Arms Legislation Bill

When we concluded last night, or paused last night, I was referring to comments the Minister had said about potentially the National Rifle Association coming over and setting up all these sports clubs and ranges, and I pointed out that in my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) it says that the said club or range has to be certified by the Commissioner of Police. So I have a series of questions about these SOPs.

Last evening, I think the last speech was David Seymour’s, and he made some points that I quite rightly think were a little bit offensive, and there’s one that I want to deal with first and foremost. Mr Seymour said there is nothing in this bill that would have stopped the Christchurch terrorist from getting his weapons. Now, Mr Seymour may have forgotten, but, in this House, every single member of Parliament except the member from Epsom voted to get rid of these weapons. In this bill, if the member from Epsom had read it, he would see that there is a comprehensive list of what determines a fit and proper person to own a firearm. What I would say to Mr Seymour, and what I would say to people who heard that statement and thought, “Goodness me, is that true?”: it is fundamentally not true at all.

On 14 March 2019, any member of the public could have wandered into a store and bought an AR-15 and bought two 30-round magazines. Any—

💬 Rt Hon David Carter: You had to have a licence.

No, sorry. The honourable member is right. You had to have a firearms licence to be able to do that. Any member who had a firearms licence could have walked into Gun City and bought an AR-15—or any store—and bought two 30-round magazines. Today, it is impossible to walk in to a gun store, a gun shop, or a sporting store and buy the sort of weapons used by the Christchurch terrorist to kill 51 Kiwis. In this bill, we have tightened up what constitutes a fit and proper person, and that Christchurch terrorist would not fit the criteria for fit and proper. So when Mr Seymour said there is nothing here that would prevent what happened in Christchurch, he is wrong—he is wrong. So I want the people of New Zealand to know the firearms environment has fundamentally changed.

The second thing that Mr Seymour said when I said that Justice Thorp recommended an independent firearm authority in 1997 is that this wouldn’t work because Justice Thorp also said that for a firearms register to work, you would need about 90 percent compliance. He asked me as the Minister how I can guarantee 90 percent compliance. Well, there are two things I would say to Mr Seymour. First of all, I trust good law-abiding citizens to obey the law. And, Mr Seymour, if they do not obey the law, then they face a fine of $10,000 for failing to provide information required for the registry, and they face a fine of $20,000 or up to two years in jail for intentionally providing false information to the registry. So Mr Seymour talks about good law-abiding citizens, and I believe good law-abiding citizens will obey the law, because if they don’t, they face up to two years in jail or a $10,000 fine.

The other thing I would say is that in this country, it is a legal requirement to register your car. It is a requirement in this country to register your dog. So why is it so offensive to ask people to register their guns? Why is it so offensive, if we require them to register their car and their dog, to ask them to register their guns?

The second thing I would say in terms of compliance with the register is what we have said is we are going to take a soft-touch approach to this. So the register, we have said, will take up to three years—up to three years to be implemented. But then what we have also said is there’s up to five years for people to actually become part of that register. And how do they become part of that? Whenever they touch the system, they’re supposed to be part of the register. When they buy a firearm, when they trade a firearm, when they buy ammunition, when they buy a part, then they become part of the system.

Mr Seymour said we are putting massive cost, an imposition, on firearms owners. No, Mr Seymour, we are not. This will be easy to do. In fact, the model we have talked about is registering your car. If Mr Seymour thinks it is a massive imposition to register your car, then maybe, Mr Seymour, this will be an imposition. But I think the vast majority of Kiwis understand why you’ve got to register your car, and I understand, Mr Seymour, that over 85 percent of New Zealanders understand why you’ve got to register your firearm.

💬 Dr Deborah Russell: Eighty-five percent?

Eighty-five percent believe it’s right to register your firearm. This is not going to provide massive imposition. In fact, what we have said in the bill is that police have also got to take a light-touch approach. So it’s an informative, it’s an educational, one. They’re not going to go in there and go, “You haven’t registered your firearm—$10,000.” We have actually said it’s an instructional process. We’re making it as easy as we possibly can to register your firearm.

Then Mr Seymour said we shouldn’t be doing this, because the bad guys don’t get their guns from stealing it; they get it through shipping containers. Now, there is no evidence whatsoever that that is the case—no evidence. In fact, we heard at a select committee hearing a couple of years ago that that isn’t the case. But even if it was the case, is that a reason not to put this bill in place? Absolutely not. Mr Seymour, what I would say is sometimes you’ve actually got to stand for something, and, by opposing everything, you end up standing for nothing.

What I would say is I’m incredibly proud of what we are doing in terms of ensuring that New Zealand is actually a safer place. Mr Seymour did ask: “Is New Zealand a safer place because of this?” What I would say is we have taken nearly 60,000 firearms out of our communities that are primarily designed to kill people. If they are still out there—if people did not participate in the buy-back—then they face up to five years in jail. They are now criminals, and they face up to five years in jail.

The interesting thing is that when we undertook this and there were interviews with people who handed their firearms in, they said, “We sort of get this. We get what you’re doing—we get what you’re doing because of this.”

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: What a hopeless defence of this bill—what a hopeless defence.

If Mr Simpson wants to go to his people in the Coromandel and say we are no safer because of this, well, good luck to you, but I tell you, you’re against the tide of public opinion. And I also, Mr Simpson, want you to go and say to your people, “And don’t worry about registering your dog, and don’t worry about registering your car.”

This is making our community safer. It is not providing huge amounts of imposition. It is doing what Justice Thorp said we should have done in 1997, and it’s about time.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Wow! Sometimes you see a Minister in committee who is calm and relaxed and on top of his brief and you know that he’s going to have an easy run through committee, and then there are times like now. I didn’t realise that Stuart Nash had clearly been up all night thinking about my speech that I gave at 9.30 last night, but evidently he had. I’d like to ask him a couple more questions about his response, because he clearly listened to my speech. I said, “Look, you know, it’s true. Justice Thorp said you needed 90 percent compliance.” I didn’t ask him about car registration; I asked him about firearms. There was actually a really simple, specific challenge that he should be able to answer: where in the world have countries actually achieved that level of registration compliance? That’s what matters. We could talk about cars all day, but this is not the “Car Registration Bill”; this bill is to do with offering to register firearms. So which other countries have managed to register firearms to 90 percent or more? That’s the question for the Minister of Police.

The second question for the Minister—he said that I am claiming that firearms come in through containers; they might be exported illegally from overseas. Well, I didn’t say that. I just said that if the Minister thinks that stopping all law-abiding Kiwis from having firearms is going to stop criminals getting them—and he didn’t deny that, because the other thing I said is that seems to be his policy. He didn’t deny that that’s his policy. He seems to think that there are no firearms coming in illegally in containers or any other way. Well, really, the onus is on the Minister to show that he knows how he can stop firearms coming in illegally at the border. If he can’t do that, then all the punishments he’s putting on law-abiding firearm owners aren’t going to work. So the onus is back on him. Is he sure that there are no illegal firearms being illegally imported into New Zealand? I’d love to hear what the Minister has to say about that.

Then the next point I’d make to the Minister is that he said—well, actually, we’ll come back a little bit to what privilege meant. But he said that this law is going to change the fit and proper person test. Well, that’s interesting, because by extension, what he seems to be saying is that the Christchurch terrorist was a fit and proper person under the previous laws. Well, if that’s what the Minister is trying to say, that’s an extraordinary thing. So my next question to the Minister is: did he think that the Christchurch terrorist was a fit and proper person under the old laws? If that’s true, then maybe changing this law will help. But I think the real problem is that a guy who wasn’t a fit and proper person got a firearm licence and wasn’t even interviewed. I’d love to hear the Minister answer that question. Was he a fit and proper person under the old laws? That’s the question we want to ask.

Finally, the Minister got up and said, “Well, actually, this bill changes the law so that a person couldn’t get a firearm like they did on March 15.” Well, I think the Minister’s got confused between his bills, and this happens a lot, actually. Stuart Nash has done this before. People will recall when Stuart Nash accidentally passed the wrong bill just a few weeks back. The thing is, for people at home, that the bill that banned semi-automatic centrefire rifles was the one that was rushed through last April. This bill doesn’t do that. This bill actually, and I think it’s a good thing, at least in its Supplementary Order Paper, says that in limited circumstances, more people will be able to get semi-automatic centrefire rifles.

So there are four questions there for the Minister. I look forward to him calmly answering those questions, because I suspect it’s going to be a long morning. There you go, he’s turning to his officials to get advice right now. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I rise to take the first call on behalf of New Zealand First on this legislation—fairly interesting. I want to thank the Minister of Police for acknowledging New Zealand First’s role and making some adjustments to this legislation.

💬 Brett Hudson: Very minor. Tiny adjustment.

But I do have to, on the back of some of the speeches last night, address some of the assertions. I’ll start with the first one about the complaints around the changes to pest control and the adjustments being made on the back of representations made by the New Zealand First caucus to the Minister and to the Labour team. Mr Hudson might well think that those changes are insignificant. He might well think that it’s created a degree of bureaucracy that he thinks is unnecessary.Hon RON MARK I just say to Mr Hudson, being a landowner myself, I can tell him of a block of land in Canterbury. I can tell Mr Hudson, unfortunately, I do get notifications from the regional council which advises me on my pest count. I do get notifications, and that document is very useful and will be useful in future for any farmer who’s been told by the—

💬 Brett Hudson: You shouldn’t have to prove a material financial detriment.

Mr Hudson, listen, just listen—listen. Mr Hudson, so any regional council writes to a farmer, a high-country farmer, and advises them that they’ve conducted a pest count on his property, and they’ve identified that he is in excess of what is permissible and instructed him to move forward and produce a pest management plan. That’s what’s happening now. What we have done here is made a change that removes a whole bunch of bureaucracy and allows those farmers to actually say, “Yeah, look, here’s the regional council evidence. Here’s the instruction from the regional council telling me I’ve got to sort out my wallaby count, sort out my hares, my rabbits, sort out my goat count, whatever it is. And I’m off now to the police to get a permit to actually buy a restricted firearm so I can deal with this.” Because in the high country in Canterbury, those ranges, you can’t deal with it with any other weapon; it has to be a centrefire semi-automatic.

💬 Brett Hudson: Sold out the firearms owners. Sold them out.

I can only say, Mr Hudson, amid all your chipping and carping in the wind, that Federated Farmers are very pleased. So if that member truly is a supporter of Federated Farmers—

💬 Brett Hudson: They won’t be. They won’t in practice.

If that member’s truly a supporter of Federated Farmers, he should just shut up and listen to Federated Farmers on the radio this morning. Listen to Federated Farmers.

And then I’m looking across at Mr McKelvie, who seems, as always, as a former mayor, a very rational person. But his presence in the House does remind me of one thing. It’s interesting hearing how the National Party, who supported the first tranche of firearms legislation, is now saying that they don’t support this tranche. And it’s really interesting the topics that they’re pulling out. I’m going to give credit over there to David Seymour, because David Seymour has one thing that the National Party doesn’t have, and that’s consistency.

Back in 2017—and I’ve got a copy here for Mr Hudson to take away and read—Kanwaljit Singh chaired a select committee inquiry into how firearms were getting into the hands of gang members. Mr Hudson’s team included Ian McKelvie, included Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, and included Alastair Scott actually. If I look at the list on the back—and I am going to take a little bit and seek another call—included Ian McKelvie, Maureen Pugh, Lindsay Tisch, and Jonathan Young. Here were some of the recommendations: that the law be amended so firearms dealers’ licences required to sell or supply ammunition be registered. Registering ammunition, that’s what the National Party were advocating when they were in Government. Registering firearms, that’s what the National Government were advocating when they were running the country. The only people who voted against that was New Zealand First, and we were lambasted by the National Party for being irresponsible.

💬 Brett Hudson: And now they’ve folded. And now they’ve folded.

“Now they’ve folded.”, says Mr Hudson. Who made these recommendations? This legislation contains every recommendation that the National Party put forward, and now they’re voting against their own recommended legislation.

Mr Seymour’s consistent—Mr Seymour’s consistent. He’s going to be in the wilderness, in oblivion. All the people who vote for ACT will see him sitting in the Opposition saying consistently the same message. I’ll give him credit for that. There’s no deviation. The National Party, by this record, flip-flops like a jandal on Bondi beach, doesn’t it?

💬 Brett Hudson: What about your minority view, Ron?

It says definition—it wants to alter semi-automatics, the access to semi-automatic firearms; effectiveness of licensing and training; criticises it; and then talks about firearms prohibition orders—what happened to that? Never happened. It makes for an interesting read when you look at it. One of the claims in this report that the National Party chaired, led, supported by the now Minister, Stuart Nash—I’ll give Mr Nash this credit: what Mr Nash said he was going to do in this legislation, he’s doing. The National Party supported firearms registration. The National Party wanted it. Ian McKelvie sat on the committee and voted for it, so too did Maureen Pugh, and, so too did Jonathan Young, and they took that report of theirs to their caucus, which included everybody who’s sitting here today—almost everybody—and passed it through their caucus. So all I’ll say to the National Party is that you’ve got your dream—you’ve got your dream. This piece of legislation does everything that Ian McKelvie and Jonathan Young sitting there—hi, Jonathan—said they wanted to do in 2017. So stop playing the games with the firearms owners. Stop playing games with them.

And let’s talk about New Zealand First. New Zealand First—[Interruption]—well, Mr Jonathan Young says that. New Zealand First has always pledged to play a responsible role in Government. We get plenty of accusations from people, and we have always supported—for 23 years, we fought against National’s arms amendment bill No. 2, National’s arms amendment bill No. 3, and National’s inquiry into arms. We fought against them all. This time we have got one thing that we believe is going to fundamentally change the way firearms legislation is run in this country. We have got into this a promise from the Labour Government. Now, we would have liked it, Mr Nash—

💬 David Seymour: Labour Government.

From the Labour team—thank you, David. We have got a pledge that in the first months of us coming back to the House, if we’re in Government, we will put legislation on the table. This legislation, quite frankly, is going to change. I don’t know what the hōhā is about. This legislation will change within months of coming into Government, as we seek to introduce an independent arms authority, which will take over. Wherever you read in this bill right now “the Commissioner” and “Police”, that will change.

💬 Brett Hudson: You won’t be there, Ron. You won’t be there.

Put your money on it—put your money on it. Put your house on it—put your house on it.

We will change this legislation in the first few months of the next Government, whomever we’re governing with. And, if the National Party wants to come to the coalition negotiation tables, then you’re welcome. But we will change this legislation. Labour has committed to changing it. Labour’s committed to an independent arms authority, removing the functions of writing the law and enforcing it—separating it, taking the role and responsibility, the issues that Mr Seymour’s talking about, out of the hands of police: determining who should have a licence and administering those licences.

New Zealand First believes that, fundamentally, the system is broken. It’s hard to argue with four Cabinet Ministers and nine MPs and keep a stable, coherent, reliable, responsible Government in the white hot heat of 51 people dead and 50 more wounded, and thousands of people—it is hard to argue against that emotion.

💬 David Seymour: Oh!

It’s hard, Mr Seymour. Try it when you’re in Government. Oh, you’ve never been there—that’s right—and never will be.

💬 Brett Hudson: Well, that’s not true.

But when we’re sitting in coalition negotiations, Mr Hudson, looking across the line, all I’m going to want to hear from Mr Hudson is no more flip-flopping. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Give us the independent arms authority that we seek. Give us that complete review of this legislation, the post-implementation review, which Mr Nash has committed to, which will be done in three years, not five, to ensure that everything that’s said about this piece of legislation, the reason that’s here, is it actually happened. And where we have identified failures, we address again. That is our pledge to the firearms owners of New Zealand, whom we’ve always—I’m looking at Hon Judith Collins, and I know she’s always supported sane, sensible firearms legislation. And I know that she will support a post-implementation review of this. I know that she will support an independent arms authority to take over the control—

💬 Brett Hudson: He sold them out.

—of the firearms administration and the writing of the firearms law of the future. This is not my final contribution, Mr Hudson, there’s more.

Oh, thank you, Madam Chair; what an excellent choice. Well, it was very nice, all those lovely things said about me, but not about my colleagues, by the Hon Ron Mark. Yeah, I would support this if it was sane and sensible legislation, but it’s not, and, given the fact that the Hon Ron Mark has stated very clearly that should New Zealand First help to form the next Government, this will be one of the very pieces of legislation that’s changed, why are we voting for it now? The answer is because it is actually not up to it. So he’s giving us the argument right there.

Now, I have been very supportive of the first tranche of changes into the arms legislation, because I felt something needed to be done on these. I’m also very supportive of the firearms prohibition orders that don’t seem to have made it through to this bill. We have argued for a very long time in the National Party that the criminals are the people who we should be going after when it comes to firearms, not the law abiding farmers who happen to have firearms to control pests. They are not the people who are going around committing these atrocities—they are not the people—and yet why is it that this Government, with all of its ability to get legislation through because they have the numbers in Parliament—and they have the tremendous goodwill that we gave them for the first tranche of firearm reforms—why is it that the two, are, let’s say, unable to actually bring forward the firearm prohibition orders, which would actually target the gangs, target the criminals, target the stockpiles of guns, ammunitions, and even, in some cases, grenades and other explosives in gang headquarters? Why is that? The answer is because the law-abiding people of New Zealand are a far easier target.

I agree that the police should not be the people in charge of the administration of the Arms Act, and I agree with that for this very reason: police are not administrators; they are A-type personalities who like to deal with crime and sort that out and prevent crime. That is their mandate from the people of New Zealand. Where they have failed—and it’s very clear that the Minister must have known about this failure well over a year ago—is in the administration of the Arms Act. That is not to say that every arms officer in the country wasn’t doing their job, but it’s pretty jolly clear, from what we’ve now seen in the media, and elsewhere, that one particular one certainly wasn’t doing his job.

And that’s because the arms legislation and the arms rules and the way it’s administered are not seen as a career path in the New Zealand Police. One doesn’t go and become an arms officer because it’s a move through to become the commissioner. This is a job that is at the end of a career, and it’s basically put on the side.

We can’t have the New Zealand Police in charge of an area of administration where they are not up to the task, and that is because it has not been a priority, and it should have been a priority. That is a failure, and it’s a failure in the administration to have not addressed this earlier. Having said that, Parliament has always given this role to the police—for many, many years; at least the decades that I’ve certainly looked at. It’s time for that to change. This does not change in here. This bill does not address this. It’s not to say—I don’t wish to dismiss the excellent work of the New Zealand Police, but, actually, in the administration of this Act, it has failed, because it is not actually an administrator—it is not a role that it is comfortable with.

This bill does not address the issues my colleagues have raised. It does not address the issues that the New Zealand public, the law-abiding New Zealanders who have firearms for their work and also for their sport, have raised with us. This bill is a cheap, shoddy piece of work that the Minister the Hon Ron Mark has already said would be up to be reviewed straight after an election. Well, I can tell you, Madam Chair, that it will be up for a review because it will be our Government that’s doing it. And he knows that I will want firearm prohibition orders, and he knows that our Government will not sit by and let criminals have access to guns while law-abiding people are having to prove why they should have to have this access.

This is an important bill for us to not support. It’s an important bill for us not to support because it is shoddy, it is rushed, it does not have the full support of Parliament, and it does not have the support of the people.

I want to focus on Part 1 of this bill and the failure of the Minister to be upfront with New Zealanders about the background of this bill and the awful tragedy that occurred in Christchurch on 15 March last year. I was gobsmacked to read this week that the licensing of the madman who killed 51 people on 15 March did so and received a firearms licence against the law of the day. Now, for this bill that we’ve debated, and the previous bills that we have promoted, this Parliament had a right to know what went wrong with that man getting a gun licence.

So my first question to the Minister: when did he know that police failed the old law in vetting the issue of the gun licence for that individual? I am at loss as to how a man applies for a firearms licence in Dunedin, the law requires that a close associate or family member vet for him, and someone at the other end of the country, in the Waikato, who’s only met him on the internet, provides that verification. We’re not talking about a failure of the law; we’re talking about the failure to do the basics right, and that is what is at the core of that tragedy. So my first question to the Minister: when did he know? Simple question, Minister.

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: I’ll answer it then, now. Sit down, I’ll answer it.

I’m happy to yield.

Madam Chair, thank you very much. I think, Mr Smith, it was 19 March. I think it was 19 March, but it was certainly around that date that police themselves put out a press release saying that they believed all the processes were followed. Now, what we have seen on the front page of the New Zealand Herald yesterday is an aggrieved ex-officer who came out and said, without any evidence, that he does not believe the process was followed. So what we’ve got is the police saying they do believe the process was followed. So I heard about a week after the Christchurch terrorist killed 51 people that the police believed the proper process was followed.

Ms Collins made a couple of points I would like to reiterate—or answer, I should say. Ms Collins stated that a police officer who is an arms officer, or who is administering the Arms Act—that’s not a route to be the Commissioner of Police, and why would anyone want to do it? That was her inference. Well, the Minister is a former—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry to interrupt the member.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The process of yielding is for the purposes of answering the specific question of when he knew.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): That’s not a point of order. The Hon Stuart Nash has got the call and he has up to five minutes. You understand the new process of to-ing and fro-ing, that speeches are no longer limited to five minutes. You can take shorter speeches, have your question addressed. If you feel the Minister hasn’t addressed your question, you’ll have another opportunity to raise that in your next call.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: No, no, that is not—the process of yielding is to enable the Minister to specifically address that question. He is entitled to continue his call in respect of the issue of which I yielded on; he is not entitled to then hop off and just take a general—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): The Hon Stuart Nash.

Thank you, Madam Chair. What I would say to the former Minister of Police Judith Collins is she is well aware that some of our most effective community officers are those who are ingrained in the communities and have been there for ever. Not everyone wants to be the Commissioner of Police. I think those officers who are out there every single day administering the Arms Act actually do their very best. They are committed to getting this right. I also agree with Mr Ron Mark, though, that, in fact, putting this into an independent authority is in fact the right thing to do, and it’s why we’ve committed to do that.

A couple of questions from Mr Seymour. Mr Seymour asked me if in fact the law as it stands, as opposed to the legislation in front of ourselves, is not fit for purpose. Well, Mr Seymour, it’s not. That’s why we’re here. Have a look at clause 36. Take a look at that. Under that, the Christchurch terrorist would not have received his current licence. It’s why we are here today, because the 1983 legislation—

💬 Brett Hudson: The police didn’t know that, Mr Nash.

—is not fit for purpose, Mr Hudson. It’s why we are here today. The other thing I would say—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I hope it’s not the same point of order.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: I wish to refer to Speakers’ ruling 56/2, and you may want to refer to it in the Chamber. I’ll read to you what it says: “When a member yields to another, the member given the floor may refer only to the matter raised by the member yielding. A member yielding yields the member’s time to the other member.” It’s quite explicit, that when I agreed to yield to Minister Nash, it was specifically about the question of the timing. The Speakers’ rulings are very, very clear, and I ask you simply to enforce the rules of the House.

Quite correct. So the Minister’s time is up.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is obviously a—

💬 David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Madam Chair. I think it is helpful to have this discussion as we adapt to new rules. I was under the impression that if a member yielded to a Minister in this discussion, then that member would also receive the next call. In fact, I think it was either yourself or the Hon Anne Tolley who said as much at the beginning of this committee stage last night.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): In order to be given the call, you have to seek a call.

—very testy debate—and quite rightly so, in my view, given the significance of this legislation. I just want to return to the question that my colleague the Hon Dr Smith just raised. I don’t actually believe that you have answered the question, Minister Nash, because the allegations around the police checking the terrorist Mr Tarrant’s application, the allegations around the appropriateness of those checks, has been up for a debate and swirling around the public, obviously, since 19 March, which is what the Minister just referred to.

If you did know about it on 19 March, my first question to you, Minister, is: given that that is over a year and these allegations have been in the public domain for all that time, what have you done about it? Have you actually—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry, could you please not bring the Chair into the debate, Mr Bayly.

OK. Has the Minister, in fact, undertaken any investigation as to what actually occurred so that we could be definitive on it? If that is the case, it would be excellent to take the opportunity today to talk about whether, in fact, the process did break down and Mr Tarrant actually ended up getting a licence when he ought not to, because that is very unclear and having things in the media is very, very untidy and inappropriate given this debate today.

The other thing that I want to talk about: last night, when you introduced this bill, you said, and you made this claim, that this bill would keep New Zealanders safe and “We’re going to keep guns from the hands of bad people.” You asked why we weren’t supporting this bill. Well, it’s pretty clear, Minister: the current Act that’s in place is a result of delays in terms of publicising the prices that would be paid to people who return their weapons and just the whole chaotic process that happened. You know that only 56,000 automatic weapons have been handed back in; there is an estimated 250,000 out in the market right now, swirling around, all across New Zealand. That is an incredible amount. You’ve only picked up 20 percent of all the estimated number of items.

I see you shaking your head. We do know that every automatic weapon that had to come into this country had to be imported through an import licence, and therefore there are records that show—even if it’s within 10,000 or 20,000—that there are probably 250,000 of these automatic rifles in circulation. You have, as a result of this past bill—the Minister’s reactions have only captured 56,000 of it. It is a miniscule amount.

One of the principal reasons why we have an issue with this bill is that it is unsuccessful. It has been unsuccessful. This bill won’t help much more, because what this bill does is it targets farmers, it targets sports clubs, it targets those who want to do competitive shooting, and it targets people who just want to own a rifle and operate appropriately—and also part of that is gun collectors. The whole intent of this bill is about those who will act lawfully, who do act lawfully; what it hasn’t dealt with is the issue around gangs and those who can get these types of arms and use them for bad circumstances. That is the reason why we don’t like it.

The last thing that I want to just pick up on in this short contribution is this, somehow, glorious wave of people from New Zealand First coming in and saying that they’re going to solve it. My question to you, Mr Mark: where were you in the last bill, when we were trying to change things around sporting arrangements? In fact, if you had been involved in the last Finance and Expenditure Committee, which I haven’t seen you in, Mr Mark—I’ve never seen you at a meeting, Mr Mark. Somehow it’s “Ronnie-come-lately” trying to say that “We’re going to save it.” Why didn’t you turn up to the select committee? In the select committee, we had actually talked about an independent group to monitor firearms licences. If you want to try and say it’s your idea, you should have turned up to the select committee, Mr Mark. It’s not your—[Time expired]

I want to return back because the debate we’re having on Part 1 and this entire, vigorous argument about appropriate gun laws comes back to that awful tragedy that occurred on 15 March 2019 in Christchurch, in which 51 New Zealanders lost their lives. The entrée for determining what is the right legal change must first be to establish what occurred, and it’s not that difficult. Now, I ask the question: the murderer in Christchurch, did he get his gun licence appropriately under the old law? A pretty basic question.

What we have found out is that in November of 2017, that individual got a gun licence, but only this week we have found out that the checking of the referees did not occur according to the law, and I just simply want to know what the truth is. It’s very simple, and I actually find it quite appalling that 17 months after that tragedy, basic, important facts about what occurred are not being disclosed. So I’m going to ask the Minister again: were the proper referee checks carried out on the gunman who killed all those people in Christchurch? What is alleged this week is that the referee checks were people that the gunman had had an internet-based chatroom with—really?

Fifty-one New Zealanders lost their lives as a consequence of police not doing their job of vetting that man under the existing law, and why that matters is that there is all this effort and work about rewriting the law and, actually, it was a failure of the old law that brought that tragedy to New Zealand. The requirement of the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Police, is very, very simple: who was the referee for Mr Tarrant? Was it, as alleged, an internet chatroom friend from more than a thousand miles away and at the other end of the country, because if that is true, why has this Parliament—which, over the last 18 months, has debated arms laws extensively—not had access to that most basic fact.

There’s a piece of paper in the police department that will show the paperwork of who the referee was. Does the Minister in the chair know who the referee was? It’s a very simple question: who was the referee that provided the evidence to police in November 2017 to issue him with a gun licence—does he know?

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Do you want me to answer the question?

It’s very simple: does he know—yes or no?

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Do you want me to take the call?

No, no—the last time you wouldn’t answer the question. Just answer the question—yes or no—does he know who was the referee for Mr Tarrant’s gun licence issued in November 2017? It’s a very basic question.

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Do you want me to take the call?

Well, in answer, does he know?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I think it would be really helpful—

I’m happy to—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): —if members tried to address the legislation that we’re considering.

Well, actually, it’s fundamental to the—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry, it’d be really helpful if you didn’t talk over me. Could you please resume your seat. You’ll have the rest of your call.

Well, the last time I did that, you took the call off me.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): That’s correct, because you didn’t take it. It’s not helpful to the process of the committee for the member and the Minister to have a cross-bench conversation. If the Minister wants to answer the question, he can stand and take a call, and that’s the process that the House has agreed to, and that’s why we’ve surrendered the four-speech limit. So you can have as many calls as you like and keep asking the same question. It’s up to the Minister to determine whether he answers it or not, but it is expected of a Minister to answer it.

I’m happy to yield to the Minister, providing the Chair will enforce the Standing Order that he’ll keep to the answer that is required and the call is returned to myself. If the Chair gives that reassurance, I’m happy to yield to the Minister to answer the specific question: did—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): OK, if the member could just—

—he know—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): If the member could just resume his seat, and I want to correct the assertion that Mr Seymour made on the same point. During the debates in the House, a member can yield a part of their 10-minute speech—their one 10-minute, allocated speech—in order to have a specific question addressed. The process during the committee stage is different. With the four-call limit removed, members should not yield, but, rather, a series of short calls enable questions to be answered, and members can be confident they will have multiple short calls.

There is a very important question pertinent to Part 1 as to how the murderer in Christchurch got access to his firearm. The law of the time required a referee. What we know is that a police officer has alleged that the referee was not a family member nor a close associate, as required by the law, but a person who lived more than a thousand miles away and who had only met the killer via an internet chatroom. That is extraordinary, and what is even more extraordinary, I would say to Mr Seymour and others in the committee, is that Parliament has spent months debating arms laws, but it has not had access to that very basic fact.

We asked the Minister—and I’m just going to keep asking the Minister because I say that we owe it to the memory of those 51 people who lost their lives—for the answer to the very basic question: was the referee for the killer in the Christchurch tragedy a person who lived a thousand miles away and who had never met the killer? Why that is so pertinent is because it would show that that tragedy was not caused by a flaw in the law, but was caused by the law not being followed.

So while we can have all of the debate about the provisions in Part 1, if this Parliament is to be true to the memory of those 51 people, we owe it to get to the bottom of the facts of what occurred and we owe it to ensure that we go after the failures that occurred that resulted in that tragedy because of the old law being breached, in the event that that was the justification for the issuing of that gun licence that was pertinent to the killer gaining his arsenal of weapons, which he used so abhorrently on 15 March. So, again, I say to the Minister in the chair that he’s got access to the information. He should share it with the committee.

A very simple, pertinent point, and that is: who was the referee who enabled police to issue that gun licence, and was the issuing of that gun licence done lawfully? I would contend to the committee that it could not have been issued lawfully if it was for someone who had only met the murderer via an internet chatroom, and someone—

💬 Michael Wood: Completely irrelevant.

Well, Mr Michael Wood interjects that he thinks it’s irrelevant. He thinks it’s irrelevant as to how the killer in Christchurch got to get a firearms licence, because it’s only through getting a firearms licence that he was able to get the arsenal that enabled him to kill 51 people. I would say to the chair of the select committee—who’s far more interested in ramming legislation through than getting it right or in protecting future New Zealanders—that he has been negligent. Mr Michael Wood has been negligent in his duties as chair of the select committee and in not wanting the answer to that question.

I ask Mr Michael Wood: does he know who the referee was for the Christchurch murderer to gain a firearms licence in November of 2017? He doesn’t want to answer the question. New Zealanders want the answer to the question, and whether it be the chair of the select committee or the Minister of Police, I say this: what are they wanting to hide? How can they look New Zealanders in the eye and say of the most open and transparent Government ever—we know there’s a piece of paper in the police department that will very simply answer the question as to who that referee was. Before this Parliament advances legislation of this sort, we need that answer because we need to know and we need to be absolutely confident that in the arms laws that we are passing, we are fixing the errors that let that tragedy occur in Christchurch. I say that the Minister in the chair has been negligent in the 15 months after that tragedy in not being able to answer that very pertinent question, and I invite him to do so now.

Yet again, we’ve been debating this bill now for over an hour and, yet again, we have heard another speech, which was about a 10-minute speech, on something that has absolutely no relevance to the legislation before us. I would also say that when that member asks what have I done to deal with the issues, Mr Nick Smith, we are here debating the solution to what the issues were. I will answer Mr Smith’s question yet again, but for the very last time.

Mr Smith has been a member of this House for a long time. Mr Smith is also very aware that there is a royal commission at the moment that is looking at how that terrorist obtained a gun, a licence, and his ammunition. Mr Smith is also very aware that as a Minister and as a member of Parliament, first of all, I have no access to what the royal commission is deliberating. They have not put out a draft report, they have not put out a report, they have not released anything. It is not the place for a Minister of the Crown to second-guess what the royal commission is going to come out with, because I do not know. It is the royal commission that is looking at the answers to your questions, Mr Smith.

Now, one thing that I would request members to do is—we’ve got about another half an hour on this section; can we at least—after an hour and a half of general, third reading speeches, it would be good to talk about stuff in this bill, or is it the fact that you agree with the bill to the point where you’ve got no contention and, therefore, you don’t want to talk about the bill? Mr Smith asks what is the solution to the issue we’ve found ourselves in. The solution to the issue we’ve found is this piece of legislation, Mr Smith, and let’s debate this legislation going forward. That is my request. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve been impatiently waiting, but, you know, we all have our faults. I just want to traverse—because there were comments the Minister of Police made in his two contributions prior to this last one that I wish to touch upon. But, first, an earlier comment from Mr Ron Mark, who waved around a piece of paper like Neville Chamberlain—because he has sold firearms owners down the river—and said, “Oh, National are flip-flops.” What he didn’t say was that New Zealand First’s minority report in that inquiry report said that they would oppose all of these measures, including a registry, and what are they doing? They’re voting for it—they’re voting for it. The “Jandal Party” are voting for it. Well, there we go. There is no consistency over there. Of course, they’ll only get to vote for this round, because there’s every chance they won’t get to vote on an amendment in the next Parliament.

The Minister said that this bill would keep those firearms out of the hands of New Zealanders, particularly criminals. Mr Seymour correctly pointed out that it was the first bill in April that addressed that. The Minister said that the fit and proper person test gets new elements in this bill. Well, actually, the advisers told us in select committee that it was simply codifying the elements that are already in the police code for a fit and proper person test. So what is it, Minister? Is it new, or is it simply codifying, as we were told, in legislation the rules that already apply?

The Minister then had the gall to—or, no, maybe it was an astounding revelation. He said new section 24A(1)(j), which is about the patterns of extreme behaviour—he said that would have stopped the Christchurch massacre. Well, what is in the public domain is that the police only became aware of that after the events, so therefore the inclusion of that couldn’t possibly have prevented that happening. But perhaps the astounding revelation we’ve learnt today is that the police were aware of that pattern of behaviour, or what they considered a pattern of behaviour, before 15 March but they felt they didn’t have the authority under law to reject a firearms application from that guy. If that is the case, that is an astounding revelation which should have been in the public domain. Actually, I don’t think it is. I have confidence in what has been publicly reported to date. The police didn’t know until after the event, and therefore the change that the Minister claimed would have prevented it most certainly would not have. There’ll be more to say about that fit and proper test when we come to Part 5. I was just responding to comments and claims the Minister had made in this part in his contribution.

So my questions I do have for the Minister, specifically on my Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in Part 1, which I was finishing last night and got the last 20 seconds of this morning—firstly, on the pest control. The Minister last night said, “Nah, it’s all about territorial authorities’ pest control plans.” If that is the case and that is, in fact, what the regulations are today for commercial pest control, Minister, and you don’t want to adopt my SOP—I think that’s a mistake, by the way. My SOP applies to all owners of rural-zoned land, which would accept the fact that they’re not all farmers or productive owners of land. But pests are still a problem on that land, and, what is more, pests do not respect fences and borders, so if the pests grow on one piece of unproductive land, nothing’s going to stop them going to the farm next door and creating havoc and damage there. So, firstly, Mr Nash, you should accept my SOP on the basis that it does have a legitimately broader application to owners of rural-zoned land.

But even if you refuse on that basis, then do one thing—do one thing to give confidence to those that own and work the land, and that is remove the words “that have detriment of significance”. As you yourself said, this is all about pest control issues and plans approved by territorial authorities. If that is the case, if that is truly the case, then the words “detriment of significance” are unneeded, and all they do is pose a potential bureaucratic hurdle that those farm owners and workers will have to jump over and through just to get the tools that they actually need to help control pests on their property.

I also have questions on Part 1 on my SOP for sport shooting. The Minister last night said, while it’s not the sort of sports shooting I was referring to—International Practical Shooting Confederation, the three-gun stuff, the Service Rifle Association stuff—the Minister last night—[Time expired]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ve tabled an amendment to the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 511 that I hope he may be willing to answer some questions on. Then I hope I may be able to speak to it further. I’d like to ask the Minister of Police for the rationale behind why quite invasive impacts on people’s personal medical details, which could potentially go back many, many years, are included in this legislation. I’ve proposed, in a tabled amendment, that there be some deletions within his SOP. They’re namely around the requirements for an applicant to provide the name of their doctor and their contact details to police when making an application, and also the requirement for police to notify an applicant’s medical professional should they be ones that get a firearms licence. Those are contained within clauses 34, 35, and 36. Later in the SOP, in clause 83, there’s a requirement for a medical practitioner, if they have concerns about a licence holder, to inform police around those concerns. There’s also no requirement in there for the medical practitioner to inform the actual licence holder themselves that the medical practitioner has made such a notification to police.

This, on the surface, I say to the Minister, feels like an intense invasion into the private medical details of individuals. It also would act as a disincentive for people—and, we know, mostly men that are licence holders, who may be more likely than others to withhold their background when it comes to their medical information. It would act as a disincentive for people to seek help in the system. And I say to the Minister: these are intrusive powers. These are powers that go far and beyond what any person would normally want to have to offer. And these powers could go back many, many years. Imagine a situation where a 50-year-old man decides he wants to get into shooting because it’s a passion he’s wanted to pursue and was able to later in his life. Imagine the situation where that individual, through their teens or in their twenties, suffered from depression or suffered from some difficult circumstances in their life. That background could be held against them in the future when they seek a firearms licence. And I imagine an answer might come back which suggests, “Well, look, there’ll be limitations on how far it can go back.” and, “Well, the police will be reasonable in this.” But, within the requirements for the police commissioner to issue some guidance notes and advise health practitioners what they can actually notify the police on, there’s very broad powers for the commissioner to put in pretty much anything he wants around what a health practitioner should provide to police by way of a notification.

Disincentivising people—licence holders—disincentivising men, who, we know, don’t inform or seek help, to get assistance when they need it. Disincentivising licence holders to be upfront with their doctors about what they might be going through in their life I would suggest is actually, overall, detrimental to the public health and detrimental to the mental health and mental wellbeing of licence holders in general. Yes, it’s important that we consider these matters, but these types of intrusive powers which enable police to delve into the medical records of individuals seeking a licence and the ability for a health practitioner to, behind the back of a licence holder, inform police about what a person might be going through, I suggest to the Minister, are powers that shouldn’t be there and go far and above what is reasonable.

If we’re to consider these types of issues, we have to consider the context of existing powers and other pieces of legislation. I mean, the Civil Aviation Act at the moment requires similar requirements there around people who are seeking a pilot’s licence or people who do have a pilot’s licence. I know, as someone who does hold a commercial pilot’s licence and knows many people in the aviation sector, that those types of requirements act as a disincentive to those pilots to seek assistance, and they withhold things from their doctors. Do we really want all the licence holders out there to be withholding personal struggles or personal difficulties that they’re going through because of legislation like this? I wonder if the Minister has an answer to that particular question.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I just want to reflect on a few of the Minister’s comments, especially around my colleague Nick Smith, who’s raised a very sore point with the Government. Mr Smith was raising the point of the fact we had a horrible, horrible, one of the worst days in New Zealand’s history, 15 March last year: 51 lives destroyed, many families ripped apart. The community of Christchurch went through a bloody tough few weeks.

The fact that this happened 15 months ago and then the Minister, in his previous speech, said, on 22 March, about a week later, he had a report from the police which stated all processes were followed. The Minister then said we had to find a solution to what the issues were. A solution to why a terrorist went on a spree which resulted in New Zealand’s worst day.

Now I’ll put it to the Minister: the solution to what the issues were—you are the solution; you are the issue, Minister. You are the issue. The fact is that this policeman, a long-serving police officer, came out in various media organisations in the last week stating that the proper processes weren’t followed. Now, according to these reports, he raised this the following months—two months later—to the New Zealand Police, and the most open and transparent Government, the very police Minister, has the cheek to sit here and say he knows nothing about it. It’s a disgruntled police officer.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! It won’t take much for the member to get his contribution so far in order and relevant to the bill. We’re doing Part 1, so if he can make those points and make them relevant to the bill—it won’t be difficult, and he’ll be in order.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just on Brett Hudson’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), especially Part 1—

💬 Brett Hudson: Good SOP.

It’s a very good SOP. My question is, to the Minister: can he put his hand on his heart and say that he didn’t know? Because this very police officer raised these concerns to the police two months after the fact. And, in the meantime, the Government has gone after law-abiding citizens, a quarter of a million of them, who are very caring people. They are responsible. They undertake extensive training to get their gun licences. They care for their environment because without the environment they wouldn’t be able to go hunt. Yet the Government has attacked these law-abiding citizens the last 15 months, and the police Minister didn’t disclose the fact that proper processes weren’t followed.

In the meantime, the celebrity Prime Minister goes over to America and tells everyone she’s banned high-powered firearms. Yet the most open and transparent Government haven’t disclosed the fact this proper process wasn’t followed.

The National Party—I think my hard-working colleague here Brett Hudson—put up a very good bill last year to give police the ability to search for illegal firearms on gang members. Police can stop a gang member and search them for illegal firearms. Yet the Jacinda Ardern Government voted it down and spent the last 15 minutes going after very responsible, caring, law-abiding citizens, being gun owners.

So my question is, to the police Minister, tell this House, tell the law-abiding citizens out there, the gun owners, that he truly didn’t know about the very fact that the proper process under the old law wasn’t followed. That’s my question to the Minister.

I’m not going to answer those questions again, because I think I’ve answered them about four times, but I will just make one correction to the member Hamish Walker. The man who makes the allegations is not a police officer; he’s a former police officer and has been a former police officer for quite a long time. But, yet again, we get another five-minute speech that doesn’t mention anything in the bill.

Jami-Lee Ross talked about health practitioners. We actually believe—this goes also to Mr Seymour’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 458 and Mr Hudson’s SOP on this as well. What we do believe is that currently Police is not maximising the opportunity to draw on the knowledge of health practitioners to enable early identification in the consequential management to the risk of self-harm, of death, by firearm. I had a meeting with Rural Women New Zealand, and they talked about the fact that one of the greatest fears they have is when their man disappears to the back of the farm in tough times and doesn’t return. Now, what we’re doing here is we’re not obliging health practitioners, we’re not saying they must contact police whenever they have concerns; it says they should consider contacting police. In fact, as I think Mr Hudson alluded to in his second reading speech, what we’re putting in place at the moment is actually no more than is in law anyway. What we want to do, and what we’re asking the police to do, Mr Ross, is actually notify the health practitioner that their patient does have firearms.

But this isn’t about relitigating anyone’s past and looking at a mental health episode that might have happened 20, 30, 40 years ago and saying you’re not fit and proper. This is actually using what we believe is information to determine if someone is fit and proper, but it is not a way to say that someone cannot have a licence. It’s about managing the licence process. When the original bill was submitted to the House, it was tougher. The Privacy Commissioner had a look at this and he made some strong recommendations, which I do believe were picked up by the select committee; so I think where we’ve landed on this is actually the right place. The reason I say that is because most suicides by firearm are rarely preceded by attendance at a mental health service or a hospital for self-harm. For a person who is undergoing a mental health episode at that point in time, firearms make is of significant concern. So what we’re saying is the doctor should consider contacting police under certain circumstances—that’s all.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I would like to take another call for New Zealand First. Look, it is interesting sitting here and listening to this conversation as it unfolds right now, and I guess, if there’s one thing that it does reinforce, and it doesn’t matter where the contributions are coming from in the House, there is clearly concern around a number of aspects of this bill. New Zealand First made no secret of it. We very publicly—and recently, on the black and white—

💬 David Seymour: You’re still voting for it.

Well, that’s right, Mr Seymour, because, you know, ultimately, at the end of the day, one is charged with the privilege and responsibility of delivering stable, coherent, capable, reliable government, and in doing so, and as the member knows, when he was in a coalition Government, at times he had to do things to support the Government that he may not necessarily have 100 percent agreed with. But you do your best as a constructive member of the Government, as Mr Seymour did when he was in Government, and holding a privileged position, to do whatever you can—your caucus does whatever it can—to change.

I think the greatest thing that the New Zealand First caucus has achieved is actually getting the independent arms authority now on the table. We would have liked it to have been passed before the House lifted on 6 August, but, clearly, things such as COVID and a range of other things have worked against us, and we are determined, and we have a commitment from Labour—I’m looking for the same commitment from National—that, post-formation of a Government, we will continue with a pledge that the Labour caucus has given us at this point in time, and given us absolutely faithfully, and the Minister has repeated in his opening comments, that we will establish this independent arms authority.

The comments that have been made, and the questions that have been asked right now by the Hon Nick Smith, and a number of others, I have to say, are fair questions, aren’t they? They’re fair questions. And it does raise this question, overall, about the level of confidence and competence that the Police have demonstrated over a period of time in the administration of good firearms legislation, and about their ability. And one of the submissions that kept reappearing and reappearing—and I went back through the submissions, Mr Hudson—was people’s concern about the ability of the police to interpret the Act as they saw appropriate, and implement it the way they saw appropriate, and adjust the regulations through the Regulations Review Committee, which, actually, the Opposition played a part in as well, by the way, as they saw appropriate, and to make changes.

Now, all of this is leading to—and this debate today is reaffirming that there has been an undermining of confidence now on the part of firearms owners in the police’s ability to do this job, to the point that you now, actually, face down the line non-compliance issues through people just simply not having confidence. We cannot go forward as a nation with firearms legislation and with a situation between police as the enforcers and, actually, the people who help write the legislation and advise the Minister, when things are in the state that they currently are in for the firearms owners. So that reinforces a position that New Zealand First had to talk about, going back to what Justice Thorp originally offered up in 1997. And we think, actually, on balance, he was right. Do police necessarily want to go with that? Probably not. Do police think they’re capable of carrying on administering the law? They probably do. But, actually, that’s not the point. This House decides, and Labour has agreed, and I thank them for that agreement.

💬 Brett Hudson: Put it in the bill.

Well, that’s a good question, Mr Hudson. So it isn’t in the bill. And it would’ve been in the bill, but we don’t have it in the bill, but what I have is an iron-clad pledge and a promise that we will attack that legislation as soon as we get back.

But my message to Mr Hudson and to others who want to criticise New Zealand First is: fine, but don’t give us 12.7 percent when the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners conducted a survey of who in the firearms fraternity actually voted for New Zealand First—12.7 percent; 12.7 percent. So nine MPs and four Cabinet Ministers are expected to win their way on that. Well, it doesn’t work that way. But let’s see what we get.

The campaign issue will be around sporting shooters and their ability—

💬 David Seymour: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I’m really eager to get on to debating the amendments proposed in the parts of this bill. I can’t see how voter support in certain organisations and what the campaign of the election is are relevant to parts of this bill. Now, I don’t mind if this debate goes on all morning, so long as I get to debate the actual amendments and the parts of the bill. If he wants to keep on going on that way, we’ll have the political debate in the committee, but I just want your assurance we’re going to get to the actual content that the committee is supposed to be debating.

Mr Chairperson—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): No, I’ll make a ruling, thank you. There are aspects of what the member has said that are absolutely correct. I have been listening very carefully to the contribution, and I have to say relevance is becoming an issue on both sides. I gave the—

💬 David Seymour: Not in the end—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Let me finish. I gave the speaker who spoke before the Hon Ron Mark, Hamish Walker, some encouragement around that. I thought the member the Hon Ron Mark’s contribution has mostly been in order, but it’s a difficult situation when you’re in the Chair of balancing out the entirety of the member’s contribution where, at the end of it, you might think, “Well, that was 60 percent relevant.”, etc. So it’s really up to this committee: the committee has it in its hands. The member has 49 seconds remaining, and he does, actually, have the ability to bring what he has said thus far in order.

Thank you, Mr Chair. So the question around the firearms registration system, which has been hotly debated here, and in the amendments to the Act—it’s fair to say that in the past, we have argued against such a thing. And other members on that side of the House have voted in favour of such a registration system. The point is, we are now putting into this legislation a mechanism that will delay the implementation of that registration for three years, and there will be a post-implementation review. That post-implementation review, New Zealand First hopes—

💬 Brett Hudson: So we waste the money and then say it didn’t work.

—well, we’ll insist—will look at all of the arguments that have been put here tonight and look at the original objectives laid out by the police and espoused by the Minister—[Time expired]

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. As I’ve just raised in a point of order, I’m very eager to get on to debating the parts of the bill. However, I think the reason it’s been so difficult to do that—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry; are you raising a point of order now?

No, I thought you gave me the call; but it’s a call. No, sorry—I’m taking my call, yeah.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): No, it’s just that you started off by talking about a point of order.

I referred to a point of order I made earlier. I apologise for any confusion.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Yes, and that’s been ruled on. That’s why I’m asking.

Yeah, yeah—and I just mentioned it, you know. I wasn’t trying to relitigate it or anything like that.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Don’t do that.

No, I would never dream of it, Mr Chair. We are very eager to get on to the details of the bill. One of the reasons that’s been so challenging is that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Stuart Nash, started with a range of, frankly, irrelevant content that’s had to be responded to and mostly refuted, and then the New Zealand First member Ron Mark has got up and talked about a whole lot of politics that are not actually relevant to the bill. Nevertheless, it does need to be responded to. What I’d say to the New Zealand First member is that I acknowledge it’s unparliamentary to call people by other than their title or their full name, but I did like the description of his behaviour, on this legislation, as “Ronnie-come-lately”, because the fact of the matter is, we’ve got a New Zealand First party that voted for the first tranche, is now voting for a register of all firearms, is now voting to invade the doctor-patient relationship in relation to firearms, is voting to put damaging regulations that will kill many clubs, and is saying that it’s OK—in the way that, unfortunately, in our country, abusive spouses sometimes say, “We’ll be different next time.” If you vote for New Zealand First, they’ll be different next time. That’s the message that he’s trying to get across.

I’ll also put a series of questions to the Minister that he so far has not answered. They’re questions that need to be answered, coming out of this debate that’s arisen throughout the discussion. One is: can he be sure that it’s going to be effective to take firearms off law-abiding firearm owners, which is what he said is his intention, if there is still going to be illegal importation of firearms? He hasn’t given us that guarantee. He hasn’t addressed that question.

I asked him, could he tell us what countries have achieved 90 percent compliance with their firearms register. Because that was the real test. He was up all night thinking about my speech. He gave a flaming response to it this morning—first thing, as soon as he got his feet under the desk this morning—but that’s the simple question: the matter of fact. He talked about cars; we’re not here to debate cars; we’re here to debate firearms. And where in the world have they had 90 percent compliance with a register that’s been effective? It might interest the Minister to know that his department, the Police, recently released an OIA request which found that over half the firearms seized by police have the registration markings ground off them. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Tells you something about the real world out there and how effective a register might just be. So that was a question I wanted him to answer.

But the other question I had for the Minister that he hasn’t answered at this stage is a question around: does he believe that the law, as it was on 14 March or in the months preceding, when the Christchurch terrorist got his licence, made the Christchurch terrorist a fit and proper person? And this is important to this bill, because the Minister in his opening address said we are changing the definition of a fit and proper person so that the Christchurch terrorist could not have got a licence. Well, my question to the Minister is simple: was he a fit and proper person, according to the law, when he did get a licence? If he wasn’t, then changing the law is not going to help much; it just means he would have been breaking different laws. I don’t see how that helps those people slain in the worst terrorist incident in our nation’s history. It’s a waste of time.

Interestingly, he may have answered the question with “I don’t know.” when he said, “I’m waiting for the royal commission.” If that really is his answer, then I want to ask the Minister of Police: what is the point of legislating now if he doesn’t know what problem is he’s trying to solve and he knows he doesn’t know because he said he’s waiting for the royal commission to tell him? And, finally, I want to ask: does he believe the Police press statement on March 19 or does he believe the allegations in the press? He’s avoided that question. He hasn’t actually said which one he believes.

But I want to get to Part 1 and specifically new section 1A(2)(a) within that part, in clause 5, and that says that the regulatory regime—[Time expired]

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have some questions to the Minister of Police on my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) on sports shooting exemptions. Last night, when I first introduced this and the Minister of Police responded then, he raised issues, saying, “Well, it would allow lots more people to have exemptions to use prohibited firearms. It’s not really a sport, because it’s not in the Olympic Games or the Commonwealth Games.”, and he also said, “Oh, the National Rifle Association (NRA) would just be able to come here and set up clubs and we wouldn’t be able to stop them.” Well, I’d just like to challenge the Minister on that. I have some questions for him to actually consider and answer.

The first part is: is the Minister actually aware that most—not all but most—of the individuals who participate in these sorts of sport shooting events that might use prohibited category firearms, such as the International Practical Shooting Confederation three-gun competitions and the Service Rifle Association competitions—there are others but they are the predominant ones. Is he aware that most—admittedly not all—of those people are people that, for instance, are pistol users and hold B-category endorsements, so are already subject to, and followers of, the conditions which he has acknowledged in this committee, in this debate this morning, who are reliable and trustworthy and can be depended on to hold and use their firearms appropriately. They’re the same people. So it doesn’t introduce 2,000 more people that could possibly have prohibited category firearms or some sort of restricted firearm. It actually is a much smaller increment. So what, Minister, is the evidence that the risk profile would change substantially to not warrant such an exemption?

On the matter of the legitimacy or validity of the sporting competitions: on what grounds is it that a sport or a sporting code specific discipline is only legitimate if it is part of the roster of events at an Olympic or Commonwealth Games? I hold that that is a complete fallacy. It is a straw man, for one thing, but it’s a complete fallacy to put forward. There are many sports. There are certainly many disciplines within sporting codes that are not part of the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games, but they are very real and they are particularly very real to the participants of them, many of whom are able to compete for world championship medals and trophies. They hold them as valid as any other world championship, medal, or trophy. So on what grounds can it be argued that a sport is not a real sporting competition if it’s not in the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games? I contend that it isn’t a basis for argument and, therefore, it’s not a basis to refuse to have this sort of sports shooting exemption in this country.

The third point the Minister made on the NRA coming over and setting up clubs—I highlight for the Minister’s attention my SOP. It says that that must be certified by the commissioner. I’ll put it as a question: does he have confidence in the ability for the commissioner to make reasonable determinations on what should be certified? I know I do, and I’d certainly hope that he would too. And if not the commissioner today—because it is the police that are administering the Arms Act today and if this bill passes—but into the future, would he have confidence? Would he expect to have confidence in the head of an independent body that might administer the Arms Act to likewise make certifications under appropriate grounds?

So, actually, Minister, each of the three points you raised as to why the sport shooting exemption shouldn’t be approved I think I’ve answered, and I’d like you to come back with responses to my questions, because, in the face of that, I can’t see any reason why any member of this committee, except maybe the Greens, who have always been staunchly opposed to firearms, would vote against it. I’d certainly look across to Mr Mark. Here’s an opportunity for New Zealand First to vote for an SOP that will actually give firearms owners one of the things that I’ve called for. Stand up and be an independent party; vote in favour of it. We’ll win. The firearms owners will get what they deserve, and that’s democracy in action. It’s actually MMP in action, Mr Mark. So here’s your opportunity. Let’s do this.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. David Seymour gave another five-minute speech. I don’t think there were any questions there relevant to the bill; so I’ve got nothing to say—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! It’s the Chair that makes that determination, not the Minister in the chair.

OK. No questions worth answering there. Mr Hudson, I did talk about your Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) last night, and what I will do is I will reiterate the points I made last night. But the other thing I would say is I used the example that, in fact, there are no sports in the Commonwealth Games or the Olympic Games that use banned firearms. I did not say that if they are not part of the Olympic Games or the Commonwealth Games, they are not a sport. I just used the example.

Now, one thing I would say is keep in mind the purpose of this legislation, and the purpose of the bill beforehand is to ensure that we remove these firearms from our communities. It’s why we voted; it’s why, Mr Hudson, you voted; it’s why your party voted to remove these firearms from our communities. Now, as we know, every single exemption we put in place—it would put one in place with regards to pest control—just chips away a little bit at that; it just opens up the door.

Now, we turn to pest control. I’ve talked about your SOP on that a couple of times as well. We have said that if, in fact, there is a bona fide reason for a farmer to have to use these weapons for pest control, we’ll give them the exemption. Now, in terms of the sport shooting SOP, there are numerous international competitions and events that use these prohibited firearms, as the member has alluded to himself. We estimate that, even if we have an exemption just limited to three-gun, let alone all the other competitions, there would be around about 2,000 exemptions. So what Mr Hudson’s SOP recommends is that we open this exemption up to every bona fide international competition—

💬 Brett Hudson: All of them are pistol-holder licences.

No, that’s not true, Mr Hudson.

💬 Brett Hudson: They have to be to compete in three-gun, Minister. One of the guns is a pistol. They have to hold a pistol endorsement.

No, we’re talking about your SOP, Mr Hudson, which talks about opening this up to every single bona fide international competition. What that does is it opens the door to anyone who wants their AR-15, their AK-47, or the other banned firearms back so they can compete. The aim of this legislation, I must say, is to remove these dangerous firearms from our communities and, Mr Hudson, the SOP 450 would open not a crack in the door but a massive gap to allow a whole lot of people through, because if we said that any bona fide international competition that used these banned firearms would get an exemption, we would see thousands of applications for people to have licences for banned firearms, and that goes against what we are trying to achieve in this bill. In fact, I believe it would fundamentally erode the basic principle behind this bill. So just to clarify once again, Mr Hudson, I will not support your SOP 450, for the reasons that I’ve outlined.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you to the Minister for answering my questions relating to health notifications. I’m not persuaded by his arguments, and I do believe that what is going into this bill by way of his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 408 is an attack on the private, confidential relationship between a doctor and the licence holder. I think, Minister, this will be detrimental to the mental health of the very people that the Minister is trying to assist. I did hear him when he said that he’s spoken to rural women, and there are real concerns out there. I did hear him when he said they’re looking. The Minister sees this as an early detection opportunity to try and assist people.

Well, Minister, this, in fact, will act as a disincentive to people seeking help. We know already that, for the people who are most at risk when it comes to mental health and detrimental elements of their own mental wellbeing, putting in place a legislative requirement where doctors can abuse that relationship—behind the back of the licence holder, as it turns out, as well. That individual’s love and joy, which might be pistol shooting, it might be going out hunting once a month—the risk to that person’s love and joy and livelihood being taken away if they open up with their doctor about how they’re feeling, that is a detrimental risk that actually will harm people and will lead to people not seeking assistance. It will lead to people further hiding the challenges they want.

The Minister’s Government is pouring nearly $2 billion into providing greater mental health assistance to New Zealanders. The Minister’s Government is trying to put in place better primary health services in this area, only to then go and say to all of the licence holders that if you open up to your doctor and you tell your doctor how you’re feeling, and your doctor is a cautious doctor who thinks, “Goodness, if I don’t go and tell the police about this, then, if something happens, I’m going to be held liable.”, that is going to see licence holders say, “No, I’m not going to share my feelings. I’m not going to open up. I’m just going to keep hiding it.”, which is the very problem we have with men in this country killing themselves, because they don’t open up. They keep it confidential. They keep it quiet because they fear the ramifications.

I say to the committee and to the Minister that if we actually want to help those men, providing more services and getting more education in front of them is the way to go. If the real concern there is that if doctors have information that is going to actually save lives, and there’s a real and present danger and threat to someone’s life—let’s say someone goes into the doctor and says, “Hey, I’ve got a firearm at home. I think this afternoon I’m going to go and do something to myself.”, there’s already a legal ability for the doctor to do something to notify emergency services. There’s already the ability for doctors to do something if they feel there’s a real and present threat to the person’s life and safety and there’s a danger to others. Saying to all the licence holders out there, though, “The legislation is going to require you to shut your mouth if you want to hold on to your firearms.”, that is going to hurt the overall outcomes that we’re seeking.

It will also create a culture within shooting clubs, within the firearms community, where they’ll say to their mates, “Hey, you know what? If you are feeling a bit down, talk to us. Don’t talk to your doctor, because if you talk to your doctor, then something might happen. You might lose your firearms. They’ll go and tell the police. The police could make you go and undertake further medical treatment.” That is a fear that will be existing within the firearms community. There’ll be little boys out there who see their fathers who are involved in shooting clubs, and their fathers will say to their little boys, “Hey, be careful. Don’t talk to your doctor about how you’re feeling, because later on down the track, your doctor might go and tell the police.”

Whether we like it or not, there’s a distrust between police and the firearms community. I know police are trying to do the right thing, and I know the firearms community think they’re trying to do the right thing as well to ensure that they can enjoy their sport in a free and fair and reasonable manner, but there is that distrust there. By allowing an invasion, an attack on the private, confidential relationship between people and their doctors in a way which probably will have no appreciable benefits, but actually lead to people shutting their mouths about how they’re feeling, I say that’s a bad change to this law that shouldn’t go ahead. If the Minister, however, does want to pursue this further, then I at least ask that he considers inserting into his SOP the requirement for a doctor to at least inform the patient that they’ve made the notification to the police, and that’s on my tabled amendment. If a doctor is going to exercise that ability to breach the confidentiality, they should at least tell the licence holder too.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I thought it was never going to happen. It’s a great pleasure to take a call on Part 1 of the Arms Legislation Bill in the committee stage. But, before I get on to the points I want to raise on that, I need to raise some issues that the Hon Ron Mark raised, because he was giving me a psychoanalytic test of some sort, I think, and I just need to defend the patch a little bit. Because if you go back in time, he spent a lot of time talking about the arms inquiry 2015-16 parliamentary time, a very competent inquiry run under the stewardship of Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi. It took a lot of time to consider a lot of issues that are now being dealt with to some extent in the course of this bill. It made a report back to the Minister at the time. Some of those things were acted on; some of them weren’t. I reject his criticism of that inquiry. I think it was very well run, and I think the results were appropriate at the time.

What’s transpired since then is that we’ve had some extraordinary actions take place. We’ve had two bills brought to the House, one under significant urgency and this one ill-considered and under further urgency. The Hon Ron Mark himself said this bill is not appropriate, yet he is supporting it. So what we’re doing here is pushing a bill through Parliament that, frankly, has got very little support in Parliament and is going to be altered the moment the next Parliament sits. I don’t follow that at all. I think that’s a very flawed policy.

So the other issue that’s been raised by the Minister, in fact, when he opened the address last night and talked about the fact that we’re removing guns from the crims in New Zealand—we’re not removing guns from the crims at all. If you look at the police statistics on this when we were presented with the information at the beginning of this bill, they estimated there could be as many as 250,000 of these arms in our community. What did we do? We collected 56,000 of them. So on the basis of the information we were given, there could well be 150,000 of these guns still out there. Now, those guns have not been handed in, they’ve not been surrendered, and they must be still out there. They are inevitably going to fall into the hands of criminals because if you want to sell one, who are you going to sell to? You’re not going to sell it to a licensed gun owner, because you can’t. So the whole system is flawed.

So we’ve got a bill in the House that’s based on flawed information and that Ron Mark himself—who spent a lot of time in the course of his address to us, this last address to us, talking about 1997, which is a New Zealand First trait. They go back that far usually. He spent a lot of time talking about the Thorp report. That was 1997. The world’s moved on dramatically since then. So I want the Minister to justify to us why we are pushing a bill through in significant haste with ill consideration, and we’re going to change it the moment we have a new Parliament sit. I think that’s extraordinary. I think the Minister should justify to us why he’s wasting Parliament’s time with a bill that’s arisen from a process that’s clearly flawed. And now we have all sorts of stories out there about how the licensee, in fact, got his licence and how many other people in New Zealand have achieved or got licences under the same circumstances. It would be very interesting to know that.

The other thing I want to talk about in this short time on Part 1 is the issue that Brett Hudson has raised in the course of his Supplementary Order Paper, and that’s the issue that came up a number of times during submissions of pests and agriculture and the potential to use these types of guns for the elimination of those pests. Now, we listened to a number of submissions from Federated Farmers and others on this very issue. I, obviously, have a gun licence; I’ve declared that before. I’ve never used a gun that’s fired more than five shots at a time. In fact, if I fire five shots, I’m almost sitting down on my seat by the time I get to the fifth one, because I’m getting a bit older and it’s quite difficult to get them all out there, particularly with the steel ammunition we’ve got to use these days, because it’s terrible stuff. It’s brutal. But I do think that it’s a useful addition to the bill, but the problem is it’s not really going to achieve, in my view, the result it wants to achieve. That’s been raised a number of times by Brett Hudson. So I’d like the Minister to very quickly tell us how many times he thinks this clause that they’ve introduced around pest control will be used and what the demand for it is going to be as we move forward.

So I’m disappointed with the process we’ve gone through. I think it’s just not helping the cause at all.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’ve spoken, I think, four times on pest control, and I’ve answered all those questions. But to Mr Jami-Lee Ross, I need to answer some of the questions that that member’s put forward, and, in doing that, Mr Ross, I’ll also address Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 447 from Mr Hudson. But I’ll come back to Mr Ross’s questions.

SOP 447 wants us to put “immediate threat” in terms of when the doctor must consider informing the police. Under the status quo—

💬 Brett Hudson: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I would’ve allowed this to go, because, obviously, you’re in control of relevance, but the Minister, by using the words that he’s going to debate my SOP, SOP 447—that’s a Part 5 SOP. I won’t have the Minister debate the—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): No, that’s not correct, actually. It alters Part 5 of the principal Act. It’s in Part 1. So e noho.

Look, I’ll put yours aside, Mr Hudson. Mr Ross, we thought long and hard about this, because you are right: there is a fundamental relationship, there is a confidential relationship, between the medical practitioner and the patient, and that is sacrosanct. You know, the patient has to be able to trust their doctor that they are going to do the right thing. Under current legislation—principle 11 of the Privacy Act 1993, and in the Health Information Privacy Code 1994—a health practitioner may disclose information if they believe “on reasonable grounds that the disclosure is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious threat to public health or [private] safety”. That’s what exists in the law at the moment.

The bill is seeking to reduce the threshold for notifying police to deliver a better outcome for firearms licence holders. We worked closely with the Privacy Commissioner on this and what it would look like, and we also worked closely with the medical fraternity as well, just to ensure that we got that part of it right as well. So what the bill provides is that a medical practitioner “must consider”—and that word is “consider”—“notifying the Police” if they consider “that the health condition of the licence holder is such that, in the interests of the safety of individuals or the public, the licence holder should not be permitted to use or possess a firearm; or, should only be permitted to use or possess a firearm subject to any limitations that may be warranted by the health condition of the licence holder”.

Now, under clause 83, new section 91, if you have a look on page 106—you mentioned the fact that a doctor may not go to police or may consider being more conservative in his and her approach because they open themselves up to liability. What we actually did is remove the health practitioner’s liability in this case, simply for the reason that you’re talking about—the reason that you mentioned, Mr Ross. The other thing we did is that we said that if a health practitioner notifies the police that they believe someone is of sufficient state that the police need to deal with that—their licence needs to be removed or revoked or suspended—then the police have to go to someone independent of that medical practitioner. So, in essence, if the police decided to act on this in a way that meant that the firearms licence holder lost their licence, then that licence holder would be notified and an independent practitioner or expert would then come in and do an assessment as well. So the way the regime is set up—and this was mentioned under consultation with the Privacy Commissioner—is such that there’s a degree of independence from the doctor who has made that initial complaint if police want to carry this through and revoke or suspend the licence.

So we think we have got that balance right in terms of (a) protecting the privacy of the individual, (b) protecting the safety of the individual and our community, and (c) providing a level of assurance to the medical community that they won’t be held liable if, in fact, you know, in hindsight, a call they made might have been the wrong one. It’s the reason why we put the word “consider” as opposed to “compel”, and it is the reason why we removed that liability from the medical fraternity.

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to put a few facts, as I see them, on the record, and I do have some questions for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Stuart Nash, as well. I want to acknowledge the fact that he is standing and taking calls and responding to the questions that are being put to him.

I spent the better part of a decade of my own life involved in anti-terrorism operations overseas. As we saw—

💬 David Seymour: Undercover.

—maybe I should say “preventing terrorist acts overseas.” One observation that I made immediately when we saw the tragedy unfolding in Christchurch last year was that, without doubt, there were going to be red flags that were there in terms of identifying the person involved and the fact that they shouldn’t have been able to obtain firearms legally. Now, in my mind, he probably would have tried other illegal avenues to try and get his hands on black market weapons. But I felt very strongly that there would be red flags there in terms of—and we heard some information come out initially that the gun club, where he had actually been going down and using the firearms, had flagged up to an agency that they had concerns around the person’s mental state.

We’ve now had a retired police officer—and I acknowledge the fact that we don’t know whether it’s a disgruntled employee or whether it’s a police officer, and I want to acknowledge their service—that has come forward with a genuine concern around the vetting process and the process that the alleged offender was subjected to in terms of being able to gain access legally to firearms. I would ask the Minister—because I know that the Hon Nick Smith has put this to him several times, and I know that he has made an attempt to answer it—are you taking seriously the information that has come forward from this person? They have been a serving police officer. Is the Minister taking some proactive action now in verifying and looking to see whether or not, in fact, there was a system failure around the vetting? This is critically important.

Look, the reality of it is that it doesn’t matter how good the system is that you have in place; there is always risk of human failure somewhere in it—there’s no doubt about that. That leads me to my next question to the Minister, which is that, in my view, even as that tragedy was unfolding—and I know the arms officers in the police have copped a bit of criticism throughout the debate, and I acknowledge that, because they’ve got to be held to the highest standards and an arms officer’s job is critically important for making sure that that vetting process is done properly and that they are making sure the community is protected from someone of poor character actually getting access to firearms. But I would ask the Minister: what was done in the 24 hours to 48 hours afterwards by the Government—by himself as Minister, and the Government—to analyse and look at the process and what had gone on and to react quickly to make sure that there was a response to make sure that the country wasn’t put into a situation similar to that in the following 48 to 72 hours? Because we know, historically, if you look around the world, copycat attacks can very quickly follow an act like that.

So I’m very interested to hear from the Minister what the Government’s response was initially and what has led them to bring this legislation into the House, because by bringing this legislation into the House, you would have to assume that the Government and the Minister have actually discovered that there were weaknesses in the system. That’s what you’re saying. You’re saying that, by bringing this legislation into the House, there were weaknesses in the system—what were they? What were the weaknesses? What was highlighted in the review that you should have immediately undertaken within hours of the tragedy starting to unfold? What were the weaknesses that were highlighted? Why has the Government responded in the way that they have?

We haven’t supported it. I’ll tell you why: because, to be honest with you, I don’t think that the real threat to this country and the safety of our citizens lies in law-abiding sport shooters that belong to firearms clubs—I just don’t. I don’t think the risk to our people and to this country lies in people that are undertaking pest management and eradication—I just don’t. I feel very strongly that the threat to our nation, to our people, and to the public is from organised crime and gangs.

I was in Taradale, late last year, where gangs had firearms on the street, and we averted, just by good luck rather than good management, a tragedy—[Time expired]

I move, That the question be now put.

David Seymour’s amendment to clause 16 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 456 is out of order as being inconsistent with a previous decision of the committee.

The question was put that the remaining amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 456 in the name of David Seymour to Part 1 be agreed to.