent tests and vetting by police. Our view is that that model could have easily been adopted for competition shooters.

And the other point I’d make about competition shooters is that in my experience these are people who are highly skilled, are very small in number—who actually undertake this activity—and are very specialised and have a very deep concern about safety but are professionals—absolute professionals—in undertaking their sport or, in some cases, their profession.

I think where we’ve ended up—that these people must only practise with a .22 semi-automatic, when, in fact, they do use higher calibre rifles to practise—I was not persuaded by. But I am heartened that the Government has talked about maybe reviewing this at stage two, and I would urge them to because under the pistol arrangements that provides a very easy model to adapt and one that’s been very successful.

The final point I want to turn my talk towards is the issue of amnesty. As the bill sets out, there’s an initial six-month amnesty period to 30 September 2019. Now, it is illogical to be requiring people to surrender their weapons—effectively, from Thursday this week—without any clarity as to the financial arrangements for surrendering those weapons.

One of the very important submitters was actually the chief of staff to the Minister in New South Wales responsible for the buy-back scheme. He was a very good submitter to our committee. When we asked him—in fact, I asked him—about the question about the level of remuneration, it was a crucial aspect in terms of leading to the success of that buy-back scheme. Without clarity around that, that is an important illogical step at the moment. We asked the Minister during the process of the committee hearing for a further explanation and confirmation about when he might promulgate new regulations, but he was not in a position to provide that. It is absolutely essential that law-abiding people in New Zealand—who are currently law-abiding, until this Act is passed tomorrow—who bought these weapons should have absolute clarity as to what the buy-back provisions are of those weapons if we are to ensure that this buy-back proceeds quickly and actually gets all the weapons out of circulation that we are all so keen to see happen. So I’d urge the Minister to do that very quickly.

But I take the opportunity to thank my colleagues. I think we did a good job in working through these very crucial and at times quite difficult topics.

This is a split call—five minutes.

E Te Māngai, ka tangi, ka tangi, ka tangi au, te ngākau mō a rātou kua hinga atu ki te pō. Haere, haere, haere atu rā. Hoki atu rā koutou ki ngā ringa o ā rātou tīpuna. Moe mai rā, moe mai rā.

[Mr Assistant Speaker, I mourn, I mourn, I and my heart are grieving those who have passed on. Go well as you pass. Return to the hands of their ancestors. Rest in peace, rest in peace.]

The events of 15 March undoubtedly have shaped our nation for future generations and are etched into our collective memory for the duration of our lifetimes and lifetimes to come. It is through the tragic events of that day that I alongside almost every single member in this House today come together to collectively denounce the actions of that individual that perpetrated that horrendous act of violence, by, in part, the legal acquisition of a military-style semi-automatic weapon, and took the lives of 50 men, women, and children.

It’s not a common event where you can genuinely stand alongside almost every single person in this House. We represent multiple races, religions, cultures, creeds, urban environments, and rural environments, but we come together with a shared collective intention to denounce the use and legal purchase of those weapons that are designed to take the lives of humans, not animals.

I want to, of course, acknowledge the leadership of our outstanding Prime Minister in the way that she commanded and led our nation post the events of 15 March, and the clarity through which she determined that there would be a wholesale ban on the legal acquisition of these firearms, and, in turn, just days after the event, used the powers accorded to her under the current arms amendment Act to use the Order in Council to ban the sale of those military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs)—known as a Henry VIII power, which is in our current legislation.

I want to turn to some of the points made by my colleague Christopher Bishop earlier very shortly, but firstly I also do want to acknowledge the Minister of Police, the Hon Stuart Nash, and his team in the New Zealand Police force. I want to acknowledge the assistant commissioner, Tusha Penny, and all of her colleagues from the police and across the raft of Government agencies that’ve worked tirelessly under a very tight time frame to turn around the review of over 13,000 submissions from a broad range of community members that have been impassioned by the events that have been undertaken over the last few weeks, but also by the advent of the introduction of this legislation in this House.

There are a couple of particular amendments that have been made to the bill that was tabled in this House last week that have been as a consequence of the submissions and the collegiality of the members in the Finance and Expenditure Committee but on behalf of all of our colleagues in this House. I want to acknowledge the submissions on behalf of the likes of Federated Farmers and others—Hunting & Fishing—that addressed a very narrow exemption for the culling of pests and wild animals, and acknowledge the work by both officials and members in this House to find a comfortable medium in enabling commercial operators to legally own and acquire licences to undertake the activities of culling of significant pests in, particularly, highland areas. I just want to acknowledge the work done there.

Turning to the Henry VIII provisions, I also sit on the Regulations Review Committee, and we had the responsibility of looking at those provisions. I just do want to acknowledge that the right of the executive is currently in the current Act, and therefore the Henry VIII provisions are an extension of what is already there. So I want to make those two points on behalf of the Government. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise in support of this, the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill. I particularly want to begin by commending the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who have worked so diligently under quite challenging circumstances, not simply because of the circumstances that preceded and brought about this amendment but the challenges of seeking to scrutinise such important legislation in such a compressed time frame. No matter how much the effort of officials and members, there is a simple reality that trying to do what amounts to the same amount of work under such a shortened time frame carries with it quite a number of risks, particularly that fewer voices can be heard, less consideration can be given to fewer items of consideration, and a real risk, although not a guaranteed outcome, that what the committee reports back may be suboptimal both in its extent and in its effect. Time will tell, as it always does in these shortened proceedings, as to how well the committee has done in shaping that bill and getting it back with the right form and content.

But I would acknowledge that while it should be not only an exception but an extremely rare exception that a select committee will scrutinise a bill in a week or less, these were indeed extremely exceptional circumstances that brought this bill about. Those horrific and tragic events on 15 March, which some have said have changed our nation, haven’t necessarily changed our nation, in all, in a bad way. One of the consequences of it has been what I perceive to be unprecedented coming together across communities, across the length and breadth of this country, as Kiwis are looking to help each other and, importantly, looking to understand each other better. The challenge is that if we can maintain that into the future, we come out of this a much stronger and better society.

But it also brought Parliament together, and brought Parliament together in the knowledge that certain privileges, particularly around firearms ownership, were no longer tenable; that the public were very clear in their view and wish for change—and a reminder that we make and amend laws under their consent, and it was appropriate that we came together and took very expedited action in this area. So I certainly do not quibble that the select committee had to operate under those trying circumstances, but I do reiterate that there is a real risk that what we are debating now is not as good as it could have been, had the committee had a longer period of time to deal with it. But it certainly did do all that it could do in the time it had.

I had the good fortune of spending a couple of hours on the committee last Friday, but I certainly wouldn’t emphasise my role at all. The members who sat on that committee for most of the last week deserve the kudos and the congratulations and acknowledgment for the effort they put in on the balance, the output, that we have now before us. They made every attempt to understand and make sure that the bill would give effect to the desire to limit the access—to fundamentally ban, but then, through some limited exemptions, limit the access—to military-style semi-automatics, assault-type semi-automatics, and those firearms magazines and parts associated with them that have no place in New Zealand after the events of 15 March.

While we have some concerns, we certainly do agree, and we’ll continue to support the bill in this, its second reading. But there are concerns, and the chief one I would mention is that we are removing a privilege to own certain firearms—they will be prohibited; it will be unlawful to own them after the amnesty period—but the people that currently own them for lawful purposes are having to give up that privilege, not knowing what compensation they may or may not receive for them. Whether it will be a fair value or a set value, what perhaps will come of the parts, what if the part can only be used with a prohibited firearm, what if it can be used with another but the owner may feel it’s of much less value to them if they if they can no longer use it with that now prohibited item—these are issues that they deserve to know, and it’s really regrettable that the committee was unable to get that information. But, still, I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. I want to be clear: in opposition to this bill, not to the idea that firearm laws must become more restrictive, that our laws must change, because it’s very clear that any legal paradigm where such a deranged individual can get hold of such lethal weapons, and nobody that should know knew about it, must change. But if our laws are to change, this is not the way to go about it. It is difficult to think of a worse way to go about it.

It’s only human, in times of crisis, to seek strong leadership and decisive action. We think back to George W Bush standing on the rubble at 9/11, saying, “I can hear you. The rest of the world can hear you, and the people that knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” Well, the people of Iraq and Afghanistan are still hearing the aftermath of the invasions that followed. That might be why our Prime Minister received such great kudos for the way that she led New Zealand through this tragedy—by appealing to the common humanity in every single New Zealander.

Yet the approach to this particular legislation is the absolute opposite of the prime ministerial approach that got so much praise around the world. By banning all semi-automatic weapons, the PM has made legal owners of such weapons pay a cost for something that they did not do. They are not bad people, and most of them accept the need for change. They could have been welcomed as part of the solution to making us safer, but trying to legislate in nine days with scant regard for the usual process of public input and parliamentary scrutiny has sent instead a message of contempt.

At the very time we should be celebrating the institution that represents our free society, we have instead discarded the role of this Parliament. Citizens have a right to elect a Parliament to hold the Government to account. It’s not enough for those members of Parliament to simply agree, generally, to vote for a bill; they must have time to consult and to assess the Government’s plan. That is democracy at its best.

On the other hand, trying to make complex legislation in nine days is absolute madness. You only have to ask yourself: if this was a good way to make laws, why wouldn’t we save a huge amount of time and money and make all laws in nine days? Of course it’s not, and that’s why we don’t do it, but in this very important case, the Government has, effectively, told the public: “We’ve got this—don’t bother.” I concur with the Law Society, who told the select committee that rushed procedure leads to bad outcomes.

Right now, there is no reason to be confident that this ban will make it harder for motivated bad individuals to get their hands on dangerous weapons, because if a significant number of weapons are not handed in, we actually risk creating a larger black market for dangerous weapons outside any regulatory cordon whatsoever. Amazingly, the Government didn’t even ask, before it went down this path, “What is the likely effectiveness of the buy-back?” They don’t know. Well, the evidence we do have is found in Australia, where only 40 to 80 percent of the semi-automatic weapons estimated to be out there were ever returned. That might tell you why it is that the 1997 ban in Australia did not accelerate the collapse in Australian gun crime that had already begun after the peak in 1996.

So what might’ve been done better? We might’ve taken the time to legislate properly. We might’ve taken the time to see the legal gun-owning community as allies in gun control and worked together to find more creative solutions to make our society a safer place with respect to guns—we haven’t done it. There’s a great irony that the Prime Minister, who stood on her laurels of being inclusive and consultative in the wake of our nation’s terrible tragedy, has now chosen to legislate in a way that is likely to be ineffective at achieving its goals, that has eroded goodwill with potential allies in gun regulation, and that has, frankly, been offensive to the role of this Parliament. So while I support changing our laws, not this way.

I call Tamati Coffey—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. This is an exceptional circumstance for an exceptional event. This is something that we don’t undertake very lightly. It’s been enlightening for me, actually, to be sitting through the committee as we’ve listened to the submissions, as we’ve pored over the officials’ advice, and knowing that we’re sitting in a room with people who have been affected by an exceptional event and exceptional circumstances—and we are having to move exceptionally fast.

If we want to talk about the swiftness of this legislation, let’s talk about swiftness, because, actually, it was very swift—the killings that happened in Christchurch on that day. They happened in a very, very short time frame, and we need to act with swiftness to make sure that those kinds of things don’t happen again here in New Zealand. We are lawmakers, and that’s our job. There is so much that we can’t do, there is so much that our community needs to do, there is so much that others need to do, but here in this House we have the ability to regulate who can and cannot own a military-style semi-automatic weapon; and that’s exactly what this bill does.

Can I acknowledge the work of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on this. Can I acknowledge our Minister of Police, the Hon Stuart Nash, and the chair of our committee, Michael Wood; all of the officials that spent sleepless nights poring over this bill, making sure that, because we had such a short time frame, we were still making the best legislation that we could possibly make. I want to also acknowledge the submitters, of which we had a real cross-section of them from around the country—some that were really supportive, some that were incredibly unsupportive as well, but it was our job to listen to them. I was heartened when I heard Hunting & Fishing, Fish & Game, Rural Women New Zealand coming to present to us, and they said to us that, actually, from their members’ point of view there is no place for military-style semi-automatics in New Zealand.

The submission that, actually, left me contemplating exactly why we’re doing this—which kind of reaffirmed why we’re doing this, despite the quick time frame, despite some of the opposition out there—and the submission that really struck me, was the one that came from the Mayor of Christchurch, Her Worship Lianne Dalziel. It was because she pointed out that this isn’t a new conversation; this is actually a very old conversation that’s been around for quite some time. She reflected on the time when, in 1990, after the Aramoana massacre that happened down in Dunedin, there was actually a call at that time to ban military-style semi-automatic weapons. The Minister of Police at the time, the Hon John Banks, tried to get it through Parliament, but it didn’t make it, because it didn’t have the numbers. Here we are in 2019, having exactly the same conversations all over again. She pointed out to us that, actually, our time was now and we needed to move quickly. So I am going to be incredibly proud to go back to the people that I represent, to tell them that we made the best attempt at really good legislation to try and mitigate the impact and the shock that was felt around New Zealand post 15 March.

There have been exemptions made throughout the bill—they’ve been varied, and we’ve also had to drill down into exactly what some of those exemptions are, the balance being that we don’t want to create exemptions, basically, for people to all crawl in through, so that we don’t actually solve the problem through the legislation. So having made exemptions for pest control and for wild animals, we’ve done that. Having made exemptions for people—and I’m unaware of these people, but apparently they’re out there—that keep these military-style semi-automatic weapons as heirlooms passed down from generation to generation, or even mementoes, we’ve done that. The sector that will be disappointed is the sport shooters that go out there and compete at these international events. As some of my colleagues have referred to, maybe that can be dealt with at a later stage.

I’ll leave you with a whakataukī widely used around New Zealand, but really apt right here, right now. He aha te mea nui i tēnei ao, māku e kī atu, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.

[What is the most important thing in this world? I say to you: it is people, it is people, it is people.]

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to get the opportunity to stand and take a call on this bill. I’m not part of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, I haven’t sat on the committee, but can I acknowledge the committee members that are in the House at the moment, and those that aren’t, of course. Can I also acknowledge the chair, Michael Wood, because I understand that he has run a very good and a very fair process in what has been a truncated process.

This isn’t without precedent. I remember back in 2015, when I was chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, that because we had a rising threat of the possibility of returning foreign fighters coming to New Zealand, and on intelligence information that the Government of the day had, we decided that we needed to run a truncated process to put in place our countering foreign fighters legislation. I think we had a bit more time—we might have run that over a two- or three-week period—but we had support from the Opposition. I just want to acknowledge David Shearer, Phil Goff, and also the Hon Christopher Finlayson, who worked with myself in making sure that we did hear all the submitters that wanted to come in front of the committee, and that we could pass that legislation.

It was important legislation because it was about protecting our country. When it comes to national security, I think that’s one thing where there should always try to be bipartisan support and a spirit of cooperation and work across this House. I’ve listened to the Green Party contributions, and the appeal that I’d make to them is simply this: your language has changed, and I think you realise that it had to change, but I can tell you that back in 2015 you did just about everything you could to obstruct, stop, and prevent legislation that we were trying to pass in this House to make New Zealand safer. Now, we’re going to have to continue to do that—this is where it starts. This is just the start.

This is a good piece of legislation. We support it. Yes, we realise and we understand that there could be some fish hooks in there because of the speed at which it is being passed. I acknowledge the comments that have been made by the ACT leader, David Seymour, but one thing I can tell you as a Parliament is that we are committed to go back, and we will support the Government, if we need to make some changes. The important thing is that what we’re saying as a nation is that we don’t want to be a country in which military-style weapons can be generally available.

I want to just go back and maybe provide a little anecdotal story. I was in Christchurch on Friday and I met up with an old friend of mine whom I served in the police with. Actually, we both deployed as part of the Christchurch Special Tactics Group into the Coromandel back in the late 1990s. There had been four prisoners who had escaped from Pāremoremo—all dangerous, violent offenders—and they’d managed to get themselves on to the Coromandel.

Tim van de Molen: Tairua.

It was actually Tairua; that’s right. It was Tairua. He was reminding me, actually, of the time when we had deployed in an air force Iroquois because there was a remote building at which there’d been some activity, and we felt that maybe they’d split up and a couple of them were there. They had me with my police dog, Zara, where they’d put the harness on and they were hoisting me down on to the ground in quite a heavily dense sort of pine forest. All of a sudden, they called that there had been a shot fired, and I can tell you, Mr Assistant Speaker, that you will never feel so exposed than when you’re 50 metres above the tree tops in a harness and you realise that the only target that they can really see—well, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: You were slimmer in those days.

And it’s not a small target, so I was a bit worried. But the point was that, on that operation, those four offenders had one objective, and that was to break into primarily vacant farmhouses or holiday baches with the objective of getting firearms. They wanted to rearm themselves, they wanted ammunition, and they were after semi-automatics because they wanted to be able to do as much damage as quickly as they could.

We were very, very lucky that we actually managed to find them and take them into custody, but the reason why he was reminding me of that—and I’m glad that he did—is that afterwards we were sitting in the squad room having a beer. Basically, we’d been working for about five days solid to actually catch these guys. We were sitting in the squad room, we opened a beer, and we were sitting around, and all of us, that entire squad, were saying, “Why would we have military-style weapons in New Zealand? What is the need for them?” That was 20 years ago.

So I actually think that although it’s taken a tragedy for us to act, this was the right thing to do. We are sending a clear message as a nation that, yep, there are still going to be those who want to come here, there are still going to be those who want to create harm, there are still going to be those who will try to access a black market—we accept that. That’s why we have to put trust in our law enforcement agencies and our intelligence agencies to be able to stop that and prevent them. But what we are saying as a nation is this: we’re not going to tolerate having military-style weapons readily available to the public. I think that’s a powerful and a strong message for us to send as a Parliament and to send as a nation.

The one thing I would say is let’s maintain the spirit of cooperation that we have seen in this Parliament during this process in the work that needs to be done in the coming weeks and months and years. Threats have not gone away and, actually, the fundamental—the one thing—that a Government is responsible for is the safety of their people. That’s the one thing that a country relies on their Government to do—to keep them safe. And when I say “Government” I’m not absolving us from any responsibility. Although we sit on the Opposition benches, let me make it very clear that we will support this Government to make sure that we do everything that we can to not experience another tragedy like the one that we’ve just been through in Christchurch, where we know we’re going to have to, as a country, continue to support the people who need to be supported in Christchurch.

All the points that are being made today are that people’s lives were wrecked in those 30 minutes. They will never be the same again, but what we can do is we can continue to work together to make sure we do everything possible so that we can put a hand on our heart and say that we’ve done everything that we can to protect our country and to stop this ever happening again in New Zealand. Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker.

This is a split call. I call Dr Deborah Russell—five minutes.

I begin by noting the work done by MPs across the House on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, especially the work done by our chairman, Michael Wood; the work done by Assistant Police Commissioner Tusha Penny and her team, and also the officials from New Zealand Police, who did an extraordinary job for us along with the clerks of our committee. They worked long and hard.

This bill is personal. It’s personal to all of us in New Zealand. Let me start with some facts about firearms. About 50 of us die every year from firearms. About 90 percent of those who die are male, and the factor that is most significant for suicide is ready access to firearms. Nearly 40 percent of farm suicides involve firearms. So firearms matter in this country. Let me give you another fact to do with what happened in Australia before and after gun law reform. Between 1996 and 1997, before gun law reform in Australia, there were 13 fatal mass shootings. But from 1997 through till May 2016, the last date I have the figures for, there were no fatal mass shootings in Australia. That was the significance of gun law reform in Australia. Why is this personal? Well, these facts come from some research, some notes compiled by Dr Hera Cook and Dr Marie Russell from the University of Otago—and, yes, that is my Aunty Marie. It’s personal. All of us in New Zealand know about this stuff.

This bill is personal; it affects people in my electorate. I have here a submission from Mr Raymond O’Brien, who wanted to be heard by the select committee, but we simply didn’t have time to hear every one and heard only a small proportion of people. Mr O’Brien is a shooter and, in particular, he likes and has a business in shooting semi-automatic weapons. He operates a gun range, and he is deeply concerned about the ability of people to participate in sports at high-level sporting events. But the committee has decided not to allow that sporting exception. This is not a Commonwealth or Olympic sport—some of the recognised sporting events that we all recognise. It’s participated in by a very small group of people in this country—perhaps 80 to 100 people who participate in international events using semi-automatics. As the New Zealand Police have pointed out, people who want to participate in a three-gun shoot can still do so using a .22. It’s still possible to do it.

Aside from that, the real business is weighing up the interests of all of us in public safety. Firearms are a public health issue in New Zealand. We need to consider them in that context, and although people do enjoy that particular sport, the rest of us enjoy being safe, and we enjoy safety not just from the actuality of firearms’ fire but from the threat of it. That is why we need to regulate to ensure that these highly lethal weapons are not available to us. So, Mr O’Brien, your submission was read and heard and considered, but on balance we have decided that these weapons should not be allowed for sporting purposes.

The bill is personal. We heard from Rural Women New Zealand, who pointed out that, when it comes to guns in rural communities, they are the ones who clean up the mess. They see no reason for hunting to be carried out with automatic weapons. In fact, their line was that if there is a perceived need for semi-automatic firearms, then the shooter needs to learn how to shoot. That sentiment is echoed by my Uncle Terry, who has hunted in the back country of Taranaki for decades. “Any hunter”, he says, “who thinks they need a semi-automatic are wrong. Real hunters don’t use them.”

This bill is personal. My friend Anjum Rahman spoke to the select committee, representing the Islamic Women’s Council. She’s been my friend for a decade or so now. She says, “There are spaces in our mosques that will never be filled.”

This bill is so personal to the Muslim community. A man in my community was in the Linwood mosque that day. Our Muslim community have lost friends, neighbours, whānau. We have lost friends, neighbours, whānau. New Zealand is so small that we all will have personal connections to this bill: we all know hunters, we all know shooters, we all know doctors and medics; we all have Muslim friends, neighbours, and whānau. This bill is personal and we must ensure that it is passed now.

Thank you. Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā.

As the MP for Christchurch Central, it was a real privilege to sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee that considered this. Dr Russell’s contribution made it very clear that it is personal, but I, in my short contribution, want to really just make a couple of, essentially, more technical points. I think it’s important to recognise that this is a law that really must work. This process is one that I think is probably, in my short time here, the best parliamentary process I’ve seen, because the committee and Parliament have come together and agreed that in policy terms, this is the right step.

But let it not be thought that that select committee process was self-congratulatory in any way. It was one where members had vigorous discussions and did not agree on every point. I think the work that the select committee has done, coming back with its report, has significantly improved the bill. It does record dissenting views by no less than three of the parties that comprise this Parliament, and that’s a good process. It sends a signal that there’s more work to be done in this area, but also, I think what is a really important value underpinning this bill—I think it was Mr Bayly that said it was a privilege to bear arms in this country, and I think that’s right. It’s not a right in any sense of that word; it’s very much a privilege and one which must be balanced. The discussions in select committee seek to strike that balance in terms of the kinds of firearms that can be used and the people who are entitled to do that.

I sit on the Regulations Review Committee as well, and that committee advised the Finance and Expenditure Committee that it had some concerns. It drew the committee’s attention to what are called Henry VIII clauses—the ability of the executive to amend the definition of what a prohibited firearm was and various other definitions in the Act, and not only to amend but also to replace. In committee that was looked at in some detail. And whilst some members of the committee still have concerns, it was amended.

So the change was that it was no longer going to be possible to replace that definition, but it could still be amended by executive order. I think that’s important because it shows a further constraint. If people come back and look at what happened at committee and what happened in this House, they can look at that retreat and accept that a wholesale change of what kinds of firearms are prohibited is not contemplated by that section; rather, there is a continual updating of the definitions to make sure that when nefarious people make changes to firearms not contemplated by the Act, it can be updated. We saw some very alarming video clips, I must say, showing how people could, indeed, alter firearms to make something which might not strictly break the rules be extremely lethal, and well outside of what was contemplated. So that was a good example of the process.

The heirlooms and mementos exception that was introduced was also another good example of that process, as well as testing out and developing what that might mean. Rather than just using the words “heirlooms and mementos” as the Act does at the moment, it is a case of exploring how that test might be applied. I must say the police and officials were very helpful in that process and accepted a test of reasonableness, one that looked at all of the circumstances: the significance of the firearm; the fact that it had some special, perhaps, family significance; the nature of the person, their history, perhaps—they might be entitled to a firearms license per se, but this was a particularly dangerous firearm and, perhaps, this person might or might not be suitable—and all of the other circumstances surrounding that firearm. So there was a really good example.

What we have here is an ongoing conversation about how to strike the balance between people having firearms for quite legitimate uses, and the safety of our community. It’s a conversation that’s ongoing, but this is an important first step. I commend this bill to the House.