Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

I’d like to thank members across the House for their unanimous support for the legislation progressing. I do think it will be an additional set of tools for the New Zealand Police to help to ensure that some of our worst offenders cannot access firearms and therefore it can help to reduce firearms-related harm.

To recap on the bill, as a result of this bill, the Arms Act of 1983 will be amended. It will enable the courts to issue a firearms prohibition order against an offender who is 18 years or older who’s been convicted of a qualifying offence that they committed after the amendments under this bill have been made. The eligible offences are all serious offences with sentences of more than five years. They include serious offences against the Arms Act: serious offences including murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, manslaughter, discharging a firearm with intent to injure, aggravated robbery, strangulation and sexual violation offences with intent to cause harm or grievous bodily harm, violent sexual offences, terrorist offences, including planning a terrorist act; and participating in an organised criminal group for the purposes laid out in the Crimes Act 1961.

Once subject to a firearms prohibition order, those people are prohibited from accessing, possessing, or using a firearm, airgun, imitation firearm, pistol, restricted weapon, pistol carbine conversion kit, any part of a firearm magazine prohibited item, or ammunition. Being subject to a firearms prohibition order will also place restrictions on a person’s ability to associate with people who have firearms or to be around firearms unless they are in a secure storage; stay where firearms are stored or are available; join or visit shooting clubs, ranges, or galleries; attend any activity that uses firearms; and visit places where firearms are made, repaired, modified, or sold—i.e., gun shops and workshops.

Similar regimes to this are in place in places such as Canada, the UK, and in five different Australian jurisdictions. One of the key differences between this New Zealand bill and several other overseas jurisdictions are the issues around search and surveillance powers. We did carefully consider those as a Government. We made the decision that the existing powers under section 18 of the Search and Surveillance Act of 2012, which already enable the police to carry out warrantless searches in relation to arms offences if there are reasonable grounds to do so—we made the decision that those were sufficient powers at this point for this legislation.

In bringing this legislation forward to the House, the Government’s always mindful of the need to balance the rights and freedoms of New Zealanders. That includes, of course, the right and freedom of New Zealanders to be safe in their own community. We believe that this bill strikes the appropriate balance there. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker O’Connor. Can I just pass on my congratulations as well. I don’t know whether I should be nervous having you in the Chair or not, but congratulations. It’s good to see you there.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Thank you, Mr Mitchell.

Oh, I’ll wait and see. This is a massive lost opportunity by the Government. This firearms prohibition order (FPO) legislation actually could have had some teeth. It could have been meaningful. It could have actually given our front-line police officers the ability to start taking illegal firearms out of the hands of gangs. Sadly, I predict that this is going to be a complete flop. I’ll keep an eye on it. We’ll come back in six months and we’ll find out just how effective it’s been, because this is meant to be addressing an issue that’s in front of us right now. It’s not something that we anticipate happening—we’re not trying to harden our borders because there might be a terror threat. This is something that’s happening right now, right in front of us, every day: shootings, homicides, and illegal firearms; gangs well-armed and arming up even more.

The police asked for the firearms prohibition order as an effective tool for them to be able to deal with that. This isn’t an effective tool. It’s not retrospective at all, so it means there has to be some fresh offending. It goes in front of the judge, and the judge can decide whether or not they’re going to apply an FPO. The police can request one; the judge can decide. They apply the FPO to the defendant and they are then back out on the street, or maybe they get a term of imprisonment—I don’t know. But they have an FPO and they’re back out on the street, and nine times out of ten, they’ll be out reoffending. If it’s a gang member, they’ll be out associating with their mates, and the police are left to try and police them. They generally know who they are.

The Police Association, along with us, said that if you want to make this bill meaningful, if you actually want to allow the police to actually use it, be effective, and be able to stop people and search them and take any firearms that are found, and, by the way, let the criminals know that if they do want to drive on to the street with a firearm in their car, then there’s a much higher likelihood that the police can detect them with that firearm and take action. They need to have a warrantless search power—you need to have an extended search power.

This is status quo. There are no new search powers. The police have already got search powers under the Search and Surveillance Act—they’ve already got section 18. They could use that before this bill came into the House. There’s nothing new in this bill. There’s actually nothing new in this bill other than the fact that the judge now can issue a firearms prohibition order to an offender—that’s it. How this is going to be effective? How are the actual front-line police officers going to use this new piece of legislation to be effective, to clamp down on the gangs, and to keep the public safe? I think it’s going to be an abject failure.

What amazes me is that I put up a Supplementary Order Paper when the Minister was in the House during the committee stage, or maybe it was the second reading—no, I think it was the second reading. I said to him to let’s work across the House and let’s see if we can actually get that warrantless search power that the Police Association asked for—based off what the Australians had done to make sure that their legislation was effective; so there was lots of information there and evidence there, and the Police Association used that in their submission to the select committee—and let’s try and get this actually folded into the bill. Well, the Leader of the House and the Minister of Police and the sponsor of the bill turned around and said, “Oh, you obviously don’t understand. I thought you wanted to get this through. I thought you were supporting it. You know, we’re trying to rush this through to give it to the police, and you obviously don’t understand how the process goes because if we were to do that, it’s going to slow the process down.”

How is it going to slow the process down? It’s quite simply what I’ve done today by bringing a Supplementary Order Paper along, which has been voted down by the Government. There was a compromise in here—there was a compromise in this Supplementary Order Paper—because we removed “premises”, and we made it “public spaces and vehicles”. This is exactly what the Police Association in their submission to the committee said: if you don’t want to go with a full warrantless search power, there’s a compromise solution. This is the compromise solution. What have they done? They’ve voted it down.

I hope that this FPO bill does do what we all want it to achieve, and that is to give our police officers more powers to be able to remove illegal firearms and make our streets safer, make their jobs safer, and make the public safer. My fear is this—and I think probably, sadly, I’m going to be proven right. This bill is almost meaningless. It doesn’t introduce any more powers. It doesn’t give the police any more tools. It allows the court, on their own discretion, to apply an FPO order. We will be watching it, because we have got a continued ongoing rise in violent crime in our country. We should be the safest country in the world. We’re not, and we’ll be watching very closely to see whether or not this bill actually makes the impact that the Minister and the Government have told us that it will. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and may I congratulate you on your appointment to your new position. Nice to see you there.

Firearms-related crime represents a real risk to our community and, in particular, community safety. While firearms licensing and the regulatory regime has been somewhat strengthened already under this Government, there is further scope to reduce the opportunity, particularly for high-risk offenders, to have access to firearms and to, in doing that, further improve public safety.

I want to quickly touch on the history of this bill, because I think it’s important that way back in—I think it was—2013, when Minister Tolley was the Minister of Police, she brought an item to Cabinet back then to raise the issue of firearm prohibition orders, in 2013. And it wasn’t until way into March 2016 and then 2017 under Ministers Collins and Bennett, that’s the third Minister of Police under the previous Government, that we actually saw a Cabinet paper brought on firearm prohibition orders. But still—still—there was no legislation produced from that substantive discussion around the Cabinet table.

The very reason for that was the issue that has just been raised by the member who resumed his seat, Mark Mitchell, and that issue is on search powers that the previous National Government was torn right down the middle on—on whether to breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and have, like New South Wales does, warrantless, causeless searches or to do what this Government has done and to utilise the existing provisions within section 18 of the Search and Surveillance Act to enable firearm prohibition orders to operate in New Zealand.

So I’m proud to be part of a Government that was not only able to make their mind up but able to deliver a bill that will increase safety for New Zealanders. And so I think it’s a great thing that we have done. It’s been a delicate balance in order to be able to get that right, and this bill has been designed to carefully balance the public safety protections offered with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act considerations, alongside considering the restriction on the freedom of movement proposed by this bill. And they are warranted. They are warranted and it’s passed its vet because it makes that better for public safety. So I am proud to see a good bill pass that has got the balance right and that has delivered on something that the previous Government was simply unable to do. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We, obviously, have pointed out in the other speeches during this debate that National supports this bill, the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill, that the Government has brought, and we’ve supported it being passed sooner rather than later, and quickly. We’ve just had the committee stage, we’re now having the third reading, and the bill will be passed. We’ve supported the swift movement on this, because we are conscious of the fact that there is a sense across the community that the Government isn’t on top of the law and order issues in our community.

I live in Auckland and I’m subject to the constant background of sirens, the helicopter flying overhead, the smash and grabs, the ram raids, the shootings across the city, which have increased dramatically this year—more than 35 in the last few months in Auckland. I saw a picture of them scattered all around, particularly around South Auckland and West Auckland but throughout the city, including in the CBD. People are conscious of the sense that things are somewhat out of control. They’re worried about their communities and they’re worried about their families, and they want to know that all members of this House are focused on that as an issue. And we certainly, on this side, are.

It comes on the same day that the Government has just passed another bill which reduces sentences for our worst repeat offenders by repealing the three-strikes legislation, which is a little bit odd. In this bill, they’re creating an extra tool in order to deal with an issue of gun crime and violence in our community at the same time as they’re reducing sentences for our worst repeat offenders. So that, I suppose, sums up the mixed messages that we’ve been receiving from the Government on justice matters and law and order matters for the 4½ years that it’s been in power. It’s been like they’re anti-gang, but they’re also going to give gangs some money, a couple of million, for rehabilitation programmes on drugs and things like that. And so people can’t work out exactly what the message is. Are we tough on crime or are we soft on crime? And many people have concluded that this Government is indeed soft on crime.

But this bill is, I suppose, on the Jekyll-and-Hyde kind of attitude that you get from the Government on crime—the Jekyll or the Mr Hyde, I don’t know which is which—where they’re pretending to be a little bit tougher and introducing a piece of legislation that will, as Minister Hipkins has said, help in some way. It’s not going to solve gun crime in totality. Nobody would expect that it would. But it will create another tool that the police can use and the justice system can employ, to impose these firearm prohibition orders on people who have been sentenced and convicted of crimes involving firearms in particular. You go and shoot somebody, and the chances are when you’re sentenced, part of your sentence will be a prohibition on owning a firearm for 10 years. And we support that.

What we are a little frustrated by is the reluctance of the Government to really expand the search and surveillance opportunities that went hand in hand with this in parts of Australia where similar powers have been introduced. Because, ultimately, yep, they’ve relied on the existing search and surveillance powers, which have a reasonably high test before police officers can go for a warrantless search, such that, in the case of people driving along the road who have a firearm prohibition order against them, that wouldn’t really provide sufficient means for a warrantless search that may be appropriate in the circumstances. And so we see this as a step in the right direction, but not as many steps as we would like. We continue to be concerned about the fact that this Government’s response to the surge in crime across our community hasn’t been sufficiently robust in order to get on top of it. New Zealanders are seeing the consequences of that in their communities. They’re worried about it and they want the Government to do a better job.

Anyway, this bill will help. This will help to some degree. It could have helped far more, but in so far as it does provide another tool for our justice system to use and our police to use in the ongoing fight against gun crime—which, as I say, is rampant across our cities at the moment—then we support it. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker O’Connor, and I’ll join my colleagues in congratulating you on your new appointment.

It’s an absolute pleasure to speak in support of this bill this evening, just as it was to speak in support of the repeal of three strikes. I consider it rather poetic that these two bills are, hopefully, passing on the same evening, because they both speak to this Labour Government’s approach to community safety and justice, which is evidence-based and which is based on the rule of law and principles of justice.

The other side have spoken about New South Wales. We have a report from the Ombudsman in New South Wales where he says that there’s no evidence that warrantless search powers without cause achieve the results sought, with a reference to data. I’m not sure whether to be entertained or whether to be horrified that the Opposition often don’t seem to bother themselves with things like data or evidence, and they don’t seem to bother themselves with things like the principles of justice, but, thankfully, on this side of the House, we do. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker O’Connor. I rise to speak on behalf of Golriz Ghahraman, who is our usual spokesperson for these sorts of issues, but I’d also like to extend my congratulations on your ascension to the Chair. It looks good, and it suits you. [Interjection] Am I greasing? Maybe, maybe not.

I rise in support of this bill. I see it in line with a number of the firearms suite of changes that have come through since the tragic terror attack on March 15. It was a time of deep distress, and the ongoing trauma of that event, particularly for our Muslim whānau, is something that is still keenly felt today. So I see this law and this piece of legislation as moving in that direction, and it is about keeping and maintaining that promise to that community but also to Aotearoa New Zealand in general.

The Green Party has called for gun law reform for quite some time. Regulating gun violence falls within the kaupapa of the Green Party as one of our charter values is non-violence. Our vision of a justice system for Aotearoa New Zealand is one which values social responsibility, appropriate decision-making, and non-violent conflict resolution. These things should be paramount. In this system, disputes are solved quickly and fairly, everyone is entitled to justice, no one is judged without a fair hearing, everyone is given a reasonable chance to atone for past wrongs and reintegrate into society, and everybody is treated with respect. In this system the law benefits everyone equitably. We get that balance right so that people can be safe and we can uphold people’s access to the law.

This bill is about getting that balance right. It is about improving public safety. It is about improving the safety of New Zealand communities by preventing those people who are deemed to be at high risk to not be able to access firearms, and that is the general direction of this bill.

We do that by amending the Arms Act, and this way it will work—that is, if someone has been convicted of a specified offence that’s listed within the Act, the firearms prohibition order will then be issued by the court and not issued by the police. I think that’s the fine balance that we have struck with this piece of legislation moving forward, and that’s a good thing. If a person is serving a term of imprisonment, it will come into action once they’re released. It will apply for a period of 10 years’ time. An FPO—a firearms prohibition order—will set out criteria or conditions that someone must comply with. The bill allows a sentencing judge to issue a 10-year long firearms prohibition order when sentencing a convicted criminal. The exact conditions are up to the sentencing judge, and there are suggested standard conditions in this bill. But the important thing to note here as well is that an FPO can be appealed, just like any other sentence.

I don’t sit on the Justice Committee, but I did read through some of the submissions on the website. I picked up the submission by the Rural Women New Zealand organisation, which for me made the very clear point that violence is often gendered regardless of where it is and including in rural communities. So I just wanted to quote directly from their submission where they said “Women deserve to be safe in their homes, in their rural-based businesses and on their farms. Women living in rural New Zealand are more vulnerable in threatening and violent incidences where firearms are used or threatened to be used. Adverse impacts on rural communities also occur where there is an incident … or [an] accident in their community where a death or injury has been the result of the discharge of a firearm. Women are often those who support or organise support for anyone in the community affected by such an incident”—and they acknowledge that—“women are the glue that holds a community together.” If it’s good enough for the rural women, it’s good enough for the Greens.

We also see that in terms of making sure that our communities are safe, we’ve got to take care of all those other issues as well. We can do that by ensuring that we have liveable incomes, liveable wages, and making sure that everybody has a warm home. These are the social determinants that we need to focus on to make sure that our communities are as strong and as cohesive as possible.

So we know that the safest communities are not those that are highly policed or very criminalised; the safest communities are those with access to secure, warm, dry, accessible housing, inclusive education, meaningful work, and, when people are not in work, with a social safety net that provides them with the opportunity, not just to barely survive, but to thrive. So we do want the Government to go ahead and regulate guns effectively, because gun violence is a blight on our society. But we hope that the pain and hurt of victims of gun violence are not used as a means to dog whistle and to lean more and more in to policies that only make politicians look tough on crime when actually we need to be tough on poverty. So with that Green vision in mind, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to speak to firearms prohibition orders, and I just would like to start off by acknowledging the Green member Teanau Tuiono’s contribution and his statement that if it’s good enough for rural women, it’s good enough for the Greens. May I just say, rural women, you need to start talking to Parliament about the emissions trading scheme (ETS), zero carbon, and some other things as well. The Greens will listen.

But, in relation to firearms prohibition orders (FPOs), I’m glad to see a Government that’s finally responding to the increase in gun crime that we are experiencing across our country—47 percent increase since 2018. These firearm prohibition orders are needed. But one thing that I do think is important to remind everybody of is that, while the member across the way Ginny Andersen has spoken about how long we’ve been going through a process of trying to get FPOs in place, it’s a good reminder that National brought a bill to the House last year and the Labour Party voted it down. There was an opportunity to get in place safer laws for our communities, but at the expense of doing it through another party—an Opposition party—rather than doing it through the Government. I think we’ve wasted a fair bit of time there, and that did not need to happen. I’m disappointed that politics played a part in the delays for getting FPOs through, instead of acquiring safer communities together.

I’d like to spend this time reiterating the concerns that I’ve held in this legislation, regarding courts being directed to order the forfeiture of firearms to the Crown. It was mentioned by me in my second reading speech and brought up again at the committee of the whole House. I’d just like to reiterate the Minister’s discussion after speaking with his officials that, in fact, all endeavours will be made to return firearms to their legal owners should that be possible, as opposed to the forfeiture and confiscation of privately owned property.

Our next step is to address the illegal importation of firearms that come into the country—2 to 5 percent of containers have been stopped at our borders and, in that 2 to 5 percent, 5,887 illegally imported firearms have been found at our border, and that’s between the years of 2014 and 2020. It’s important, I believe, that the likes of Gun Control NZ and the Police Association start attributing accurately where the firearms are actually coming from, and stop solely blaming the licensed firearms community. If you want to see real change, start treating the community as humans and with respect. After all, they have been run through the mill to be deemed fit and proper people—more so than your average kindergarten teacher being left alone with the toddlers. We need to get the narrative right, and the courts also need to get the sentences right and the application of FPOs on to the right people.

This bill is also moving a clause which absolves the Crown from paying compensation for items devalued by way of markings. I’d just like to say to the firearms community: I did try, with a Supplementary Order Paper, to remove the clause that absolves the Crown from having to pay compensation for the devaluing of the marking on firearms that has been directed by this Parliament. Unfortunately, it was ruled out of order, but I did give it a go, and I think that’s important to note that we are still trying, over here at the ACT Party, to make sure that we have good laws for firearms going forward.

The reality is, though, that society is giving us all a warning. They don’t like the soft on crime approach. They don’t like the gangs taking their money. They want consequences for the losses they are experiencing not only in their businesses but also in their homes. But they don’t want to see dad locked up for a minor offence, either. Some of the qualifying offences within this bill include some where a firearms prohibition order would be absolutely warranted—for example, section 16(4) of the Arms Act is where the illegal importation of firearms is included, and it’s often seen alongside the drug shipments that come in. It is section 16(4) of the Arms Act where it could mean that someone that imports a firearm, not realising that it now needs an import permit—because that changed in the legislation as well, and it never used to have to require an import permit—could get inadvertently caught up in an FPO application by the police to the courts.

In these situations, the courts should go back to the intent of this bill: what is it that the implementation of this bill is trying to achieve? Well, quite simply, it is to prevent people whose behaviour and actions represent a high risk of violence or reflect an underlying risk of violence from accessing firearms or restricted weapons. Police should know the difference between the two types of people, and strive to rebuild the trust and confidence between themselves and the firearms community again before bringing charges that do not meet the intent of the bill. This law should not be used to punish those with no ill intent, but we should all be mindful of the unintended ignorance of the extent of arms law changes. Really innocent licensed firearm owners should not get caught up in this regime. But, as we know, the police gave gangs licences in their dozens, so many legitimate licensed firearm owners are already feeling the pain of that agency’s incompetence.

So, in my final words, there is more to be done. There’s a lot more to be done, and ACT have, sitting in the ballot box lottery, their gang control orders bill. I think that this will go as a great supplement to the firearms prohibition orders, because it will specifically target the gangs, whereas this firearms prohibition order targets anyone that’s at risk. We want to target the bullying of the gangs specifically. There’s not one solution, we agree, but by introducing ACT’s gang control orders, it will really hit them where it hurts—in their pockets. But we have more than that; we also have a rehabilitation policy. We want to bring back charter schools and introduce a welfare policy while we’re at it. This is all part and parcel of having good crime intents with firearm prohibition orders, because we all know that this one response won’t make a significant difference without others, and, if we address the other social issues facing our community right now, we could perhaps make a difference together. ACT has the solutions already sitting in the ballot box for you, Labour. All you have to do is pull them out and run with them. We support this bill, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is just going to be a brief contribution as we have heard how important it is to get this legislation passed as soon as possible. But as a member of the Justice Committee, it is my pleasure to take a call on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill. This is another step in the Government’s response to criminal behaviour and reflects our ongoing goal of ensuring that our police have the right tools that they need to keep our communities safe.

We heard a lot, through the select committee process, about ensuring that we are striking the right balance between our public safety objectives and our human rights concerns. I feel confident that as a select committee we have thoroughly debated this and looked at that and I’m comfortable that we have struck that balance.

The aim of the bill is to protect community safety and to reduce firearm-related crime by targeting possession, use, or carriage of firearms for unlawful purposes. We heard about those who might be responsible gun owners, but this is really clear. We are targeting those whose actions and behaviours reflect violent tendencies or who represent a high risk of violence, and they’ll be prevented from being able to access firearms.

In my final few seconds. I want to acknowledge Dr Emily Henderson, who, through her experience in the Family Court, argued hard for the inclusion of strangulation as one of those offences and I’m pleased that, as a select committee, we were able to recommend that and that has been included.

So with that, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and congratulations on your appointment. Look, I’m rising to speak on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill. So this is something that the National Party supports. It’s a bill that protects undercover officers investigating a suspected offence from liability in respect of those offences, and also in respect of the offences of conspiring or attempting to commit those offences and other specified offences. So it disqualifies anyone who has one of these prohibition orders from holding a firearms licence, and it provides that a person who has had at any time a firearms prohibition order made against them can’t be found a fit and proper person to be in possession of a firearm or an airgun. It defines the circumstances under which the FPO, the firearms prohibition order, can be made, the effect of it, the standing conditions, and the provisions for variation of the standing conditions, and also the provision for special conditions, commencement and duration, modification replacement, and appeals against decisions to make or not to make an FPO. It also makes it an offence to breach a firearms prohibition order or to supply firearms or other related items to a person who is subject to that firearms prohibition order.

The bill says that a court can make a firearms prohibition order against an offender who is 18 years or over if they are convicted of a specified offence in the Arms Act 1983, the Crimes Act 1961, or the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. The court must be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that it’s reasonable, necessary, and appropriate to issue one of these orders in order to manage the risk that the offender poses to public safety. The bill also sets out a series of standard and special conditions for a firearms prohibition order, and the penalties of breaching those conditions. The order continues in force for 10 years and will take effect from either the date the order was made or, where the offender is sentenced to a term of imprisonment, from the date that they are released from custody.

So this is certainly to address an issue that has been deeply concerning to our communities in recent times, unfortunately, with a rise of illegal firearms’ use. Particularly in our biggest city, Auckland, unfortunately, far too many firearms are being used on streets—particularly in what appear to be gang wars. So this gives the police an additional toolset which they can use to address those persons who certainly should not be in possession of firearms and which gives the court the power to issue one of these orders against them and enables the police to have those additional powers.

The National Party does have some disappointments with this bill, despite supporting it. The National Party’s of the view that it did take too long for the Government to bring it in, as it was recommended to them in 2017, for their first hundred days. However, they vetoed several attempts to bring this critical safety measure into force. It is good, however, that they are doing this now. The National Party’s also of the view that it’s disappointing the Government did not listen to the Police Association or the Opposition and put some warrantless search powers into the bill to enforce the ability of the police to address the issues of people of particular concern. In the words of the Police Association, “This bill will not be a game changer without those powers.” However, again, I would say that at least this is a step in the right direction and does give some additional powers to the police and to the courts in respect of persons who should not ever be in possession of firearms. Mark Mitchell has a Supplementary Order Paper, which would give police greater powers to get firearms out of the hands of those who pose a danger to the community. Those new powers would allow police to search the person and vehicles of people who are subject to a firearms prohibition order for firearms at any time.

So the objective of the bill is to ensure that the person subject to one of these orders will not be able to use, access, or be around firearms. The person will also not be able to live in or visit locations where there are firearms or associate with someone who has them in their physical possession unless permitted by the court. So there are some quite strict conditions around this, and this is to address that issue of persons who the court has determined need these particular conditions because of their risk factors that the court can take into account, and that they should not ever be—at least during this time frame, that the court determines, of 10 years in force of these firearms prohibition orders. So with that, I commend the bill to the House.

The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The sitting will resume at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Good evening. The sitting is resumed. Members, before the dinner break, the House was debating the third reading of the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill. I invite a member to seek the call.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker Bennett, and congratulations on your new role, and to the Assistant Speaker who was in the Chair before you as well.

I know from hearing the previous speeches that this bill addresses something we’re all concerned about, and that is: giving police another tool to keep our communities safe from criminal behaviour. How the bill does this is by creating a new firearms prohibition order—an FPO. This is the tool that the speeches have been talking about. It’s a court order for people who have a conviction of a specified violent offence, and we heard about that in some detail from Nicole McKee. What the bill does is insert new Part 7A to the Arms Act and it disqualifies these people who have the FPO from ever holding a firearms licence.

There are standard conditions for an FPO, and these are found at what will be new section 39C. There are a range of things here—we heard the Minister talk about them in his speech—but they include associating with people who have firearms; residing at premises in which firearms are stored; joining or remaining being a member of shooting club; attending any shooting range or shooting gallery; attending an activity of any kind that involves the use of firearms; or visiting any premises or place at which firearms or related items are manufactured, sold, repaired, hired, lent, or otherwise supplied. So it is going to be a useful tool, and I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I want to acknowledge, first, everyone who has worked on this piece of legislation and the hard-working select committee—the Justice Committee—and my colleagues who are here in the House tonight. There has been a great deal of consideration on both sides of the House and around the table in that select committee about the submissions and the content of this legislation, and I thank everyone who has put in the work to understand it.

I think it was well captured in the speech of Joseph Mooney earlier. Colleagues will recall that before the dinner break, Mr Mooney’s contribution highlighted the reasons that the National Party members came to agree with many parts of this bill, but he drew the House’s attention to one part, which is warrantless searches, where we have a disagreement. I’d just like to put on record that Labour’s proposals here do allow warrantless searches by police officers, but they require a reasonable suspicion. We landed there and it strikes a useful balance because we believe that allowing police officers—where they have a suspicion of someone being around firearms or having firearms in their possession, that is about the right standard to require of police when they are conducting these searches. So for that reason, I’m pleased that we’ve found some agreement here, and I commend this bill.

The next call is a remote call.

Ah, there we go. It might be a sign, Mr Speaker, that they weren’t allowing me to unmute myself, but I’ll try not to cause the House too much harm.

Look, it’s very clear that Nationals supports this. Look, it’s on the old adage that the perfect is the enemy of the good. So this is a good, sufficient bill in many ways and you’ve heard from previous National Party speakers that in many ways it’s just echoing a lot of what legislation already exists, particularly around the search or warranting side of things. In other words, police already have existing powers they can use. National’s being very clear that this should have gone much, much further. Warrantless search powers for the likes of firearms on gang members is, to put it in a common parlance, a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the Labour Party disagrees with that, even with the escalating crime we are seeing in New Zealand.

However, this is still a step forward or at the very least not a step backwards. So, as I say, National is happy to support. We still encourage the Government to go further in this space and if I might just draw from a previous contribution, it should not be lost on my colleagues on the other side of the House the major problems that we have with crime in our communities, and particularly those Labour MPs who are electorate MPs like myself, they will know. They will know the large amount of crime that is in play. It doesn’t matter if that’s with guns, it doesn’t matter if it’s ram raids, break-ins, assaults; you name it, the Government needs to do much, much more. So I am encouraging my Labour colleagues, and particularly the Minister, to not think that he or the Labour Government have done anywhere enough to address these issues. It would be a false presumption to sit back at the end of this reading and think because we now have a firearms protection order, that all is fine. It is not and it will not be.

As I say, we’ve had multiple shootings in my electorate. There was an aggravated robbery only 24 hours ago with a firearm in my electorate. We had multiple people being attacked, businesses broken into, ram raided. There’s a huge array of problems and, again, the firearms side of it is deeply, deeply concerning. So can I begin to wrap this little contribution up by signalling a good step, maybe a half step, but we have rampant gun crime now in New Zealand. And if I might just riff, if you will: of my own electorate, lucky as it is—being an electorate that is, not necessarily me as the MP, but no, lucky as it is, gun crime in the electorate of Tāmaki has almost been unheard of. But, as I say, in the last month or so we’ve had two shooting incidents and, as of 24 hours ago, an aggravated armed hold-up again with a firearm—unheard of. This law will maybe go some way—I don’t know, one-eighth, one-sixteenth of the way—to address the issue.

But can I conclude my contribution by asking, imploring the Labour Government to take crime seriously and to pass far more legislation required—in fact, take some steers from Mark Mitchell and his suggestions so that we can properly address the rampant crime occurring under this Government.

Kia ora, e te Mana Whakawā. A pleasure to be here and congratulations on your appointment.

This bill is an important bill and the points made by Mr O’Connor, in terms of guns in our community being an issue we need to address, are fair ones. The important and only point I really need to make is that this bill strikes an important balance between rights. There has been some discussion from the other side around the fact that searches shouldn’t need cause. That’s what we would call a random search or even an irrational search, and that’s not what we want. As the member for Manurewa noted, we need a trigger, a threshold for any search to be conducted under this legislation, and a “reasonable suspicion” is a well-known legal test for a search. It’s entirely appropriate and that’s where the balance is struck. The Attorney-General agrees that it’s appropriate and I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.