Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill.

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

I move, That the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 17 November 2022 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196.

This is a classic case of where, sometimes, laws passed by this Parliament can have a very, very long tail in terms of the effects that they have. Back in 1992, the House made the decision to move from lifetime firearms licences to 10-year firearms licences. The result of that is that every 10 years we have seen a surge or a peak in the number of firearms licence holders applying to have their gun licences renewed. That’s always been a challenge. It’s always resulted in police having to significantly increase the resources to process those applications.

That challenge, though, has been compounded by changes to the licence process in response to the findings of the royal commission of inquiry, and that’s included transferring responsibility for recording information to the applicant and referees. That’s led to further delays through more incomplete applications, sometimes due to the applicant or the referees not fulfilling their obligations.

There is also, of course, the issue that many licence holders don’t apply for their licence to be renewed until relatively close to when it expires. And we did see evidence back in 1992 that whilst there was a reasonable period of time allowed for people to apply for their licences to be renewed, many didn’t do so until relatively late in that period of time, and that does create a significant peak in applications every 10 years. So, one way or the other, we have to accept that we are going to see quite a significant peak in licence applications and that is going to create uncertainty for licence holders because, at the moment, even if someone applies for their licence to be renewed before it’s expired, unless that licence is processed very, very quickly, they will find themselves in a position where they are unlawfully still in possession of firearms.

Now, that’s an unacceptable situation because it will generally be through no fault of their own—they’ve done the right thing, they have been legal, they have held their firearms, they’ve held a firearms licence, and they have applied for the licence to be renewed. This law change is relatively simple. It means that if someone has applied for their licence to be renewed—even once their licence has expired—as long as there is an application in the process, then their expired licence will continue to be valid. That will mean that they don’t have to transfer their firearms into the possession of someone else because their licence has expired and they are in no position to do anything about that.

There are a couple of other very minor changes that this bill makes. It ensures that the new licence will be valid from the point in which it is issued, not from the point in which the last licence expired. That will help us to smooth out the curve and it will mean that, hopefully, over this next licence renewal period, we will be able to smooth that out so we won’t continue to have these peaks every 10 years in the way that we have previously. I think that that will be a welcome thing.

Similarly, we’ve made a change to the renewal of licences for dealers so that they will also come into effect from the date in which they are issued, rather than the date that the previous licence expired. And there is a further minor change to allow for more of this process around notices to be transacted electronically, basically bringing this law into the 21st century. I note that the Arms Act itself in total will be reviewed in 2026-27. So that is an opportunity for people to raise any further issues around these matters as they choose to do so, by which point we should be through the peak of licence application renewals.

I want to, at this point, thank the firearms licence or gun-owning community for their perseverance and their patience with this. I accept that many have been operating in good faith. In fact, the vast majority have been operating in good faith to ensure that they comply with the legal requirements that are placed on them. Where their licences have expired, it has been through no fault of their own. This law change will give them certainty.

I want to thank the members across the House who have advocated for this change. I think there’s probably some lessons for the House—dating right the way back to 1992 when the law change was first made—about how these sorts of changes could be made in a smoother way to avoid these kind of peaks in the future. I’m very pleased that we’ve found a solution that will be an enduring solution and that should avoid these sorts of peaks emerging again in the future, and, therefore, should mean that we can get firearms licence renewal applications on to a much more timely footing.

Finally, I want to provide reassurance for those who have been waiting some time for their licences to be renewed: the police have put significant extra resource into clearing the backlog of firearms licence renewal applications. They are making good progress there. I continue to get regular reports from them on that. I’ll continue to monitor that closely to see if we can get that backlog cleared as quickly as we can. This law change will actually help in clearing the backlog because it will mean that police can make sensible decisions about triaging licence renewal applications, and, therefore, try to get people a more timely response.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We stand in support of the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill because it’s a pragmatic and common-sense step towards fixing a problem that should have been dealt with, actually, a fair time ago. In fact, back in March 2021, we wrote to the Minister at the time, Poto Williams, asking for these types of changes to be made, because what had happened was that the Government, in their rush to move through legislation and reform, hadn’t anticipated or thought about the impact that it was actually going to have on the system.

The one thing that I would say to the Minister is that the police are having to scramble and they’re having to dedicate additional resource for firearms-vetting officers, and the massive resource that it takes to try to correct a backlog of, I think, about 9,000 applications, 2,000 of which are genuine firearms licence holders who actually started breaking the law, in terms of the Arms Act, through no fault of their own—

💬 Nicole McKee: It’s 4,000 now, Mark.

It’s 4,000, is it? Nicole McKee was saying 4,000, through no fault of their own. Quite simply, they had engaged in the process in a legal way, taking their responsibilities seriously, and the system had let them down. Their licence had expired. They were then faced with the stress of realising that they were in breach of the Arms Act. So the Government themselves, with their own changes, have put them in this awful position, where they’re now in breach of the Arms Act. And what were they going to do with their firearms? They had to try and find, and come up with, solutions to deal with that problem, which is stressful in itself. So they’ve created a real mess here.

I want to acknowledge our firearms community. I want to acknowledge our hunting community. I was at the Sika Show at Mystery Creek, a couple of weeks ago, for the weekend. It was an outstanding show. It was well attended. It was well and truly a family event. There were fantastic exhibitors there. There were some amazing examples of conservation going on, with the protection of kiwi, with the trapping and shooting and removal of pests like stoats, rabbits, and possums. It was nice to get in amongst our firearms community. The one thing they highlighted was that when the Green Party held the conservation portfolio, one thing it did that was very effective was that it brought them together; they actually started working together on a plan, and they’ve become a very effective and a very strong group now in terms of working on conservation and making sure that the interests of our firearms community are actually advanced. And that’s a good thing.

In this House, for too long, we’ve seen MPs stand up and attack them. For me, in the police portfolio, let’s not focus on our law-abiding firearms community. Yep, we all acknowledge that you get the odd rotten apple in a barrel and that you need to have a process so that you can identify those—there’s no problem with that—but, if you actually want to have a look at where all the rotten apples are, go over and have a look at organised crime and gangs. That’s where the real issue lies. All the firearms violence that we see in this country has got nothing to do with our hunting community or our firearms community or our gun clubs. It has everything to do with gang members and gangsters that procure illegal weapons, carry them, and are prepared to use them. So the focus needs to return there and away from our firearms community. I want to apologise to them because—actually, I know that Nicole McKee has been a very strong advocate for this as well—we wanted to see this change made a long time ago. Simeon Brown, my predecessor, wrote to the Minister back in March 2021, asking for this to change, because we could see that there was a backlog and a pipeline being formed because of the changes that were made.

Coming back to the police, it’s actually unfair on our police service and those in charge of trying to operationalise the changes that were made in this House, when they have to look around their service, which is stretched to breaking point at the moment because they are having to deal with a tsunami in the rise of serious criminal offending and youth and juvenile offending—a 50 percent increase in gang numbers—and yet they’re told they’re going to have to find more resource to put into this to start processing licences. So it’s actually unfair on them too, in terms of what is going on currently. So, although we do support this, and we want to—and, by the way, the Government wants to expedite this bill and take it under urgency. Of course we support that. We want to get this bill through as quickly as possible so that our legal firearms licence holders are not put in the invidious position where they engage in a system in good faith, to try to have their licence renewed, it goes past the expiry date, and all of a sudden they are in breach of the Arms Act. So we want to see this bill passed as quickly as we can.

Just very quickly—the Minister outlined what the bill does, and it’s fairly simple—if a licensed firearms licence holder is coming up to the expiry date, they’ve applied for a renewal, they’ve engaged in the process, and it goes past the expiry date of their licence, their licence will, quite simply, remain current, up until the point that that renewal is made. And then, from the point of the renewal, that will be the starting date that the licence becomes valid. The bill also covers licensed arms dealers as well, in terms of making sure that they get the same fair treatment that firearms licence holders get. So it is a good bill; we do support it. It’s in the House way too late. There should have been action taken on this back in 2021, when my friend and colleague Simeon Brown wrote to the Minister asking for changes to be made and highlighting the issue. Way too late; way too slow. I’m pretty sure that Nicole McKee has done the same thing.

The other thing that I found very interesting at the Sika expo was that there was no Labour stand or Green stand. There were no members there at all. There was no one there. I was there for the entire weekend. I was lucky enough to host our leader, Chris Luxon, on the Saturday, with very, very positive engagement. I expected the Government party to actually have at least some presence there, to listen to a massive sector in New Zealand that have got a strong voice and have got solutions. And, by the way, like I said—I’m going to say it again—the conservation side of it: I walked away completely, totally blown away. The amount of kids that are engaged in it, and the amount of kids that are taking ownership of it—they’re running their own Predator Free programmes all around the country. It was hugely encouraging in terms of seeing that engagement and seeing them wanting to drive us towards being predator free, which is something that we all want.

So I am very happy to stand in support of this bill. I sit on the Justice Committee. I’m sure that we will all work together to get this through the committee process as quickly as possible and back into this House and passed. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Arms Act, back in 1983, set out the regulatory requirements for the treatment of firearms and those in possession of those firearms. But what has occurred is demand for new firearm licences is currently outstripping the police’s ability to process those applications and issue subsequent licences before the previous licence expires. This problem is expected to get worse given the high number of licenses that are due to expire shortly. This bill is an important step to make sure that the Act is amended to allow those firearm licence holders to continue to be in force where there is an application in train for a subsequent licence that has been made but cannot be processed in time for that expiry of the previous licence.

I think it’s important to note that the licensing cycle is a legacy of the 1992 change to the Act which terminated the lifelong holding of a licence. Instead of it being a lifetime licence and required for firearm owners to regularly reapply, it was put into a 10-year period. No provision was made to stagger this approach, which has resulted in the 10-year cycle of a sudden wave of renewals being required to be done. So this means the current demand for new firearms licence applications is currently outstripping police’s capacity to process. Approximately, at the moment, there are 9,000 applications in the pipeline at the low point of the demand cycle, with approximately 2,000 applicants holding an expired licence while waiting to be processed. Police anticipate that the demand for new licences is going to increase rapidly as they ramp up, and that’s why it’s important to get this legislation passed in order to provide for those in the transitional space. It’s unfortunate that no provision was made to stagger this approach, which has resulted in peaks and troughs through the demand cycle.

It’s important to note that, on top of the cyclical issue that I’ve already identified, there are also additional pressures on police in order to process licences in a timely and well-considered manner. Firstly, it’s the finding of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Attack on Christchurch Mosques on March 15th—so those changes to licences in response to the royal commission, including increased checks, transferring responsibility of reporting information, has also led to delays. Secondly, constraints within the Act—the requirement for firearms licence holders to apply for replacement licences before their licence expires. Thirdly, flow on from COVID-19 and the inability to process applications—and at this point, it’s important to note that this bill also makes minor technical amendments that enable for email or electronic communication to take place, when previously they weren’t, in order to streamline that process. Also what’s happened in that space, the last point I’ll mention, is reduced vetting capability has had an impact which has resulted in a bottleneck.

I’d like to conclude by acknowledging the firearms community and the concerns that they have about the impact of delays upon them. The firearms community has been understandably concerned about the impact on their lawful status in shooting activities if their licence expires prior to police deciding on their application for a new licence. These delays have had a direct impact on those who need licences for their work, for their business, and it has also placed those with collections of pistols, prohibited firearms, and restricted weapons in a position where they must continue to hold their collections unlawfully, as an alternative storage arrangement may not always be readily available for them.

It’s also important to note in this space that the Act itself will be subject to a statutory review in 2026, 2027.

In conclusion, I look forward to receiving submissions at the Justice Committee. I look forward to progressing this legislation as quickly as possible in order to make the transition to a new model that runs not on a cyclical basis more effective, not only for firearms licence holders but for all New Zealanders who want to live in a community which is safe and protected and working under a safe space and also to enable those in the police service to be able to do their job as they’re required to do. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill. What we’ve heard from the members on the other side of the House is: “Not our fault, not our fault; don’t look at us, don’t look at us.” I’m sick and tired of hearing people on the other side of the House blame other people for problems that we’re facing today. These guys have been in power for five long years—five years of failure—and they keep blaming other people for their problems.

Today, I think, is one of the worst. I mean, we’ve heard about the potholes—it’s National’s fault that there’s potholes on the road! The health system—well, it’s National’s fault we don’t have enough nurses! Well, now it’s because of something which happened in 1992—the year after I was born—that we’re not processing licences fast enough today and we have to bring this legislation to the House. That is just absolutely appalling, and the tens of thousands of firearms licence holders up and down this country, who I know are listening and watching this very, very closely, because this is important to them, they will be laughing at their TVs, laughing at their radios, laughing at their online streaming—however they’re listening today—and saying what a joke this Government is. The only thing they’re saying, as well, is “Thank goodness they’ve finally listened!”, because it’s taken them years—years and years—to actually come to the realisation that. Because of their failure to actually make sure that the police are able to process licences quickly enough, they’ve had to come with a fix to actually get this sorted.

Back in 1992, the good legislators of this Parliament would never have thought that a situation would arise where there would be such an incompetent Government who couldn’t actually process licences that quickly, or that slowly. They never would have anticipated such an incompetent Government back in 1992 but, lo and behold, we have one. We have the most incompetent Government that New Zealanders have ever had. They can’t even process firearms licences for licensed firearms holders. That’s embarrassing; it’s frankly embarrassing. As the police spokesperson last year, I had these people getting in touch with me on the phone, messaging me on Facebook, emailing me and saying, “I don’t know what to do; I’ve got these guns, I’ve got my licence, I’ve got my application in, I now have to find somewhere else to store these guns. I don’t have somewhere else I can store these guns. Do I break the law? Do I try and find some other solution?” And they’ve been put in these precarious situations. And the reason why they find that so difficult is because these people are law-abiding firearms licence holders. They want to follow the law. They pride themselves in following the law. These are upstanding members—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: All right, Mr Brown, you can start talking about that law now. You’ve had four minutes.

—and this law, which they have been forced to break by this Government’s incompetence—this bill is seeking to finally fix their problem and this significant, serious issue that these people have been put in, and I just want to tell the House how hard it has been for these people—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, you can tell them about the bill now, please.

Well, the bill is addressing the issue that these people have been facing because of the incompetence of this Government—the rank incompetence of this Government—but, thankfully, this bill is here to address this issue.

And so this bill does make some small amendments to ensure that, if someone gets their licence application in prior to their licence expiring, they will no longer have to go through that terribly, terribly stressful and difficult position where they had to find where they would place their guns in the meantime—at incredible cost or incredible stress or, in some cases, without the actual ability to do that. So thank goodness this Government has finally listened!

But what we haven’t heard from the members on the other side is—they haven’t actually addressed the real issue. This is a fix, and, yes, we support this because it actually addresses and makes sure that there is a fix. But it doesn’t address the real issue, which is that the police are taking so long to actually process these licences in the first place. And this is what this Government does: it talks a big game. But, actually, right across public services in New Zealand, public services are going backwards; processes are taking longer. You can’t get on the phone and have a conversation with someone in a decent period of time. These are the real issues, which this piece of legislation doesn’t actually address. I looked through the piece of legislation. It doesn’t seek to actually address the time frames it’s taking for New Zealanders—law-abiding firearms licence holders—to actually have those issues addressed.

I tell you what, I know submitters will be coming to the select committee and they will be telling the select committee exactly about those problems—the amount of months and months and months that they’ve been waiting—and they will tell the select committee. They will say, “Yes, this fixes”—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Brown. You can anticipate what the submitters will tell us, but what you’re going to tell us about is the bill, because if I have to ask you again, you’ll be finishing this presentation.

Well, the issue here is that this bill doesn’t address the issue, which is the actual delay in the processing, and that is going to be a serious issue, which, actually, I think needs to be looked into in select committee. And I’m more than happy to wait to look at those submissions, and I’m sure they’ll be very interesting.

But the other issue that this bill doesn’t actually address is that this Government has failed to actually go after the real target when it comes to firearms in New Zealand. They’ve spent a lot of time focused on law-abiding firearms licence holders in New Zealand—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you—I’ve invited you now several times to actually address the bill. You’ve now again spoken about what’s not here, so—

Point of order.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m now going to, Mr Brown—

Point of order.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Brown, I’ve warned you several times. You’ve now not addressed what’s in the bill, despite being asked. Your speech is now over. I’m now going to call the next speaker.

Point of order. This is a first reading speech, and it’s an ability to talk about the bill and talk about what we, as the National Party, want in the bill and what we see as problems in the bill. It’s a broad-ranging debate about the piece of legislation. I’ve been raising issues very relevant to what this bill is seeking to address.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Right, and you have done that. You did that for six minutes, and then I asked you several times. Having done that, you’ve now gone back to discussing all issues other than what’s in the bill. So your speech is over, Mr Brown. The next speaker is Vanushi Walters.

Point of order. Sir, I do ask you to reflect on the fact that you allowed members opposite to go back as far as 1992 in relation to background issues, vaguely connected, at best, in relation to the bill, and that, of course, is perfectly appropriate, because, as has been noted, it is the first reading speech environment. I think it’s reasonable to anticipate what kind of submissions might be made, albeit that obviously they can’t speak to those exactly as to the content, being in the future. But I’d just ask you to reflect on the move you’ve made, particularly from a point of view of consistency across the House, again, noting the nature of a first reading speech in responding to some of those historical issues.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m pleased, Mr Penk, that you did mention the relevance of building on the 1992 provisions. So the reality of it—and I’m pretty generous about it— was the four minutes the member had where he hadn’t actually addressed the bill at that stage. I think that’s pretty generous, particularly when he was actually referring to what the people at home might have liked to see. So the decision will stand.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will speak to the reasons for this bill today. Other speakers have spoken to those 1992 changes, which are part of the reasons why we have this bill in place. But, actually, as Mr Brown pointed to, there are other reasons as well, including the flow-on from the COVID-19 impacts and the inability to process applications—in particular, the face-to-face interviews, which were required as part of the vetting process. And what we’ve seen recently is the flow-on effects from that, coupled with what we saw from the 1992 changes, which were, of course, those 10-year periods for renewal. In addition, there has, in sequence, been the reduction in vetting capability, and that’s partially due to the employment conditions for the vetting staff—which have changed—as well as a constrained labour market, in particular in this space. So it is the conflation of those multiple issues that has led to the Minister bringing this bill to the House now.

Because this is a Government that is responsive to that conflation of the set of issues; this is a Government that is responding to the calls from our sectors who use guns very lawfully in our community. My colleague Mark Mitchell spoke very well about that and I absolutely agree wholeheartedly that this is a tool, in many ways, for conservation protection, and there are a lot of groups out there using them in very responsible ways. Again, this is an area where we need some action; we are responding.

My colleagues in the Justice Committee will know me as a person who does, at times, raise the question about whether we ought to be putting sunset clauses in relation to certain clauses such as this bill puts forward, given it appears to be an interim measure while we clear the backlog. However, as colleagues have noted, there will be a statutory review in 2026-27. And even if we were to put in a sunset clause, it will possibly go outside the period of that review.

So I believe it’s entirely appropriate that we’ve landed where we have, but I am a member of the Justice Committee and I do look forward to hearing from community members with all views on this bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is a technical bill. It is one, though, as others have mentioned, that does raise some certain concerns for us as the Green Party. It is one that addresses existing issues that are real, which is the backlog in applications for gun licence renewals. That has come about, in part, over the past 2½ years, due to COVID issues, and we do want to hold that. A face-to-face aspect to this licensing system is important, and has been the cause of delays, in a lot of cases; that’s understandable. But it is one where we do wonder, as my friend who has just resumed her seat, Vanushi Walters, has raised, whether there is a need for a sunset clause. We do wonder if renewing or allowing extension of licence holder applications without that process needs to be something that happens only now. We want to continue to uphold the rule of law while people are holding a licence and have been validly waiting for their renewal process to happen, but one that we don’t want to allow going forward, because things like the face-to-face review process are important.

It is reassuring that there is a review coming up. It’s also reassuring to know that the work programme for the Government on gun control is continuing. We have had some good progress on Green Party kaupapa when it comes to things like banning semi-automatic gun ownership in response to the Christchurch terror attack. We’ve had progress when it comes to making gun licence applications and that process but also the threshold for that process more stringent. That is the direction that the Green Party would continue to encourage the Government to go in, rather than to allow this bill to form a foundation where we make it more lax. There is a valid need for renewals to go through a proper process, and so the delay and the backlog remains concerning for us. But to allow those licences to lapse without a legislative safeguard of the rules-based process would also be wrong, and probably more detrimental, which is where the balance lies for us in supporting this bill, to allow those licence holders to remain within the law, and for the Government to continue to process them with some of those high-level aspects to the process, like the face-to-face interviews. But the review, really, is where this lies for us. It will need to be something that’s reviewed; it can’t be that we just allow lapsed licences to continue.

Having said all of that, it is a technical thing. It is for people who are already in the system, who have already made their application for a renewal, and we know that those applications will, in fact, be processed. We continue to support the Government and encourage the Government to look harder at the process of obtaining gun licences to make the community more safe and to make it harder and harder for gun licences to be issued where they should not be issued, and to keep us all safe from gun violence. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to talk to the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill. I support this bill, along with the ACT Party and, I suspect, a large number of licensed firearms holders who have been caught up in the delays, including dealers.

This has been a long time coming, and my colleague from across the way—Mark Mitchell—has already spoken of a letter that was written back in March 2021. When I was with the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners, we wrote a letter in February of 2021. I actually wrote a letter to the Minister for COVID-19 Response back in September 2021, asking for an extension under COVID rules. I wrote again, to the former Minister of Police, on 6 October 2021, and, again, to the new Minister of Police, on 11 August 2022—this year. It’s nice to finally see an acknowledgment of what the licensed firearms owners, the legal firearm-owning community, have been going through and to see a piece of legislation—I never thought I’d say it, but, actually, I’m going to support an arms amendment bill that’s going through this House. I never thought I’d say that, but this is a good one, and it’s something that we do need to support.

I just want to touch on some things that were said by other members in this House, and I will go to a Green Party member who spoke about the sunset clause and a need for it. The whole reason why there’s no sunset clause within this bill is because the peak of firearms licensing—the numbers that are going to come through—will actually be in 2026. It’s not happening right now. It’s starting to increase now and it will peak in 2026, with an estimated 40,000 people seeking to renew their licences in that year alone. The way that this bell curve works is that from this year, 2022, onwards to 2026, it will gradually increase each year, and then by 2026, it’s reached its peak and it will start to come down again in 2027 and 2028.

The whole idea of this bill is to be able to flatten that curve over a period of time, and it will not happen in just a few years. It will take decades to be able to flatten that curve, and the 2026-27 review that is going to happen was something that this House had all agreed to when they put through their urgent laws back in 2020. They said then that we would have a review to see how it’s going, so that was the standard. That was always going to happen, and this has nothing to do with it.

I’ve heard people talk about the delays that have happened since the 1992 regulations, and I’d just like to put some of this into some proper context for everybody. We used to have lifetime licences. In 1992, we then moved to a 10-year licensing system, and the way it operated back then was that people were automatically moved in alphabetical order on to a 10-year licence. But it was happening so slowly that it was decided to just move everybody en masse, and that’s why we’ll have such a massive big peak in 2026. Of course, it happened again in 2006 and 2016, and we’re expecting it in 2026. It’s been exacerbated by the fact that with the arms law amendment changes made in 2020, we’ve now introduced five-year licensing for new licence applicants. That started in 2021, meaning that they are also going to come up for their first renewal in 2026, adding to the 40,000 that are already going to be implicated at that time.

I thought that this was quite an interesting concept that we needed to show everyone, because I’ve heard from across the House that the reason why we have delays is because of the 1992 regulations. With respect, the reason why we have delays is because this House rushed through legislation without thinking about the consequences of it.

I heard the Minister of Police say that part of the reason for the delays is because licensed firearms owners were not fulfilling their obligations and nor were the referees, and that’s absolute nonsense. I have so many emails and communications from people who have said, “First of all, we cannot email the police, because they will not give us an email address for the person that we’re dealing with. We cannot phone anybody. They will not give us the name. There is no contact phone number. They will not reply to emails to the generated list. They will no longer turn up at the times when previous vetters were available.”, which was after hours for those people that worked. Now, they only work from 9 till 4, Monday to Friday, and everyone is expected to take time off work to be able to go and have their interview at the time allocated by the vetter; not at the time when the applicant or the referee is free and available for that interview. Not only that but the number of people who have told me that they have been waiting six months, eight months, 12 months, two years for the police to get hold of them for this interview. This is not the fault of licensed firearms owners; this is the fault of rushed legislation. It’s the consequence of what happens when we don’t think out the full consequences of rushing through laws.

The licensing delays are not at the number of 2,000, which I have heard constantly repeated today. It actually sits at 4,413 people being impacted. There are 3,172 new licence applications on top of that, and not only that but there are renewals for endorsements that are also behind, including 128 pistol endorsements. This is quite relevant, because in order to maintain a pistol endorsement, you must shoot at your pistol club 12 times a year. That’s pretty hard to do if your pistol endorsement has expired and you’re waiting six to eight months for it to be renewed. That ability to be able to complete your 12 becomes strained and, in some cases, people are unable to do that.

This bill goes towards trying to re-establish the trust and confidence again between the licensed firearms community and the New Zealand Police. It is essential that we get that back, because in our old regime, while it may not have been absolutely perfect, it was nearly there, and a lot of it had to do with the ability for the licensed community to integrate and speak with their local police arms officer and let them know of things that were of concern to them. Now they don’t even know the name of their local police arms officer, let alone be able to go and approach them.

Further to this, we must remember that among licensed firearms owners, as my colleague has said, there are a few bad apples. There were 29 gang members that were given firearm licences back in 2017, and 12 of them still had licences in 2021. After massive work from the ACT Party, we have got it down to one, and I believe that that’s because we kept forcing police to address that issue.

Another one: 5,887 firearms have been confiscated through our customs officers being able to use their X-ray machines to X-ray containers coming into the ports. That’s a huge amount—5,887—but it could be bigger, because only 2 to 5 percent of those containers have been X-rayed.

So it’s not licensed firearms owners here that are providing gangs with guns. We are not the issue; the issue is poor legislation.

We have a few questions that we will be asking through the select committee process, such as whether or not the service of documents through email will need to have a receipt, whether or not there are practicalities around how a person with an expired licence can still produce that licence to buy and sell ammunition or even partake in sport, and also whether or not this is retrospective to the 4,413 people who are currently sitting in limbo. I expect that the dealers will also have a few questions on this—for example, how they go about arranging their imports with an expired licence, and so whether or not a temporary licence will be there for them.

This is a time-sensitive issue. It’s a clear and urgent safety issue that must be addressed, and this is one of the reasons why we support this bill going through under urgency. We support it not because it’s of political convenience to the Government, but because it has immediate relief to the safety concerns of the firearms owners and the general public. We look forward to this bill going through by Christmas so that some of our hunters can make sure there is food on the table for Christmas Day.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m grateful to speak on the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill. This is a very technical bill that specifically remedies some of the issues in the gun licensing regime.

Today, though, I want to start with, as we debate this bill here today: the Christchurch mosques terrorist is appealing his conviction today. This must be a very hard day for the whānau and families of the victims and survivors, so my heart goes out to them. This man is always going to be a convicted terrorist no matter what he does.

Back to the bill: one of the things the terror attacks taught us is that we must have a robust gun licence regime at all times, and allowing the law-abiding people to renew their licence on time is a part of this process. We all know that, after the royal commission report, the police have been following a more stringent approach to firearm licences. We just need to allow them to keep doing that.

In 1992, this regime changed from the lifetime licensing to 10 years, and now this has created an issue. Every 10 years, there will be a peak and a line of people who want to renew their licence, and that creates pressure on the system and the police; it also frustrates people as well. So if a new licence is granted after the expiry date, the renewal will take effect from the date of the issue; it’s not going to be an old expiry date. So this is going to have less impact on the people who line up to renew their licence. Also, it will allow the police to issue a recommendation electronically, which saves a lot of time and energy and the resources of the police.

Why we support this is because this will allow licence holders, who are struggling due to the peak, to renew their licence on time. It will allow the police to implement a priority-based triaging system. So it is a good deal, as a lot of speakers alluded to. Hopefully, it’s going to lift pressure off the police and also going to be good news for the people who are already frustrated. So it’s good news, it’s a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

Joseph Mooney, and this is a split call—five minutes.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise this afternoon to speak in support of the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill on behalf of the National Party.

This is a rare moment when the Government actually does something sensible. They’re amending the Arms Act to account for the fact that they’ve made a number of changes around the laws for firearms licence holders, but, unfortunately, the resourcing isn’t there for the police to actually process these licence applications. In fact, existing licences that have come up for renewal, which—from those changes back in 1992—they do every 10 years, and now 2,000 firearms licences have expired while police struggle to get through 9,000 licence applications. This means that otherwise lawful holders of firearms licences, and lawful holders of firearms, have been unable to renew their licences due to no fault of their own, simply because the resourcing isn’t there to process these applications.

So this is a sensible little bill that addresses that problem. It means that the holder of the current firearms licence “may apply for a new licence before the expiry of their current licence”, and, if the application has not been processed—i.e., determined—before the licence holders current licence expires, “their licence continues in force (unless it is sooner surrendered or revoked) until the licence holder is notified of the outcome of the application and any new licence issued takes effect from the date of its issue.”

So this is a very sensible little bill, as I’ve said, because it does solve this particular issue. I do note that police are totally overwhelmed with the demand at the moment for processing applications. As other speakers in the House have made mention of this afternoon, I have personally heard from people who have been waiting for up to two years for a firearms licence to be processed, which is a very, very long period of time. I know that there are certainly big challenges for the police in processing these applications; they are considerably more complex nowadays than they used to be, and, because of the number of licences coming up for renewal, it’s exacerbated an existing problem which again, in turn, was exacerbated by COVID-19.

It is an important issue. Our responsible firearms licence holders around New Zealand—and I would mention that the vast majority of them are incredibly responsible, and the very small ones who aren’t are quickly noticed by police, and their firearms licences are taken off them, which is quite a rare occurrence. So we have a lot of very responsible licence holders around New Zealand and they provide a very important contribution to their communities and their families, both through taking care of the wild animals in New Zealand—game animals, for example, are an important part of our country environments, our conservation environments, and they provide food for people who hunt them—as well as the recreational values of people who get outdoors and spend quality time outdoors. But it’s also that if they aren’t controlled—and the Department of Conservation have their own funding issues and can’t address all of these issues—it’s actually the game animal hunters who provide a really important contribution to our conservation estate and our back country in New Zealand by controlling these animal numbers which otherwise there isn’t provision to do so. For example, there’s the Game Animal Council who do a lot of great work in this space. There’s the Fiordland Wapiti Foundation, in my electorate, which does an incredible job managing the wapiti population and actually looking after kea as well. They provide a really valuable contribution in monitoring the kea population in Fiordland and also providing food to various social agencies.

So there’s some amazing stuff happening, and probably something that’s not particularly well known publicly, generally, is that our hunting community in New Zealand actually provide a really important contribution to our conservation management and the preservation of our wild spaces through the activities that they do, and, importantly, also hunting provides an opportunity for people to literally put food on the table for their families. I’ve spoken to people for whom that’s actually been a critical part of putting meat in the freezer to ensure there’s food on the table for the family.

So a good little bill here to support these law-abiding, good, contributing members of our community.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a very short call in favour of the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill.

My electorate, Ilam, actually has a border which is approximately one block from Al Noor Mosque, and I have constituents who were victims of that appalling terror attack. And so I, like many in this House, am really aware of the need for diligent and robust processes with regards to firearms licences. But it is clear that demand is outstripping the police’s ability to process these applications—which does need to be a diligent process. There are many reasons for that, and some of those do sit with the findings of the royal commission of inquiry, and that has led to delays. So what we are seeing here is creating an ability for us to ensure that consistency of legality runs past the expiry of these licences. I do commend it to the House.

Thirty years ago, this House passed a piece of legislation that unfortunately created a situation where every licensed firearm owner, essentially, had to renew their licence at the same time. This has created a peak which is difficult to manage for the police. That peak hits in a few years’ time. Meanwhile, the rolling problem of COVID and the pressure that it put on our Public Service and the new and more stringent provisions for checking licence holders—the reasons for which have been so eloquently set out by my friends and colleagues Mr Omer and Ms Pallett—have created a situation where we needed to do something to break that wave, that coming wave, into manageable swells.

This piece of legislation will, effectively, bridge the gap, and that is something we need to do. I’m always amused to discover that my colleagues across the ditch, otherwise known as Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, the National Party, have only come to the realisation that this 30-year-old piece of legislation creates this problem since they themselves became the Opposition. And in the nine years previously, of course, it was no problem at all, apparently, and certainly not one that they were going to be bothered to fix. We, however, are going to fix it. It’s a simple administrative fix that is going to allow a bridge. It is worthwhile and I commend it to this House.

I’ve been deeply offended by the last speech, actually. It’s “His” Majesty’s loyal Opposition. I’m just going to process that briefly, for a moment—but I’m OK now, Dr Henderson—

💬 Dr Emily Henderson: Mea culpa to His Majesty!

Very good, yes.

Look, I’m very pleased to support this Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill, and, as I’ve heard from other speakers across the House, there is widespread support—including that this is done under urgency. This has been an issue building for quite some time. In fact, the last speaker has rightly identified that a law change in 1992, I think, when we moved from lifetime licences to a 10-year renewal, by switching everyone at the same time we’ve created—well, I think they’re using the terms “peaks” and “swells”, but it’s probably a broader piece of work that’s going to be needed and I think we’ve heard some indicate that this will happen, to how we may begin to break up this 10-year dynamic.

But I think what’s really important from this side, and certainly in my own mind, is that we’re in this current situation which requires this amendment bill not simply because of a piece of legislation from 1992—we’ve seen an array of other factors kick in which have exacerbated or, if you will, tipped a process system that was already under pressure well over the mark.

One of those is certainly COVID. You can’t shut a country down for 18 months and, effectively, lock everyone at home and expect there’s not going to be process consequences. And, look, to be fair, the Civil Service and others and the Government’s trying—I mean, we would critique how they’re doing this, but we are seeing the Government trying to get through a massive backlog. But, again, I would say to this House, that is a consequence of the way that the Government chose to manage the lockdowns and primarily kept us locked down for so long compared to many other countries.

The second is around police resourcing, and I want to make a quick distinction here. The firearms officers that I know, including in my own electorate, do an incredible, incredible job and—talking with locals who deal with them—are very thorough. So I think we should have great confidence in our police in the work that they undertake, and to do so, so diligently. But at least two factors are also leading to this massive number of applications, which require this amendment bill. One is—and I’ll qualify why I say this, but somewhat understandably—after the terrible mosque shootings terrorist act in 2019, we saw a much more broad, shall we say, application process. I can’t exactly remember the numbers, but let’s say you sort of went from eight to 32 pages. So an enormous amount of extra work has been required, obviously, for that person applying. But the flipside, of course, is that the police officer—or, rather, arms officer in charge—has a lot more to go through.

The second part is—and Nicole McKee from the ACT Party was intimating this—the ability of an arms officer to sit down with not only the applicant but also their referee, and/or—actually, not and/or; I apologise. An arms officer has to not only meet with the applicant, they need to meet with the spouse or partner of the applicant and a referee. And trying to coordinate that, particularly around current structures, is exceptionally, exceptionally difficult. So the main context we’re trying to give here is that, yes, moving to 10-year licences 30 years ago, or whenever it was, has had an impact, but it was ticking away relatively well until these other factors have kicked in.

I might make the comment as well, that most, if not almost all, licensed firearms holders are law abiding. When we see, particularly with current and more recent criminal activity, the people discharging these firearms don’t hold a licence, have not gone through any of these processes—and it’s probably the challenge to the House, regardless of political colour, in many ways, no matter what laws we pass, the law abiding will proceed correctly; the gangs, the criminals, and others will not. So it’s always going to be a balance for this House of just how onerous we make processes, which I would say we have to admit don’t fully capture those who are just going to outright ignore it.

So while this is a good step and we do have to still be prudent in this amendment bill, the likes of the gangs are just going to ignore it outright. Now, that’s not a reason for inaction. As I say, we should support this bill. There’s over 9,000, I think, new applications—I haven’t been able to do the math mainly because I’m not exactly sure of some of the factors such as how long does it take an arms officer to read through, you know, 30-plus pages of application. But that’s an enormous amount of time required.

And, of course, on top of that, I was operating under the thought that we had about 2,000 licensed firearms holders needing renewal. But, again, we just heard from our friends in the ACT Party that that’s over 4,000 people. And, again, that’s the key factor of what this amendment bill is addressing. It’s saying to those current licence holders, if—if—they can get their application in before their licence expires, then they’ll be able to continue legally to have their firearms until eventually—a year, 18 months, two years later—the new licence is issued. And that’s incredibly important for a variety of reasons. I mean, one is just very pragmatic. There are, basically, licensed gun holders at the moment—well, hopefully, not literally running—moving about the country with their firearms, because if you’re about to lose your licence, you can’t hold a weapon any more. You can’t hold a firearm. You’ve got to go and find a mate who still holds a licence and take your firearms over to her or him, which, you know, to slightly illustrate the fact, you’ve got a whole lot of firearms in the back of boots moving around the country for people trying to maintain their legal right—well, sorry, that’s not quite true; wanting to maintain their legal right.

We, here on this side of the House, have almost been pleading with the Government to make these changes at least two years ago. Again, I think it’s quite pragmatic. Coming back to that earlier point, most, if not just almost all, licensed firearm holders do so responsibly. New Zealand actually has a pretty good vetting process, I would argue. But we also have these people who are providing a great contribution into society—and my colleague Joseph Mooney, and I’m sure others as well, but listening to his speech, I was noting that, you know, a lot of these people, and of the 4,000-plus waiting for renewals are hunters; this is part of their recreational—if you will—activity. It’s something they enjoy doing, getting out into nature. That’s got wonderful benefits for them over everything, of course, from mental health to just collegiality. They’re helping maintain species management: obviously, some in a recreational form; others professionally—we don’t want to downplay just the enormous contribution they make there—and then, obviously, those who are using their firearms to put food on the table.

These are all very, very positive things. And we’ve certainly seen over the last few years that good licensed firearms holders have not been able to participate in all those activities or duck shooting or the roar or whatever. And so it’s timely that we are looking at this piece of legislation now because we’re heading into the summer break—well, a break for most people, not all, of course—a lot of people will want to go out hunting. And so the opportunity to pass this law, if we do indeed—obviously, we should go to select committee; tease out a few things. But, actually, these licensed firearms holders, knowing they can continue to legally hold and use their firearms responsibly is a very positive thing because they’ve struggled for many, many years already.

Again, I just want to stress, we on this side of the House have asked for this for quite some time. In fact, this sits within a wider range of legal changes we want to see around firearms. I can’t quite explain why—the Labour MPs are welcome to do so—but I feel things have dithered and I don’t exactly know why, because this is pretty straightforward and it’s clear that it’s a new Minister in the seat who’s picked this opportunity up and is putting it through the House. But I think it’s going to be important that we do have a select committee process. I must admit, I’m not exactly sure how long that’s going to be. I’m conscious we’re under urgency at the moment, so I assume we’re going to have a relatively short select committee process.

💬 Chris Penk: A week.

A week, I’m told. If you ever want information, go to Chris Penk. He pretty much knows everything; in fact, he probably knows the next sentence I’m about to give!

But, no, if it’s only a week—a week is an exceptionally short period of time. And, look, I’m slightly torn on that. At one level, we do need to get this done for the very reasons I’ve just outlined. But one of the things I’ve found in my time in the House is that when we rush laws through, and particularly with very shortened report-backs, we make errors—or rather the Government of the day makes errors.

Obviously we’re dealing with something quite serious here, which is the arms amendment bill. And so we’ll have to listen very, very carefully to make sure that we’re hearing—within this one week—of what’s been told. And it would be my hope that if this passes first reading, the select committee will take all the time it can and will listen to as many people around this as possible.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take the final call before this bill, the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill, goes to the Justice Committee, which is a hard-working committee of this House. I absolutely have faith in our ability to have robust and detailed discussion about this bill in the time that has been given to us.

The first quick point that I want to make is how a regulatory system that works and is robust for arms in New Zealand is really important, but a part of that is the faith and confidence in the regulatory system of the people who use it. This bill is about giving the people who use it faith in a system and giving them time to renew their licences in the appropriate way. It’s a small and practical step which does that and increases people’s confidence in it.

The second point that I would make is that when it goes to select committee—I agree with Mark Mitchell that we need to get it back to the House swiftly. He said that the time allotted was appropriate, and I think it is. Where I think we can agree around this House is that we would welcome submitters on this bill, particularly around some of the very technical points. It’s a very short bill, and it only makes two real changes. But one change that I would encourage submitters to give us their views on is the technical amendments around the enabling of police to issue notices and documents to an electronic address, effectively being email addresses. The committee would do well to consider how that would work in the regime. For that reason, I commend it to the House.

The question is, That the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Instruction to Justice Committee