Arms Legislation Bill

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. The objective of this legislation is to ensure that firearms do not end up in the hands of bad people, of people who would seek to do harm to our citizens and our community, to restrict ownership to good law-abiding citizens, and who can argue with that?

The “privilege” clause states that it is a privilege to own a firearm, not a right. That is what a fundamental purpose of this bill is about. This legislation will keep guns out of the hands of gangs and will significantly increase penalties for gun crime, and I cannot understand why the Opposition would oppose a bill that ensures that gang members and prospects could not get a gun licence. And I cannot understand why the Opposition would not back a bill that significantly increases the penalties for gun crime. I’m assuming we’re going to find out why they would oppose this, but, for the life of me, I certainly cannot figure it out.

Even though it is not in the bill, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: we will set up an independent arms authority to manage this legislation. This was recommended in 1997 by Justice Thorp. Police will still be responsible for enforcement, but a separate agency will manage the legislation. So the policy, the licensing regime, will be managed by an independent authority.

I also want to thank New Zealand First, in particular Ron Mark and Clayton Mitchell, for the hard work put in. We all worked constructively, in good faith, and I think we have ended up with a piece of legislation which is actually long overdue, and I thank Mr Mark for the work that you’ve put in, sir; it has been fantastic. The select committee, very ably chaired by Deborah Russell, heard submissions without fear or favour and came up with a whole lot of recommendations that, again, I think make this legislation much more workable, and I thank the select committee and I thank the chair, Deborah Russell.

Finally, what I would like to say is that this legislation is long overdue. Perhaps—just perhaps—if we had taken up the recommendations of Justice Thorp in 1997, we would not be here today. As a consequence of that, as a consequence of Justice Thorp’s foresight, a man certainly before his time, I want to dedicate this legislation to the former Justice, Sir Thomas Thorp. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well it’s quite interesting how the Minister, Stuart Nash, started there. Apparently out of the blue there’s going to be an independent authority to administer the Arms Act and the Minister claimed this was a recommendation from years ago, from the Thorp Report. Why then, Minister, didn’t you have it in the Arms Legislation Bill to begin with? If you think it’s such a great idea and it came from so many years ago, why has it not even appeared in the bill now? It certainly didn’t appear in the bill as it started. I think the Labour Party, at least, were nowhere near as committed to the idea of an independent authority for this as the Minister has claimed in the House tonight. I’ll also add, given he raised it—it may not be in the bill, but he raised it—it’s quite, how shall we say, arrogant for the Minister to claim there will be an independent authority.

I’ll just for the record say—not necessarily a bad idea; we’ve got a lot of empathy for this idea and we will discuss this as a caucus ahead of the election and reach a position. But here’s the arrogance of the Minister: he claimed it’s going to happen. Well actually, it can’t happen before 2.5 million or more New Zealanders vote on who should be the Government after 19 September, including 250,000 licensed firearms owners who he’s just putting more cost, rules, and regulations on, and New Zealand First have sold down the river, as we’ll see as we progress through this debate tonight.

The other claim the Minister made: he said about this bill, it is going to keep guns out of the hands of gangs. Well, here’s the thing. There are no firearms prohibition orders in this bill. There are lots of provisions about the rules around whether a law-abiding person should be allowed to have a firearms licence. And here’s the evidence: the Minister sat on a select committee in the last term of Parliament, they’d heard evidence out of Australia that 90 percent of offences involving firearms are undertaken by people that don’t have a licence, and that’s borne out in everything we see and hear in the media in New Zealand as well. The gang members committing offences with firearms aren’t licensed. They’re certainly not licensed for the semi-automatic rifles they’re still using, nor the pistols that they’ve been using.

So this trash that this bill—the way it’s currently written—is going to keep guns out of the hands of gang members is pure tripe, pure tripe. But now I’ve responded to the points the Minister opened with, I think we should actually move on to some provisions in the bill.

I see a last minute—this is like so usual for this Government, right—this last minute Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) dropped on the House this morning, no opportunity for the Opposition here to understand the changes that are in it, because some are simply drafting improvements, I’m sure. But now we have to go through all of that—dissect them all and determine that there’s not some sneaky, underhanded additional rules being placed on law-abiding firearms owners that we haven’t been told about. But one of them was a small concession to New Zealand First so that they can go to the hustings claiming they found a spine and actually looked to stand up for firearms owners: pest control.

We’ve been calling—we called for an expansion for pest control for farmers back in the first bill, after 15 March. We called for that. That lot, including New Zealand First, voted it down. They refused to support it. Now—

💬 Rt Hon David Carter: Who was on the select committee for New Zealand First?

Well, who was on the select committee for it? Who was?

💬 Rt Hon David Carter: I don’t remember!

I don’t remember!

💬 Andrew Bayly: I know! I know!

Oh, there you go! There we go. So we do have a change though. No, no, in fairness, we now do have a change. Buckling to the pressure of many emails, New Zealand First have negotiated a change to expand the pest control exemptions for the use of prohibited category firearms. But here we go, it’s got a bit of a gotcha to it, because in order for people to be able to use them—farmers and other sorts of rural and other related sorts of enterprises—for those owners to be able to use them, or their employees, they have to prove a significant detrimental impact to their business from the pests. So presumably they have to let them breed for a while, destroy a bit of crops or farmland, and then they’ll be able to prove to the police that actually they’ve got a need. There’s no need for that level of hurdle to be placed in the provision.

I would draw the Minister’s attention instead to my SOP 449, my SOP which is far simpler and more worthy for these hard-working New Zealanders. It simply has it that a person who is the owner of rural zoned land—because they don’t have to be farmers; we have things such as lifestyle blocks in this country, some of them very large, some of them not put to productive farming or agricultural use. But the pests don’t care. They don’t just walk in to farming and agricultural land. So in my SOP 449, proposed new section 4A(1)(fa) inserted by my proposed clause 8(2A) states, “a person who is the owner of rural zoned land, or their employee, and who requires a prohibited item for the purpose of controlling wild animals or animal pests on that land:”—nice and simple, no requirement to have to prove some material business impact, some loss of, I guess, potential revenue and/or profit to satisfy the police, because until, and if, this independent authority came into effect, it would be the police. And we know, because we’ve all heard the stories about pest control exemption applications since that first bill last year, they have been scarcer than hen’s teeth to acquire. Tough, tough conditions. Why? Because the police don’t want people to have them.

So when you put a condition, Minister, in this provision that requires the applicant to prove a significant detriment to their business, that is simply providing an excuse for them to be turned down and that is exactly what’ll happen. So, Minister, I would like to hear how you believe with that—in fact, not believe, show us, tell us. We want to know how it is that that will not be a handbrake, a barrier to farmers and other rural zoned owners and users being able to access the firearms that they need to control the sorts of pests they face. They could be Canadian wild geese. They could be wild goats. They can be wallabies. There are any number of pests that require the ability to take rapid action.

I just want to move on, before allowing the Minister to have his first crack at answering, on another part within the same Part 1, which is about sport shooting, because I notice that is, sadly, lacking from the deal that New Zealand First crafted and it is something that every sport shooter has been calling for. Now these sport shooters are commonly—the vast majority people that also tend to shoot pistols and they shoot other sorts of sport shooting, some of which include firearms or capacities that are now prohibited. The International Practical Shooting Confederation three-gun competition is the most common. It’s not the only. There’s the Service Rifle Association. There are others.

Now, it was acknowledged—even in the first bill, actually, but it’s been acknowledged even since then—that the pistol clubs are the best managed and run clubs in the firearms community. They have the strictest rules. They are absolutely adhered to. There is no reason, no reason, why—largely the same people, but there’s no reason why—people who belong to such clubs should not be able to continue their traditional sporting exercises, which include, in many cases, either firearms or capacities which have since been prohibited.

So my SOP there simply allows for a person who is a bona fide competitor in a target-shooting sport that is governed by a legitimate international sporting body, and where the rules of the discipline provide for the use of semi-automatic firearms or shotguns, and a member of a target shooting club that holds a certificate of approval issued by the commissioner. So there we go: we’ve got the same broad rules that apply to Pistol New Zealand that could apply to other shooting disciplines which include now prohibited firearms and/or items and capacities. And we know, and know with faith and confidence, that the people that would participate and have participated in the past are the most disciplined and the most law-abiding because they’ve always had the most to lose and because the rules that are enforced by Pistol New Zealand require them to act properly and also rule out tyre-kickers—to use a phrase; it’s probably not the most accurate phrase, but to rule out those cowboys, if you will—because they require people to participate in a set number of competitions per year to be able to keep their endorsement to use pistols now but what also used to include some firearms that are now being prohibited.

So, Minister, I would like to know why it is you refused a very similar request from New Zealand First. The wording of what they asked for might have been somewhat different, but the intent was the same. Why rule out well-run clubs and organisations with strong disciplines and rules, people who have shown themselves to be the most law-abiding firearms users because they’ve always had the most to lose and they treasure the sport that they have been able to participate in. So, Minister, I’d be very keen to hear why—or if, in fact, you would support my SOP, but if not, why not.

I’ll let the Minister answer.

I’m going to answer the questions put to me and certainly address the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) tabled by that member—that’s SOP 449 on pest control and SOP 450 on sport shooters. I just want to make one thing clear before I start. Keeping in mind the aim of this legislation is to keep the guns out of the hands of the bad people, and, as that member alluded to, I think in his opening sentence, how the bad guys get these guns is by stealing them off the good guys. If we remove these guns from our communities, by and large, they can’t fall into the hands of the bad guys. So what we want to achieve here is to limit the number of people who actually have access to these guns.

So let me talk about farmers; let me talk about SOP 449. What the member has alluded to is that every farmer should be allowed to go out and buy one of these guns. Now, keep in mind, these guns are primarily designed to kill people. Let’s be honest about that. These guns are not primarily designed to kill goats or possums or rabbits or pigs or deer. The AR-15 is the civilian equivalent of the M16—it’s the civilian equivalent of the M16. That’s what these guns are designed for. So what I want to talk about is pest exemptions.

Now, the last speaker, Brett Hudson, got it wrong. The farmer does not need to wait until their business has been detrimentally affected to a significant extent until they can obtain an exemption. What they have to do is prove that, in fact, this would be the case. So what they will do is they will get a pest management plan signed off by the relevant territorial authority that says they have a pest management plan, and the only way to deal with this is through a prohibited firearm. Now, how we arrived at this was by talking to a group who, I think, understands the issues pretty well. We canvassed them. We talked to them. We looked at what the regime may be. That organisation is called Federated Farmers. Now, when we talked to Federated Farmers, we said, “What sort of regime do you think would work?”, because initially in the bill, we said you had to set up a business. Federated Farmers submitted to Finance and Expenditure Committee. Ron Mark put forward a very good submission, and we looked at this and said, “You know what? That actually makes sense.” What Fed Farmers said makes sense. What Ron Mark submitted, that actually makes sense. If a farmer has a real pest control problem, and that farmer has signed off and worked with the territorial authority to actually state yes, this is the best form of pest control, then they can have a prohibited weapon. Of course, they’ve got to enter the prohibited firearm regime, but, of course, that’s what we’d expect them to do. The last thing we want is for every farmer who thinks they have a rabbit problem and needs one of these to be able to access one, which is what that member’s SOP number 449 says. Hence the reason why I do not support SOP 449.

Now let’s talk about sport shooters. Let’s talk about sport shooters. I’m the first to agree, from what I am told, pistol clubs manage their ranges incredibly well. They’re good law-abiding citizens, and they do a good job—they do a good job. And we’ve worked with them, we’ve had a look at their regime. In fact, that’s the model we set up the whole regime around ranges on. They do a very good job, but sport shooters, if we gave this exemption for a person who is a bona fide target sports competitor in an internationally recognised discipline and who is a member of a target shooting club offering training—this is what this thing wants to do—there is no limit on the number of people who can do this. Keeping in mind there is no Olympic and no Commonwealth discipline that requires these prohibited firearms—no Olympic, no Commonwealth discipline that requires these banned firearms—even if we limited this to three-gun competitions, it would still amount to around about 2,000 licence holders, 2,000 licence holders. What we have said is, “You know what? We want to remove these guns from our community.”

Now, I remember when I brought this up in an answer to an oral question in the House, and I got laughed at. So we went away and researched this. There is no reason why the National Rifle Association, under the SOP from that member, could come over here and set up a bona fide club and a bona fide competition—a bona fide club and a bona fide competition. We don’t have the ability to prevent that if the member’s SOP came into force. That is the reason why we have said no to this. We have said no to this, keeping in mind we have all made a decision because we all voted against the first legislation that said we wanted these firearms out of our community, because we do want these firearms out of our community, and to get them out of our community, this is what we need to do.

We debated this long and hard. The select committee looked at this and debated long and hard, I know this. They considered the submissions, and, in the end, I believe they have fallen on the right side of the objectives of this legislation. Hence the reasons why I will not support SOP 449 on pest control and I will not support SOP 450 on sport shooters.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There’s so much the Minister has said already that needs to be answered. He has created an entanglement that I suspect will go on for some hours. But just so people at home are fully aware of what happened at the beginning of this debate—and I think it’s important for our democracy that people understand these procedures—the Labour Party asked if they could do this debate all in one go, put it on fast track, “get this debate done as one part”, Chris Hipkins asked. He said that he’d arranged it in discussion with the other side. Well, he certainly didn’t ask me, but what it sounded like is the National Party agreed to it too. So we would’ve had a fast-tracked debate on this tonight again—

💬 Brett Hudson: That’s not strictly true, David—that’s not strictly true.

—and the National Party agreed to that. They’re saying now they didn’t, except here’s the thing: we didn’t hear any voices objecting when Chris Hipkins asked permission for a fast-tracked debate. So that’s point number one. It’s proper that if firearm laws are worth doing, they are worth doing well.

Number two: Stuart Nash, the Minister in charge, said he thinks that Deborah Russell did a great job of chairing this legislation through the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Well, I am a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and let me put it on record in the Hansard that the way members of the public were treated—argued with, abused, harangued—by somebody in a very senior position, a highly paid chair of a select committee in Parliament whose job is to facilitate the public giving information to elected officials, was nothing short of disgraceful. We got so much feedback and we heard so much about that, and I personally, on a number of occasions, had to intervene—

💬 Michael Wood: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. It is my view that the attack that is unfolding upon the chair of the select committee is not consistent with the kind of arguments that should be raised in the committee stage of this debate.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Well, in fairness, the Minister raised it, and I take David Seymour’s comments as responding to that. I mean, I won’t allow him to go on at length, but it’s an argument, it’s a discussion, that was opened by the Minister.

I want to just respond to one thing Michael Wood has just raised in that point of order. I’m not attacking Deborah Russell. In fact, on a personal level, I quite like her. But I am attacking the behaviour, and I am calling out the way that members of the public were treated, because I think that’s wrong, and I think it needs to change. As you’ve said, Madam Chair, the Minister did raise it, and I think it’s important that it be put on record that that was not the experience of many members of the public. I did, as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, have to intervene on behalf of members of the public who felt attacked by the chair, and many of them thanked me for it. That is true.

Number three: the Minister said—and we haven’t even got to the arguments about the bill or this part of the bill yet.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: You haven’t got to any argument yet.

We’ve got to things that were raised by the Minister, and I think Duncan Webb’s right: we haven’t got to any argument; we’re just raising things that the Minister raised. The Minister said this bill is, fundamentally, about keeping firearms out of the hands of bad people, and the problem with that argument is that there is almost nothing in this bill about bad people.

It’s worth going to the origin of this legislation, because this Government was not legislating in this area at all, had no intention to, for the first 18 months it was in power. The fact of the matter is—and people need to know this—there is nothing in this legislation that would have stopped the Christchurch terrorist doing what he did. The problem that arose was that the law as it is in place should have been followed, and we now learn that it was not, or at least we have it speculated. Of course, the thing this Government should’ve done is waited for the royal commission it put in place to diagnose the problem before the Government attempts to give its solution. And when we look through this legislation, it has a large number of new laws and restrictions placed upon law-abiding firearm owners, far outweighing anything that is imposed upon people who are illegal.

Then we heard the logic—this is number four from the Minister—that, actually, he is targeting illegal firearm owners and bad people, but how did he say he intends to do it? This explains much of what we find throughout the legislation: that, actually, the Minister’s intention is to take firearms off law-abiding people because, if they don’t have them, nobody can steal them. Well, here’s a thought about that difficulty or that proposition: how is it possible that criminal elements somehow manage to get ingredients for a billion bucks’ worth of P into New Zealand every year? Well, I put it to you, Madam Chair, and I’d put it to the Minister that part of the reason is this country only has one container scanner. Last I checked, there are more containers coming into New Zealand than can be scanned by one container scanner. It must be true because, for one thing, there’s more than one port, and they all have containers coming in. So could it be that the fundamental problem with the Minister’s strategy that he has raised is that the theft of firearms from licensed firearm owners is not the only way that criminal elements can get firearms? In fact, it may not even be the major way that they get firearms.

Then the Minister said, “Well, the problem is these firearms are guns designed to kill people—that’s why they’re being prohibited.” That’s number five. What’s interesting is that a .303 is a firearm that was designed to kill people—that’s the whole purpose of it; designed for the war—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: It wasn’t very good at it.

—and the fact of the—well, the member Duncan Webb says it wasn’t very good at it. Well, I think people that fought in those wars were probably very grateful to be equipped with them. But a point is they haven’t done anything about the firearm that really was designed to kill people. Although, I have heard that there are good pictures available of the current Minister of Police using such firearms, ironically.

The next problem that we have is the enormous burden that is placed upon people who wish to use firearms legally. In spite of the fact that nothing in this legislation is going to actually make us safer, except by the Minister’s hope that if he takes everyone’s firearms away then no one will have them and QED, no bad people will have them either. The problems are that this bill puts huge burdens on licensed firearm owners, and ineffective ones at that.

This bill puts in place a register. This bill invades the doctor-patient relationship. This bill places onerous restrictions on clubs that will backfire, because their intention, we can understand, is to ensure that people who have clubs operate them well. We can understand why they might want to do that, but the problem is that if they make it too onerous and clubs cease to function the way that they have in the past, and people find themselves with even less of an incentive to form clubs and use firearms in a safe location, they’re going to go bush, and they’re going to do things that are even more dangerous.

Then I think we’re up to point six so far—just talking about the points the Minister raised that are erroneous. He said he wants to dedicate this legislation to Justice Thorp. Well, that’s nice. What’s interesting is that Justice Thorp said a register would not work unless they got 90 percent compliance. Well, I hope the Minister is going to stand up and tell us what sort of level of compliance he thinks the register will achieve, because if it’s over 90 percent—and it’d be helpful if he could provide some examples of countries around the world that have achieved 90 percent—in that case, maybe he could say it’s going to work. But I suspect that he won’t be able to provide those examples, and he’s dedicating this legislation to Thorp, even though Thorp’s own report and words would tell us his legislation will not work. I hope to return to the specifics of the bill in future speeches.

We heard an extraordinary number of submitters during the select committee stage of this bill. As it turned out, all the hearings were recorded, and that recording is available, so people can see for themselves the truth of how it was conducted. I stand by my chairing of that committee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, now I get to respond to the comments of the Minister in the chair, the Hon Stuart Nash, on my Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). I think he should probably start by actually reading the regulations that exist under the previous legislation, because that did have a limited pest control exemption in it and the police created regulations to manage that. They’re not in the primary legislation; they were added to it. And they require a pest control management plan to be in place by the territorial authority. So the firearms can only be used in an area where there is a valid pest problem, where the pest is of a sort that might either require or genuinely benefit from that sort of firearm. So the notion that my SOP 449 would allow any farmer, including a farmer that just might want to shoot some bunnies, to get hold of a prohibited category firearm is just blatantly showing that the Minister doesn’t understand his own bill, he doesn’t understand the existing legislation, and it would appear he hasn’t bothered to read the regulations that police have been merrily making to give effect to the powers under that existing legislation.

Now, the other part is I think the Government—possibly this Minister, although it’s not actually in his portfolio—now should apologise, it appears, to the America’s Cup contestants and, in fact, remove some of the visa exemptions or processing they’ve done recently, because of the Minister’s statement that in order for something to be a bona fide sport it has to be included in the Commonwealth Games or the Olympics. I’m not sure they race America’s Cup class yachts in either the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games. To say that only a shooting event that is undertaken at either the Commonwealth or Olympic Games is worthy of participation domestically or internationally is, quite frankly, astounding and offensive not only to shooters in New Zealand but indeed our neighbours and others around the world. It is not an Olympic classification that gives some legitimacy to any sport because to take that approach would say that any sport that is not on the current rota for the Olympic Games or Commonwealth Games is somehow less worthy.

The Minister also missed a point on that sport shooting that, fundamentally, the people that he acknowledged that are so well disciplined, so well managed, and so well behaved, and are part of Pistol New Zealand are the same people, particularly in the International Practical Shooting Confederation three-gun discipline. I know this, because I’ve visited a number of ranges and clubs. I have seen them participating in their sport. The range that is used for that sort of sport shooting that would now use prohibited category firearms is the same range that is used for other still legitimate and lawful pistol shooting. So to somehow create a second tier, to somehow allude to them being different or different ranges, is simply not reflected in the experiences of shooters every week, in some cases for those that practise for international competition every day across the country.

But in the acknowledgment that we can have confidence in the rules, the governance, the behaviours, the discipline that Pistol New Zealand has—to acknowledge that that is legitimate and worthy merely highlights the fact that that’s exactly what I’ve said should be done to allow the use of now prohibited category firearms or capacities.

The example the Minister made about the National Rifle Association (NRA) is quite laughable for a couple of reasons. One is that not one of us in New Zealand should be afraid of the NRA or any other international lobby group. I think we’re all a bit—

💬 Hon Member: Huh! OK.

Well, if the Minister’s not stronger than they are, he should think very seriously about vacating his seat in the Beehive because, I tell you what, there wouldn’t be anyone on this side that wouldn’t be prepared to stand up to them. But the point he missed, saying the NRA could just waltz in and start up a club, is in the SOP 445. It says it has to be certified by the commissioner.

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