Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Look it's a pleasure to take a call on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill a bill that's taken a long time to get this far. And I guess my comment from that last speech was that's the biggest lot of Nat-splaining" I've ever heard in a really long time. It's absolutely typical to hear after nine years of utter inaction from that side of the House to then have a lecture on how we don't get it quite right. I fail to accept that because that member opposite—the Hon Mark Mitchell—has even failed to be able to ask the Minister of Police a question in question time for over six weeks. So I'm pleased that he's finally fronted up and given some sort of commentary on what they believe to be the point of view. But let's be clear that this is a bill about improving public safety. It's about improving the safety of New Zealand communities by preventing those people who are deemed to be high risk to not be able to access firearms and that's the purpose of this bill. We do that by amending the Arms Act. The way it will work—which hasn't been covered in that previous speech and it's important for people to know—is that if someone has been convicted of a specified offence that's listed within the Act that that will then be issued by the court and not issued by police which was a previous suggestion from some of the many failed members' bills from the Opposition. It'll be issued by the court. If a person is serving a term of imprisonment it will come into action once they're released and it will apply for a period of 10 years' time. An FPO a firearms prohibition order will set out criteria or conditions that someone must comply with. Those are essentially not to be around or with firearms at any point in time. And if someone breaches those conditions then some strict penalties will come into play.In terms of doing that—and that's been part of the debate—it will invoke section 18 of the current Search and Surveillance Act. So that means if someone who has a firearms prohibition order placed upon them and there is any reasonable suspicion that that person is breaking the terms of that order then that enables a warrantless search to take place. So that member opposite is quite wrong—this bill does enable warrantless searches for the specific purpose of firearms that have got into the hands of high-risk individuals in New Zealand. This is a targeted piece of legislation that is specifically honed at those who are high risk and not unnecessarily penalising or causing obstruction in the life of law-abiding New Zealanders who have a firearms licence and who are going about their normal daily business. The submissions that we received to the Justice Committee were really good and it gave us a really good point to take a look at. It's nice to see in select committee when you hear strong voices coming back from organisations and people that result in a bill being strengthened and that's exactly what happened here. One thing that frequently came up during the select committee process was family violence. Nearly half of the submissions that we received and that was a good amount—we received a total of 51 submissions at committee and nearly half of those made by the public pointed to a connection between family violence and firearms. As a response to this an important change is the addition in the bill of section 189A of the Crimes Act which is strangulation or suffocation as a qualifying offence for a firearms prohibition order which means that it will be added to that list that qualifies someone to have a firearms prohibition order placed upon them. Reports of family violence incidents show that those who have been strangled by a partner are seven times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner. Therefore the inclusion of strangulation and suffocation as a qualifying offence will help make those situations of serious family violence safer from the threat of firearms violence. It's really pleasing to see that while this is targeted at reducing firearms and improving safety it will also act as a protection for the safety of whānau in the wider community. I'm pleased to see that change. It's been a long time coming in terms of how we reached that but I guess I would like to conclude today by saying that we hear so much talk from those members opposite. National quite often talks such a big game in terms of what they're attempting to achieve yet when it comes to delivery it is zero. I think back over times when they've tried to talk tough on crime—whether it's crushing cars which resulted in two or less being actually crushed or whether it's talking about firearms prohibition orders for nine years yet failing to implement any legislation. And I look to this Government with 1800 more police out there on the streets keeping our people safe. We're having $92 million additional funding in this year's Budget specifically for organised crime and combatting organised crime syndicates. We have never seen that level of investment previously in Government before. I think about the recent announcements made by the Minister of Police and Minister of Justice to specifically target gangs organised crime and firearms. That legislation is yet to come before the House. So this bill along with the others yet to come puts us in a really strong position that we will not tolerate intimidation from organised criminal networks in New Zealand that we will take action to make sure that firearms are out of the hands of risky and dangerous people and that our communities in New Zealand can go in their homes and know they are safe because that is the aim of what this Government is attempting to achieve. Thank you Mr Speaker."