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

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

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Barbara Kuriger): 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 second time.

The delay in processing licence applications is a great concern to the firearms community, and this bill puts in place new measures that will ensure that firearms licences remain current while the police are processing a new application. This bill takes action to ensure that existing licence holders can continue to possess and use firearms. It also includes two minor amendments: to ensure that the commencement date is set from the issue date when a new licence is issued after the expiry date of the previous licence, and the final change is to enable police to issue electronic notices outside of the registry.

The bill was first tabled in the House on 3 November and it passed its first reading with cross-party support on 8 November. Firstly, I’d like to thank the Justice Committee for the way they dealt expeditiously with this bill. They have worked hard under a very tight, one-week time frame and have made suggestions to improve the quality of the bill.

I want to also thank the 143 submitters who took time out of their busy lives to participate in the democratic process within 24 hours of this bill passing its first reading. Your feedback has been taken on board for both the bill and the implementation.

The Justice Committee also considered revisions which are incorporated in the revised bill before us today. There is nothing in the amendments that have been made that would change the cross-party support evidenced at the first reading on Tuesday, 8 November.

Many submitters raised concerns about the police’s ability to process licence applications. These submitters expressed concerns about the challenges and frustrations that they have experienced due to processing delays. The purpose of this bill is to provide a foundation for police to be able to address the high number of applications and move forward in a more efficient and practical way. I want to also acknowledge the inconvenience and safety concerns associated with firearms licence holders having to move firearms when their licence expires. This bill is about putting an end to these challenges.

Some submitters suggested alternative solutions such as issuing temporary licences, requiring firearms to be handed in within 14 days of a licence application being declined, and specifying a minimum time to make an application before a licence expired. These suggestions are out of scope of the bill as they present a fundamental change to the Arms Act and would require further consultation. These changes could not be considered under urgency.

Some submitters sought clarification on how this bill will be implemented. This feedback has been useful to ensure that Police has considered implementation for all licence holders, including those who travel domestically and internationally, or who live and work in remote and rural areas.

The narrow scope of this bill means that the number of changes to the bill is minimal. There are two substantive changes in the bill since its first reading. These are related to the electronic delivery of notices, and transitional provisions.

The first change relates to the questions that members asked during the first reading about ensuring that electronic notices are delivered to the relevant person. Under the Arms Act, there is a general assumption that if a document is posted, it will be received by the relevant person. Under the revision, a qualification has been added to limit the electronic email address to an address that has been provided as an address for service. The recipient will need to agree to electronic communication to the email address that they have provided. For recipients that do not have sufficient internet access, they will be able to continue to receive documents via the post or hand-delivered.

There are also two changes related to transitional provisions. For the avoidance of doubt, an additional provision was added to the transitional provisions to make it clear that the licence holders who have a firearms licence as continuing in force under regulation 28ZB of the Arms Regulations 1992 will also benefit from this provision. These are the licence extensions that related to the COVID-19 lockdown in 2021. The second change to the transitional provisions is that for the avoidance of doubt, endorsements that existed at the time that licence expired will also be reinstated when this amendment comes into force.

These amendments to the bill are consistent with the original purpose of the bill to ensure that law-abiding citizens are able to continue to comply with the law and to enjoy the privileges associated with holding a firearms licence. The arms amendment bill before us today will mean that law-abiding firearms owners who apply for a new firearms or dealers licence before their current licence expires will no longer have to worry about being non-compliant with the law. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it is a pleasure to rise and take a call on this piece of legislation. It’s a piece of legislation that is quite overdue, actually. I have been fielding a number of calls and emails from concerned constituents around my Waikato electorate who have been waiting with frustration for their renewals to be processed, and in some cases that has been for an unacceptably long period of time. So now, getting to the second reading on this bill—in a truncated process for another piece of legislation; not best practice from this Government, again, yet here we are, again, with them continuing to show poor practice and poor legislative processes—but, ultimately, the outcome here will be a good one for current licensed firearms holders. Of course, it is only for current licensed firearms holders, so the issue remains in place for anyone who has put in an application for a new firearms licence, and has been waiting for extended periods of time, as well, to receive an update on that status. That, unfortunately, is not addressed within this, and I do want to acknowledge those people, as well.

I have some stats on this, because I asked specifically in relation to my electorate around some of the wait times that were being experienced. There were over 200—exactly 205, it was—people waiting for renewals in the Waikato electorate alone. And so, when you think about that extrapolated around the country, there are a lot of people, law-abiding New Zealanders who have currently held firearms licences, that were then facing these sorts of issues through no fault of their own, through delayed processing time caused by a few issues: one, potentially, by the recommendations off the back of the inquiry into the Christchurch terror attacks, the royal commission, and then, secondly, also by the impact of COVID, which did have an impact. These are unfortunate situations for the processing system to have to deal with—or those in that system—but, ultimately, we need to be able to respond quicker, to respond better, on behalf of those law-abiding firearms licence holders, who have, as I say, done nothing wrong. They have sought to renew their licence, as is required by law, before the expiry of their existing licence, and have, in many cases, been waiting far too long.

In the Waikato electorate, over 130 were waiting more than three months after the expiry date of their current licence. There were still 13 that were waiting beyond 12 months for their renewal to be processed. It is simply unacceptable. The longest wait time was 20 months—nearly two years that people were waiting to receive a renewal of their firearms licence. It is simply unacceptable. It is frustrating for them that this has taken so long, but we do support this bill going through now, because, ultimately, it addresses that issue.

It does provide, through the select committee process, the addition of new Part 3, inserted by the Schedule, I believe it was, which actually enabled, effectively, the retrospective implementation of this law, as well, such that this clause applies in respect of an application that was made before the commencement date by an applicant who, at the time of making the application, held a firearms licence. That is a good measure, as well, because, of course, it would be unfair to exclude those who have been waiting, potentially, the longest from this piece of legislation as well. So it’s encouraging that that piece has been brought in, to ensure that that category of licence holder is able to capitalise on this practical change, as well.

Now, it’s not just about the licence, too, and I do want to touch on that. It’s actually about the endorsements and any conditions that apply to particular endorsements on the licence, as well—again, extended under this legislation, of course, in line with any existing expiries on those particular endorsements or conditions, as well. So an appropriate aspect there, and, of course, the dealer’s licence side, too. I think the good aspect of this is that it’s not.

But it takes effect from the time that the licence is issued, or the time of the renewal date, whichever is further in the future, or the most advanced, so that, again, those licensed firearms holders are not unfairly impacted due to having put in an early application, for example, on the one hand, where they want to try and mitigate the risk of not having their licence processed in time by getting it in early, only to have a renewal come through a couple of months before the actual expiry of their licence. That would be unfairly biased against them, as well, so, in that instance, it tracks the renewal date to be from when their licence was due to expire, as opposed to when it was issued. On the contrary side to that, of course, in a situation where a licence is not issued until some, potentially, 20 months, as it may be for my constituents in the Waikato—20 months after their licence has expired—the new licence is deemed to be issued from that date, 20 months later, when it was eventually issued. Those are good, practical outcomes, and so we do support the bill at this stage.

I know there were a couple of concerns, and I did actually have a concern around some of the digital or electronic aspects, as well. We’ve seen continued issues around cyber-, hacking-type activity—call it what you will—that could potentially be an issue, and, of course, the digital exclusion issues that are faced in many, particularly rural, communities around New Zealand, which are often communities that have a higher proportion of licensed firearms holders, as well, who may not necessarily be particularly tech savvy. Whether or not this is appropriately accounting for their needs, as well—we will be canvassing that, I’m sure, through the committee stage which will follow shortly after this second reading. But I’m happy to support this bill here at second reading. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a brief call. This bill fixes a problem: currently, the demand for new firearms licence applications remains high, and is outstripping police’s existing ability to process applications. During the submissions period on the Justice Committee, we received 143 submissions during the one-day consultation period, with 122 of those in support. We had a day of submitters, and I would like to acknowledge all those groups and individuals that took time to submit to the committee at short notice. I’d also like to acknowledge the other members of the committee—both from the Government side and National and ACT; having Nicole McKee on the committee was like having a resident firearms expert. So that was excellent to have all of those questions being able to be answered immediately, sometimes without even needing to consult officials. So I’d like to commend this bill to the House; it’s an important change that needs to happen, and the sooner we get it done, the better.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a short call on behalf of the Green Party in support of the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill, acknowledging, first up, that this has gone through a shortened process and we’re going through the rest of it under urgency, which is never ideal in terms of the democratic process, but, in this instance, will probably put a lot of minds at ease. Generally, the Greens’ focus, when we’re engaging on issues around firearms, is about ensuring good, strong regulation and controls to keep our communities safe, as well as making sure that the people who are using firearms are doing it for a purpose and have the appropriate skills to be doing that.

This bill is not really connected to those wider issues, except in a way that making sure that we’re not actually—because of processing problems within the agencies, that people aren’t becoming out of step with the law, through no fault of their own. There are delays in the system for processing and people who otherwise would’ve got their licences renewed haven’t been able to, and that is not through any fault of their own. So this is giving them that cover in that process and recognising that because licences have a 10-year renewal, there’s a peak approaching, because the law, I think, was introduced in 1992, so we’re expecting a whole lot of renewals to be coming into the system, which is already clogged up. So we’re wanting to make sure that people have the protection of the law while the processing catches up, and the Greens are happy to support that.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand in support of the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill on behalf of the ACT Party. I’d like to start off by acknowledging the 143 submitters who came to the Justice Committee at very short notice to represent their customers, members, and clients, of which around about 60,000 club members were represented, either by written submission or by oral submission from their parent organisation. That, of course, does not make up for the extra 180,000 people who may not even realise that this is happening, because it’s happening so quickly.

And that’s really what has occurred with arms legislation bills since 2019—very, very short submission periods. In fact, the one that we’ve just had for this bill was 24 hours. In 2019, it was 48 hours, and, in 2020, it was just a matter of a few weeks. This is how the firearms community has been treated—like they’re not worthy of a full submission period, like they’re not worthy of being heard. But I would like to comment and say that the 143 written submissions that came in in a 24-hour period—I’m very proud of those people for putting pen to paper, especially after so many of them have felt harassed for a number of years now. Many of them are wanting to give up on writing submissions, they feel that they’re not being heard and they also—and quite rightly so—are not happy with the shortened time periods.

This bill is about extending licences, and I mentioned in my first reading speech how I can’t believe I’m actually supporting an arms bill under urgency. But I feel that our arms community have been affected for so many years, now, that I would like to do something to be able to do something to help them get through the period of Christmas—the upcoming roar in March where those who have not been able to hunt since 2019 can partake again. And I think that this will be exceptional for them, and hence the reason why the ACT Party are going to support it.

As I mentioned, 60,000 people out of 240,000 that have firearm licences—not that long ago, probably about 18 months, there were 250,000 that had firearm licences, we’ve lost 10,000 over a very short period of time. Now, I understand that the atrocity that happened in 2019 meant that we had to review what was happening with our licensing. But, when we get to the reality of it all, the 250,000 people, at 2019, had gone through referrals, had been deemed to be fit and proper people by New Zealand Police, and had been issued licences, and, overnight, they were no longer deemed that way. So much so that when their firearm licences expired, they were, again, overnight, deemed to be no longer a fit and proper person. And that’s sad because this is not their fault. They did not do this. And the organisation, the Government agency, that should be putting their hand up to say, “Yeah, we mucked up here, sorry, and we’re going to go through a bit of a ride, but we’ll sort it out, and let’s do it together”, hasn’t. In fact, so much so that during this bill process, which has only been a week in the making, we’ve even had the Minister, the Hon Chris Hipkins, stand up and still blame clubs for what happened back in 2019.

And this will bring me to the email situation, when we get to the committee of the whole House, because I’m really quite upset about how that clause has been put into this bill and actually has nothing to do with arms licensing at all, but is all about the Government agency being able to email people and give them service of notice of any type of document. And I will go into this a bit more, but I am worried about time—I’ve already gone through five minutes. I might do that in the committee of the whole House stage because I think this is very important and I hope the acting Minister, the Hon Damien O’Connor, is able to answer my questions on the emails, I’m just giving the Minister a bit of a heads up, there.

The reason why we are in this situation is not because of licensed firearm owners, it’s not because of any wrongdoing of theirs, it’s not because of the royal commission inquiry recommendations, which is what the Government agency had told us it was for; it was because, back in 1992, we moved from lifetime firearm licences to 10-year licences. The manager that was in charge of police licensing at the time has recently told me that at that stage they actually thought the curve would flatten. The curve is about the number of people who transitioned from the lifetime licences to 10 years. As my colleague from the Green Party Jan Logie suggested, it started in 1992, but it was actually in 1996 when they did this big move. So this peak had been projected back in 2006, 2016, and now 2026. It’s not new; it’s something that they knew was coming. Now, they’re saying that there is an issue and it’s going to get worse—they’re quite right. At the moment, there are approximately 9,000 people that are caught up in the system. By the time we get to 2026, it’s expected, in that year alone, there will be 43,000 people trying to renew their licences. Police are unable to keep up with the couple of thousand that they have now. And this is why we are introducing this bill.

I’d like to take a moment to thank one of the officials, his name is Richard, because he did what he could through the select committee process to answer my questions and to verify a lot of things as well. I’d also like to thank the chair of the Justice Committee, and my Justice Committee colleagues, because you allowed me to have more questions than I probably deserved to have, and you allowed me to also speak to a lot to the submitters, and I’m very, very grateful for that because this has been quite emotional for a number of them. So while I’m being a little bit negative, I’m being positive about my colleagues who I’ve worked with, and I’m very grateful for what you have allowed us to do.

But this is well overdue, and the shortened process—it’s totally unnecessary. This bill is about keeping our communities safe. How can we do that when we’re talking about firearms, which can be used as weapons, when we’re doing 24-hour submission periods every time we bring in an arms amendment bill? It’s just not on.

There are a few areas that I do want to touch on but I realise that I am running out of time and I’ll probably do that in my 10-minute delivery of my third reading speech, and that will be around the online checker of the licensing, as well as clarification around the retrospectivity and how police intend to prioritise—and “triage” is what they call it—the licences so that those that are needing to be looked at a little bit closer can be, while those that are of no issue won’t be.

I’m grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to be able to come in here and stand up for licensed firearm owners. This is not the end; this is one of many problems. The clubs and ranges regimes that have just come out are another spectacular problem that has been put on the community and that I’m afraid will see clubs and ranges close. This is where I come back to this bill, because the email clause in here actually relates directly to the clubs and ranges regulations that have just come out over the last few days as well, and I do want to address that in my 10-minute third reading speech.

I just would like to finish off by requesting officials to take responsibility for their part and their play in some of the mess that we’re in with firearms law at the moment and to stop blaming the licensed firearm-owning community. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. May I join in just congratulating you on your new role, as other colleagues have done today as well. I would also just like to begin by reflecting on the collegiality of the Justice Committee. Often, we deal with matters that are in a bit of a philosophical and high-level policy space. This felt very much like we were adding value to something that will make a practical difference in people’s lives.

There are two thankyous, in particular, that I would like to share. First to Nicole McKee, as our chair has mentioned: just an extraordinary skill set that she brought to the room, and I found myself asking questions of submitters and sort of getting the nod or the shake of the head from Ms McKee as I was asking various questions. But it wasn’t just her expertise; it was also the clear relationships she held with submitters who came before us. I do think that that changed the nature of the discussion and meant we could have a really constructive discussion.

The second thankyou would be to our submitters themselves, who I thought were just excellently prepared, both on paper but also to respond to our questions. What I particularly valued was that they raised issues both within the scope of the bill as well as novel issues that create practical problems outside the scope of the bill, including one that stood out for me, which was the registration of new gun owners, and the delays that were sometimes caused in this space when those new owners needed to be licensed to engage in employment activities. So I thought that was extremely useful.

Once again, I would commend Ms McKee, as well as our submitters. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I’m pleased to take a brief second call on behalf of the ACT Party on this bill. I think it’s important for New Zealanders listening at home and for those who may have tuned their television set to Parliamentary TV tonight and to see that the House is sitting under urgency, progressing what has largely been an absolute flaming comet trail of poor legislation, that finally we come to a bill that actually addresses a concern that my colleague Nicole McKee, on behalf of licensed firearms owners, has been raising for years and years—that there is going to be a backlog in relicensing firearms owners who are fit and proper people and who’ve been judged in the past as being suitable to hold a firearms licence. And that’s for a number of reasons: all of the rushed changes to legislation that were made in 2019 and 2020. But I also want to point out that as an Aucklander, it wasn’t just the 2019 atrocity in Christchurch that led to the police being tasked with a different function around a firearms law legislation regulation where they were required to stand over hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life, people I met who willingly, voluntarily, responsibly turned up to collection centres to hand over firearms that they treasured. That melting pot of New Zealanders I met on the day that I presented my firearms in 2019 to be collected—people from the Philippines, Korea, Singapore, China, new-school Kiwis and old-school Kiwis alike, who responsibly, as fit and proper persons deemed responsible enough to hold a firearms licence, turned up to hand over their firearms.

At that point, it was quite clear, the police—who we had previously assumed were helpful administrators, safety assessors for clubs and ranges and individuals like myself, who has been subjected to the fit and proper person assessment in my own home, in my family home, a number of times—had been given a different direction.

So what we then experienced in 2020 was the COVID-19 response, which, if you lived in Auckland, you knew meant that you didn’t see a policeman on the street for nearly two years because they were given other tasks. They were told to go and stand outside hotels in downtown Auckland or at the airport, guarding people who may escape custody and spread COVID-19 into the community. Or then they were sent to what became known as the “Auckland regional boundary”, or the “Berlin Wall” as we called it, us Aucklanders. Thousands of police officers rotated around the Auckland regional boundary, forcing motorists to queue for hours. Truck drivers with refrigerated goods, with stock on board, asking them to hand over their papers to prove why they should be allowed to leave the Auckland region. Every single member of Parliament who’s from the Auckland region knows exactly what I’m talking about. Those 1.7 million people who live in Auckland and the tens of thousands of licensed firearms owners who live in Auckland know exactly what I’m talking about.

The police were distracted. They were directed by this Government and by their Ministers to do different things. And, as a result, when it came to relicensing, licensed firearms owners again got a short stick. Now, the ACT Party supports the licensing extension provisions in this bill. The current situation where those with expired licences must find another licensed person, a family member or a friend to take care of their firearms, to store them safely—those parts and ammunition—because a person’s licence is expired and they couldn’t get it renewed for love or money, their local police responsible for licensing were simply overwhelmed with the number of applications and the fact that they weren’t resourced to deal with it. So people have been forced to rely on friends and family or other members of their gun clubs to store their firearms and parts and ammunition. Some of them have had to go and buy second gun safes just to store friends’ gear because the police were unable to process the applications. They weren’t resourced to do it and they were distracted and diverted at the instructions of this Government and successive police Ministers.

The licensed firearms owners raised this again and again. Nicole McKee raised this again and again. And today, after a 24-hour submission period, with licensed firearms owners acutely aware of how their property rights are at risk, like no other New Zealander has been treated in the last 50 years—I mean, that I’ve been alive—they are so acutely aware of how at risk their property rights are; 140-plus of them were prepared to write to select committee with 24 hours’ notice and make a submission. It shows you how seriously this group of people take their property rights and the property rights of their entire community of a quarter of a million fit and proper and responsible people, and how seriously they view this current Government and police Minister’s flawed, flippant, and, what has appeared to be, disrespectful approach to their property rights and to their community and to their culture. That’s new-school Kiwis and old-school Kiwis alike.

That’s why ACT supports the licensing extension of this bill. Although, under urgency, it would have been helpful to have had more time. It’s not a new problem; it’s just a problem that the Government didn’t think was important enough to deal with until it’s about to cause a major, major problem in compliance. Of course, the compliance problem at the moment—well, up until now—has been a problem for licensed firearms owners. It only really becomes a problem for the Government when the police as the agents tasked with administering the legislation find themselves potentially in breach of the law for failing to administer it. So when it becomes a reputational risk for the Government, all of a sudden they leap to urgency, don’t they, Mr Mitchell?

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: They do.

They leap when it’s a reputational risk to a police Minister or a former police Minister.

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: They hobble—they hobble into action.

That’s right—they leap. But we are concerned because it appears that the urgency and the lack of transparency has been used to slip through what appears to be helpful, the ability to serve documents electronically on licensed firearms owners, on people who administer ranges and who have officer roles in gun clubs, ranges, and so on. Because by serving documents electronically you think “Well, that’s extremely helpful; the police use email, most of us use email.”

But what the police have chosen to do, and I’m just going to read from the bill, from the actual amended section 72A, inserted by clause 7, is they’ve amended it to for “Service of documents”. That means legal documents that mean if you don’t do something about it, if you don’t get your lawyer to help you respond, or if you don’t take a physical action, you’re likely to suffer the full force of the law. When someone serves you a document, that really pricks your attention. And so the “Section 72A amended (Service of documents)” says the police used to be able to transmit to the person’s electronic address that the person has provided as an address for service; now it’s to “an” electronic address. Now, you can imagine there’s a lot of New Zealanders, particularly in rural environments or older people, who might share an email address with their partner. They might have their own email addresses that is for their business, and if they’re retired, potentially they don’t operate that business anymore and they don’t check that email that often. Or if they’re an officer in a club and it’s a volunteer role, again, they might not be checking their email that often. And, all of a sudden, this piece of legislation means that if the police sent them an email serving them documents, they didn’t even have to acknowledge or confirm to the police they’ve received them, the date of that email the police officer or the agent hitting send is determined to be the date of service and all of the obligations, duties, or consequences associated with what has been served will fall on that person, whether they knew it or not. So we have grave concerns about that and look forward to exploring that in the House with the Minister.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill.

In Committee

Part 1 Applications for new licences