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

on behalf of the Minister of Police: I move, That the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

We are here just 26 days after the most devastating of terrorist attacks created the darkest of days in New Zealand’s history, and we are here as an almost entirely united Parliament. There have been very few occasions in my history when I have seen Parliament come together in this way, and I cannot imagine circumstances where that is more necessary than it is now.

I want to acknowledge, therefore, as I begin my contribution here in this third reading debate, those parliamentarians who have worked so constructively in this discussion and debate. Of course, that goes for our coalition and confidence and supply partners, as members of this Government—I acknowledge you—but I also pay particular tribute to the Opposition, who, from the moment this issue around the use of these particular weapons in this terror attack arose, I have found to be nothing but constructive. I acknowledge you sincerely for that.

We should all be asking ourselves, though, why we are here in the first place, at this present point in time, in this third reading debate. I can recall very vividly the moment I knew that we would need to be here doing what we are doing right now. I was, very early on, in a briefing with the Commissioner of Police, where he described to me the nature of the attack that had occurred in Christchurch. He described to me the nature of the weapons that had been used in this terror attack, and then he described to me that they had been obtained legally. I could not fathom how weapons that could cause such destruction and large-scale death could have been obtained legally in this country. I could not fathom that.

Now, yes, it is true that those weapons were modified. They were modified, and that meant that they were held in form against the licence that that individual in question had, but they were modified easily. I know the Finance and Expenditure Committee witnessed the ease with which a gun of that nature could be modified, and not just the ease with which a gun of that nature could be modified but the ease with which a magazine could hold not just 30 bullets but could be extended to hold upwards of 60 bullets and rain terror on a group of people gathered together in worship and in peace. That is one of the reasons why we’re here.

We are also here because New Zealand stands apart in its widespread availability of weapons of such destructive nature and force, in that military-style semi-automatic weapons are available, or have been available, in this country to that degree, and in that assault rifles have been available in this country to that degree, and today that anomaly ends.

We are here because, after hearing all of that information, I know I was not alone in feeling that I could not, hand on heart, go down and face not just the media, not just the public, but the victims that had been left behind from this terror attack and tell them, hand on heart, that our system and our laws allow these guns to be available and that is OK, because it was not. So I made a decision, after that briefing, that I would go down that day and, without having the chance to question the Parliament, know that Parliament would be with me, and they were, and again I thank you for that.

We are here because we—not just me, but we as a Parliament—have asked the public, have taken the time that we’ve had in the select committee to talk to those who do use guns for legitimate purposes, those who are in our rural communities, our farmers who have pest management and control issues, and those who legitimately use weapons for hunting purposes. When we as a Parliament, and when I as an individual—because I have—asked those individuals, who we absolutely accept their legitimate use, “Do they need military-style semi-automatic weapons? Do they need assault rifles?”, their response was absolute: no. They have told us what is fair and legitimate use, and they have told us that they, by and large, with very few exceptions, support what we are doing here today.

This is not a House here that is demonising legitimate use of firearms in New Zealand; quite to the contrary. In fact, I see the response that we’ve had as an endorsement that we have acknowledged that fair and legitimate use. We’ve responded to that in this legislation, and I hope that we have brought people with us in our response. But, most importantly, we are here because of the victims and families. I have to reflect that when I visited the hospitals and the victims, none of them had just one gunshot wound. I struggle to recall any single gunshot wounds. In every case, they spoke of multiple injuries—multiple debilitating injuries that deemed it impossible for them to recover in weeks, let alone days. They will carry disabilities for a lifetime, and that’s before you consider the psychological impact. We are here because of them, and I believe that they are here with us, supporting what we are doing here today as well, because these weapons were designed to kill and they were designed to maim, and that is what they did on 15 March.

I’ve listened to the debate that has happened in this House and I have heard the debate that has happened in select committee and I’ve heard the minority who may have spoken against this bill, and I want to acknowledge it has been a minority. I don’t want to overstate the submissions that they made, because the majority supported what is happening here, but, within that minority, I heard an argument around process. My question here is simple: you either believe that in New Zealand these weapons have a place or you do not. If you believe, like us, that they do not, you should be able to agree that we can move swiftly. My view is that an argument about process is an argument to do nothing, and I’m not the first politician to say that. The first politician I ever heard say that in relation to gun laws was John Howard when he moved quickly after Port Arthur and for the same reasons we have.

We have moved to stop the sale, and now we’ve moved to stop the ongoing circulation of these weapons. We allowed exemptions on 10-round .22s and we’ve allowed five-shot shotguns—fair and legitimate use of those weapons. We’ve allowed pest control and those specifically working in professional pest control to still, within very tight constraints, access these weapons for the tahr, for the goats, for those areas where we consider that use legitimate. But we will tightly manage and control those areas, acknowledging, though, what we have heard from the rural community and our farmers.

Finally, we have made sure that there is compensation—there is a buy-back scheme. That’s an acknowledgment that until 15 March, whether we agreed with it or not, it was legal to possess and purchase these weapons, and now it is not. It is only fair that we put in place a compensation scheme, and we have. Minister Stuart Nash has released details of that today, including, of course, that we will use independent advice to construct, essentially, what will be a price list that will specify that for particular models and makes of weapons, we will factor in the use and the wear and tear on those models, but we will be specific and create, essentially, a catalogue for compensation. That will be worked up over the next few weeks. We’ll make sure that the buy-back scheme operates for a six-month period once that has been resolved. We will operate fairly, and that is what we have operated on, those assumptions, all the way through in drafting this legislation, and that includes a consideration of the impact on retailers.

Ultimately, I’m proud that we are standing here today. I’m proud of the enormous work that the New Zealand Police have done to get us here today. I acknowledge them; it’s been huge. They have worked constantly, every day since 15 March, and I believe it’s to make our country safer. I acknowledge the select committee, I acknowledge the chair: the work you’ve done has been incredible and important. We are ultimately here because 50 people died, and they do not have a voice. We in this House are their voice, and today, we have used that voice wisely.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party to lend our support to the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill. In the start of my contribution, I want to, on behalf of the party, acknowledge the Prime Minister for her remarks in opening this third reading debate, and also acknowledge her leadership in the hours and days and weeks following the shooting. I have received many comments in the last few weeks around your leadership, Prime Minister, and I think all of New Zealand has been impressed by your steadfastness at a time of great trial for our country. I also want to acknowledge the Minister Stuart Nash, who has worked quite collaboratively with those of us in the Opposition on this regime that we’re about to pass into law. And I want to acknowledge Michael Wood, who chaired the committee in, I think, a very good fashion—a quick fashion but a very good fashion.

There are three incontrovertible facts about what happened on 15 March. Number one: the shooter had a firearms licence. Number two: he had legal weapons—albeit illegally modified, but they were legal weapons. Thirdly: using those legal weapons, and with a firearms licence, 50 people were massacred in cold blood in a place of worship where they should have been at peace and at prayer. I’ve been personally reflecting quite deeply on that, and I have to say I thought about it almost straight away, actually, because as our police spokesperson with responsibility for firearms, one of my first thoughts following the news on that Friday night was: how did this happen and where’s this going to go next? I thought it was pretty inevitable what the Prime Minister came out and said on that Friday night, and I agreed with it.

I spent most of the weekend thinking about it, and then, on Sunday, I remembered what an individual who owns a gun shop had told me. I won’t name the person, but, as part of my work in the police portfolio and firearms, I’ve been going around the country. I now remember a man saying to me, “There is a loophole in our law. The loophole is: if you wanted to do something like Christchurch, you get an AR-15 and you get a high-capacity magazine and you’ve got it—that’s what you can do.” I remember thinking, when I was told that some months ago, just how wrong it was, and I’ve been reflecting quite deeply on that over the last few days and weeks. There is a loophole in the law, and it’s that exact loophole that the individual exploited on the evening of Friday, 15 March.

It is true that these weapons are designed to kill. They can be used for legitimate purposes—we’ve talked about it in the Finance and Expenditure Committee—with an exemption regime, but their fundamental purpose is to kill. I think it is undoubtedly true that this will make New Zealand a safer place. New Zealand will be a better country for having as many weapons like this off the streets.

There are people who say gangs and other criminals won’t respect the law and there will be people who abuse the law, like there always are. There will always be criminals, and, actually, we need to do more to take illegal weapons off our gangs. I hope that the Government will work with us in good faith in phase two around firearms prohibition orders. I think they’re a common-sense change that I think everyone can get behind.

We do need to do more, and it is true that there will be people who don’t give up their guns, but as with what happened in Australia post-1996 when John Howard, that great Australian Prime Minister, showed leadership as well and the number of guns reduced and the vast majority of people handed back their guns in exchange for compensation, the country became a safer place—and, actually, just like Australia became a safer place, New Zealand will become a safer place as well. That is fundamentally why the National Party is supporting this. We thought it was important that the Parliament speak as unanimously as possible, that we put to rest once and for all the ongoing debate around military-style semi-automatics and semi-automatics generally, and, actually, when 99 percent of Parliament speaks with, essentially, one voice, in some ways it’s a lot easier to withstand the political consequences.

Now we have the Labour Party in Government alongside New Zealand First, and I acknowledge the braveness of the position that they took. Mr Patterson and Ron Mark and the Rt Hon Winston Peters, as Deputy Prime Minister—quite a brave position, actually, for them to take alongside a Labour Cabinet, to work alongside the National Party and the Green Party as well, for Parliament to speak with as unanimous a voice as possible. Hopefully, the politicking around this will now, essentially, cease, because we are going to say once and for all that with very rare exceptions, military-style weapons are not welcome in New Zealand.

I welcome the exemptions in the bill. I think it is important that we have commercial pest control, for example. I think it is important that heirlooms, mementos, are well dealt with. We spent quite a bit of time at committee trying to get that regime as right as possible. I suspect that there will have to be a few modifications in phase two of the reforms, but I think it’s important that Parliament sends the message that antiques and historical artefacts, mementos, are largely untouched by this bill.

I do want to say that I do genuinely think there is a role for international sporting competitions when it comes to semi-automatic weapons. I think it is possible, as I’ve just made the point in the committee stage—we think it is possible—to design a regime where a small amount of people have access to semi-automatics to compete internationally. They don’t compete in the Olympics, they don’t compete in the Commonwealth Games, but there are people who compete on the world stage, in some cases doing very well for New Zealand, and if we can design a regime around pistols, around pistol clubs and pistol competitions—and we were told by the officials that that regime is working well—it must be within the competence of Parliament to do the same around international sporting competitions. I extend the hand of friendship to the Minister again to try and work through that. Potentially, that’s something that’s going to come in phase two.

But, overall, the committee worked very collaboratively together. It was a quick process, but we heard from lots of different people and we did receive good advice from the police, and the various officials were well shepherded, as I say, by Michael Wood in the chair. We produced a report that I think has improved the bill, and now we’ve reach the third reading. Parliament has acted very swiftly. As I mentioned before, it was important that Parliament do that swiftly, and I agree with the remarks around the Prime Minister as to why Parliament had to act so fast.

In the end, I just finish my remarks by returning to where I started my contribution, which is that on 15 March, the man who caused such carnage in one of our most beautiful cities had a firearms licence. He had legal weapons. In the future, that will not be allowed to be the case, and, hopefully, the third incontrovertible fact about 15 March will not happen in the future, which is the senseless massacre of 50 people at prayer. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Michael Wood for a five-minute call.

Approximately three weeks ago, I stood at the Mount Roskill mosque with our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern; the Mayor of Auckland, Phil Goff; and a huge crowd of people who had come together to remember what happened on 15 March and to provide support and solidarity and aroha to our Muslim community. What was most evident at that gathering was that although we were there gathering to remember an episode of great darkness, there was also some light. That light came from the fact that people in the Muslim community felt enormous support from their fellow New Zealanders. It came from the fact that they felt the solidarity; that people were standing with them. It came from the beautiful leadership of our Prime Minister, who ensured that those people knew that every step of the way, their Government would be standing beside them.

But it also came from the fact that those people had hope and confidence that there would be action, that there would be action in memory of those whose lives were taken and action to make our country a safer place, to minimise the possibility of the horror of 15 March ever playing out again. So it is so important that here we stand in this Parliament, less than one month after 15 March, collectively as a House, taking that action. The action that we take is not the only action that must be taken. We must resolve ourselves to building a community that is truly inclusive, in which we combat all forms of Islamophobia and other forms of prejudice, but we also must take this action, the action of removing those weapons that were used on that fateful day, that dark day, and which struck such fear into so many of our communities—weapons that, as the Minister Stuart Nash, in an earlier debate, identified, were specifically designed to kill many people in mere moments. That, of course, is what happened on that day.

Along with other members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and others who watched it, I was horrified by the demonstration that we received from police when we received our initial briefing on this bill, about how easy it is for a category A firearms owner, like myself, to take a category A weapon and put on to it certain parts and turn it into a killing machine of the nature that was used on that day. There is simply no place for these weapons in our country.

This Parliament is taking decisive action, but it is not rushed action, because this has been talked about before. We have been reminded that it was talked about in the years following Aramoana, that it was talked about in the Thorp report in the mid-1990s, and that it was talked about in the select committee report a couple of years ago, but the forces of reaction mobilised every time to prevent action from being taken.

So I wish to commend every other member of this House and the leadership who has driven this reform forward—our Minister and our Prime Minister—for taking this decisive action at this point. We cannot allow, and we are not allowing, those calls for delay to be a cover for inaction again. In the select committee, members across parties have worked to make this legislation effective and fair. We have listened carefully to submissions within a short period of time. We have heard from all perspectives. We have made changes where we have believed that this will make the legislation more fair and more workable.

I do wish to acknowledge that there are firearms owners, many of whom are good people, law-abiding people, who are affected by this legislation. I wish to acknowledge that and put that on record. This is no besmirchment of their character or their decency as New Zealanders, but this is about the public safety of all citizens. We are a country of laws and norms and values, and, every time we legislate in this House, we balance the rights of different citizens and different groups within our communities. On this occasion, we say that the right of all New Zealanders to live peacefully and free from the terror that inflicted our country on 15 March is a more important right than the right to own these weapons.

In our select committee, we heard from Mustafa Farouk, the president of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand. He came and told us that he was there to speak for the 50 New Zealanders who could not speak. In this House today, we stand in memory of those and we stand to keep faith with those 50 lost citizens, and I commend all members of the House for the action that we have taken to make our country safer. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

I call Kiritapu Allan—you have five minutes.

On 15 March, our country radically changed for ever. I too want to acknowledge, alongside my colleagues, the leadership of our Prime Minister in responding to the traumatic events of that day. I also want to acknowledge the Opposition, and I want to commend the actions of this House in almost its entirety as it stood pokohiwi ki te pokohiwi—shoulder to shoulder—in recognition of the values that we uphold as a nation and as a country in denouncing behaviours and denouncing that action, and in recognition of what we as a country and what we as citizens of this nation deem to be appropriate and inappropriate actions and values for our home, for our place.

I want to acknowledge, over opposite, my colleague Barbara Kuriger. That day, I stood shoulder to shoulder alongside Barbara Kuriger and Jonathan Young as we watched the Prime Minister. She had to leave us that day, and it was Andrew Little who stood in. That was the first time—I think it was just an hour after the events that unfolded that afternoon. Collectively, there was an acknowledgment amongst every person in this House that it was not a time to play politics. It was a time to come together. It was a time to stand together and uphold what we as a nation held as right.

So I just want to acknowledge you, Barbara, and every member of this House and every citizen in this country who came together and who showed up at the memorials, who showed up at the mosques, who showed up—who showed up. We know as a society that we are an inclusive community, and this Act that is going through this House today with almost unanimous support is an action that we as a nation can be collectively proud of.

We are picking up the work of what was commenced in 1992 in this House, under the leadership, then, of the Hon John Banks. We heard from the Hon Lianne Dalziel, now the Mayor of Christchurch, who participated in those debates back in 1992, when they were arguing for the absolute ban on any military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs). Due to politics and due to time and events at that time, they couldn’t get that legislation over the line to denounce and to ban MSSAs, but now, by almost unanimous support in this House, we will.

So I want to thank the support of our communities, because we all here in this House are but representatives for the people up in our homes—me in the mighty East Coast, and our friends over in the rural regions and the urban regions—whatever the race, the class, or the creed. We’ve seen people from every single part of our community come up and say that, actually, we don’t need to tolerate—as the Hon Peter Tapsell called them—Rambo-style, military-style semi-automatics. They’re not necessary for hunting. In particular circumstances, they have a very minor role to play in pest management and control, but people up and down our nation have said that we don’t need these.

We’ve heard from a number of people over the period of listening to the submitters, but one particular submitter really struck me. His name was Dr James McKay, and he led the surgical response on 15 March. Forty-eight citizens came to the Christchurch Hospital and had to be triaged, and, as I heard from the Prime Minister just prior, barely any of those people that came before him had single bullet wounds or entries. You had centre-fire bullets that had shattered and imploded in people’s bodies, and they had to triage them. So I just want to acknowledge him and his team, those first responders who are living with the trauma of what they saw that day but too are still treating many of those people who were injured on that day.

I also want to acknowledge the Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, and his team, including the Commissioner of Police, Mike Bush, for your incredible response. I want to acknowledge the Acting Deputy Commissioner Andy Coster and Assistant Commissioner Tusha Penny for the way that you’ve worked with us throughout the course of the select committee, police policy managers Geoff Dunn and Sheryl Pinckney—I hope you can get a little bit of sleep after this—and Barbara and all the team that have worked diligently over the last period. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It gives me—well, I guess it’s a privilege, really, to have an opportunity to speak on what probably is a historic piece of legislation for this House. I too want to acknowledge the Prime Minister and the efforts of the leadership of this House and all parties—almost all parties—within it. I also want to acknowledge the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and, above all, the officials. Probably, some of them would have been having bad dreams, I would imagine, during last weekend in particular, when they worked four days in a row to get this piece of legislation to the stage it’s at now.

Like many New Zealanders, I think we’ll always remember where we were on that fateful Friday the 15th. I’d have to say that I was at the central districts Fieldays, with many thousands of others, and I think the way the disbelief just slowly crept in to that event probably was the way disbelief slowly crept into New Zealand as to how this had happened and the result we got from it. Obviously, it’s changed New Zealand, and the change in this law is a very important part of that.

I’d like to think that this piece of law might go down in history as a benchmark in legislation-making, but I accept that the short consultation time is probably not ideal for most of our law. I want to commend the select committee chair and those who chose the submitters who came to submit to us, because I thought it was a broad range of submitters. Whilst there were over 13,000 submissions, I thought the submitters who submitted to us gave us a very good view of almost every—well, almost every view you could get of this piece of legislation. I make no apologies to those who weren’t heard, because I think there was only one way to get this bill through in the manner that it’s got to this point in the House, and I think it’s most important that we did that.

I want to make a couple of comments on what I think are very important issues going forward, and I have commented on that already but I want to comment further on it, because I think the need for broad publicity of where we’ve got to with this piece of legislation—particularly around the amnesty and what is and what isn’t a legal piece of firearms equipment now—is hugely important. I think it’s essential that we get that done and that we get it done urgently and make that publicity work. It’s going to be difficult to get to some people, because, as I’ve said earlier, there will be people in New Zealand who have got no idea they’ve got these weapons in their possession and who don’t have a licence to own them and have never needed to have a licence to own them because they didn’t know they were there. I think that will be much more common than we believe, because some of what, effectively, could be 100-year-old pieces of equipment that are no longer legal will have sat in houses for years and years. So it is essential that we get that publicity done and get it done very well.

It’s essential also that that buy-back scheme, when it is instigated, is—as I think I heard the Prime Minister say earlier—effective, that it’s fair, and that it gives people the incentive to get these guns out and in the police’s hands, or in hands of the buy-back scheme, as quickly as we possibly can, because for it to work effectively, we need to get them all. That’s the next piece I want to turn to, because I think that as this Act is reviewed going forward—and it no doubt will be—and as the second tranche of legislation comes to the House, it’s essential that we find ways of extracting the weapons out of those people who have no reason to own them and have no licence to own them, because the underworld will have many of these guns. There will be many of them in unknown places in New Zealand.

How we get them out is going to be most important to the success of this whole piece of legislation, because a failure to do that, of course, will mean the legislation, effectively, has failed. So I think we need to make sure that in the course of the next few months and the next piece of legislation, we find very effective ways of getting those guns out of our community and getting them destroyed, basically. It’s essential that that happens.

I want to say a brief word about the 250,000 people who currently have gun licences in New Zealand, many of whom will own pieces of equipment—weapons and bits of weapons—that are no longer available. Before this event happened, they were perfectly legal and law-abiding citizens of New Zealand. I make no apology for the fact that they will have to give those weapons up—I think that’s part of the game—but they will feel a little victimised. I think that we should make sure that that process is as easy and as pleasant for them as possible, because they were, as I said, perfectly law-abiding citizens of New Zealand and they had complied with every piece of the law. So I think a little sympathy for them needs to be expressed in this House not because I think, as I said, we need to make an apology for doing what we’ve done—it’s absolutely essential that we did what we did, and they will play their part in that, I’m sure, because they are, as I said, law-abiding citizens of New Zealand.

I don’t have much more to add to that. I think it is a very important piece of legislation for New Zealand going forward, and I think it will go a long way. Once we get the effective buy-back in place, it will go a long way to ensuring that anyone who has a weapon like this in New Zealand clearly shouldn’t have it, and so that will make it very easy for the police to manage.

The last piece of stuff I want to briefly talk about—and the Minister spoke about it earlier today—is the fact that the less people who have access to these guns, the easier it is to control it. I think, whilst there’s always going to be a need for these types of weapons in New Zealand and a specific need for them, we need to make sure as we go forward that that need is catered for in a reasonable manner. So I’m pleased to commend this bill to the House. I think it’s an extremely important bit of legislation, and I’m pleased to have been part of a very efficient system—the select committee—that put that in place. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

It is an honour for me to stand and add New Zealand First’s support for this significant piece of legislation. In doing so, we stand behind and beside our Prime Minister, and I would like to acknowledge her in the leadership she has shown. It has been comforting to us all. Her response has been noted not only nationally, of course, but internationally. In a dark time of international politics she has stood out, and New Zealand First, right from the get-go, had absolutely no trouble falling in behind what was, in one word, “leadership” in this time of national crisis. In fact, our own leader’s, the Rt Hon Winston Peters’, initial reaction was that at 1.30 on 15 March our world changed for ever. And so will our gun laws.

I will acknowledge, too, the National Party. I know that the politics for them, as Chris Bishop alluded to earlier, is not easy either, as it is not for us. But their response and their leader, Simon Bridges, falling in behind and getting alongside—this effort has been incredibly important. I acknowledge you on that side of the House—well, the National Party, in particular, on that side of the House—for taking the principled stand, and you have done that for the same reason that New Zealand First and the rest of the House have: because it is the right thing to do.

The gunman, it has been referenced, was operating legally on an A category licence—the garden variety licence that any one of us with a reasonably limited background can qualify for. He had a legal firearm purchased over the counter at a retail outlet. He did modify that firearm, but he did expose the gaping holes in our firearms law. These changes are long overdue and the genesis of this is actually not Christchurch. The genesis was Aramoana, and, as has been referenced earlier, we did fail to act there. John Banks has admitted recently it’s his greatest regret. Mayor Dalziel in the select committee process, in her presentation to us, referenced the fact that she sat where we sat in 1992. She heard the same arguments that we heard and they were unable to get it across the line, and today we have the ability to right that wrong.

The Thorp report of 1995 came out and recommended restricting handguns, banning these military-style semi-automatic rifles, limiting magazine capacity, having a full firearm registry. We had Port Arthur and we saw the exemplar of John Howard. We had Matt Robson’s attempts to get bills before the House and one successfully in 1999 and then again in 2005. The 2017 select committee recommended 20 changes off the back of a full investigation; only seven were implemented. This is not the time to point fingers, but, certainly, for anyone that questions the process, how much process do you need? We have been too timid. We have paid the price.

It is important, though, as Ian McKelvie referenced in his previous speech, to acknowledge the lawful firearms owners of this country. New Zealand is amongst those with the lowest rate of firearms-related incidents in the world. There are 250,000 or thereabouts firearms licence holders and there are estimated between 1.5 million and 2 million guns. There is a lot of firepower out there, and the vast majority of these New Zealanders use their weapons, as described, legally and safely and comply. For those New Zealanders, some of whom are hurting and feeling somewhat victimised, we do understand that hurt but we hope that you will see the greater good in what we are doing. There is no alternative for us. We cannot and will not suffer a repeat of this tragedy.

In terms of the exemptions, I would commend the Minister actually in his pragmatic approach to this with the collectors’ items, vintage firearms. These are history, and, as one of these collectors said to me, they touched history—they lived and touched history. And to be able to keep these with very strict controls and having this amendment where you have to have a vital part stored at another address, we are making sure that that is a safe provision but an important provision nonetheless.

I would also like to talk, too, on behalf of farmers. For farmers, this stuff’s not a “nice to have”; it’s actually a tool of the trade in some cases, and they will be feeling a little bit as if they have been restricted unfairly in the sense of the need that they have: things like wallabies, geese, goats, tahr, deer—of course, which not only damage pasture and crops but carry TB—and pigs that can do so much harm.

There is some need for cullers to have access to these semi-automatic weapons over and above the criteria that we have set, and we have carved out an exemption for cullers on private land. It wasn’t in the first draft of the bill, but we have added that within the select committee process. But we will have to look at that in the second tranche because there are 5 million hectares of private land—hill country—out there under some pressure from these pests and wild animals, and we will have to assess that. But New Zealand First fully supports in the first tranche being tight, because the tighter we make it at the start, it’s easier to make exemptions as required rather than try to do it in an ad hoc manner at the start.

So this is just the first tranche of legislation, and we note the royal commission that’s coming—Sir William Young, a wise head to lead that effort. We will look at things like the licensing regime. We will look at things like registry. We will look at sentencing. Just looking at the bill as it is, I think there is room for toughening some of the sentencing. Prohibition orders have been mentioned by the Opposition, once again, where those exemptions may be able to be increased for our farmers, if indeed they are demonstrated to really need these weapons.

Of course, there will be these wider social issues such as hate speech that will be looked at, and the wider social context of how this tragedy has been able to come about. But these are questions for another day. This is a very, actually, narrow bill around hardware—where the line is drawn in terms of what weapons New Zealanders will be able to have access to and those that we won’t.

Could I commend the Minister Stuart Nash on the way that he has shepherded this through the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I’ve previously acknowledged the chair, Michael Wood, who did an outstanding job in this, and all members of the select committee contributed constructively. Our public service: I understand that there were members from 10 departments seconded on to this bill. There were 13,000 submissions in 48 hours. We, of course, did not get to read them all individually ourselves, but I’m sure—with other members of the select committee—we did all read a select few, and it has also been referenced that we did get a very broad selection, and wisely picked selection, of oral contributors that contributed so much to the drafting of this bill.

To the Police Assistant Commissioner Penny, who I see here, and your team, Mike McIlraith, I might reference as well—who found out he’s a long-lost cousin of mine through this process—but everyone that contributed through that select committee.

Could I quote, finally, from Lianne Dalziel, who quoted a contributor to the 1999 select committee: “If the Aramoana experience has failed to teach our legislators that these and similar weapons must be banned, regardless of the power of the lobby opposing such action, one can only speculate at the extent of the tragedy needed to spur our politicians into positive action to protect our lives.” Today we know the answer to that question.

The events in Christchurch on Friday, 15 March were despicable, dreadful, and unexplainable. The horror that all New Zealanders felt as events unfolded was palpable. There was a deep sense of unbelievability that such an event could happen here in New Zealand—few could comprehend it.

For our Muslim community it was much worse. For them it did not necessarily represent a loss of a single member’s family; rather, it was a loss of a member of a large, close-knit community. Emotions were, naturally, very raw, and the way that New Zealand responded, with their outpouring of sympathy and support and assistance, was overwhelming and welcome. New Zealanders were rightly outraged that such an event could take place in our city, in our country, and to our community.

The values that we hold in this country around tolerance for one another and the ability to get along with one another are what make New Zealand so wonderful. I, like many of you here in this House, went to many of the Muslim communities, and I went there to give my support, as you did. What I received back from my Muslim communities was much more. What they offered me was hope, a sense of resoluteness, and they had an unerring sense of purpose. They see themselves as New Zealanders, and they’re committed to being good citizens—playing their part to make a better New Zealand.

Prejudice is such a corrosive element in any society and is unwelcome here in New Zealand. So this is one of those moments—a moment of unity, a unity of intent, and an intent to act as one. So we’re about to pass the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill. I note it is our duty to protect New Zealand and New Zealanders from the unlawful use of these high-velocity weapons, but I think it’s also important that we respect the rights of New Zealanders to own and safely use guns here. This committee has sought to attempt to reach that position. I think the Finance and Expenditure Committee made good progress.

I think the issue around pest control—and we’ve heard many speeches on it. The ability of farmers and conservation and concerned members of our community to make sure our lands are not overrun by pests has been provided for in the bill. I think the sensitive treatment of heirlooms and memento guns is very, very important. Many of those items are of significance to those family members, and we have stridden a line that, in my view, is reasonable. I do note that in the Arms Act, there is provision for this.

However, I do believe there is further work to do, and we have been discussing that earlier today, particularly around the issue of competition target shooting. But my final thing to the Minister is the need around the amnesty and the need to be clear—absolute clarity—around the buy-back provisions, because, to some extent, Parliament can legislate but it’s the citizens of New Zealand who will respond, and it’s the goodwill that we want, that they will voluntarily hand in these weapons over the course of the coming months.

I want to, finally, just acknowledge the Prime Minister for the role that she has shown in leading this debate. I also want to acknowledge the Minister for bringing this legislation in in a very short period of time and working with the committee. I also want to acknowledge the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who worked in a collegial and collaborative fashion. We didn’t always agree. Finally, I want to acknowledge the officials, many of whom are sitting up in the gallery here today. They worked tirelessly, and I say thank you from me personally but certainly on behalf of the committee.

So, to the families of our missing 50 and those who were injured, I trust you will look at us as an institution and say we delivered here today.

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.]

On Friday, 15 March 2019, just over three weeks ago, an atrocity was committed in New Zealand. It was committed by a white supremacist, it was committed by a terrorist, and it was committed using semi-automatic firearms that he’d purchased legally, though he had modified them. It resulted in 50 deaths: deaths of children as young as three years old, mums and dads, teenagers who had plans with their mates afterwards, and older kaumātua of their community who’d brought that community together over the years. Survivors now live with ongoing trauma, a lifetime of trauma, and ongoing injuries that will not be fixed in days or weeks or even months, because the weapons used were designed to cause mass harm.

In the wake of that atrocity, New Zealand came together. We came together across the country. We gathered in mosques and at vigils. We held each other, we cried together, we held those victims in our hearts, and we promised those victims our solidarity as well as our support and ongoing courage as we make every change that’s needed to make New Zealand a place that is safe—where we all feel safe and free.

I am so proud that in only three weeks this House is already making that change—the first step in that change—together, across the House. So I do want to acknowledge that that is happening in very near unanimity, and it happened through the hard work of the committee that came together at short notice.

Let’s recall that this change was a long time coming. It was not a knee-jerk reaction. It was change that had been repeatedly recommended, including by New Zealand Police, and I want to acknowledge them because they do face the front lines of violence when it happens and they’ve repeatedly recommended this change. So the fact that we’ve come together now to make the change proves our commitment to continue standing with those victims in their grief, in our continued and communal shock.

But also I think it acknowledges, as we must acknowledge, that members of the communities that were directly affected—Christchurch city, our Muslim communities, our migrant communities, and our refugee communities across New Zealand; and I do include myself in that—we live not only with ongoing grief but also very real fear, because that is the purpose of an act of terror. So as we walk our kids to school, as we catch the bus late at night, and as we gather in our community hubs, we now live with the fear of mass violence, and this House recognises that and the job of making New Zealand safe.

So this bill will finally ban semi-automatic military-style weapons, magazines, and modifications that make them behave like semi-automatics, because we recognise that weapons like the ones used in mass atrocity have no place in civil society. We will establish an amnesty, and I think that is the right thing to do, and I think we all probably come together to urge all gun owners who hold these weapons and these parts legally to come forward and hand them over as part of the amnesty or do it now.

We have made some exceptions, as it was appropriate to do for pest control. Other exceptions were made for heirloom and collector weapons that will now have to have their parts kept in separate places. The Green Party agrees with New Zealand Police, who said that it would be best to disable those weapons permanently, but we also do note that this is a great move forward and that it is only the first part of changes we will make in gun control laws.

I want to acknowledge also that as much as this was a change that was recommended over time by experts, it also is a change that was championed and brought about as a result of people power. It was incredible that 70,000 New Zealanders signed a petition within five days of what happened in Christchurch calling for this very change, and 60 percent of select committee submitters supported it. So this is change that New Zealand wants.

💬 Chris Bishop: Where were you on the committee?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Mr Bishop.

This is change that New Zealand has called for. It is change that’s driven by people power, because big money lobby groups don’t drive change in New Zealand’s Parliament.

I want to acknowledge also the long line of Green Party activists and MPs, in whose giant shoes I stand today, who’ve championed for better regulation of gun control. Over time, as part of our ongoing kaupapa on peace, we’ve advocated for non-violence. It is one of our founding charter principles, and we stand for peace in New Zealand now as we come together to have those hard conversations that will reveal the causes of this tragedy.

So future action will happen. We look forward to the royal commission of inquiry recommendations that will look at the causes of the violence in Christchurch and that will look at the activities of our intelligence services and our law enforcement services and the way that hate speech and hate crimes are recorded and defined in our law. We must be brave as we shine a light in the dark corners of hate, racism, and prejudice that we’ve learnt do exist in our society and make the changes we need.

The cost of doing nothing has been too high. Too many people have been hurt. Today, we are drawing a line in the sand. Fixing our gun laws is the beginning, but New Zealand and this House are committed to doing all of the hard work, beginning all of the change that will make New Zealand truly a place where we can all feel safe and at home. So I commend the bill.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call in this, the third reading of the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill. Can I acknowledge the Prime Minister first of all. I was very grateful of the fact that she shared with us some insights around how it crystallised in her mind, the leadership that was required, and then, of course, the Parliament coming together to bring this bill to the House to make the changes that we needed.

She was very clear about the fact that it was during the briefing with Commissioner Mike Bush and the police team where she got the graphic detail about the attack and also the detail about how the offender was able to actually go through a process of obtaining a firearms licence legally and then acquiring military-style weapons and then, of course, the ability to be able to get a detachable magazine with a capacity, I think she said, of up to 30 or 60 rounds. Of course, the whole purpose in an attack like that is to try and do as much damage in as short a time as possible, and, when you’re armed with a semi-automatic military-style weapon with a capacity of 30 or 60 rounds, then you see the tragic result that we’ve had to face as a country in Christchurch, with 50 of our people dead and another 50 in hospital receiving treatment for injuries—like Kiri was saying, horrible injuries—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order!

Madam Assistant Speaker, pardon?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Kiritapu Allan. You use the member’s full name.

Oh yes. Sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you.

Just very quickly though, I do want to address the comments made by the Green member Golriz Ghahraman. I know that they’re heartfelt, but I think that it’s incumbent upon this Parliament now to show some leadership, to not be alarmist, and to not create anxiety in our country, especially when we’re already dealing with major mental health issues and anxiety. So now we have to project some confidence. We have to project some confidence in our police service and in our intelligence services. We have to take the action now, in the coming weeks and months, to make sure that we can prevent another attack like this from happening.

I think Ian McKelvie said that we can all remember where we were on that Friday. I remember where I was. I was opening a new business in my electorate, in Rodney, when I got the news of this attack. It was a huge personal blow because I had invested heavily, myself, when we were in Government, to make sure that we were updating our legislation to try and make sure that we could prevent an attack like this happening in New Zealand.

I want to acknowledge the Labour Party, because I remember very clearly working with Phil Goff and David Shearer and also the Hon Christopher Finlayson, as our Attorney-General, on our countering foreign fighter legislation. That was cross-party. But I would say to the Green Party that if you are truly motivated now in making sure that we do a better job of protecting our country, then continue to show that support, because, I could tell you right now, at that time we got no support at all; in fact, it was quite the opposite.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Remember, when you use the word “you”, you are referring to me in the Chair.

Sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you.

I’d just like to say that this is an important piece of legislation. We are sending a very clear message as a Parliament and as a country that we don’t see the need for military-style, high-powered semi-automatic weapons in this country. We don’t. You can’t justify their use—other than the exemptions that we’ve clearly stated.

I do want to acknowledge our first responders—all of them that responded on that day in Christchurch. I think I spoke in the House in the first reading and said that in the initial chaos and confusion—and I know there was different information that was flying through to the police and they were trying to make very quick decisions on the ground—we still had our first responders, we still had our police officers, we had our ambulance and paramedics, and we had firefighters, nurses, and doctors. They didn’t know what they were dealing with, but they were still going out there and putting themselves at risk to help their fellow Kiwis. I want to acknowledge all of them and the outstanding job that they did. We should all be proud of them.

I do want to acknowledge Assistant Commissioner Penny and Coster, who I’ve been lucky enough to work with myself. Can I acknowledge both of you and the leadership and the support and also the other officials. I wasn’t part of the select committee process, but I heard that it was a very good one, even though it’s been truncated, and the public can have a lot of confidence in the work that has been done. Can I acknowledge the chair Michael Wood—

I apologise to the member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. It’s with pleasure, in some ways, that I stand in support of this third reading of this bill, but, of course, with sadness when I reflect upon the tragedy that happened in my hometown and electorate of Christchurch. I don’t want to reflect so much on that tragedy as on the change in the conversation that this bill has created, because this bill, which changes a law which has been outstanding for many years—it’s a change that we’ve known has been needed for many years—could have been a conversation about rights. It could have been a conversation about liberties. But it isn’t. It hasn’t been that. It’s been something quite different.

I’m heartened by the fact that we have shifted away from that libertarian narrative of what people’s entitlements are and we’ve changed to look at how communities need to care for each other. This isn’t about taking away anyone’s rights; it’s about this Parliament—and I say “Parliament”, not “Government”—across the floor, moving together to make our communities safer, not because someone has rights but because we have duties: duties to each other; duties to care. I say not a “duty of care” but a “duty to care”, because it’s time we moved away from that legalistic language and recognised that this Parliament and the Government is how we mediate those duties, how we talk across party lines, across rural lines and city lines, across all kinds of divides, to reach a consensus about how we create a community which is safe—safe from all kinds of harm. This discussion has been a discussion about how we make our communities safe from firearms, which are intrinsically dangerous and, in the case of these prohibited firearms, absolutely lethal. It’s entirely right that the consensus we’ve struck is to prohibit these semi-automatic weapons, because they are tools of violence, and only in the most extenuating circumstances should they be permitted. That is the conversation that’s been had.

But this conversation, I hope, is the start of a longer conversation about how we can keep our communities safe—how we discharge that duty of care so that not only do we not see our citizens harmed with firearms but we don’t see our citizens harmed in other ways either, that we see our citizens kept safe from hate in all of its forms. That’s a conversation that’s going to be difficult, a conversation that’s going to require a discussion about many of the tools we use in our daily lives, including the internet and the information we obtain and we share on that. It’s a conversation that’s started. It’s a conversation that very much needs to continue. But, because of the way this has been done, I think we can now go back to our communities and our electorates, talk to our friends and our families, talk to our constituents, and implore them to comply with this law and that for every weapon they have which the community has agreed is no longer legal, is inappropriate, is dangerous, and is harmful, hand it over. Come and comply with the amnesty scheme. It’s absolutely imperative that these weapons are taken out of our communities and that our communities are made safe by it.

So to everyone in the Chamber, everyone listening, let’s embark on that conversation. Let’s not for a moment abide any suggestion that it’s OK in any way for anyone to hang on to any of these weapons. We have made a huge step in making our communities safer. Let’s keep on with that important work. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is an honour to rise in support of the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill. Quite often, in standing in support of a bill, I might say “It’s a pleasure”; however, the circumstances of 15 March do mean that it is not possible to take pleasure in where we are and what we are having to do. But it certainly is possible to, and I do, acknowledge the importance of what we are certainly shortly to pass, and it is with a sense of both privilege and a degree of pride that New Zealand and New Zealanders, through their elected officials, are about to take some action to help safeguard the lives of our people and to help to ensure that we have the sort of New Zealand that we all want to see. I acknowledge that privilege and take pride in being a part of these moments.

Parliament decided—it was a choice, and Parliament decided—to take the process we have with this bill to reach the point we have now and where, I would predict, we are about to get to. As adults in the room, we can fully support that—those decisions, those actions, and where we are—and still critique the process which underpins it. There is certainly simply no way a select committee can address a bill of substance in such a short period of time and give it the same scrutiny that it could do if it had an extended, normal, or longer period of time. With all the will in the world, and with all the effort of members and officials—and I acknowledge the hard work of all the officials—there is simply not, in a shortened period of time, sufficient opportunity to hear all of the voices, to give all of the consideration to all matters raised, to debate every point, or to look at every possible alternative. Shortened time simply does not permit that.

That doesn’t mean that the outcome of the committee will be flawed or, indeed, that it’s the wrong process. In fact, I would acknowledge that through the work of the committee and with what we have returned to the House and are debating in this third reading, the committee and the House have done a great job, along with officials, to get the very best possible bill that will deliver the objectives that Parliament and the Government have set out for it to deliver. What it does say, though, I contend, is almost shouting out to members of this House a timely reminder that these truncated processes, particularly these deeply truncated processes, should not only be the exception for this House; they should be a very rare exception.

But by no means does that indicate or suggest that what we have done over this past week or so was the wrong thing—quite the opposite. I endorse the decision Parliament took, and it was Parliament’s decision. The Government put forth a proposition to do this bill under an extremely short period of time, but it was Parliament that agreed to do so. We now find ourselves in the last few minutes of a decision to rid New Zealand of weapons, of firearms, that no normal citizen needs but with enough careful consideration that where exemptions are warranted, they have been granted, with enough thought and consideration to help inform elements that might take part of the next phase of the firearms reform.

The only call I would make to the Minister is: when we finish this tonight, Minister, I know that today the framework for the buy-back has been released—that is a great thing; it has helped to remove some of the uncertainty that responsible firearms holders would be feeling—please address the remainder of it, if not exactly at the same haste, certainly in the same good faith and with appropriate speed so that those remaining vestiges of uncertainty can be removed and our law-abiding citizens can easily comply with the law we’re about to place upon them. It’s the right thing for them and all of us. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill but not in opposition to changing our gun laws. I want to pay tribute to those victims of our nation’s tragedy of 15 March. It is for them that our gun laws must change, because it is not sustainable to have a set of laws where such a deranged individual can get their hands on such lethal weapons with almost nobody knowing about it. That much is certain, and that much is the consensus in this House of Parliament, and almost up and down the entire length of this country. However, this bill is not an attempt to improve public safety; it is an exercise in political theatre.

This bill was made redundant and unnecessary by an Order in Council passed down by the Prime Minister and the Government in the week after the tragedy of 15 March. That Order in Council made it clear that only those approximately 7,500 people with the most restricted level of licence—an E category licence that requires extreme vetting and registration of every single weapon—could have semi-automatic weapons. That was a great start. That was a good placeholder, which wouldn’t expire until 30 June. That Order in Council could have been the beginning of a careful, considered, thoughtful legislative process—the type of legislative process that the Government now promises will commence almost as soon as this bill has passed through this House and become a law.

People might ask themselves, “What was the rush and what was the hurry?” Other than the need to be seen to be doing something, there was none. The fact is that, unlike the Prime Minister, who asked, “Well, is it better to do nothing?”, I believe that this bill may end up being worse than nothing.

We could not find, in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, what the officials’ estimates of the success of the gun buy-back might be. So what will members of this House say when we get to the end of the amnesty period this September and we find that our gun buy-back has been no more successful than the Australian one—one that found that between 40 and 80 percent? Just as our Prime Minister couldn’t say, today, how many guns there are in New Zealand, the Australians didn’t know either, but between 40 and 80 percent of these dangerous weapons have been handed in, and they’ve been handed in by the people who are the law-abiding ones. We could find ourselves with a bigger black market in dangerous semi-automatic weapons than ever outside any regulatory cordon whatsoever. Why might that be? Well, one good reason is that today, in the eleventh hour—such is the rush of this process—the Government decided that they would reward people with compensation if their weapons were owned legally but they wouldn’t offer compensation for people who hand in illegal weapons. That is how insane the outcomes of this process are.

That is to say nothing—maybe it’s a law that won’t work—about the way it has been gone about—to say nothing of the truncated select committee process, which gave no serious consideration to improving the law, didn’t consider any other options such as upgrading licensing, and didn’t allow the committee to consider what the success of the buy-back might be. It simply said, “There is urgency. We must act. We’re going to do this anyway.” That is not good lawmaking. That is not the way to get the law-abiding gun community—whom we need as allies in creating a safer society—on board, and that is not the way to celebrate the institution of Parliament and our democracy at a time when exactly our democratic institutions of freedom have been challenged so violently.

So, for all of those reasons, I am in support of changing our gun laws, but it is impossible for anyone of good conscience to support this bill, the way it’s been brought about, and the problems with it that may well make our society more dangerous than on 15 March. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Tuatahi, ake ka hoki ngā whakaaro ki a rātou mā kua wehe atu ki te pō, te wheao o Ihirama, te 50 kua mate i Ōtautahi i te rā 15 o Poutū-te-rangi i tēnei tau. Mā tō atua koutou e manaaki, e tiaki, moe mai, moe mai, e oki.

[Greetings, Mr Assistant Speaker. Firstly, our thoughts return to those who have passed away, the followers of Islam, the 50 who died in Christchurch on 15 March this year. May your god look after you and care for you, rest in peace, rest in peace.]

I just want to very briefly acknowledge the previous speaker, David Seymour, who talked about how this was a bit of an emotional knee-jerk reaction. Do you know what? Maybe it is, but you know what? I think that when his member’s bill comes up very soon, he’s going to be hoping that there are a few people that vote—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! No, you don’t comment on future papers.

I shan’t then. Twenty-six days ago something extraordinary happened here in New Zealand. We have the saying in Māori that when your iwi cry, my iwi cry; when your whānau cry, my whānau cry. On that day when Christchurch cried, we all cried. We shared a moment in New Zealand’s history, and I’m sure that everybody will remember. I, myself, was waking up on a Saturday morning, intending to do the Iron Māori sports event in Lake Taupō, but, actually, that all went out the window because it didn’t feel right. I started getting messages of pain and anger and frustration from my community, people that needed support. So I pulled the plug on that event and I actually went home and I organised a candlelight vigil for Saturday night in Rotorua, and it was mimicked all around the country. Everywhere, in the smallest parts of New Zealand, they were holding candlelight vigils because they too were affected by the events of that day.

The people of New Zealand should know that we have done the best that we can with this piece of legislation. We have made some exemptions, the exemptions that have well been talked about: exemptions for heirlooms and mementoes and exemptions for wild animals and pest control. What we’ve done is we’ve made sure that we have not made too many exemptions, because what we didn’t want to do was create an ineffective bill and create lots of loopholes for people to be able to crawl through. So we are proud of this piece of legislation. The unity that our Finance and Expenditure Committee showed in putting this legislation through mimicked the unity that New Zealand showed in the wake of those terrorist attacks in Christchurch.

But, you see, we’re not out of the woods yet, because the hardest part is actually going to be the implementation of this bill. We can do what we can as lawmakers in here to set the framework so that these military-style semi-automatic weapons are taken off the shelves so that they’re not in the community, but we need New Zealand to stand with us and we need them to stand firmly with us. We need responsible gun owners to actually stand next to us as we take these out of our communities to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

Although we can say that we’re trying to do it so that it doesn’t happen again, are we guaranteeing that it will never happen again? Well, no, you could never guarantee that. If somebody wants to kill, they will find a way to do it. But with this, we have done something that this Government has been wanting to do for a very long time, and I’m proud to have been part of the committee, part of the movement that has washed through this Parliament after those terrorist attacks, putting this bill through the House.

It would be probably remiss of me not to touch on the actual cause of this heinous crime, and that crime is something that we Māori have battled with for a long time. The root cause of this is racism, and we’ll call it out for what it is. It was a racist act against an innocent group of New Zealanders, and we need to also sort that out. In the months to come, we will have conversations about hate speech and we will have conversations about racism, but what we need to do as a country, as communities, is look back into our communities and do as much as we can to celebrate and embrace the diversity that we have across the country.

I fully support this bill. I’m proud of it. I will go back to my people that I represent and tell them that we did the best that we could. Kia tau te rangimārie mō ake tonu atu.

[May peace reign forevermore.]

I am so proud of us. We have worked so hard over quite a short period of time, and we have worked in the Finance and Expenditure Committee to get the best bill that we could in the shortest amount of time. Even when we have not agreed, we have been able to be civil and adult, and that is something that I think we can pat ourselves on the back for.

I also want to say to New Zealanders who have purchased guns over the years that are now going to be, following the Royal assent of this bill, prohibited items that they need to hand those in. We need to have—and we have said this in our National Party view in the report—a very good buy-back system in place. We have talked in the last few weeks about how much money that will cost. We know it’s a lot of money whichever end of the spectrum we’re talking about, but I say: how much is a life worth? How much are 50 lives worth? And how many other times could the atrocity that happened in Christchurch happen again?

We have already seen that our Anzac Day is coming up, our day of national mourning—to me, anyway. We in this debating chamber, a war memorial to our dead, are now seeing our Anzac Day being affected, and I’ve never in my years in Parliament seen us at such a high security level—the highest security level that we’ve ever had. I don’t believe that that’s just chance. I don’t believe that’s just to encourage us to get this bill through. I believe it’s there because it’s needed, and I speak as a former Minister of Police. I would not, for a moment, expect that that security rating would be in place if it wasn’t needed.

We’ve had some very good submissions on this bill from members of the public, and I want to thank those people who came and made their submissions—the 20 that we heard. It’s less than a week ago, although, actually, those members of the committee, I’m sure, will agree with me that it feels like it was about three weeks ago—so much has happened since then. I will say that most of the people who came to submit came with a constructive outlook to say what they thought we could improve, and we listened to those and some changes were agreed in the select committee, particularly around antique firearms, what we could do around some of the airsoft and paintball guns—all of those sorts of things—and we also were concerned to make sure, as a committee, that we gave exemptions around the commercial wild animal and animal pest-control businesses.

In the National Party, we felt we could have done more for those people who are sports shooters and who engage in international competitions—our competitive shooting sports. We would like to hope that in the second tranche of legislation, that could be addressed. I was personally, and I think we all were, very impressed with the quality of the submission from the pistol shooters’ association. They have a very good system, which I’ve heard of before, obviously, but to have them run through exactly how it worked gave me a lot of confidence in that system being able to be used for people engaged in sporting events where some of these higher calibre or higher capacity weapons are used—that we could bring that in for them.

We are concerned about the firearms prohibition orders not being in this bill, and we’d like the Minister to come back to us on that. We think that is very important. Why we think that’s very important is that most of the people we’re talking about whose firearms will now be subject to the law and will be illegal and must be handed in are law-abiding New Zealanders who have purchased their weapons, and the accessories and everything else that goes with them, from firearms dealers. They have done so within the law, and some of those people feel very strongly towards their firearms and their weapons, and they, in many cases, feel that they are being targeted or picked on, I could say, in more colloquial terms.

Those people must know that the Government and Parliament take seriously the fact that we know that some of our violent gang members in New Zealand have firearms that are not legally owned, that they do not have licences for, and that are also prohibited items under the law. Those people—those law-abiding New Zealanders—need to be encouraged through a very good and generous buy-back scheme to hand in their weapons, and they also need to be encouraged by this Parliament saying that we’re going to be asking not just law-abiding people to hand in their weapons but also people who are not law-abiding. I think that is something that we are going to want to hear more from the Government on.

It’s not often that peace breaks out in Parliament, but to most intents and purposes—I won’t say “all”, because not entirely—it has over this matter. We have all been deeply moved by what happened in Christchurch, by the murder of 50 people and the attempted murder of many more. We have all been deeply moved. It could have happened anywhere. It happened in two mosques. It could have happened in a kindergarten. It could have happened in a church. It could have happened in a school. For any New Zealanders who think, well, it wasn’t some place that they would go, it could have been. It could have been anywhere. It’s the sort of thing that happens, and we could say a person who has done this has done this for particular reasons. It’s not only that person we need to be concerned about and worried about—that they have access to firearms—or only people with those sorts of thoughts and those drivers. There are other people as well.

I just think that New Zealand cannot continue down the path of having a generally unarmed police force and a highly armed population. We can’t have that. We’ve seen other countries where they have armed police all the time. We’ve seen where they have great access to firearms. It doesn’t necessarily make people safer—not if everyone else has them as well—and so I think that it is important that we do this. This is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we will pass during this Parliament, because it’s not only about keeping people safe; it’s about putting a marker in the sand for our New Zealand culture, It’s saying that, yes, firearms are necessary in the agricultural sphere, and, yes, firearms are necessary and desirable for hunters—yes, they are—but, actually, living in Thorndon, do you really need one? And the answer for many people will be no.

I think there will be more people who hand in their firearms than those who have to under the law. I think there will be people looking at their firearms and saying, “Do I need this? Can this be stolen? Can it be used against people? What if my child got access to this?” I hope this legislation makes a real difference to our culture in New Zealand. I hope too that the second tranche, and particularly the buy-back scheme, addresses the absolute concerns that some gun owners have. I hope that the more quickly we can deal with those issues, the better I believe it will be for New Zealanders.

In the meantime, while people are still waiting for further detail—I know we’ve got some detail today about the buy-back scheme—and until gun owners can start speaking to other gun owners about them being treated fairly, which is what they want, then we will have more people putting out false information about what this bill actually says. We’ve seen quite a lot of that, haven’t we? Many of us have been subject to a lot of lobbying, which people are entitled to do. Some of it has been patently wrong. If we answered all of those emails and other bits of lobbying, then we would do nothing else all day. So I think our best answer to those who are concerned about this law is to put the information out there as quickly and as fairly as possible and get that scheme going as soon as possible.

This has been a good opportunity for the Government and the Opposition to work together for New Zealand, and I would hope that the Government will keep us informed and ask for our support on other matters pertaining to these firearms laws.

We have travelled a long way in eight days since this bill was read a first time. It has been a punishing schedule for MPs, submitters, and public servants who played a role in this process. In that time we have walked in the shoes of a wide cross-section of our communities. Discussions during the eight days of debate on this bill have taken us to the sanctuary of the mosque; they’ve allowed us to witness the supreme effort of trauma surgeons in the hospital emergency department.

We’ve caught a glimpse of the family circles, now with an empty chair or two in their household. We know there are widows, many widows. There are children who have been to funerals of a sibling, a parent, or a grandparent. There are elderly members of our community who never got a chance to say farewell to an old friend. As well as the victims and bereaved, we have walked through the worlds of the gun users and dealers. Women have talked about their lives on farms. We’ve been taken through the landscape of the high country sheep station, introduced to the atmosphere on rifle ranges, and heard of the wildlife in the mountains and valleys frequented by recreational hunters. The Police Association reminded us of the everyday reality for front-line cops, listening to instructions and warnings on the radio as they head to a call out wearing body armour to enable them to walk into danger.

While Parliament has been to these worlds, many other visits have been happening outside this place. Family and friends have been tending to the 14 people still lying in hospital beds, recovering from gunshot wounds and other injuries. That includes a five-year-old girl at Starship in Auckland and her father in the hospital next door. One patient remains in intensive care in Christchurch Hospital; others are at Burwood Hospital. This legislation is just the first step of many to make our country safer. The all-of-Government response is ongoing.

Police are acutely aware of how vulnerable and frightened some communities still feel after the terror attack. They’ve established a special operation to reach out to these groups to provide reassurance and advice. They are also responding to the many questions people have about safety and security. Police have made almost 2,000 visits to schools. They’ve made almost 1,400 visits to places of worship. These visits are mostly, but not exclusively, to our mosques, but I’m also aware of a visit made by police to a Chinese Christian church which normally has 150 people at its Sunday service. Many had stopped coming because of fears and false rumours about threats, but police were able to reassure this congregation. Fourteen police officers with specialist cultural knowledge and skills have been deployed to liaise with ethnic communities in Christchurch. The diversity of our police force is growing as we roll-out 1,800 extra officers, which means that police are increasingly drawn from the communities they serve, they can speak the language, and they know about faith and cultural practices. Police have also made about 150 visits to gun clubs—this is an important community for police.

It is worth repeating the assurances given by Government from the earliest days. There are good people in all of our communities who will find themselves in possession of banned firearms, parts, and magazines. This is because we are changing the law not because these people have done anything wrong. This is why we have an amnesty and we are putting in place a buy-back scheme. To date, more than 300 weapons have been handed over during the amnesty and more than 1,100 online forms have been completed for more weapons and parts to be handed over. There have been 1,900 phone calls to the dedicated police freephone, 0800 311 311. The amnesty runs to 30 September, but I want to remind the House that there has always been provision to extend that date by Order in Council if necessary.

Alongside that amnesty, the buy-back will now be structured within a strict statutory framework. The framework will provide certainty for all participants and create a transparent system for compensation. Police have consulted extensively with Australian officials about their experience with almost 30 amnesties and buy-backs since the 1990s. We want to take the time to get it right, to avoid some of the pitfalls and legal risks encountered across the Tasman.

Tonight’s third reading completes the passage of the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill. We’ve begun work on an Arms Amendment Bill (No 2), which we hope to see around June. That bill will address some long-debated questions around a gun register, the licensing regime, the system of police vetting, the fit and proper person test, storage requirements, and penalties, amongst other matters. I hope this House can, once again, come together to work collaboratively on the next stage of reforms.

Before I conclude, I would like to specifically acknowledge a few people. The first is our Prime Minister. Jacinda Ardern gave us the mandate to respond swiftly to the horror attacks of 15 March and change the gun laws in a way that will make a real difference. Opinions will vary, of course, but I believe this bill will be one of the more important legacies of her prime ministership, as it was for John Howard. I thank her for her boldness and her leadership.

Secondly, I’d like to acknowledge my ministerial adviser, Barbara Edmonds, who has been fantastic. Without Barbara’s tenacity, drive, intellect, organisational skills, and relationships and huge hours—huge hours—I’m not 100 percent sure that we would be here, now, where we are with this bill. To Barbara’s husband Chris and her children: I just want to say that your wife and mother has been as influential as anyone in making change that matters to ensure the ongoing safety of our communities. She has made a difference to New Zealand, and you have every reason to be very proud of her. My press secretary, Kathryn Street, has also worked incredible hours and provided an extremely high level of professionalism, advice, guidance, and insight since 15 March. She is a star. Travis Mills, my police private secretary, even though only 24, has the wisdom, intelligence, and insights of someone twice his age and experience. Trav, you have been brilliant. In fact, everyone in my office: Catherine Pantling has worked incredible hours, Jason Smith has taken over Travis’ police workload in order to free Trav up, and Anna Weir, who has had to read a lot of the terrible messages and take some of the unpleasant calls. We’ve asked a lot of our public servants, and I would especially like to acknowledge Deputy Police Commissioner Andy Coster and his police policy team. They have made this country a better place.

To conclude, I acknowledge that in just over two weeks we’ll be marking Anzac Day and police are busy working with RSAs and councils to make the occasion as safe as possible. Traditionally, this day remembers those who have been lost in war—the military and civilians. We remember those who have served our country, who have worked to make it a safer place where freedoms are protected. Of course, those freedoms include being free from harm and free from the fear of harm. Those freedoms include making room for diversity, tolerance, and inclusion.

The day marks the historical ties that will for ever link New Zealand, Australia, and our friends in Turkey. It is an appropriate moment to remind the House of the words of the great Ottoman and Islamic leader Field Marshal Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He honoured our war dead who are buried in Turkey with the words which are reproduced on multiple war memorials in Wellington, Canberra, and Anzac Cove overlooking the Aegean Sea.

He noted: “you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference to us between the Johnnies and the Mehmets … where they lie side by side here in this country of ours.”

We embrace those who lost their lives in the mosques. They are us. Thank you.