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

Members, the House is in committee on the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill. Members, we come now to Part 1.

💬 Tangi Utikere: Point of order. I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one debate.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? Yes, there is objection. The question is that Part 1 stand part. This is the debate on clauses 4 to 6 and the Schedule—“Application for new licences”.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, in Part 1 of the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill, new section 25A is in regard to application for a new firearms licence made by a holder of a current licence. The current regime is that when a person is renewing their licence, they’re actually renewing it as a whole new licence. It’s not a renewal as such, but, rather, they have to apply starting from scratch. Under the new regime that was delivered in the 2020 arms legislation change, a new licence is actually issued to a first-time person for a five-year duration. In fact, that is going to exacerbate the 2026 peak that I spoke about earlier, because those licence renewals will be coming up in 2026, as they were first issued in 2021, at the same time that the peak of the bell curve will be there.

Minister, I’m hoping that you can take the time to explain to those that are watching at home what the application for a new firearms licence actually means for them. I’m hoping that you can explain to them that those that are renewing won’t be looking at a five-year licence only but will remain as a 10-year one. It’s a question that I have been asked—whether or not the new regime implements those that are renewing under this regime.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the Arms (Licence Holders’ Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill, and join what’s been a protracted, long debate on this bill. My question to the Minister is quite simply this, on Part 1: the Government has chosen to bring legislation into the House and take up the time of the House to try and deal with and fix what is a poor process—a process that is not working.

So it was highlighted through the submission period that this is not a very good way of fixing or dealing with a problem. We support it, because it has to be done—because the process hasn’t worked and because the Government has been too slow to respond and act on it, it means that you’ve got firearms licence holders who have engaged with the process in good faith in terms of renewing their licence, because the process is so broken or it is not keeping up with the renewals. That means that their licence is expiring and then they’ve been put in the awful position, through no fault of their own, that they are breaking the rules around the Arms Act.

So my question to the Minister is quite simply this—and the previous speaker, Nicole McKee, highlighted the issue. There’s going to be another big bottleneck in 2026. How can the Minister guarantee, and the Government guarantee—I’m talking directly to Part 1 in terms of the renewal of these licences—that the process is actually going to be fixed and that we’re not going to continue to have an ongoing issue with continued bottlenecks, with the process continuing to be broken, and with the Government having to respond again and bring this back to the House to have to look at and pass more legislation? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Minister, carrying on from my colleague Mark Mitchell’s question about the peak, I guess, that we were talking about that arrives in 2026, during the select committee process we had asked officials how they were planning to fix that peak. If we are looking at triaging now and we’re still four years away from that peak—actually, coming up more closely to three years away from that peak—I had asked police what their plans were. Was it to extend licences for two years or four years? And they advised that they still plan to keep to their key performance indicator of 90 days’ processing.

So I’m wondering, Minister, how the peak will be alleviated if in fact we’re only putting people off by three months at a time—if we actually get to the point where we can process within three months. Or is it that there will be some who are deemed as not being an issue to police actually having to hold on to expired licences for a number of years? That could be quite difficult, Minister, when it comes to being able to check whether or not their firearms are actually still valid, because the police had advised us that the only way others could check was to go online and use the police online checker. If some licence holders were going to have to wait a number of years and have to get to an online service every time they wanted to utilise their firearms licence, how would that work? So, for 90 days, Minister, I can see that being OK, but if it’s actually going to go for longer and be a number of years, like some people are currently experiencing, how is that going to work for them?

Look, as the stand-in Minister, I can’t profess to have all the expertise that my colleague does in this area. Can I just say that, just on a couple of the questions, they were reasonable questions, and I acknowledge the goodwill in the committee here. There’s been a lot of moving parts in this space for a couple of years, I guess, and we’re trying to move forward in a cooperative way, with all parties in the House, to get it right. I’m no expert. I have not had a firearms licence. I’ll say that. But we’ve had a pistol club and a long-range rifle range on our farm, so I’m quite familiar with the clubs and the way they run, and I have a huge respect for those people, and they run really, really well. So this is an area in rural New Zealand, of course, and urban New Zealand that the Government wants to support. The fact that we’re prepared to bring in legislation like this—it is rapid—to make some improvements is a sign of the goodwill that we have towards this.

The police have been doing what they can. A recruitment process—it’s a low-unemployment, tight labour market, but they do need to recruit the right people. They’ve been out there trying to attract more people into the positions to assist them. There’s an education process out there to try to encourage people to apply, you know, not just at the last minute for their licence renewals, and there’s intelligence-led triaging of licence applications. And those that are low-risk indeed will be streamlined through the process, so there’s a lot of good things happening there.

In terms of the particular questions—and I’ve got some advice here—I guess, the 90 days’ processing—thank you very much. On the 10-year licence premise, a five-year licence at the peak would add a maximum of—it’s good writing—less than 10 percent of the numbers of the applications. I think that only 91 five-year licences will come up for renewal in 2026. So, in fact, you know, the conflation that I think was being referred to might not, indeed, be the reality. It is a bit of time between now and then, and I’m sure that pretty much all the parties in the Parliament will be trying to move through, with goodwill, to sort out what are some pressure points that this bill is addressed to concern. So all I can say is that. The other questions—how can we guarantee that the process is fixed? As I say, the goodwill, the fact that we’re trying to move through and enhance the capability within the police force, should give some assurance on that. Thank you.

I do want to acknowledge the Minister because he’s not in charge of the bill—he’s actually making a genuine attempt to answer the questions. I want to acknowledge the advisors that are working on it. But I just want some clarity—[The Hon Chris Hipkins replaces the Hon Damien O’Connor in the chair]—it’s good to see the Minister in charge of the bill is in the seat.

So, Minister, just some clarity. We were just told, in response to some questions that we asked that—just so that we’re clear—there’s only 91 current licence holders with either a five-year licence that come up for renewal in 1996. Have I got that right? [Official responds to member] Sorry, 2026? There’s only 91 with a five-year licence, but that’s not excluding others that are coming up for renewal—[Official responds to member] And the next 12 months after that, 4,000? Yeah. OK, thank you very much. I think that—I don’t know if we’ve ever done that before. Maybe we should do that more often.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yeah, no. I think, now that the Minister’s in the chair, we might refer directly to the Minister. Because, actually—

Yeah. That actually works very well, though, Madam Chair. I like it. But—

💬 Harete Hipango: Got a straight answer.

That’s right, exactly—exactly.

So, in light of that, I guess, carrying on, the question to the Minister is quite simply: we’re bringing a bill into the House; we support that, we understand why we have to do it, and we’re behind it. But it’s legislation responding to a process issue, and can we be confident that with the pipeline of licensed firearms holders that are coming in to be renewed that the process is going to be OK?

I thank the member the Hon Mark Mitchell, and I apologise for my lateness—I’ve actually been at a police event this evening and the House has moved even faster than I had anticipated. For once, the police actually held me late. Normally, police events run bang-on time; this one didn’t. So it is good to be here, and I thank the committee for its patience and I apologise for my lateness.

Perhaps if I could just traverse the fact that this isn’t new; this is something that has happened every 10 years since the lifetime licences were abolished, and it is something that I think is long overdue—time for the House to actually finally bring a resolution to this issue, so it doesn’t keep happening every 10 years.

The bill does two things in regard to the 10-year peak: it means that your current licence will remain valid whilst you apply for a new licence—I did hear some of the discussion on the car radio on the way in, and so I think it’s important to differentiate between a new licence and a first-time licence. So, yes, you get a new licence. That doesn’t mean it’s treated as if it’s a first-time licence; it means it’s treated as a licence renewal. So it’s still a 10-year licence when you get your new, renewed licence. So the first thing it does is it means that whilst you’ve applied for your new licence, your existing licence will remain valid. So the issues that were canvassed during the second reading—having to move their firearms around so that they stay with a licensed firearm owner is avoided because someone’s current licence will remain valid even if it’s after its expiry date, which means that, then, the police will be able to triage the licence applications and process them in an orderly manner.

But the second thing that it does is the new licence will apply from the date on which it’s issued, not the date on which the old licence expired. So what that will do—to use a term that we’re all familiar with now—is flatten the curve. It will mean that whilst we go through this process once, where people will have, effectively, a temporary extension of their existing licence, 10 years from now we won’t go through that same experience, because we will have spread that demand out over a longer period of time.

I’d like to start off by welcoming the Minister back, the Hon Chris Hipkins, and by thanking Minister O’Connor for your gracious efforts and also your little intel there about the pistol range on your property.

Minister, my question is about the online checker, which is the verification that will be used for those with expired licences. Minister O’Connor mentioned that he has a rifle range and a pistol range on his farm, and we had submitters that came to us and told us that they are also on rural properties where there is no connectivity. So being able to go online to check when somebody turns up is actually going to be very difficult, especially for a pistol range.

When Police were questioned about this during select committee, they did suggest that we could utilise local police to help, which is fine, apart from the fact that many licensed firearm owners can’t get anywhere near their local arms officer. The phones aren’t answered, emails are not replied to. In fact, I heard that, at one police station, when someone turned up to visit their arms officer, they were not able to see him. They were told that they had to go away and make an appointment. Now, when people want to turn up—and this is a changed regime for them—to participate, potentially out of town, at a club, at an event, and find that they’re unable to have their licence checked right there and then—and they may have travelled some distance, and police are not available—I’d like to know whether or not there is something that we can do to ensure that the club secretaries are not held accountable for allowing a person to continue to participate in a competition when, in fact, their licence is unable to be checked.

I thank the member. I’m happy to have further conversations with Police about whether there are further practical things we can do to make that process easier. Of course, that would be a challenge regardless of whether this bill was going through the House or not, and I’m sure has been a long-standing challenge as well. But I’m happy to take that one away and talk further with the Police about whether there are some additional practical steps that can be put in place to help with that.

Minister, I’m hoping that you will just confirm, for those that are listening at home, the fact that once this bill goes through by Royal assent, it will be a 24-hour period after that Royal assent when the online checker will be available for those licences that had expired to be able to be checked. One of the questions that I’ve been asked multiple times by those who have had to remove their firearms from themselves and take them to a friend is: how quickly can I get them back, and what do I need to do to be able to get them back? So, in other words, do they go to their friend and get their friend to go on to the online checker to check that their licence is actually valid in order to get their firearms back? And will that occur within 24 hours of Royal assent?

Can I get the member to unpack her thinking a little bit more on that for me?

Sure. Thank you, Minister. We have had licensed firearms owners who have had to give their firearms to friends. They want to know, because they have applied for a licence, it’s expired, so they’ve had to give them to a friend. Once this bill goes through, Police have advised us that the online checker would be available within 24 hours. They want to know whether or not, at that time, 24 hours after Royal assent, they can actually go get their firearms from their friends. And how do their friends check that they do have a valid licence?

Thank you. I’ve been advised that the online checker will be available on the 29th. The calendar on the wall, of course, is still registering Tuesday, but by the time the bill gets to Royal assent, it will be not far off being available. So it will be available from the 29th, and, in the meantime, the friend is able, also, to check via phone whether the person has a current licence.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Other amendments