High-power Laser Pointer Offences and Penalties Bill

I move, That the High-power Laser Pointer Offences and Penalties Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

Put simply, New Zealand is well behind other countries in addressing the menace and the clear and present danger of high-powered lasers that pose a huge risk to our aviators, police, and the travelling public. In this bill, I seek to double the imprisonment sentence from three to six months and double the fines from $2,000 to $4,000.

The statistics are truly alarming. In the last six years, there has been a 130 percent increase in laser pointer cases, and 717 recorded cases since 2014. In the previous two weeks alone, there have been three cases: one where a man was arrested for flashing a laser at a police Eagle helicopter in Christchurch, and the others were a small plane in Wellington, and then, the following night, a two-seater aircraft was targeted. That’s two incidents in two nights. Time and time again, we are now reading about reoccurring cases of lasers being pointed at aircraft, which puts a huge amount of lives at risk. People continue to point lasers at helicopters and planes, which just demonstrates that the current penalties simply are doing little to deter offenders. What we need to do here is to deter these offenders.

Last year, the Ministry of Health released a report which stated, “It is of continuing concern that numbers of laser strikes on aircraft continue to increase.” The report also stated that “Countries vary in their approaches to managing the risks from [high-power lasers] from raising public awareness to calling for voluntary improvements in labelling. However, there is consistency in terms of strong controls countries apply to address aircraft laser strikes, including bans and high penalties.”, yet, at present, under this current Government, we’re letting offenders do as they please, getting away with murder as laser strikes on aircrafts continue to increase. When will enough be enough? Do we have to wait until there is a disaster, or a plane comes down from the sky, or loss of life before this Government acts? When will they take a stronger stance to show zero tolerance to this idiotic and highly dangerous behaviour?

Over the past few months, I’ve been speaking to many pilots. They are telling me that trying to land a plane while you have a laser in your eyes is not only incredibly dangerous, it causes temporary headaches and blindness, causing hundreds of passengers’ lives to be at risk, putting themselves, their crew, and every passenger sitting behind them at risk.

Even air traffic controllers are now becoming common targets. You only need to look a few kilometres from here, in Paul Eagle’s electorate, at the new Wellington aircraft control tower. The same day—the very same day—it opened, some idiot in a nearby car park thought it was a good idea, have a bit of fun, to point a laser in that air traffic control tower, in the eyes of the controllers who have one of the most important and dangerous jobs in the world, safely bringing planes into land at Wellington Airport. This is one of the most complicated roles in the world.

Pilots, air traffic controllers, police, and many other New Zealanders are continually asking for harsher penalties. I also understand that the current Government, even though they are aware of the increasing incidences and cases occurring, have also been told that New Zealand is lagging behind nearly every other single country worldwide. They still feel this doesn’t need to be addressed.

No one in this country should feel unsafe in their workplace, including those in aviation who hold the safety of hundreds of people’s lives in their hands at any one time. Those in the emergency services who provide a critical lifesaving service are victims of high-powered lasers; for example, fighting fires in Wānaka the previous year a helicopter was brought down from the sky. It had to land because some idiot down below was pointing a high-powered laser into the eyes of that helicopter operator. The Eagle helicopter has been targeted while fighting crime from the air. Why are we not sending the message to deter these offenders from continuing with these idiotic behaviours and showing these offenders the full strength of the law? We need to deter these dangerous acts.

What is incredibly disappointing, though, is the Minister of Transport isn’t willing to put the safety of people before politics and support my bill. The Government’s soft approach on crime, on these criminals, is endangering the lives of Kiwis, and in some cases the emergency services in New Zealand. [Interruption] I just want to acknowledge Darroch Ball over there who has a bill in the box around first responders. I hope that he takes a common sense approach and supports this bill. I look forward to that.

Safety should be the paramount focus of all these ongoing issues, and that’s why we’re voted into Parliament. We are voted here to protect our people, to protect our citizens, keep them safe, especially when we’re talking about heroes like the police helicopter operators, or the rescue helicopters, or even the pilots who fly hundreds of flights daily across New Zealand. The rescue helicopters, they put their own lives at risk going up into the sky to get hundreds of Kiwis to safety every year from point A to point B in their time of need.

With the continuing increase of cases year on year, it is only a matter of time before a serious accident occurs. I ask this House tonight, are we willing to take that risk when we have the power now to do something about this, to send a strong message, and deter these criminals that do this? We need to do more to protect our pilots and passengers, who should all feel safe in aircraft across New Zealand.

The New Zealand Air Line Pilots’ Association supports my bill, which have said that it would be a step in the right direction of protecting our pilots and our passengers. You’ll also be aware, ultimately, that offenders will give power, like other countries have, to those who have requested complete prohibition. I think that’s a bridge too far in this House tonight. But we have the power today to do something to deter these incredibly dangerous acts.

We need to support our pilots, our air traffic controllers, our emergency staff, and our law enforcement agencies to do what they need to do, to continue to transport, to save, and to protect New Zealanders. We need to do all we can to ensure they are operating in a safe work environment. Those offenders who continue to put lives at risk through pointing high-powered lasers at aircrafts have to be dealt with, and understand those circumstances. My high-power lasers offenders bill will do this by not only deterring those offenders but also by raising awareness about an issue which poses a great risk to pilots and passengers.

The question is that the motion be agreed to. And I just remind members that they should not be reading speeches. I didn’t interrupt the member, but really its members’ day, these are their bills, and they should be able to deliver a 10-minute speech on their bill without actually reading it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Firstly, let me congratulate the member on having this bill drawn. Many people can spend time in this House without ever having a bill drawn, and I’m aware that it’s the second time he’s been so lucky. It’s probably unfortunate that the bill he’s had drawn is one that really, again, is something that this House could probably spend a lot of its time much better on. Oh, that life could be so simple, that we simply would solve a problem by doubling a sentence. Life just doesn’t really work like that.

Firstly, I think it’s probably quite important, because those that were listening to that speech may have thought, “Well, this is really, really serious.” In fact, the comment was made, “They’re getting away with murder.” Well, I think that, probably to say the least, would be overstating things somewhat. But, again, the member is building a case for his bill, so perhaps it is understandable.

But perhaps for the sake of those who are listening tonight, you would ask, “Why don’t we just ban these things if they’re so bad? What are they here for? Why are they in the country anyway?”. Well, they do actually have quite a legitimate use. There’s a range of things that these lasers, high-powered lasers, are actually bought for and are legitimate. Like so many of the things we have in our world in the hands of the sensible, the law abiding, the sober, these things are actually perfectly benign tools. But, of course, once you start regulating, once you start putting too many restrictions on them, you’ll be depriving many of those very same people I’ve discussed of the pleasure, the need, or the advantages of these things.

For example, one of the primary uses or one of the, I suppose, recreational uses is hunting. Now, for those of us of my era, who grew up with .303 rifles, who trod the bush of the West Coast, we even looked down our nose at those that actually had telescopic sights. A real bloke, in my day, was someone who could bring down a deer at a thousand yards on a dark night, shot from the hip, or that was how the subsequent tale in the local hostelry may have had it. I may be exaggerating things just a little, but certainly you’ll get the idea that in the world I grew up in real blokes didn’t use such tools.

However, the world has moved on, and you’ll understand that there are those for whom time is a little more precious, that when you do go hunting, you get a hunting block, you may not have the time that people did to spend weeks hunting down the best stag, hunting down nice back steaks to take and to share on a—it wouldn’t have been a barbecue because, again, in our day, Madam Speaker—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don’t include me in this.

—barbecues—“our”, did I say? I wasn’t looking at you at the time, Madam Speaker; I was looking around the House, perhaps further down the back I might get someone nearer to our time. But, anyway, barbecues were, again, somewhat of a latter—they were seen as something for people who today might be wearing lycra; in those days it would have been the very people who were in those hunting.

As you’ll know I like to contextualise—some of the best work that I do in this House. But I’m going back to hunting and the use of lasers for hunting, just to remind you as to how we got to the point that we have right now. So these lasers now are attached to these magazines so that when the game—the whatever it is—that the person is recreationally in our bush for, doing their bit, I might say, for ecology, bearing in mind that we are a country that the more things we shoot in our bush that don’t have feathers, we are doing our bit for ecology. So, people do use these weapons, although in another time they may perhaps not have been quite as proudly talking about these things. But, anyway, coming back to the legitimate use of these—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That would be good—that would be good.

—very tools for which we are now spending our time in this House on members’ night. So that is just pointing out that this is something that there is a legitimate use for. Next time anyone who is enjoying a piece of back steak from the backblocks of the Tararuas or the Paparoa on the West Coast, they will know there’s a very good likelihood that one of these very things has been used for that purpose.

Moving on, there are other uses, too: for finding faults with fibre-optic cables. Anyone driving around Wellington at the moment will see that there is actually quite a large number of roadworks. The need to dig up under streets is minimised by the use of these lasers. So, again, what I’m talking about is the legitimate use. As I said, if we’re going to talk about why—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know that’s very interesting, but the bill isn’t actually—

Well, no, no, Madam Speaker—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: —about the use of them for anything other than pointing in pilots’ eyes. So could we come back to that.

Yes, but, again, Madam Speaker, it’s important to understand that without defining—I know, Madam Speaker, you would have been a debater in your day—what it is we’re actually using here I think is important.

But I do take the time; it is perhaps time to move on to perhaps the other—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: To the bill—to the bill before us.

—parts of the bill. Just, again, we are talking about the definition of this high-powered pointer. It’s a device that in the director-general’s opinion is the kind commonly known as that laser pointer. If one looks at clause 9 of the bill, you will see that is in there.

Also, another part of the definition is that it is “battery operated”. That’s an important part—the “battery operated” part—and what does make this high-powered laser more sinister is that, of course, it makes it highly mobile, which, again, is why it becomes the tool of the sort of criminals who will actually hang around those places.

Again, I think it’s important to note that those who often talk about these lasers, they think that it’s got to hit the eye of the victim; it doesn’t. If one of these lasers is actually shone into a cockpit, the whole of the cockpit actually flares up. It doesn’t have to be aimed; they actually can be quite damaging.

So it is legitimate that we have the current existing legal regime around these lasers. But, of course, what this member’s bill seeks to do quite simply is just double the penalties. In doing that we should discuss whether penalties are actually the legitimate tool to prevent crime. Any criminologist will tell you that, actually, the best crime-prevention tool is a belief that you will get caught. That’s why when the police conduct—and you, Madam Speaker, as a previous police Minister will know the—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don’t bring me into it.

—attention that goes on road policing: making people understand and believe that they’ll be caught is as an effective tool.

So anything that we do do, if we’re going to take this—and it is a serious issue, I do acknowledge that this is, and I would never belittle this on behalf of particularly airline pilots, those who are victims. But we owe it to those people that are victims, we owe it to airline pilots, to be a little bit more serious about this than merely to say that we’re going to actually double the penalty.

What we do have to do is actually ensure that these people who have nothing better to do that actually go and use these high-powered lasers against aircraft, against pilots, actually believe they’re going to get caught. That’s actually where we could be focusing our areas, ensuring that we get better powers to ensure that we can actually catch these people.

So, again, I go back to this idea of merely thinking that by doubling a penalty, all of a sudden we can leave this House tonight, or when this bill does wend its way through the process, and all of a sudden we’ve solved a problem. The problem there is that we will ignore some other tools that are absolutely essential for those who are potentially thinking of doing this extremely dangerous act. And in giving the protection to the pilots that pilots do need, aviators do need, and, as we heard, those who are in air traffic control do need, we need to ensure that we don’t just focus on doubling a penalty, and that we actually look at what we can do to ensure that those offenders that do this will believe that they’re going to get caught, and that will be the safest thing that we can do. Thank you. In doing that, I oppose this bill.

The contribution that we just heard from Greg O’Connor may well have been started with the words “We don’t take aviation safety seriously.” because every single day tens of thousands of New Zealanders get on an aircraft and put their life in the hands of the skilled pilot and flight crew to keep them safe. It’s actually been an incredible story in the way in which aviation safety has improved over the last 30 years and I just did not get any sense from the Government as to how little things in the aviation sector can make a massive difference to life.

I’d just ask members opposite who have said they’re going to oppose this bill: do they really believe that the current law, where a person with a laser beam can bring down an aircraft with many hundreds of people—that the penalties that currently exist on our law books are fair and appropriate? I congratulate my colleague Hamish Walker for having the audacity and the good sense to introduce this bill to the House and make plain on the law books of New Zealand that messing around with the safety of aircraft carrying hundreds of people is totally inappropriate and deserves the sorts of penalties that are proposed in this bill.

I was surprised to read of the number of incidents that have involved pilots suffering from attacks from such laser beams. They number in their thousands internationally. There are reports of pilots being blinded for 45 minutes as a consequence of a laser pointer. What member of Parliament in this House wants to be in an aircraft where the pilot has been blinded for 45 minutes? That is playing with death and the Parliament needs to treat it with that sort of seriousness, as does my parliamentary colleague.

It’s also interesting to note what the other jurisdictions do. If we look at Australia, if we look at the United States, if we look at Canada, if we look at the UK—every one of those jurisdictions has tougher penalties because of this new risk. And yet we have a Government over there that says, “Oh, we know better. We think this is a minor safety issue.” This week, I was flying from Nelson to Wellington. I was invited very politely by the captain and co-pilot to sit up front in the aircraft, and that was a privilege to do so. You get the opportunity to talk to them about the issues facing our pilots in New Zealand and while the Government members may think this is a bit of a joke, actually, the pilots who sit at the front of our aircraft every single day and take the safety of the travelling public so seriously do want this bill.

I also want to reflect on the broader view where this Government’s out of touch—and that is that this is a Government that is fundamentally soft on crime.

💬 Darroch Ball: Oh, get lost.

They are soft on crime and are soft on gangs and I invite the member that’s interjected to look at what’s going on in places like Hawke’s Bay and look at what’s going on in Tauranga. Even in my own community, I’m seeing the impacts of the Government’s policy of not holding people to account for when they do bad or dumb stuff. I just say it’s flawed. I say the view that you heard from Greg O’Connor represents Government policy, and that is, “Actually, we don’t think that fines or penalties on people work.” We’ve even got this Government saying that people that commit offences have got to have the freedom to vote, and I’m going to debate a bill on that.

Well, I say to the Labour Government and their coalition parties they are out of touch with New Zealanders. They want a Government that will hold people to account for doing reckless, stupid things, and pointing a laser at an aircraft is a stupid, reckless thing which this Parliament should take seriously and should impose the penalties that are appropriate.

💬 Darroch Ball: You don’t know what this bill is about, do you? You’re not even talking about the bill.

I say to the member from New Zealand First I’m absolutely talking about the bill. It is about the penalties for people—

The member’s time has expired.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the High-power Laser Pointer Offences and Penalties Bill. I think it’s important that we spell out exactly what this bill proposes to do. So the bill amends existing offence provisions and increases the penalties for use and possession of high-powered lasers and the bill doubles the maximum penalties to six months’ imprisonment or a fine of $4,000. It also amends clause 9 to make that any such offences committed with high-powered light lasers are punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment—14 years.

What I would like to point to is that when the National Party was last in Government and I was a diligent worker for police, I remember well when the introduction of legislation happened to introduce new penalties and new offences for the use of high-powered lasers. And since 2014, since that legislation has been introduced, the problem has got worse—the problem has got worse. Instances of misuse have escalated dramatically since that legislation was introduced. The penalties as they stand were not applied despite a record number of incidents. So increasing the penalties for possession is highly unlikely to have an impact, which is the desired one from those opposite. And so the rationale here is that if something’s not working, let’s do it more—and some analogies can probably be drawn with the leadership, but I won’t go there.

The third one in terms of increasing penalties—let’s look at the psychology of increasing a penalty. Do you think the person sitting in the car at Wellington Airport who has the high-powered laser beam pointing at the air traffic control has got Radio New Zealand on with The House, listening to that—that law was changed and the penalties have doubled—and suddenly flicks it off and puts it away? They don’t; they do not know. So that is why increasing penalties blindly has zero impact upon offending rates or the outcome and that is why we oppose this bill.

So let’s have a look at the other issue that came up when I was working at police. The other issue that comes up when you are just increasing penalties is it is actually pretty tricky to catch someone pointing a laser. The ability to intercept someone and find where that beam is coming from is a tricky job, and wouldn’t you be far better off targeting illegal online sales? Wouldn’t that be a better point to intercept them? Because, if we’ve already introduced—as we have done—the Customs Import Prohibition (High-power Laser Pointers) Order in 2013, which states that hand-held high-power laser pointers are prohibited to import without a consent from the Ministry of Health, shouldn’t we be looking at how people are getting their hands on them without having that permit?

I would argue that we should be taking a closer look at online sales, and that would be a far more effective tool to try and curb some of the dangerous incidents that are happening instead of trying to threaten people with increased penalties and 14 years in prison. So I think that this has good intent—this bill—the idea of making people safer. The idea of giving pilots and air traffic control staff the confidence that their wellbeing and safety are looked after is a good idea, but the execution of this bill, the idea of how it’s going to be carried out by threatening people with 14 years in prison, is doomed to fail, because it has failed since the initial legislation was introduced under the National Government previously.

So, looking at that, that is the case for why we believe that this is not a good bill for addressing this problem—that there needs to be a far more thorough exploration of what this problem is—and if we look back into the history of where this comes from, I can name another bill that was exactly the same, and that was car crushing. It’s the idea of coming to the end of a solution and scaring people with an outcome without actually analysing what the problem was. How many cars did we crush in New Zealand under that legislation? I think we did one or two, and the time it took the Parliament to pass the legislation and to implement a bill that had zero impact on the problem was a real waste of time and effort and energy. If we’re serious about turning things around, we need to look at how people are getting their hands on these, not just standing over them and threatening them with imprisonment. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I call Darroch Ball and introduce him to Hamish Walker!

That’s right—Hamish Walker. It’s getting increasingly frustrating. Every time I stand up and speak in this House, it’s quite often that I say that the National Party haven’t done the research, but what’s quite disappointing about this one is that the member himself, who is the author of this bill, quite frankly hasn’t done any research, and neither has Nick Smith. Nick Smith stood up there and he said that this Government doesn’t want to have any legislation or laws against people shining lights into aircraft and helicopters—there already is. There already is, and this bill isn’t addressing that. This bill isn’t addressing that.

💬 Hon Tim Macindoe: It just increases the penalties—read the bill.

Now Mr Macindoe is getting on to the bandwagon. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This bill, if they look at the general policy statement right at the start, is talking about the possession—the possession of the lasers—not about the fact of pointing a laser into the aeroplane, or the aircraft, or the helicopter. They’ve already got provisions for that in the Crimes Act—it’s called the Crimes Act 1961, section 270.

Now, the reason why I know that is that I did a little bit of research and people have been charged under that section of the Crimes Act for shining lasers into aeroplanes and into helicopters. They already do—they already do. I’ve got examples written down here. Someone laser-struck four aircraft and was charged with four counts of endangering transport under the Crimes Act 2012—they already were charged. Now, what’s the penalty for that? What’s the maximum penalty for that, Mr Walker? Already 14 years in prison. Now we’ve got people standing up here from the Opposition—call themselves members of Parliament—they don’t even know what they’re talking about when they stand up. Another example: two counts of reckless disregard under endangering transport in the section in 2016. It’s unbelievable that they don’t even know that when they stand up.

This bill is doing nothing but increasing penalties for the possession of lasers. What Mr Walker failed to do was mention that, although there were 717 laser strikes on individual aircrafts or helicopters, or the like, and 228 last year—228 different examples last year. Now he wants to increase the penalties under possession. How many people were prosecuted for possession of the laser from the 228 incidents? How many, Mr Doocey—guess? Zero—zero people were prosecuted for the possession of lasers last year, and only four since 2015. This individual wants to stand up here and say that this side of the House is soft on crime and that we’re not serious with it because we don’t want to see an increase in penalties, but no one’s been prosecuted with it yet—no one has been prosecuted with it yet—four instances since 2015. And how many have had the maximum penalty, Mr Walker—how many have had the maximum penalty? Zero.

So we’ve got an individual who, by the standards of the backbench of the National Party, is quite a genius, and he stands up and all he does is look into the Summary Offences Act 1981, goes straight to the possession of high-power laser pointers, goes to the sentences, sees $2,000—“I know what, let’s double it”, goes to the imprisonment, three months in prison—“I know what, let’s double it”. And he thinks that that is going to go anywhere near solving any of the problems with the 717 incidents since 2015.

Not only that, let’s get one thing straight: in 2014, when this original piece of legislation was introduced by the National Party—by the National Party—it clearly has done nothing to touch the sides of stopping. They had not one, not two, but three years, at least, to have a look at the lack of effectiveness of this piece of legislation. But really, as Mr O’Connor actually quite rightly pointed out in his speech, this has got nothing really to do with the legislation. It’s got to do with the enforcement. If we’ve got 717 incidents and zero prosecutions last year, it has nothing to do with the legislation and it has absolutely nothing to do with the level of punishment that can be meted out by the way, because there were none meted out last year at all.

I do want to say that it’s no secret, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody, that this entire House—whether it be that side or this side—find the issue of laser pointing into the aircraft a very dangerous one, a very serious one, and we do need to do something about it. This bill isn’t doing it, because it’s not addressing the right part of the issue. We do not support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the High-power Laser Pointer Offences and Penalties Bill. Can I acknowledge the sponsor of the bill, Hamish Walker, who put this bill into the ballot, and it has been picked from the ballot. He is responding—and the last caller highlighted the fact that there’s been 117 cases where the legislation that the National Party introduced has actually been used in terms of action taken—[Interruption] Well, if the incidents have been recorded, then obviously there’s an issue around the use of high-powered lasers. The issue exists there, it sits there.

In response to the last speaker, Darroch Ball, he’s very upset by the fact that this Government’s—the narrative now is up, and the perception amongst Kiwis is that it’s soft on crime. It is soft on crime. Greg O’Connor raised the point that this bill’s been brought to the House and it’s a waste of the House’s time. Let me tell you what the waste of the House’s time is: the Ombudsman’s bill, the bill that this Government brought to this House that affects a grand total of three people in New Zealand, right? And I’d put to the Government this: if you were to survey every Kiwi that uses and has access to a commercial carrier, or is a regular flyer, and you ask them and you said to them, “What would you rather see: tougher penalties around someone that may use a high-powered laser to interfere or interrupt the functions of a pilot of your aircraft or the Ombudsman’s bill?”, I can tell you which one they’ll be picking. It won’t be the Ombudsman’s bill, right? So you’re on the wrong side of the argument, trust me. And let me raise another point—[Interruption] He’s laughing. He’s laughing about it, and I’m actually shocked that the Government has not—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! You’ve had your five minutes.

—chosen to support this bill, because it would have been a chance for them to do something positive and send a positive message to people that may be thinking about interfering with commercial flights or our police Eagle helicopter. It might have been a chance for the Government to say, “Yes, we think that’s a good idea to signal and get behind Hamish Walker.” and to say, “We’re taking this seriously. You are going to face a stiff penalty or sentence if you engage in this. You could face up to six months in jail.” I actually think that putting a commercial airline at risk with 200 to 300 passengers on it is worth six months in jail. I do believe that. I think that if someone is caught doing that, it’s worth six months in jail, if they’re caught doing that.

💬 Darroch Ball: It’s worth 14 years already.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can I say to Darroch Ball—

💬 Darroch Ball: It’s 14 years already.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Darroch Ball, I’m speaking to you. Don’t ignore me. You’ve had your five minutes. Let the guy have a go.

💬 Darroch Ball: Well, clearly he’s not listening, Madam Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, he doesn’t have to listen to you; he has the floor.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. And you’re right, I’m not listening to him. I gave up on that a long time ago.

The other point that I wanted to raise is the police Eagle. I just wanted to use a very quick example. When I was a young police officer in Auckland Central, back in 1990 probably, I was called to a job where a woman had been calling for assistance in the central city. I’d arrived there with a couple of my colleagues. We were looking for her. We were searching yards that were unlit, and we were having no success at all in actually finding her. In fact, we were about to give up because we thought it might have been a false call, when all of a sudden the Eagle helicopter appeared with Lou Grant. And can I just acknowledge and remember Lou Grant and Alastair Sampson and Ross Harvey, who, very sadly, we lost serving in that Eagle helicopter.

I can’t remember what the candle power was—it’s about 20,000, 30,000 candlelight power. They just lit up this enclosed yard and the offender immediately became obvious behind a skip bin with this girl who, at the time, he was trying to sexually assault. I can tell you right now, even back then, the Eagle guys—and I want to acknowledge our Eagle staff today that do an outstanding job.

In fact, the Eagle in Christchurch was subjected to a high-powered laser just in the last couple of weeks. They said that interference from the ground was just as risky to them in the work that they’re doing as any type of interference from the air. So this is a serious issue. It’s not something to be laughed at. It’s not something to be scoffed at. It’s not something to be trivialised. It’s a serious issue that could end in tragedy. I want to again acknowledge Hamish Walker and the fact that he’s brought a serious bill to this House to say that we are going to react, as the Speaker said, to a rising number of these incidents, and we’re going to send a very clear message that we’re going to increase the penalty around it. The Government needs to do a little bit of soul searching and come back and decide whether or not they should be supporting this bill. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. First of all, I just wanted to say congratulations to Hamish Walker on having this bill pulled. I know that the odds are against it and it’s always pretty good, particularly if you’re a first-term MP, to get a member’s bill drawn from the ballot. Of course, it is also quite disappointing when it gets voted down on first reading, which is probably what’s about to happen.

This is an appropriate topic for a member’s bill. It’s got a very tight focus. It deals with a real problem, and I do think it is a real problem. I agree with Mark Mitchell that it is serious and it needs to be taken seriously. It’s a case of emerging technology that’s being used and abused and is putting people’s lives at risk.

I have a personal story of this, actually, not in an aeroplane but just at home. Someone was shining one of these lasers through the windows of my house late one night, and the risk, of course, was that it would blind either me or my wife, who were both up in the house at that moment. Of course, we could sort of identify roughly the position of where the person was who was shining the laser into the house, and I sort of went out on to the deck and the person disappeared.

Here’s the thing. If that person had known that the penalty was double, would they have still done it? My answer would be “Well, yes.” That person who was shining that laser and didn’t actually know what the existing penalty was wouldn’t have known that doubling would have made any difference.

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: How do you know that, James?

So when you have—well, I didn’t get a chance to ask him, and that speaks to the question around enforceability, Mr Mitchell, but I’ll come back to the question around enforceability. The issue with this bill is that every time you do something like this, you have to ask yourself the question: if we do this, will it fix the problem? And I’m afraid that this bill fails on that test. Just doubling the penalties is not going to stop people from shining lasers up at pilots. Getting rid of the lasers, that would stop people from shining them into aeroplanes.

The other issue, of course, is the issue of enforceability, which is we can have these reported incidents when they’re reported from an aeroplane, but you’re not actually going to get a sense of whether or not you can actually catch that person at all. And the fact that there have been 117 incidents reported but no enforcement of the existing law suggests that merely doubling the rates wouldn’t improve that.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)