Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill

We now come to the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill. Members, we come first to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 3 to 9, “Amendments to Arms Act 1983”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to be here for this stage of the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill. The bill progresses the Government’s commitment to reduce violent crime, restore law and order, and keep our community safe. It was developed as part of the Government’s 100-day plan and gives police the tools that they need to keep firearms out of the hands of gangs and other high-risk offenders. Firearms prohibition orders—or FPOs—are orders of the court made when offenders have committed serious violent offences. They last 10 years and prohibit the person from holding a firearms licence or from being around or accessing firearms. Breaching the conditions of an FPO is a criminal offence punishable with imprisonment for up to seven years.

This bill makes three key improvements to the existing FPO regime. First, the bill expands the qualifying criteria for the court to make an FPO, focusing the FPO regime on gang members and gang offending. It specifies additional offences for which a member or associate of a gang, if convicted, can be issued with an FPO. These are gang-related offences in the Crimes Act 1961, the Arms Act 1983, Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, and the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013. These are offences like assault, robbery, illicit drug manufacture, and unlawful possession of a firearm and illegal supply of prohibited firearms. This change responds to concerns from the public about the risks posed by gang members and associates using firearms.

Second, the bill establishes a process by which an FPO may be varied, modified, or revoked. An individual is subject to an FPO for a considerable length of time, but we recognise that within this time, their circumstances may change and they may no longer pose a risk to public safety. To address this, the bill means people with FPOs will be able to request the court to vary or revoke the FPO after five years, which is half the duration of the FPO, should their exemplary behaviour warrant a reduced time variation.

Third, the bill gives police a new search power to monitor compliance with an FPO. Currently, the FPO regime does not provide police any specific search powers to monitor an individual’s compliance with an FPO. Police rely on general search powers associated with firearms, set out in the Search and Surveillance Act 2012—the officer must suspect an offence involving a firearm has occurred. The bill amends the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, giving police the ability to search anyone with an FPO, to monitor compliance with that FPO. The officer must have reasonable grounds to believe that person is subject to an FPO. This bespoke search power means that police can proactively monitor compliance with FPOs to ensure those individuals who have been deemed a risk to public safety are not accessing firearms.

This bill addresses the unacceptable levels of gang-related violence, public intimidation, and crimes involving firearms that have so concerned New Zealanders. The changes will keep firearms out of the hands of gangs and other high-risk offenders. This is another initiative to advance the Government’s commitment to reduce violent crime and restore law and order, and, ultimately, to make our communities safer.

I’d like to ask a couple of questions in relation to this Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill. I note that this is tranche one of four different elements of the overarching firearms reforms that have been part of the Government suite of changes.

Before I get into that, I would just like to have some feedback from the Minister, in relation to some of the issues that have been identified in the regulatory impact statement; in particular, the limitation and constraints on analysis that have been unable to be completed, given the short period of time. In particular, it does note that no public consultation has been conducted on these proposals and that Police relied on previous statements in 2020 consultations and the 2022 Justice Committee regarding firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) to indicate stakeholder views. From my understanding, and the Minister may want to clarify, that’s the previous FPO regime. The previous consultation on the last regime is what’s being applied to this one. Could the Minister explain why that has happened, given that this one is supposed to be different to the previous one. It’s also noted here that those “views may no longer be accurate and proposals previously consulted on have a number of key differences from current proposals.” Given it appears that there was no consultation undertaken with this regime, why was that the case?

I’d be interested to have some information from the Minister in relation to the fact that it states that “Police consider it is too early to properly assess how effectively the current FPO regime is achieving its objectives.” That would be the FPO regime introduced under the previous Government. The current regime only took effect from the end of 2022—that’s November 2022—and only comes into place at the point of sentencing for those offenders who would receive a firearms prohibition order. In addition to that, only coming into effect in November 2022 and at sentencing, many individuals had an FPO imposed on them, but they’re also in prison, because it’s at sentencing, and so they’re receiving an imprisonment term. The impact of that regime—I’d be interested to know how the Minister assesses that it’s ineffective enough to warrant it being changed or this new one coming on top of it, when there seems to be quite clear advice from Police that it’s not been in operation for long enough, given that it only came in in November 2022 and those it does apply to all largely received a custodial sentence so would still be largely serving time.

In the problem definition for the changes that we’re examining right now, it does appear that there’s limited evidence to support it and there’s very little baseline evidence to support future monitoring of where these changes have been effective. Given the fact that analysis has not been undertaken for the FPO regime in place now, how do we track whether this one’s actually making a difference or not? That would be interesting to understand from the Minister. There is still quite a lack of certainty regarding how many firearm prohibition orders will be issued under these new requirements, and that appears to be largely due to the fact, such as, that it’s a judge who is able to put one of these on somebody.

The Minister has provided some modelling of what she anticipates to be the number of FPOs and how that will increase. I’m interested to understand how she arrived at that modelling, given that there’s been no essential analysis of the existing regime. I’m interested to hear how the analysis will be undertaken, given the lack of consultation on this and also the lack of real, I guess, analysis of the existing regime and how it’s operating to date.

I thank that member for her questions. There were quite a few there, so I’ve tried to capture as much as I can in order to answer.

The limitation on data that was produced in regard to giving the Police the ability to make sure that they can monitor the compliance of the regime—yes, the programme has only been in place since November 2022. We’re coming up close to two years of that but, at the end of the day, if the Police are unable to actually monitor the compliance of the regime, then it’s unknown how the regime is being effective as well. I think it’s great that we are introducing this at this stage, because it will help Police to know whether or not those individuals with a firearms prohibition order (FPO) are actually complying with the conditions of that FPO. The consultation that was held in 2021 actually addressed these issues, the requirements that we’re putting into law now, and we feel confident that there has not been that much of a change, if any, because it wasn’t that long ago when they were canvassed.

Further, the member is talking about people that are incarcerated. The FPOs do not take effect until a person is released from prison. One of the benefits of this bill, as it goes through, is the ability for those that have been rehabilitated to apply, after five years of having that FPO upon them, to have a variation or reduction in time. Those that do rehabilitate and do well when incarcerated, once released will have the possibility of a five-year reduction instead of having to go through a 10-year regime.

The FPO numbers are currently sitting between 80 and 100 per annum, which could relate to about 800 to 1,000 more people with an FPO placed upon them over 10 years. I think what’s important here is what the member herself actually alluded to, which is that an FPO is not placed on a person unless they are convicted of a serious violent assault—or crime, I should say, rather than assault. At the moment, those crimes are those that are considered serious violent crimes under the three-strikes regime. This regime will allow us to open it up to some other further violent and serious crimes. Again, if I come back to the fact that these people would already have been convicted of this, an FPO is additional to the conviction that they have; it’s not an incarceration. Ffurther to that, those numbers could actually reduce effectively if the five-year regime is implemented where somebody who has been convicted ends up applying and is successful in having their 10-year FPO reduced down to five years—those numbers actually have the ability to reduce.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Firstly, a clarification from the Minister would be good on the offending that is required, because she seemed to suggest that serious—I think she said “serious, violent” and then backtracked a bit on that, but even the seriousness thing perhaps needs clarification. One of the concerns we have about this is the increase in scope, the kind of wide range of people that this can be kind of cast over.

I had an occasion to look at the Misuse of Drugs Act, and one of the offences that falls within the scope of this bill is possession of drug paraphernalia. That’s just happening to have at your home or on your person something like a bong. Now, that’s an offence—as it should be—under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, and that’s captured in clause 7 of this bill, as is any offence whatsoever under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Another offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act is misleading an officer who is engaging in an inquiry—so, just telling fibs. Now, that might be very, very serious, or it might be a minor matter. It’s just recognising, perhaps, that there’s some offences which some people would consider minor. It may be that the three strikes—not that I want to take too many pages out of that particular book—regime which uses the sentence imposed as the trigger rather than the offence itself would be more sensible. A bit a bit of clarification around that.

The other thing is a more practical point about the bill as a whole, because one of the real, critical factors is that this gives a significant limitation on the rights or the ability of people and their subject to search, and so on. My question is this: how can we be sure that when an officer is searching or exercising a power or doing something, that they will know that there is a firearms protection order in place? Can we be 100 percent certain, or certain beyond reasonable doubt, to use that phrase, that a person does have or doesn’t have a firearms protection order in place? If we make mistakes about that, they can be pretty significant mistakes.

Now, in the spirit of the committee of the whole House, I’m not going to do a five-minute speech. I’ve asked a couple of questions and perhaps the Minister would like to respond to those.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the member for his question. The specific offences for a firearms protection order (FPO) under clause 7 of the bill: a person who is a member or an associate of a gang or an organised criminal group at the time that the offences committed may be issued with an FPO for offences under the Arms Act 1983, Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, Psychoactive Substances Act 2013, punishable by term of imprisonment of one year or more.

Minor offences such as being in possession of a pipe or a bomb that does not have an offence of more than one year—

💬 Hon Dr Duncan Webb: It’s “one year or more”.

—there’s more, there’s more, there is more—may not come under the regime if it is under that time. Some offences under the Crimes Act 1961, specifically crimes against the person, crimes against the rights of the property, and threatening, conspiring, and attempting to commit offences will also be captured.

What’s very important here is that a judge will not issue an FPO just because a person is convicted of an offence. The judge must be satisfied that the FPO is necessary, reasonable, and appropriate to manage the risk that that particular offender poses. How will the police know? There was good debate through the select committee process where we changed the words of “suspecting a person” to “believing that a person” is the subject of an FPO. I think this is really important, because if we do have an issue of mistaken identity, it could mean that an actual relevant case is then thrown out.

What has been put in place is the fact that we cannot have police constantly trying to search people, because that would be unreasonable. They need to make sure that they’re trying to search somebody in order to monitor the compliance with the regime, not just search them for the heck of it. They need to make sure that they are monitoring that compliance, not just pulling somebody over and then searching them for other reasons.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to start with just getting some clarification from the Minister, if it’s OK, regarding this particular bill.

My understanding, reading from Part 1, is we’re looking at adjustments to how the firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) are issued. One of the things that’s kind of really drawn my attention to this, and I couldn’t find it in the regulatory impact statement (RIS) as well, is it talks specifically—let’s say clause 7—around when an offender is sentenced and then the FPO is issued. But one of my questions is: if the intention of this bill is to provide for greater public safety, one of the things we hear a lot from migrant communities in general is about people who may not have had offended in the first place, but who may be on any form of watch list, etc.

Noting that the regulatory impact statement didn’t actually mention that there is any form of public consultation, and the previous consultation based on select committee and also previous things in 2020 may have been outdated as well, I was wondering if the Minister would mind clarifying or reassuring us that there has been some form of consultation or appropriate consultation that’s been done with the migrant community around other potential risks when it comes to something like this.

Again, when we’re looking at the issues of FPO specifically in the context of those who offended, what are some of the provisions around those who have not offended but should be issued or should have some form of FPO that’s kind of been put in place because of the idea of public safety? Again, in the regulatory impact statement (RIS), it talks about public safety in the context of gangs, and this is something we’ve discussed in previous bills, but again, I’m not seeing it from the perspective of genuine firearm safety in public.

Again, I would like to get some clarification from the Minister on what level of consultation they’ve done with the migrant population, and in this case, particularly I’m thinking of the Muslim population and our Muslim whānau. But, also in this case, when we’re looking at this not being included in the RIS, is there any other consideration around this idea of FPOs actually providing public safety? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d just like to ask the Minister her views on some of the risks that have been highlighted as part of the—it’s not a regulatory impact statement; it’s a supplementary analysis report. I understand there was insufficient time to pull together a complete regulatory impact statement, but it’s still a brief outline of what some of the implementation risks are. It would be good to have a level of reassurance, in particular around human rights and litigation.

Changes regarding the search power, it’s been identified, are likely to limit section 26 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA), which is the right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure, and I understand that the Attorney-General will provide a report into whether the bill implementing these changes is consistent with the NZ BORA, prior to its introduction. It would be good to have an update from the Minister as to when that section 17 report from the Attorney-General will be made available.

The supplementary analysis report has identified risks associated with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act being inconsistent, including that the courts may read down relevant legislation in order to be more rights consistent, and it’s important to note here that these firearms prohibition orders—the way they’re structured—are the same as the previous regime, that it’s still issued by a judge at sentencing. There may be some challenges in that space.

I’m interested to know from the Minister if she’s got a view whether individuals may submit claims for monetary damages either for breaches of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act or unreasonable search, and if that’s been factored into any of her calculations—it’s been identified here in the supplementary analysis paper—and whether there’s any calculation in the Government’s budget for the potential for damages, for breaches, of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as a result of this. I’m sure there’s some ways in which there will be mitigations for those risks, but it would be really good to hear from the Minister what’s in place there, and also if there’s budget in place for that.

The other area that she might want to speak to is the fact that it’s still the judge who has the power to lay one of these, and I do note that when looking back over official information requests and looking at their earlier drafts, that initially it was, I think, the Commissioner of Police who was potentially the person who could determine a firearms prohibition order would be laid upon someone. Clearly there’s been a discussion about that and it’s decided that it’s best to remain with a judge issuing. But, with that, there is a risk that the imposition of new search powers may potentially have a negative effect if it results in the willingness of the courts or the unwillingness of the courts to issue these FPOs. You’re still reliant upon a judge to think that this is the best pathway for the offender before them.

I’m interested to know what views the Minister has on how you guess if a judge is going to put one of these on someone, and if it fails its bill of rights vet, will that potentially affect whether a judge considered that these expanded search powers are necessary in these circumstances, and if they in fact believe that the expanded search powers reduce the circumstances when a firearm prohibition order will be considered reasonable? There is potential there and I’ll be interested to know what the Minister thinks that this may result in fewer firearms prohibition orders being issued and therefore reduce public safety, which would be the antithesis of what this bill is aiming to achieve.

If the aim of the bill is to increase public safety benefits from this regime, the fact that there may be New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—we’ll find out—issues, it’s still being done by a judge, you could have even fewer firearms prohibition orders being issued as a result of that. I’m sure there’s a plan in place for police and for her officials to mitigate that risk, to ensure legislation—and the associated materials clearly indicate that there’s legislative intent behind these changes—but I would be interested to hear from the Minister as to how she intends to develop that guidance for how FPOs will apply. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to respond first to the Green member’s comments, which I was a little confused on, so please feel free to stand up if I don’t answer in a way that answers your question.

The reason why I’m a little confused is because I had made mention already that there had been extensive consultation in 2021 regarding the search powers, so we feel that the consultation had taken place. You specifically mentioned the Muslim community. Where I’m confused is the firearms prohibition order is to actually stop people who should not be in possession or use firearms from being out on the streets and using them, and the way that you spoke didn’t speak to that. That’s why I just got a little bit confused, because I would think that any vulnerable community would be happy with the fact that we are looking at utilising the monitoring of compliance on those people with FPOs, to make sure that they don’t cause harm in any community whatsoever, regardless of ethnicity or race or religious belief; that anyone who should not be in possession of a firearm is able to be monitored for that compliance. I hope that addresses—and please feel free to stand up again if it doesn’t. Not right now, because I’m talking—

💬 Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Not right now? OK, all in good time.

You’ll get another go. To the member from the Labour Party, regarding the human rights, the Attorney-General actually found that the bill was consistent or is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. She concluded that the purpose of the proposed search power is not to locate evidence of offending but to ensure compliance with the FPOs. The Attorney-General also noted that searching to monitor compliance is generally reasonable where a person is subject to a community-based sentence or on bail or engaging in activities such as driving a car on a road when they shouldn’t be. We already have these sorts of things in place.

She also noted that administrative searching and surveillance to ensure compliance with the law is also common to some highly controlled industries, and she noted that the exercise of the power could still breach section 21—the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure—if it was used unreasonably; for example, through excessive searching, for searching at unreasonable times or searching for an ulterior purpose.

Also, the Auditor-General’s report has been published when the bill was introduced. It is already public, although the member is still looking for it. Another point that I would make is that licensed firearm owners are also restricted—they are open to being searched at any time whatsoever just for being a licensed firearm owner. The ability to actually monitor compliance and search them for the firearms prohibition order seems reasonable in this case.

I’m going to call Lawrence Xu-Nan because I believe you’ve got a clarification?

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. This is going to be really quick. Thank you so much, Minister, for responding to my questions. Just on the two points, the first one is that the Minister is absolutely right that there has been consultation previously, and I’m looking at page 6 of the supplementary analysis report—sorry, it’s not the regulatory impact statement. In the supplementary analysis report, on page 6, right at the bottom, it does say that “No public consultation has been conducted on these proposals.”, and it mentions the views taken in 2020 and 2022, but it says that “these views may no longer be accurate”. I wanted to check with the Minister to see if there has been anything other than that that has been updated recently.

In terms of the second clarification, what I’m trying to—and I’m really glad to hear from the Minister that there is a high level of consideration for migrant communities, and particularly for our Muslim whānau. I guess what I’m trying to draw on is the fact that clause 7 talks about the firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) being in place or being issued once there is a conviction, but in the cases we’ve seen previously—like in terms of the Christchurch massacre—what happens if a person is at risk of harming the public or is endangering public safety, but has no prior criminal convictions? What are some of the considerations around that in terms of FPOs? That’s kind of what I was trying to ask. Thank you so much.

Madam Chair, thank you, and thank you, Dr Xu-Nan, for clarifying your questions. In relation to question No. 1, I felt that I had answered it with the previous contribution, but also we’ve just gone through a select committee process. That’s part of consultation, and that’s getting the community to be aware. There were 40 written submissions, there were 11 oral submissions, we had 12 that supported the bill, and a number of these—14—raised matters that were outside of the scope of the bill. There were also substantial submissions that were received from the Criminal Bar Association, the New Zealand Law Society, the Privacy Commissioner, the New Zealand Police Association, the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties, and the Disabled Persons Assembly. With those submissions, I feel that we will have captured a few of those ideas.

In regard to a firearms prohibition order (FPO) being placed on conviction and the concerns that you might have about people who have not committed crimes, we’re not the mind police or the thought police. We have to act on what the criminals do at the time and the risk that they pose to society at that time, and that’s for a judge to decide whether or not an FPO fits within the criteria of being reasonable, being necessary, and, of course, being appropriate at the time on that individual. To actually say that we need to put FPOs on people who have never committed a crime—that would be a concern in itself in a democracy.

Kia ora, Madam Chair. Thank you for that. Three things: one is the nature of these orders. The Minister, the Hon Nicole McKee, made a comparison of these and community detention or community-based sentences—home detention, for example. I think it’s really important just to ground this discussion in what this is.

The Minister may want to comment on it and contradict me, but if we can agree that this is a protective order and not a punitive one—it’s not a sentence at all—it’s quite unusual in that sense; it sits in this kind of grey area. All of the burdens of proof, for example, are the civil standard—“on the balance of probabilities”, not “beyond reasonable doubt”—which points to it being a civil order of some sort which is of a protective nature, much more akin to a bail order than a home detention order. I think that’s important because, if we’re starting to say that it’s some sort of punitive order, the whole complexion of this discussion changes, because, whilst these people have been convicted of an offence—that’s one of the triggers—this isn’t part of the punishment; it’s just something put in place to make our community safer.

That, I guess, brings me to my second two related points, which is the kind of gang trigger. Under the Gangs Legislation Amendment Bill, we had a long discussion, and quite a useful one, about what a gang was and tidying up that area of the law in some respects, but we’ve got a couple of funny things going on. One is what an associate of a gang or organised criminal group is. The Parliamentary Counsel Office have done an amazing thing and they’ve said an associate of a gang is someone who associates with a gang, which is just a mindless reordering of words, to my mind. Now, previously, it said that it’s not a mere acquaintance of a gang member, which is meaningful, because I can associate but not be associated in a criminal way; I could be a social worker associating with a gang for very important and pro-social purposes. But, at the moment, it looks like I’m a gang associate if I associate with a gang or organised criminal group, and that’s just too loose. I’m really concerned. Once again, it’s about the breadth of this bill. We’re doing something a little bit later on in the bill, which we’ll get to, which is quite significant.

The other one is: a member of a gang is someone who demonstrates affiliation with a gang by wearing gang insignia. We’ve talked about insignia in another forum. My question, essentially, is this, because you could have, conceivably, people who are wearing gang insignia but aren’t actually affiliated. Is it simply the wearing of the gang insignia that makes them a gang member, or do they actually have to be affiliated? It’s almost presumptive evidence but not conclusive. Is the wearing of gang insignia absolutely conclusive that they’re a gang member for the purpose of this Act, or is it just evidence which is useful to prove that and which the judge can say, “Well, you’re wearing it. You can’t disprove it, therefore you are a gang associate”—or a member? Actually, that makes them a member of the gang.

The two questions, really, are: the nature of Firearms Prohibition Orders as being a civil and protective or criminal and punitive; and secondly, what it means to be part of this gang—the associates question and the affiliation question.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a number of questions. I may not be able to get through all of them straight away, but thank you for the opportunity. To the Minister, I know that we have canvassed the wider scope of this legislation. We’ve already talked about firearms prohibition orders and police search powers that exist currently that we could evaluate and that we could understand, rather than having gone through the select committee process to do something new when we already have something existing that functions and that we understand works well.

I think my colleague Duncan Webb has talked about the potential for harassment with this legislation—in particular, in relation to clause 7, where it mentions the Misuse of Drugs Act. As it stands, and I know we’ve talked about it previously, but this covers offences that are neither violent offences nor drug manufacturing offences, and, yes, we do require people to receive an imprisonment of more than one year. However, what this does is open up an opportunity for interpretation that could lead to not very supportive outcomes for our communities, for communities that, let’s say, are struggling with a whole range of issues. If we are reliant on the judge to decide what is appropriate for a firearms prohibition order or what is reasonable or what is necessary, that leaves a wide interpretation that could, depending on the judge and depending on the legal system, lead to more Māori and Pasifika people being imprisoned, and it could lead to more harassment of those populations.

As we’ve talked about, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act may allow the checking without warrants, but this certainly doesn’t give me comfort that we are going to do well by our communities and that this is going to make us any safer. So what I’ve proposed here is an amendment to the bill which will give some comfort, I think, to make sure that this isn’t simply a racist attack on our communities. The amendment that I’ve tabled moves “In clause 14 after new section 18AA(3), page 6, after line 25, insert ‘Any person who is subject to warrantless search under subsection (1) shall be entitled to reasonable compensation if it is subsequently found that they are not subject to a firearms prohibition order.’”

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Can I just make note, we’re still on Part 1. That paper should be in Part 2. Perhaps if you’ve got any questions on Part 1—because I’m starting to hear quite a bit of repetition in Part 1 and I know the Minister’s answered a number of questions that are still coming up. Questions on Part 1 are relevant. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To come back—and I’ll obviously have an opportunity to come back to my amendment later—the key part of the question that I have here is: how on earth are we going to avoid the prejudice that we know exists in our police? How on earth are we going to avoid harassment of communities who are already at risk under this new firearms prohibition order? This is the biggest question I had, because we already have firearms prohibition orders that we have not yet evaluated to see how well they’re functioning, and this is going a step beyond, and it risks splitting or giving further prejudice to communities that, really, we should be supporting instead. I’d like the Minister to address that question in particular, please.

Minister, how is this bill fundamentally stronger than the firearms prohibition legislation passed into law by the last Government? And are you confident, Minister, that this legislation will ensure firearms prohibition orders are complied with?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll start my way round through trying to answer some of these questions. To the member from Labour the Hon Duncan Webb: the nature of these orders—you asked me to confirm whether they’re protective and not punitive. What these orders are about is making sure that people comply. It’s not an extra punishment on them at all. It’s about compliance of the regime that’s already been placed upon them, the order that has been placed upon them, so it’s not punitive in any way. Of course, the ultimate outcome, as the member said, is about making our communities safer. We need to do that when we’re looking at the amount of unlicensed people in possession of illegally held firearms creating harm in our communities. This is allowing police to be able to actually, again, confirm that they can monitor on that compliance.

The definitions in regard to the gangs legislation—I’m really happy that the Justice Committee went through quite a process with that. In fact, we have now ensured that the definitions of “gang” and “associate” are the same as the definitions that are in the gangs legislation. Of course, picking people up who shouldn’t be picked up is not what this bill is about. We want to make sure that we do target the right people. The bill defines an associate as an individual who associates with a gang or an organised criminal group—as you mentioned—and association is based on the person’s connection to the gang or organised criminal group activities, rather than to any particular member of that gang. The intended target is people who associate with gangs—those who may not be patched members but are involved in the gang activities and their lifestyle. For example, this would include situations where a person frequently attends gang events, wears gang insignia, or participates in criminal offending with gang members. However, it’s not intended to target a gang member’s family, acquaintances, or even their colleagues.

To the Green member Scott Willis—a judge will not issue a firearms protection order. I’ve said this before, so I’m just repeating it: just because a person has been convicted of an offence of one year or more, the judge must be satisfied that a firearms protection order is necessary, is reasonable, and it’s appropriate to manage the risk that that offender poses to our communities and to our societies. When you talk of a range of issues, of certain people and members being affected, I’m thinking about the people who have been the innocent victims, who have been shot and killed as they’ve been caught up in gang warfare. I’m thinking about the grandmothers who open their doors. I’m thinking about the little kids who are asleep on the couches. I want to make sure that we are removing the ability for gang members and violent offenders to be in possession of firearms by, one, supporting what was a Labour bill to introduce firearms prohibition orders (FPOs), and, two, giving police the ability to monitor the compliance with those FPOs. You are correct that three-quarters of gang members are Māori, but over a third of victims in total are also Māori, and a lot of them are recidivist victims, and the offenders are often recidivist as well. I think it’s a win for our Māori communities who are affected by the illegal possession of firearms and crime.

To the member Simon Court: we needed to make this law stronger because, while we implemented the FPOs, we did not give police the ability to monitor that compliance. We’ve still had the drive-by shootings occurring and not had the ability for the police to be able to actually go in there and make a difference by checking whether or not these people are in possession of firearms. They are able to do that—to go into a firearm-licence owner’s home and do these sorts of checks. It makes sense that they’re able to do it on those people that have a firearms prohibition order placed upon them. I am confident that the changes that this Government, on this side of the House, are making to FPOs will contribute to public safety and will contribute to getting the guns out of the hands of the gangs.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yes, new questions, please, because I’ve got to the point where it is getting quite repetitive.

Yes, Madam Chair. My question is in relation to Part 1, and in particular it’s around when a firearm prohibition order (FPO) is made. I would like to ask the Minister, what are the operational system capabilities for police to be able to make sure this is being done appropriately? This has been raised in some of the analysis we’ve seen—that, if you’re doing those check-ups, we need to make sure that the person actually has an FPO on them. There have been some issues raised that there is a risk that those capabilities are not, in fact, in place. I would like a level of reassurance from the Minister that front-line staff won’t be apprehensive about conducting searches in order to avoid the risk of conducting a potentially illegal search.

There’s also a risk there, that’s been outlined in the supplementary analysis paper, that there’s a risk of mistaken searches of individuals who are not subject to a firearms prohibition order being in place, meaning that a search would, potentially, be deemed in breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. And any—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): We’ve dealt with that. We’ve been down the bill of rights track.

Well, I’m talking about police capability to be able to make sure that police have the confidence—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I got that bit. Now the next bit is repetitive.

All right. I would be interested from the Minister just to know what’s in place and what police have to make sure that evidence obtained would not be ruled out as inadmissible because of those grounds.

I’d also like the Minister’s view in terms of the revocation provisions. This is a new addition to this regime. That enables a firearms prohibition order that would be in place for someone for a number of years to potentially be able to be revoked or done. Given the fact that no consultation was done on this, I’d be interested to know, because the Minister’s relying on the consultation from the first firearms prohibition regime, which was in place in November 2022. This is the new regime, which didn’t have any consultation, but this provision—new section 39FA: “Varying, modifying, or revoking FPOs”—I understand to be a completely new provision within the firearms prohibition orders regime. That provides that a person who’s subject to an FPO at any time after the FPO has been in force for five years—that the court can vary or modify the conditions or actually revoke that FPO.

I’d be interested into why this provision has been included in this new regime and also to understand what analysis, what consultation, has been undertaken to arrive at why this is a necessary pathway to have in the bill. Because it’s quite clear in the legislation that there’s a clear pathway in subsection (3) that “if it is satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the condition is no longer reasonably necessary to prevent the applicant from accessing, possessing, or using any firearms or related items”, then the judge can just take it off. I am really interested to understand why that new provision is in there and what the Minister did to identify that as a necessary addition to the previous regime.

It’s important to note, I think, that the varying provision—there’s not a lot of detail in the varying. From my understanding, judges can pretty much put on any conditions to an FPO. Are there any limits that a judge can put on an FPO? Do they have to be wearing their pyjamas or what are the types of conditions that a judge would be able to include in an FPO, and how would they be varied in order to provide additional public safety if anything had substantially changed over that period of time? Keeping in mind that public safety is paramount here, I am very interested to know how the Minister has undertaken the analysis or the consultation to understand how this provision would enhance public safety.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In answer to the member’s question about police and operations, police are developing their operational guidance on the new powers that they receive, and police have a lot of experience in executing search powers in a reasonable manner. They are constantly updating their operational practice to ensure that they are exercised reasonably, because, of course, if they’re not then they can be in trouble for breaching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It’s in their interest to make sure that they do do it well.

With the five years, it’s an incentive, as this Government has said, for correcting bad behaviour, about allowing people to be rehabilitated, and giving them that incentive to come off the 10-year regime to five years if they can show, indeed, that they have rehabilitated. I mean, that is just common sense from our side of the House. We in the coalition Government will be making reforms in the corrections space, so we are all about making sure that people have the opportunity to rehabilitate. If they do rehabilitate in such a fashion that it is good for them and for society and they can show that, then there should be an incentive there for them.

The conditions on a firearms prohibition order—well, that’s up to a judge. And the varying conditions can actually talk to a person perhaps being in a workplace where firearms are and they are showing that they have rehabilitated in such a way that they can be around them. More importantly, it’s also about the operations of being around family members, say if there’s a tangi that’s taking place, they’re going home, and mum and dad have firearms in the home. As long as those firearms are locked up and the conditions are varied, then that person is able to go home for a couple of days, stay overnight, so that they can be around their family in certain times where there’s a need for them.

The variations will depend on the individual’s situation, the requirement that they’re seeking, what they’ve done in the past, what they may do in the future, and that really is going to be up to the judge at the time to consider all of the elements before they make or don’t make any variations to the firearms prohibition order.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I certainly agree with the Associate Minister of Justice that we do need the space for rehabilitation, and I think the five-year review is a sensible approach. The thing I’m interested in learning about is how we are going to really reduce risk with this bill. If I think about one of the worst examples that we’ve had in recent times—I’m thinking about an individual with white skin, not brown skin, the Christchurch shooter, who would not, I believe, have been picked up through any other way. How is this firearms prohibition order going to diminish the risk from extremist political or racist—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): No, that’s not actually relevant to that particular piece of legislation that we’ve got in front of us.

Thank you, Madam Chair—and I’m getting to my point. What we really do need to see is something that is going to be effective. I have heard that it’s not the intent to target gang members or their friends or family. That’s great, but what if that is the actual result of this bill? In that regard, I’m interested to hear about what the link might be—the link that the Minister sees between the firearms prohibition orders and housing, for example. Because there was a leaflet that was distributed most recently, that was put out by a member of the National Party, that says, “I know the cost of housing is a key issue in our community and country. It has been for the past two decades. Materially improving housing supply is the only solution to this challenge.”

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I’m struggling to understand where this actually fits with the bill.

Madam Chair, I think, if you’ll allow me just to finish, you’ll see.

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Ask the question.

It, essentially, says, “Giving police tougher powers to disrupt gangs and get guns out of the hands of criminals is one of the solutions to our housing supply.” My question is: is this bill really going to make us safer, or is it designed to do something completely other than that? Is it designed simply to target some of our most vulnerable, to imprison some of our most vulnerable? Because—

CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): This is actually a repeat of the member’s first speech, so I’d ask the member—[Gestures for member to sit]

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment to clause 8 be agreed to.

Members, it’s time for me to suspend the committee for the dinner break. The committee will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Part 2

Amendments to other Acts