Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill

I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: I move, That the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill was developed earlier in the year as part of the Government’s 100-day plan. It gives police the tools that they need to keep firearms out of the hands of gangs and other high-risk offenders. This bill advances our commitment to reduce violent crime, restore law and order, and keep our community safe. Firearms prohibition orders—or FPOs—are orders made by the court when offenders have committed serious violent offences. They are in force for 10 years and prohibit these offenders from holding a firearms licence and from being around or accessing firearms. Breaching the conditions of an FPO is a criminal offence, and offenders that do can be liable for up to seven years in prison.

The FPO regime has been in place since 2022 but was largely without teeth. This bill makes three key improvements to particularly target gangs and organised criminal groups. It expands the qualifying criteria for the court to make an FPO, it gives police a new search power to monitor compliance with an FPO, and it establishes a process by which an FPO may be modified or removed. This provides police with another practical tool and sends a strong message that we are committed to addressing violent crime and enforcing consequences for gangs.

On 26 July, the Justice Committee reported the bill back to the House. I’d like to thank the Justice Committee for their careful consideration of this bill. I would also like to thank the 40 or so members of the public who took the time to provide submissions on the bill. I hugely appreciate them sharing their views with the committee. Substantial submissions had been received by the committee 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.

The most common themes raised by submitters were around who is captured by the definition of a gang member or associate; widening the eligible offences for gang members; and concern with the extent of the new search powers. Through their process, the Justice Committee has made several amendments to address the matters most raised by submitters and sharpen the focus of the bill. These refinements specifically relate to the definition of an associate or gang or organised criminal group, the offences for which the FPO may be issued, and the extent of the new search power to ensure compliance with an FPO.

The first change relates to the bill’s original definition of an associate of a gang or organised group, which was defined as “an individual who—(a) associates with a member of a gang or an organised criminal group; and (b) is not a mere acquaintance of the member”. Several submitters raised concerns that this definition could capture a broader range of acquaintances than was intended, possibly including colleagues or relatives. The bill is intended to target those who associate with gangs—that is, those who may not be patched members but are involved in their activities and lifestyle. To reflect this, the bill now defines an associate simply as “an individual who associates with a gang or an organised criminal group”. This means that the association is based on the individual’s connection to a gang or an organised criminal group and its activities, rather than to any particular member of that gang. This would include situations where an individual frequently attends gang events, wears gang insignia, or participates in criminal offending with gang members.

The second change relates to the types of offences for which an FPO can be issued. Submitters raised concerns that some of the offences were fairly minor and not related to gang activities and may capture more people than was intended. To better reflect the policy intent, the bill now targets offences specifically connected with firearms, organised crime, and violent offending. This includes crimes against a person, such as kidnapping or assault, and crimes against property, like money laundering or burglary. These are offences that clearly demonstrate that the offender poses a risk to public safety. This recognises the sudden and significant violence that can result from gang conflict and focuses the FPO regime on gang members and gang offending.

The third change relates to the new search power for the police to monitor whether someone who is subject to an FPO is complying with the conditions. This bill allows police to search someone who is subject to an FPO without a warrant, without reason to suspect they are breaching the FPO or that they are committing any other offence. As a result of the Justice Committee’s consideration, three key refinements have been made to the search power.

First, there is a clear statement of the purpose of the search power—that is, for monitoring compliance with an FPO. This makes it absolutely clear that the purpose is to ensure that an offender is complying with the conditions of their FPO and not to search for evidence of other offending.

Second, there is a higher threshold for the exercise of the search power, from “reasonable grounds to suspect that a person is subject to a [FPO]” to “reasonable grounds to believe that a person is subject to a [FPO]”. This allows for situations where police cannot be certain of a person’s identity and, therefore, whether they are subject to an FPO.

Third, there are additional limits on the places that can be searched in connection with a person subject to an FPO—to places where the person subject to an FPO has influence, control, or direct access. This keeps the focus on the subject and ensures the scope for what can be searched is only as wide as it needs to be.

I want to once again thank the Justice Committee for their thorough and careful consideration of the bill. Their work has finetuned it to ensure police can effectively keep firearms out of the hands of gangs and high-risk offenders. This bill forms the first phase of the Government’s broader programme of firearms reform, to modernise our firearms law to ensure public safety and quality regulation.

In closing, this bill addresses the unacceptable levels of gang-related violence, public intimidation, and crimes involving firearms that have so concerned New Zealanders. It will help keep firearms out of the hands of gangs and other high-risk offenders. It is another initiative to advance this Government’s commitment to reducing violent crime and restoring law and order and, ultimately, to make our communities safer. I commend this bill to the House.

Mālō ‘aupito. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is the first of four tranches of firearms reforms being undertaken by this Government. The first being firearms prohibition orders (FPOs), the second being loosening the safety regulations on pistol and non-pistol ranges, the third being reviewing the firearms registry, and the fourth is rewriting the Arms Act.

The FPO’s regime is somewhat counterintuitive. The first pillar is at contradiction to the second, the third, and the fourth of this range of reforms because it’s with its National Party hand that this Government is claiming it’s making it harder for criminals to get a gun with FPOs. But with its ACT Party hand, it is making it easier by loosening the safety restrictions on guns and ranges and weakening the firearms registry. Nicole McKee is on record saying, regarding the firearms registry, “I think the full A category licensing regime is not going to be effective. It’s going to be too costly. It’s going to make people fearful for their own safety.”

We have the Minister responsible for firearms prohibition orders stating that the gun of choice by criminals, which is the Alfa Carbine rifle—easily cut down—would be excluded from pillar three of this range of reforms, therefore, endangering front-line police and communities. So my point is: what is the purpose of introducing a strengthened firearms prohibition order regime when, in the same tranche of reforms, firearms are able to be more easily accessed by criminals if our firearms registry is undermined and A category weapons such as Alfa Carbines are excluded from them?

The Labour Party opposes the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill for two main reasons. The first one is that we believe that there has been insufficient time for the regime, introduced under the Labour Government that introduced firearms prohibition orders, to sufficiently bed in. The process right through—the select committee process, submissions, the information that we received from officials, nowhere in that information was there an evaluation of the existing scheme in terms of how it was working and whether or not there was any need to strengthen the existing regime. That is a real concern. We have a Government that is introducing warrantless, causeless search powers without even taking the time to evaluate whether the existing firearms prohibition orders scheme is operating well or not.

The truth is, they don’t care whether it’s operating well or not. They’ve made an election promise and they want to deliver on that, irrespective of what is working well or not now, and irrespective of the actual impact it will make. Even more, as I’ve pointed out, they’re undermining the whole purpose of this by weakening the firearms registry and making A category weapons potentially far more able to be accessed by criminals and far harder for our police officers to be able to track them.

The second main reason that we oppose this bill is that we consider the new search powers to be too broad and they could be exercised without cause to suspect a person is in fact breaching their firearms prohibition order. The scenario we worked through is that if you had a friend and unbeknown to you they had a firearm prohibition order on them, if that person came to your house or was in your car, the police would be able to come in and search your whole house if the friend was at dinner. I might not know that person had a firearms prohibition order on them. The police only need to suspect that that person has a firearms prohibition order on them in order for a warrantless search of that entire premises. That is how this law currently runs, and that gives very wide and sweeping powers that are able to now be used in New Zealand once this passes.

The firearms prohibition legislation passed under the last Government strengthened the existing provisions under search and surveillance to be able to enable those to work. In addition to this, new search powers were also introduced under the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Act, which enables police to apply for up to 14-day warrant from a judge when there has been inter-gang conflict or heightened tensions. It is this new provision under the CAIL, or Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Act, that has worked very effectively in a number of situations right across New Zealand where there have been heightened gang tensions, and police have stated that this is a strong tool to have in the kit, to enable that. The benefit of that search power is it’s confined to a 14-day period, not a carte blanche search for any time. It’s when it’s needed, when there’s heightened tensions, those powers are able to be called upon.

Many submitters during the time at select committee raised concerns that this search power was too broad and could be exercised without cause to suspect that a person was breaching the conditions of their FPO. The legislation would also mean, as I’ve already pointed out, that someone who was in the company of someone is able to have their vehicle or complete house searched.

The problem we have with measures like this is it really is window dressing. It’s window dressing to show that an increase of power is going to help police work more effectively, where, in the same day, we see close to 250 jobs being cut from Police. These are people who directly help the front line operate, who will have a direct role in supporting and enabling front-line police to be able to do their job effectively and get back out on the street. To not be tied up with paperwork and filling out warrants and doing all the work you need to prepare to go to court. Those people are being laid off, which means sworn police officers will now have to do much of the paperwork that FPOs will be—the follow up work and the work around preparing for court and going to apply for one of these. That work will now be falling more to front-line police officers due to the fact that we’ve had all of those non-sworn police workers now without a job.

That’s why I feel that mechanisms like this—increasing search powers—are window dressing to show the shop front’s looking great, but if you take a look behind the scenes, it’s not working so well at all. In fact, there’s going to be more and more pressure on our front line to have to do this work, as well as all of the other work required with all of those jobs being cut from within Police.

The other point I would make is that it’s going to be really difficult to identify the person as a gang member, and what is the process for demonstrating they’re affiliated with the gang? There’s a provision now that you’re able to get out of a firearms prohibition order early, and they have to demonstrate good behaviour in order to do that. So this is for someone who’s got an FPO on them. There’s a new provision now, you can have that lifted. That’s an area in the bill we still believe is quite unclear and we’re unsure why they’ve put that into place.

I could go on in lots of areas, but the main point I would like to sum up with is really the stark contradiction in the suite of firearms reforms that we have proclaiming to get tougher on criminals to try and make sure they don’t get their hands on dangerous weapons, but in the same suite we have changes to the regulations and safety requirements on our guns and ranges, which now means there’s no recording of sales and ammunition. That’s a loophole that has been exploited and used by a terrorist to train on a range. There’s now a loophole there where a criminal can get hands on ammunition, and that previously didn’t exist.

Secondly, as I’ve already stated with guns not being included in the firearms registry, the other area which is still a real concern is that the Minister responsible still wants to see military style semi-automatic weapons—have that ban lifted and have them able to be used on ranges and in competitions. What is the point of having an FPO if this Government is going to bring back military style semi-automatic weapons? It’s just ludicrous. This is window dressing that shows this Government wants to look tough, but when we take a look under the hood, there is a big mess going on right here, and it’s New Zealanders’ safety and police officers’ safety that’s at risk.

Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to address this important question, the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill, in the second reading. It is an omnibus bill because it changes the Arms Act, the Sentencing Act, the Search and Surveillance Act. If we believe that the main object of this omnibus bill is to improve public safety, then we need to look at what it intends to do and what it doesn’t intend to do, and what other actions the Government is taking, because this bill appears to be more about virtue signalling on gangs, really, than it is about guns or gun safety. It extends the firearm protection orders to any gang member who’s been convicted of a crime under a number of Acts, but, as we’ve just heard, gang members are already subject to firearm protection orders, and we need to understand and evaluate how well these are working.

Firearm protection orders and police search powers are already readily available, and this bill is simply going to open up communities to potential harassment—harassment through targeting, through increased and unclear search powers, and a really, really vague, vague definition of gang members or associates. We can talk about the risks from structural racism that this poses to our communities. For example, it allows warrantless searches on anyone the police suspect of having a firearm protection order to search for guns. That’s going to lead, inevitably—inevitably—to more harassment of Māori and Pasifika people, and we’ve heard this recently from the police.

The other thing it does is allow a person to request their firearm protection order to be reviewed or revoked after five years. Currently, firearm protection orders last 10 years or so. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It gives consideration to rehabilitation, and it seems to make sense, but we really need to consider whether this bill is needed at all.

I’m a firearms owner, and recently I managed to put all my firearms through the gun registry—because we’ve heard from the Associate Minister that the gun registry is problematic. It was a very, very simple process, and the one thing I had to do was take one of my rifles to get a serial number stamped on it because it didn’t have one. I know many people who are responsible firearm owners, and I know they’re people who hunt pest species like deer, tahr, chamois, pigs, goats, rabbits, hares, for food or to do pest control to restore, to protect our precious taonga. But guns in the wrong hands can be used to harm people, and we all need safeguards and restrictions. I am sure that we all agree on that.

This isn’t necessarily problematic, but it is somewhat ironic that the associate justice Minister is doing so much otherwise to open up access to firearms through an unnecessary review of the firearms registry—something opposed by the Police Association, something the police want to ensure keeps working, something that has been rolled out incredibly successfully and is making sure that we know what firearms exist and where they exist and who holds them, to weed out those people who are irresponsible, who are feeding guns to the criminal fraternity.

So we’ve got an ex - gun lobbyist who has made it clear that the firearm protection orders are part of a wider gun reform with other actions including easing restrictions on gun clubs and ranges, where we might see people being able to access ammunition for weapons that might not be registered. This is, as has been pointed out, an incredible inconsistency, a contradiction. That’s why this bill is really about virtue signalling, rather than about safety or concern about gun controls.

Our Green position, really, is that the fewer guns around, the better, but for those people who are responsible, we do need safeguards and restrictions. Gun ownership is a privilege, not a right. When I think about what this bill is trying to do, it’s a focus on gang members, which is unnecessary because they are already targeted by firearm protection orders, when we know that the biggest risk to life and limb historically—well, we should be concerned about some of the extremists, political factions, the extremists that we’ve had experience of.

Think about the Christchurch shooter. The Christchurch shooter was somebody who was able to get hold of a gun—there was no registry—and practise at an open range. Imagine if that shooter could simply buy ammunition at a gun range. Terrorist attacks in this country have been primarily done by non - gang-affiliated extremists. This legislation makes no change to that. It does not make our community safer from these threats.

Mark Cameron: What a rubbish—

SCOTT WILLIS: I can hear a member saying this is all rubbish, but, actually, you know, the evidence points to the truth in all of that, in that the Government also aims to make military-style semi-automatic weapons more available. This makes communities less safe, and personally, as a hunter, I don’t see any need for semi-automatic centre-fire weapons. Saying this will make our communities safer while allowing more military-style semi-automatics contradicts the whole point of legislation in the first place. It would allow more weapons that present a greater danger to our communities into our community, so the inconsistency is something that we should be really concerned about. If we want to crack down on criminals, let’s look at the existing firearm protection order rather than making it easier, because this is simply a nonsensical approach.

I think this bill is actually a distraction from this Government’s pro-gun agenda, or at least a fraction of this Government’s agenda, because we’ve heard about the need for military-style weapons for sport. Now, I’m not sure if members are aware of the sport that is being talked about here, but it’s called the three-gun shoot. It’s very popular in America. The three-gun shoot—

Mark Cameron: Point of order, Madam Speaker. Without over-litigating the point, if I may, it’s about firearms prohibition orders. I think the member is way wide of the mark with his remarks.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Yeah, well, Mark Cameron, I didn’t hear a Speaker’s ruling or a number for you to actually quote what your point of order is based on. It is actually my role as the Chair of this House to rule things in or out of order. Continue, Scott Willis.

SCOTT WILLIS: Thank you, Madam Speaker. As I was saying, this bill is actually a distraction from the Government’s pro-gun agenda. Talking about the need for military-style centre-fire weapons to participate in a sport that’s called the three-gun shoot demonstrates how we are risking becoming an American-style pro-gun society, because this is part of the reform that we have been hearing about. The firearms prohibition order legislation is part of a suite of reform that is aimed at changing gun ownership and who can own and use firearms in New Zealand.

The three-gun shoot includes centre-fire weapons, with a .223 calibre rifle or something heavier, with up to a 30-round magazine; pistols; and shotguns, going through a range shooting targets that could be clay targets and could be human silhouettes. This is about combat-style training in our community. It is deeply disturbing that we are seeing a bill that pretends to be doing something that is going to protect and safeguard our communities when, in actual fact, it is ignoring what we already have and is instead ushering in something that is going to make our communities so much less safe, that’s going to make society so much more dangerous, that is going to present so many more challenges to our police. That is so disappointing from this Government.

Before I call the next member, can I just remind all of our members that if you’re making a point of order, please state the Standing Order or the Speaker’s ruling that your point of order is based on. I call on the chair of the Justice Committee, James Meager.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I look forward to attending the parliamentary hunt with the previous speaker, Scott Willis, at the end of the year. Given his experience in firearms, I think it will be an interesting opportunity for not only myself but all members of Parliament if they’re interested to find out a bit more about what hunting and shooting is about in New Zealand. It has a long and storied history in this country.

I’m happy to bring a member a copy of the bill because I think it might be wise to refresh about what this bill actually does. The bill is strengthening firearms prohibition orders (FPOs). It is making it harder for certain types of people to access firearms. That is what this bill does.

The bill extends on the changes made back in 2022 by the previous Government, by the Labour Government who brought them in. I suspect the reason that they brought them in is outlined in the initial briefing provided to the committee. I’ll quote some figures from the initial briefing. That briefing said, from 2020 to 2021, there were 26 deaths and 625 injuries reported from violence involving firearms. Gangs and organised criminal groups drive a large portion of firearms harm. In one police investigation in 2021 to 2022, approximately 1,800 firearms were seized in an operation to disrupt the illegal possession and use of firearms by gangs and organised criminal groups. I suspect that is what the genesis of the firearms prohibitions orders were all about—that and significant pressure from the Opposition at the time, led by Mark Mitchell, and I know that because I helped him draft his member’s bill at the time. That is why we have the FPO regime.

The reason why this regime is being strengthened is because the coalition Government, and the parties that formed this Government, didn’t think it was strong enough—it needed some strengthening. That’s what this particular bill is about.

As a committee, we worked very, very diligently and very hard to get it into a shape that we hope the House will support. I’d like to thank all members of the Justice Committee for their work on this bill. We tackled quite a number of gnarly issues, but I would like to acknowledge the continued and consistent good work by the likes of Dr Duncan Webb, Ginny Andersen, Tracey McLellan, Tamatha Paul, and Tākuta Ferris, who, as Opposition MPs, are always very constructive and very helpful members of the committee, and of course members on the Government side as well. So can I just acknowledge the work of the committee.

I’d also just like to acknowledge the advice provided by the Ministry of Justice. We actually went back and forth on a number of issues, which you will see outlined in the select committee report, including the extent to which warrantless searches can be undertaken, the extent to which we are focusing on whether or not someone is an associate of an individual who is a gang member or someone who is associated with a gang—we thought that was an important distinction—and also tackling some of those issues around what is the threshold of police needing to suspect whether or not someone has an FPO. Actually, as a committee, we wrangled with that issue back and forth, and we actually strengthened that by changing it to “reasonably believe” rather than “suspect”. Hopefully, that will relieve some of Mr Willis’ concerns. I wanted to thank the Ministry of Justice for their advice. I thank the Office of the Clerk for their advice on the legislative quality and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for the drafting too.

Can I also acknowledge the 40-odd groups and individuals who submitted on the bill, and we heard from 11 individuals. Interestingly, there was roughly a fifty-fifty split, actually. For a Justice Committee bill, that’s relatively unique. Generally, we have a lot of people who either really like or really dislike a bill, but this one was very evenly split, which I think represents some of the feeling across the House.

Now, in the couple of minutes I’ve got remaining, I just wanted to touch on the key changes made in this bill, because that, after all, is the purpose of a second reading—it is to look at what was discussed in the select committee, look at how the bill has changed, what conversations were going on, and whether or not the House accepts the recommendations of the select committee to make any amendments to the bill. Very, very briefly, as outlined before by the Hon Nicole McKee, Associate Minister of Justice, and some other members, we have changed that definition of whom can be issued with an FPO, and we’ve decided to include people who are associates of a gang. To make that clear and to put this on the record for the Hansard in case this ever gets to court at some point: we consider this to be people who are associated by way of participating in criminal offending, or demonstrating support for the gangs activities and aims, or attending gang events. That’s the kind of thing we’re talking about. We’re not talking about someone’s legal adviser or work colleague or an uncle or an auntie. That’s specifically what we’re talking about.

We made a few changes to when an FPO could be made. We thought that some of the original offences listed in the bill weren’t strictly associated with the types of offending that we were thinking about. So those offences have been narrowed down to, in particular, crimes against people, crimes against property, and threatening and conspiring.

There are changes in there around varying and modifying FPOs. One of the significant ones we looked at was what happens when you are an individual who owns or is in possession of a property. Under the original bill, if you owned a property but weren’t present, that property could still be searched in your absence. We thought that was a step too far in terms of warrantless searches, so we made the recommendation to remove ownership and amend new section 18AA(1)(c), which went more towards a person having influence, control, or direct access to.

The final one I’ll touch on is the conversation we had around what happens if you’re staying in a hotel and you are subject to an FPO—can the police then search every other room in that hotel? Of course, the advice that came back from the ministry was that, no, that would constitute, in all likelihood, an unreasonable search and seizure in that hotel. We always have the fall-back provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in terms of the reasonableness of search and seizure requirements.

I think that generally covers the main changes to the bill. We think the bill has been strengthened in a significant way. I want to thank the members of the Justice Committee for their hard work on it and commend the bill to the House.

Mālō ‘aupito.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Before I speak on the bill, I’d just like to acknowledge your new role, as well. Congratulations, and it’s a pleasure.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill. Firstly, this bill is about reducing firearm crime and that is something I think everyone in New Zealand would like to see done. It’s also about reducing the risk around high-risk offenders, and a lot of the stuff that the bill touches on is around those high-risk offenders and actually putting restrictions on them.

Just as we’ve heard from the chair of the Justice Committee, James Meager, we heard or received 40 submissions on this bill and heard 11 oral submissions. There were, as we heard, different views on whether we should make some changes.

As we have heard from the chair—and what I’ll outline as I go through—we have strengthened this bill in a number of ways. One thing I’d like to say is this is another tool in the tool box for the police.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: The old “tool in the tool box” line.

JAMIE ARBUCKLE: As much as the Opposition seems, at the moment, not to want to give the police further tools to actually crack down on crime and gun crime and on gangs, this is another tool in their tool box. You would think everyone in this House—in being an MP and looking after our constituents—would want to look and give the police as many tools to control crime as possible. But, unfortunately, often in this House and, actually, through select committee, for some reason there seems to be some suspicion around what the police actually do in their actual role. I know, for one, that New Zealand First supports the police. We support what they do. Unfortunately, recently we heard from a member on the other side of the House, “Who would you rather meet in an alleyway?”. I know, for sure, if I was in an alleyway and somebody had a gun, I’d rather the police officer would be the person with that gun—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Yeah, than a New Zealand First member!

JAMIE ARBUCKLE: —than a gang member. So this bill is about public safety—

Shanan Halbert: What are you doing in alleyways?

JAMIE ARBUCKLE: I’m still getting heckled from the other side because they’d rather see gang members in the alleyway than a police officer. But, as most New Zealanders would say, police officers are the right way to go about things.

Public safety is this bill; it’s about providing further public safety, it’s about stopping violent crime, and it’s about restoring law and order. Through the bill, we look at how disqualifications of an offender come about. If I just go to the bill: the disqualifications of an offender from obtaining a firearms licence prohibits the offender from accessing firearms and restricted weapons. It gives the examples that the offender must not associate with persons in possession of firearms or reside at or visit locations at which firearms are stored. That gives that further protection.

One part that we haven’t heard about is it also gives a review process and that’s important too, because if somebody has a firearms prohibition order (FPO) against them, now, after a five-year period, there’s actually a process where that can be appealed: it can be varied or revoked. That actually is a part of the bill that someone with a protection FPO against them hasn’t been able to do in the past. That’s actually the second part here in the bill.

We’ve heard also from the chair of the Justice Committee about the “without cause” search and how we’ve strengthened that, too, around the word “believe”—the police must “believe” that that person has a FPO against them before they can actually go in and search. But again, that is about public safety and actually providing that actual level of protection for our constituents.

New Zealand First supports this bill because it strikes the right balance between enhancing public safety and ensuring fairness in its application. The amendments recommended by the Justice Committee improve the bill by focusing its reach on those who generally pose a risk without overreaching into the lives of innocent individuals. The inclusion of serious crimes under the Crimes Act, such as offences against the person and property, ensures that FPOs are applied where they are most needed, against those involved in violent or organised criminal activities. This targeted approach is in line with our commitment to effective and just law enforcement. Furthermore, the adjustments to warrantless search powers reflect a careful consideration of civil liabilities. By requiring a “belief” rather than mere suspicion, the bill ensures the police actions are grounded in a higher level of certainty, which is a critical safeguard against potential misuse.

In conclusion, New Zealand First supports this bill because it is necessarily a step to protecting New Zealanders from the threat of gun violence, particularly in the context of gang and organised crime. It is a sensible, focused, and balanced piece of legislation that will contribute to a safer New Zealand. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call between Te Pāti Māori and the Green Party and I call on Tākuta Ferris, for five minutes.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka, otirā ngā mihi nui ki te whakatairangatanga o te reo taketake o ngā motu o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa i roto i tēnei o ngā wiki. Ka tū ake au ki te waha i ngā kōrero a Te Pāti Māori e hāngai ana ki tēnei o ngā pire e kīia nei ko te Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker, indeed huge congratulations to the promotion of the indigenous languages of the islands of the Pacific this week. I stand to give voice to the statements of the Māori Party relating to this particular bill called the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill.]

My colleagues have laid out a lot of the detail, so I’m not going to labour and repeat what they’ve said. But let’s get to the point: this bill was the result and a response to this country’s most horrific terrorist act that we’ve ever had to suffer, really. It’s just a brutal piece of our history and we shouldn’t just fluff around the edges of it, because it’s a critical piece of where this legislation came from.

As I’ve just sat, even just today at its second reading, listening to the comments and the kōrero that comes out, I just can’t help but recognise how many times the word “gangs” is used to make points relative to this piece of legislation. We shouldn’t forget that the word “gangs” is being used across a number of pieces of legislation in this House. Unequivocally, across all of those bits of legislation, that use of the word “gangs” has been associated with a disproportionate negative effect that will be laid at the feet of te iwi Māori—and I just want to remind everyone of that, because I just can’t get over how easily it’s just glossed over here.

Speaking of glossing over, we’ve heard from this side of the House that the select committee process was a bit of a fifty-fifty—it was pretty good one side, pretty good the other side. My view of that is that it wasn’t really fifty-fifty. That’s just a shining review that it doesn’t actually deserve.

In as much as the chair of the Justice Committee thinks it’s all good to make quips about parliamentary hunting trips as things worth discussing in this discussion, I think we should—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Can I ask the member to come back to the bill, please.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Yeah, sure, I think we should come back to the bill. Obviously, Te Pāti Māori does not support this bill in the slightest. Inasmuch as, under this law, gang members and their so-called associates—a lot of the pieces of legislation, including this one, before this House, rely on the discretion of police. It’s a power that’s been exercised a lot in this country for a long time, and it has never favoured Māori—ever.

Another colleague over there in the Justice Committee is talking about the responsibilities of MPs to be here representing their constituents. Well, I can guarantee him that I’m 100 percent here representing the constituents who voted me in.

Mark Cameron: Just not gangs.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Oh, yeah, OK, we’ll get to you later. Yeah just not gangs—just not gangs—yeah, like the big blue gang over there or the gang of farmers up North, or any bunch of people.

Let me get back to the kaupapa or the kōrero. So associates and the exercise of discretion—it’s never been exercised favourably for Māori. Within the remit of this bill—me, I’m a young man who has had to attend gang tangi. I could easily fall into the category of an associate of a gang member—easily.

Mark Cameron: Well, just don’t have an FPO.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Yeah, good on you, mate. Good on you, bro.

Mark Cameron: We’re neither of those things. Just talk about the FPOs—maybe that’s a good idea.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Have you ever been to a gang tangi? Have you ever had to go to one? Oh, well, ka pai. Kia kaha ki a koe. Kia kaha.

So, effectively, creating a double standard, leaving Māori as second-class citizens in their own country, the country in which they’re the principal sovereign, they’re the principal constitutional rights holder—this is the treatment.

To wrap up, I want to bring this House back to the reality that this House is responsible to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It is responsible to its constitutional partner, te iwi Māori; in fact, te iwi Māori are the sponsor of the Crown’s constitutional position in this country and they deserve more respect out of this House and its laws.

Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker. Happy Tongan Language Week.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Mālō e lelei.

TAMATHA PAUL: I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa to oppose this bill. You’ve heard our concerns pretty clearly from my colleague Scott Willis here today, but I really want to reiterate some aspects of the bill that raise pretty significant concerns for us. The big concern that we have is around the unjustifiably broad allowance for unwarranted searches if a police officer suspects that somebody is subject to a firearms prohibition order—key word there: “suspects”.

Just to talk about guns in particular, our general approach and philosophy to gun ownership is that people should need to prove that they need access to firearms for specific purposes, for things like pest control or hunting, not allowing tonnes of people to have guns except for a minority. It should be the other way around. A majority of people should not have access to guns except for a very small minority who need them.

It is our view that our communities are much safer when guns are not in them, period. There’s no reason for it, and I don’t want to live in a country like America where school shootings are completely normalised and enabled by their Government. Nobody wants to live in a world like that, and that’s why we have the protections in place that we have. I want to express my deep concern about the potential relaxing of gun laws in Aotearoa, and I want to reflect that this is a concern that many people in our communities have.

Back to the bill. I want to talk about police powers now. The main concern that we have again is around those unwarranted searches of people who are suspected to be subject to a firearms prohibition order. Our big question is: how will the police determine whether someone is suspected of being subject to a firearms prohibition order? Given most gang members are Māori due to colonisation, due to abuse in State care, does that mean that those of us who are related to gang members could be subject to unwarranted searches as well? What about the safety of the whānau and friends of gangs?

I’ve spoken to gang leaders in order to understand the implications of the legislation that has come through this House. Does that make me a suspected gang associate? What about situations where children are involved in a whānau or household or in the car, and might also subsequently be traumatised by an unwarranted police search at any time of the day?

The reason I ask those questions—the member might learn a little bit about what the reality is like for people who have been subject to unwarranted searches. Yesterday, we got a report, the Understanding Police Delivery report, which came out and confirmed the presence of bias and structural racism within the police, so it’s not far-fetched that some of us are suspicious about the way that police utilise the powers that they have access to. Our concern remains that if police officers have too much discretion, the bias that was confirmed yesterday, that even the Police Commissioner himself accepts—even though the Minister of Police and the Minister of Justice deny that it’s even happening in the first place—then how are we to trust that police will be able to discharge their duties under this bill and discharge the powers under this bill without adding to the structural racism and the bias that our people experience at the hands of the police?

Until there’s an acceptance, because I know Mr Arbuckle brought up the comments made around gang members and police in dark alleyways—people might not like the way that that was phrased, but what it was trying to demonstrate is that there is genuine distrust from many of our communities towards the police. Until the Government decides to accept that that is the reality for our people, then we’re not going to get anywhere. I do actually want to acknowledge the important work that Andrew Coster has done as the Police Commissioner, because at least when he saw that evidence and at least when he read that report, he accepted some level of responsibility and he said that the police have got work to do. But I tell you this: this bill undermines the work that the police are trying to do to rebuild trust within Māori communities and that is why we do not support it.

Contrary to what you’ve just heard—that this is undermining police’s work—police are very happy with the direction of this. Police are very happy with the direction of this Government. In fact, when we were on the Justice Committee just this morning, talking to the Secretary for Justice, who also chairs the Executive Board for the Elimination of Family Violence and Sexual Violence, I posed the question: will the Public Service target of 20,000 fewer people being victims of an assault, of robbery, or sexual assault by 2029 help sharpen his board’s focus and priorities, and will it strengthen the work of the multi-agency and interdepartmental across Government - approach? And the Secretary for Justice—go back to the Hansard, go back to the video—said, “Yes and yes.” He said it with a gleeful look on his face: “Yes and yes.” He was so excited about the fourth—and Tom Rutherford knows these Public Service targets better than anyone—Public Service target, which was about reducing the number of victims of an assault, robbery, or sexual assault by 2029 by 20,000.

This Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill is part of a suite of tools that we’re putting in the tool box. The member over the other side said, “Oh, they always keen talking about tools and tool boxes.” Well, guess what! We’re putting more tools in the tool box to sort out crime in this country. More tools in the tool boxes. And if he wants to know—“Well, we were on top of crime in the Labour Party.”—can I give him this statistic from the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey, and why we are going with this firearms prohibition order (FPO) approach. The New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey showed the number of people in New Zealand who were victims of an assault, robbery, or sexual assault—

Shanan Halbert: What do your North Shore stats say?

CAMERON BREWER: —Shanan Halbert—from 2022 to 2023, jumped by over 20,000 people, to over 185,000 New Zealanders that are victims. This piece of legislation, Shanan Halbert, goes straight to reducing that. The justice department, the justice secretary, is right on our side. Wind back the tapes—they’re excited; the Public Service targets. You guys should have thought of Public Service targets, because the justice ministry is very excited, the police are very excited, the Executive Board for the Elimination of Family Violence and Sexual Violence are very excited, and they’re also very pleased with the FPO approach that we are taking.

All the amendments to this legislation that went through the select committee—we’ve heard a differing view, haven’t we? We’ve heard a differing view, but guess what? All the amendments were passed unanimously—unanimously. How’s that? So there you go. Were they there, were they asleep, or did they just agree with all the amendments? Well, I would err on the side of the third proposition that they agreed to all the amendments, because they are recorded unanimously.

Let’s go back to the bill and its purpose—all about reducing firearms crime and the effects on communities. It seeks to do so by enabling FPOs to be made and monitored against the wider group of people whose behaviour and actions indicate and pose a high risk of violence. The focus is on specifying new qualifying offences for members and associates of a gang and organised crime. We’ve heard again, haven’t we, that we seem to be—why are we always focused on gangs? Well, they increased by 3,000 in five years—over 51 percent under that administration. Man, did we have a mandate at the last election to get on top of gangs. Public meetings on gangs filled up every town hall around New Zealand. New Zealand has had an absolute gutsful, and this Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill goes to the heart of that. Specify new qualifying offences for members and associates of a gang or an organised criminal group; establish a review process to enable a person who is subject to an FPO to apply to the court to have their FPO varied, modified, or revoked; and the other third part of it: give the police additional warrantless search powers to monitor the person subject of an FPO.

This is a great piece of legislation. This is a suite that’s key to the Government’s agenda. This is something we have a big mandate on. This is why we won the election. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Mālō e lelei.

Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker. And I want to see that note! I think it said, “Cameron, stop dribbling. Sit down.”

Rima Nakhle: No, it had a love heart.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: No, it might not have said that. It said, “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, sit down.”—“If you haven’t read the bill, sit down.” Or perhaps it just said, “For God’s sake, your taxi is here.”

Look, the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill is actually a serious bill. I’m going to put that little bit of levity aside and talk about this, and I really want to focus on warrantless searches, because invasion of privacy is important. It is very easy to say, “We hate gang members and their privacy doesn’t meet the same standards or have the same protections as ours.” Don’t get me wrong; on this side of the House, the vile conduct of gangs is abhorred as much here as it is over on the other side of the House. But we do need to be very, very cautious when we’re talking about warrantless searches, because we’ve got to remember the invasion of privacy, the invasion of personal space, of home, of vehicle, of personal property should be by law and not by discretion.

That’s why we have warrants, because warrants are a judge saying the threshold is met—that there is a reasonable grounds for a police officer or other authorised person to enter into someone’s home, to disrupt their personal space, and to search for some evidence of wrongdoing. Warrantless searches do away with that check entirely, right? They do away with it entirely. All we have now is a member of the executive, essentially—a Government agent—a police officer in this case, a constable, who is entitled to exercise their own judgment. It’s rule by discretion and not rule by law. That is a very, very dangerous thing. It’s not to say it’s never appropriate. We know that when police are in hot pursuit or they think there’s a crime occurring on the premises, they already have the power to have a warrantless search, and that’s appropriate. That’s the balance that’s been struck. But, here, there’s no issue of an immediate and violent crime going on. It’s that they’ve breached an order.

But wait, it gets a bit worse, and I think this is really important. The Act does not say, “If there is a firearms protection order in place, there’s a power to have a warrantless search.” It says, “If a constable has reasonable grounds to believe”. You don’t even have to be sure. Now, if you’re going to bust into—and let’s be absolutely upfront about this; these are not going to be doors knocked on at 3 o’clock in the afternoon on a sunny Saturday. These will be catching people by surprise in the dark of night. And there’s a reason for that, right? You do want to surprise people. You don’t want to forewarn them. I’m not even sure—because the Justice Committee changed the word “reasonable grounds to suspect” to “reasonable grounds to believe”. Certainly in the committee stage I want to interrogate exactly what that means, because it’s still a very vague test. It’s basically an honest reckon.

I’m not sure we should have invasion into private spaces on the basis that there’s an honest reckon that an order is in place. Either it is or it isn’t. If my house or your house, or the house of a member of the other side of the House, gets busted into in the dark of night because they thought—but we’re wrong—that there was a firearms protection order, then that’s an illegal search. It should be recognised as an illegal search. It shouldn’t be just, “Sorry. I was empowered to do it because I honestly thought on some grounds, but not very good grounds, that you had a firearms protection order in place.”

Let’s just expand that, because the other one that really bites is a vehicle. If there is a vehicle and the driver or any other person in it has a firearms protection order, that vehicle can be stopped and searched. Now, that has the same problems, but the next stage is concerning because anyone in it can be searched as well. I know the picture in our mind, and the picture in our mind is of a car, probably a beaten-up one, with a group of thugs driving round. But that’s not what the test is. It’s anyone in it. A spouse or a child can be searched. I think it was Tākuta Ferris who referenced the good work that the police have done talking about biases within their own system and the fact that Māori and other people of colour are much more likely to be picked up, and when discretionary decisions exist, they tend against Māori. That is a concern, and that is a concern when you have powers like this.

Of course, the chair of the Justice Committee, James Meager, mentioned that the right to search premises is loosely defined: an entire premises that a person occupies or controls. Now, those words do have some meaning, but we did run into the problem of, when a person is at the pub or occupies a hotel, exactly what the bounds of that are. I’m not comfortable that the power is constrained by the statement in section 18AA(1) that the warrant is “for the purpose of checking whether the person is complying with the conditions of the FPO”. Yes, this is a so-called tool in the tool box. It’s a pretty significant tool. It’s a very extensive power, and I’m concerned that police, given this power, will use it as a pretext.

We know that police do like to keep close tabs on people who they think are criminal offenders or likely to be criminal offenders, and they’re entitled to do that in given ways. The vagueness of this warrantless search power is, essentially, if misused, a licence for harassment, and that’s a real concern. I do think we need to think extremely carefully about that. And you’ve got to remember this is, essentially, a civil power. If you go back to the Arms Act and see the basis upon which it can be imposed, although it’s almost penal in nature, the test for whether it should be imposed or not is on the balance of probabilities. It’s a very significant curtailment or infringement of liberty that a court imposes simply on the balance of probabilities. I think we need to hold that in mind as well.

I do think—and Mr Brewer, I think it was, sort of guffawed that the Labour Party and others agreed to amendments but opposed the bill. I can’t use the language I’d like, but our view is that we worked hard to make this bill as least bad as we could. But it’s still pretty bad. We still oppose it, and we oppose it for two reasons, as Ginny Andersen very eloquently said. The first is that extremely wide warrantless search power. The second is this: firearms protection orders were put in place by the last Government. They haven’t been in place very long. There’s not very many of them out there. They seem to be doing a pretty good job. Why do we need to crank up and do this kind of legislation, which is very heavy-handed—if it’s in the tool box, it’s a sledgehammer—when we haven’t even seen whether the other ones are working?

I concur with some of my other colleagues on this side of the House who have said it’s a bit of window dressing. On the one hand, you’re saying we’re going to crack down on guns and where they are, and on the other there’s a narrative from one party in this House, the ACT Party, that they’re going to liberalise gun laws. On the one hand, we want to know where the guns are; on the other hand, we don’t want a gun register. On the one hand, we want to be able to enter someone’s house and search for these guns; on the other hand, we’re going to have military-style automatics which people can do sports shooting with. Now, that is a double narrative. That is cognitive dissonance, and it doesn’t work.

I appreciate some of my colleagues on the other side of the House, the National Party, are trying to be moderate in these things, but in respect of this particular part of their legislative programme, the little magenta tail is wagging that blue dog. Kia ora, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker, thank you for allowing me to take this call on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill. We’re in the second reading.

I’d like to start my contribution today talking about warrantless searches that the previous speaker, Duncan Webb, was mentioning. I respect the fact that we need to ensure that people’s privacy and protections are indeed protected. But, in this instance, if you don’t mind, Madam Speaker, I’d just like to turn our memories back to 2020, to a bill by the name of COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill that was pushed through the House, where it allowed for a private dwelling or marae—for police to enter on reasonable grounds to believe that people gathered there in contravention to the COVID rules. I don’t know why it’s OK for public health to have warrantless search powers but not for public safety. So I just want to remind us about what happened back then.

Terms, like “window dressing”—also, it was referred to by someone across the House that this law will make our society so much less safe and that it’s virtue signalling instead of gun control. Yes, if you don’t believe it, please go back and watch the recording. All I’d like to ask the House is: what’s so wrong about restricting illegal access to guns? I’d like to ask the House: what’s so wrong with trying everything that we can to keep our neighbours safe? I’d like to ask the House: what is so wrong about sending a strong message to gangs that intimidation and gun violence is not OK? That’s what we’re intending to do with this bill, amongst other bills. I have no shame in commending this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. I call on Glenn Bennett for five minutes.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Just responding to the previous National Party speaker, Rima Nakhle, who just finished their contribution. Very different circumstances; very different times; COVID legislation—and we had challenges in that space and we were really open to it. Obviously a one-in-100-year pandemic comes around rarely and extreme measures had to be taken, which is excessively different to what this piece of legislation is all about. I’d rather be speaking this afternoon, I guess, about gun prohibition—how do we rid this country of guns?—but I understand that is not a conversation that could be had, and there are purposes that guns are used for in New Zealand, and so I understand that.

As we’ve heard the rhetoric; as we’ve heard the speeches over the last 45 minutes, there’s been lots thrown around, obviously, about getting tough on crime, lots of stuff around gangs. That rhetoric was around “Let’s get tough on crime” and this is another tool in that mysterious tool box that they talk about. But we really need to be talking about how do we get tough on the causes of crime. How do we get tough on the causes of gangs? That’s a conversation I’d rather be having in this House rather than just tinkering around with some legislation which hasn’t been in for long—legislation that hasn’t been around a long time that we’re actually tinkering around with this afternoon.

As my good friend and colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb mentioned earlier, it’s the search warrants that are a real challenge and a real issue for us. It’s around that “without cause”—without cause. That is cause for concern, and it should be. The communities that I’m part of—and the world that I’ve been part of for many, many years—is one of those communities that regularly has the police visiting; that regularly has a knock on the door from police to deal with issues going on.

I know that there are challenges within the communities I live in—there are challenges—but also there are vulnerabilities. There’s this gung-ho attitude and there’s these—you think they’re all just thugs and gangsters, but at the at the base of that, they’re actually human beings and often vulnerable human beings and often those who actually don’t understand the systems and how they work.

That’s why this legislation is an attack on our vulnerable and is an attack on those who aren’t as articulate to know the law and how it works. In terms of police overreach, we as a Parliament—as a sovereign—need to ensure that we are making sure that our police force—those who are on the streets, ensuring to keep our streets safe—are also protected from themselves and protected from their overreach and what they are able to do.

We cannot support this legislation. As I’ve listened and heard from ACT, as I’ve heard from National, as I’ve heard from New Zealand First, I really feel that this is around weakening the gun laws that are currently in place. I feel like it’s tinkering and it’s just focusing on minor issues instead of addressing the root causes of crime, instead of addressing the root causes of gang violence, which they talk about often.

We cannot support this legislation. We would ask that the other side of the House does consider what getting tough on the causes of crime could look like, getting tough on the causes of gangs. How do we actually deal with those things? Not just throw around “tough on crime” soundbites, but actually look and dig deep into what is broken fundamentally in our community of Aotearoa New Zealand. We cannot support this bill.

Well, there it is. If we hadn’t heard enough rubbish from the other side, this bill is now an attack on the vulnerable—those poor, vulnerable, violent criminals. Those poor, violent, vulnerable gang members. That’s what this bill is an attack on, according to them. We heard it from the Green Party, “Leave the gangs alone; it’s not fair”. They actually doubled down on their comment that they’d rather see the weapons with gang members than with police members. That’s the attitude that we’re up against. That is what we had six years of. That’s how we got to this position.

I’m proud that we’re actually doing something practical about it, supporting our police who are out there, making our communities safer. This bill—there’s two key parts. The first part is about who can be subject to a firearms prohibition order. There’s been a lot of discussion on that. I don’t want to dwell on that too much, but I’m OK with us targeting them towards people who have been convicted of serious violent crimes, people who are associated with criminal gangs.

The second part, that’s had a lot of discussion, is around the ability for police to conduct warrantless searches. I have to start by coming back to the bill itself. It would be nice if someone from the Green Party read it, but if you read section 18AA, it is where a constable has reasonable grounds to believe that a person is subject to such an order—not who suspects—which was the entire substance of the last Green Party contribution; it is where they are believed to do it. Then we had some contradictory position from Labour around “Well they’re going in at 3 o’clock in the morning and they won’t have time to research it”.

These are deliberate operations. They do have time to prepare. Yes, police have to make difficult decisions in the operational environment. That relies on us enabling our police to make decisions to act in the best interests of our community—I, for one, completely back our police to do that—but they can’t do it unless we give them the framework, unless we give them the tools and the legislation. That’s what this bill is doing. It is enabling police to go out and target the people who need to be targeted the most.

This should not be about the rights of convicted criminals, the rights of members of criminal gangs but the rights of every member of our community to live in a safe community, to live free from fear of violent crime, of illegal use of illegal firearms. That’s what this bill is doing. I commend it to the House.

Mālō e lelei, thank you, Mr Speaker. OK, it’s the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill, and today, we’re at a little bit of a crossroads, I think, on this legislative journey, because on one hand, it’s a moment where we’re actually making decisions that potentially have a profound implication on the safety and on the wellbeing of various communities, but probably not in the way that we think so.

We’re here to discuss the Government’s proposed changes to firearms protection orders (FPOs), but I think we have to be really clear from the outset, and let me be clear from the outset, that these changes aren’t what they seem. They’re not robust, and we’ve heard from several people today that have pointed out reasons as to why that’s true. They’re not safety-enhancing measurements that the Government’s contributions to date would have you believe, and, instead, actually, they’re just a bit of a smokescreen. They’re a diversion from the real and dangerous agenda that’s at play here, which is simply a loosening of the gun laws to make military-style semi-automatic weapons more widely available.

Now, when we begin by acknowledging the existing framework, the FPOs, as has been discussed, are already in place, or the laws surrounding it—the current conditions—are already in place and they are functioning effectively. As my colleague the Hon Dr Duncan Webb said, they haven’t been there for that long and we don’t have enough empirical evidence or enough data to show whether this is doing as good a job as it could be. But why bother ramping that up and doing something else before we’ve had the chance to discuss that or just to really get to the bottom of whether that was working? By doing this, we’re introducing another whole set of variables that actually have detrimental effects on other people.

These orders are a critical tool that the courts currently use to prevent individuals—particularly those involved in criminal activities. The current legislation, we believe, certainly, on this side of the House, is comprehensive. It covers not only the firearms but also ammunition, restricted weapons, and other related items. So I think that the system is working as is. It’s designed to protect the public by ensuring that those that actually do pose a risk—because, let’s be clear, there’s some people that do pose a serious risk—are kept away from firearms.

When we think about it, we could ask why, therefore, is there need for change. I think the answer is quite simple, and that’s just that there isn’t one. The Government’s proposed amendments add almost nothing new. They extend the FPOs—sure—to a broader group of people, including those over 18 who are either members of gangs or organised crime groups, or they may just be mere associates, or in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s supposed to be for those convicted of certain offences, but, let’s be honest, this is not going to be about that. It’s not groundbreaking, and it’s open to misuse. It’s open to all sorts of things going wrong, and the tools to protect our communities already come from the Search and Surveillance Act. The police already have, I think, the powers to conduct warrantless searches to the extent at which we should be affording them the opportunity to do so in the first place.

This is not entirely new, but it steps over a line without actually fixing something that it purports to do, and I think that that’s a dangerous combination. It’s certainly not innovative. It’s not going to do any of the things that I think it has been said that it will, but it introduces a level of uncertainty and a level of potential risk that I think is just not worth it. That, again, brings us back to what the true intent is behind these changes. This is one of four bills, or potential bills, that will be making their way through this House. Together, they’re leading us in a direction that I don’t think, in retrospect, we’ll be very pleased with.

The Government’s real agenda here is to loosen gun laws. I think that that can’t be said in a light way, and that shouldn’t be perceived in a light way. The Government’s real agenda is to loosen gun laws in a way that will make things more accessible. Now, that might end up being an unintended consequence, but if you don’t take notice of the unintended consequences and if you don’t take notice of the advice and of all the information, that’s what can happen.

It’s not just conjecture and it’s not just me saying that; it is, in fact, supported by police advice that these weapons will inevitably end up on the black market. Who benefits from that? Actually, it’s the gangs and the criminal organisations that you’re purporting to crack down on—so the very people that we’re supposed to be trying to protect our communities from—and the irony of that is actually quite palpable.

The Government claims that they’re tough on crime, and we’ve heard them say that on many occasions. There’s a lot of verbose talk about it, but when push comes to shove and they’ve actually got opportunities to put bills through this House and to create legislation—when you actually look at it, it doesn’t do what it says it’s going to do. Their actions will put more dangerous weapons in the hands of criminals, and that’s not something we should take lightly.

Now, let’s consider the practical implications. The bill proposes to extend the FPOs, and we’ve talked about that today and other people have gone through the specifics of that, but it doesn’t achieve anything. It creates this illusion of action while actually doing nothing to address the root causes of gun violence. I know that other people have said that, but we should think about that more deeply. It’s not a time to be shallow. It doesn’t do what it says it’s going to do, but it provides the opportunity for the Government to point to a specific example of them being tough on crime. While that might not seem like a bad idea to many, it also prevents them from doing the things that they should be doing to be tough on crime. It’s a false sense of security.

It’s not all just benign things—it’s not doing anything—but, as I said, it also introduces some variables that actually can have some pretty profound implications, not only on individuals and not only on certain communities, but it’s a slippery slope to degrading the types of standards that we should have in some of that surveillance and some of that police work. I think that the best example of that is surely the bill introducing without-cause search powers. Almost every speaker on this side of the House has chosen to highlight that, and that’s no accident. That absolutely is our number one concern when we think about this. On the surface, it might sound like it’s a small thing, but when you start looking at the ways in which it could be misused, it’s quite frightening to think of the ways that could manifest.

So, as I’ve said, if this bill was making our communities safer, we wouldn’t have a problem with it, but because it’s not, we can’t support the bill. It’s not about preventing gun violence; it’s about creating a distraction—a distraction from the fact that the Government is quietly working to loosen gun laws and making our streets more dangerous, not less, and this bill does nothing at all to address the issues around gangs or around all of the things that the National Party, in particular, has campaigned on so hard for. Instead, the bill weakens the very protections that keep most of those communities safe.

In contrast, Labour in Government was the one that introduced the firearm registry, and that was a critical tool in reducing gun crime over time. We’re the ones that have taken actual, meaningful steps to address the root causes of violence and keep those dangerous weapons out of the hands of the people that we don’t want to have them—out of the hands of the people who could very easily misuse them. When we look at that contrast, it just beggars belief that the National Party are being led by the ACT Party, here, and introducing a piece of legislation that they must surely know doesn’t do what they’re being led to believe in.

In conclusion, I really think that anybody listening and people considering this—and I want to acknowledge the people that submitted on this bill and gave their time to lend their expertise and their lived experience. It was informative and it was really interesting to hear something from as many different perspectives as we were able to during this process, and I urge people to think about this bill for truly what it is. It’s a dangerous distraction from the real issues at hand—not just in the manifestation of this bill, but what’s yet to come.

The Government has proposed changes to FPOs that I don’t believe enhance our society in any way, shape, or form—in fact, they undermine it—and let’s not be swayed by empty gestures. This is one of several bills that are going to be finding their way through the House in this genre, in this particular sector. I think it’s the first time that we have a real reminder that we should be looking through the lens, not be blinkered, and realise the fact that this is another empty gesture and a hollow promise.

Our commitment actually must be to the safety of those communities, and on this side of the House, we are committed to the safety and security of all New Zealanders. So we don’t support this bill in its current form, we don’t believe it achieves anything at all, and we do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to rise as the final speaker on the second reading of the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill.

I just want to acknowledge, firstly, the chair of the Justice Committee, James Meager; it’s his birthday today. I’m sure he got plenty of well wishes from around the House this morning on the Justice Committee, plenty of nice words and kind remarks.

In the second reading, it’s really important to focus on what took place at the Justice Committee on this bill as it went through—remembering that it was introduced on 1 March this year, referred to the committee on 5 March, and reported back on 26 July. The committee received 40 submissions—15 on behalf of organisations; 20 as individuals. There was a real split on the submissions that were received—some in favour; some against. It was really good for the committee to work through and iron out those details as they worked through the business of this legislation.

Let’s be really clear: this bill is about reducing firearms crime in New Zealand and the impacts it has on the community, by enabling firearm prohibition orders to be made and monitored against the wider group of persons whose behaviour and actions pose a high risk of violence. I commend the bill to the House.