Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in place of our usual spokesperson on this particular bill—and our justice spokesperson—Nicole McKee in support of the Arms (Firearms Prohibition Orders) Amendment Bill (No 2).This is not a particularly complicated bill. It allows the police to stop gangs from getting guns; that's what it allows them to do. It's based on the simple premise that if you're in a gang you're on the National Gang List and you're committing crimes then you shouldn't have a gun. The funny thing is that the Labour Party usually are the first to say that it's a privilege to have a firearm—usually; they're usually the first people to say that: it's not a right it's a privilege they'll say. And yet they're also now trying to say that they want to fight to maintain that privilege for gangs. They think it will be terrible to discriminate against people who are involved in organised crime. Now I'm as much in favour of equality before the law and human rights as the next guy—in fact I can claim to have done my bit for those causes at certain times; more than most—but the idea that being involved in organised crime and identified as such being in the National Gang List being convicted of a crime doesn't even remove what the Labour Party calls the privilege of having a firearm is really quite extraordinary.And you have to wonder why exactly they think that is. I'm mindful of your ruling a moment ago Madam Speaker that we shouldn't have epithets or accusations of racism in Parliament and I think that's a very important thing that this House maintains that standard. But it was just so odd that the Labour Party members two different Labour Party members said that somehow this bill was racist. Well that's fascinating because this bill doesn't talk about race at all; it doesn't mention it. It says that if you do a couple of things that sadly people from all ethnic backgrounds do—join a gang get convicted of a crime—then you can have your firearm taken off you. But two Labour Party speakers got up on their hind legs in this House and said that somehow this legislation was racially motivated—although there's no race mentioned in it.How did they come to that conclusion? There's two possible theories here: either the Labour Party were actually deliberately trying to impugn people who support this bill as having racial motives even though they don't and they were doing that for political reasons—trying to impugn the character of others—or they genuinely believe that Māori and Pacific people as they mention are more likely to be members of gangs and therefore if you follow their logic it would be wrong to put firearm prohibition orders on gang members because it would affect more people who are Māori and Pacific.Now standing before you right now I don't even know what the ethnic breakdown of people on the National Gang List is but I do find it deeply troubling that the Labour Party by making those comments was either trying to deliberately smear and impugn the character of people who are worried about gang violence and gang gun violence—that's one possibility—or they genuinely do think in such a coloured world that they believe the ethnicity of people is somehow more important than basic basic things that unite all humanity such as not wanting organised crime in your community and if you have organised crime in your community not wanting organised criminals with guns.I just leave that there but I think it speaks volumes about the politics of the Labour Party—the way that they approach this particular issue. I can see some of the Labour backbenchers looking very attentively because they know better than me which one it was and they're not comfortable with it and they shouldn't be and that's because there's some good people in the backbenches of the Labour Party—people with real thoughtfulness and conviction. Now the other problem with this Government's approach—you know the Government's going to vote this legislation down—is that they have taken an approach to organised crime and guns that is incredibly disturbing to a lot of people. Just today we've been debating the fact that if you are a gang member you can end up isolating at home under the current COVID response. If on the other hand you are one of tens of thousands of Kiwis suffering in a variety of excruciating ways separated from your family and your home and your business and so on—in some cases separated from your expectant wife—you are unable to come to New Zealand and home-isolate but if you're a gang you're allowed to do it. It really is quite an extraordinary thing that this Government has taken an approach to gangs where their gang programme or anti-gang programme is called Operation Tauwhiro. Now I asked the Prime Minister: did she know that Tauwhiro means to care for or nurture—and it turns out she didn't. But of course somebody in the Government either couldn't speak te reo Māori couldn't consult a te reo Māori dictionary or generally thought the way to approach gangs was to care for and nurture them. And then they gave the gangs $2.75 million of money taken from the gangs for dealing drugs to help people—get this Madam Speaker—get off drugs. I mean this has got to be the most sophisticated money laundering programme that the New Zealand Government's ever been involved in—but maybe just about anywhere.Underpinning this Government and this Labour Party approach in the House today is an approach to gangs that says Actually if there's a privilege" as they see firearm ownership "then for a variety of quite twisted reasons the gangs should have that privilege too." And I think that is totally at odds with the values of the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders who don't want organised crime and don't want armed organised criminals in their community.But here's the next thing: this is not only about gangs; it's also about guns. This Parliament shamefully with the exception of one member I might add rushed through knee-jerk legislation in the wake of our nation's tragedy in Christchurch that would rate objectively as one of the least effective policies the Parliament has ever passed. Unfortunately they banned a quarter of a million semi-automatic firearms and they collected in their so-called buy-back around 60000. So there's 180000 still out there and the gangs have openly said "We will not be retuning ours." And it's difficult to believe that due to that Government's rushed incoherent knee-jerk response to a tragedy a lot of those firearms that were banned but somehow didn't appear at the buy-back—75 percent of them actually—have ended up in the shootouts by gangs up and down this country.So we've got a Government that is very poor at dealing with gangs but also very poor at dealing with firearms policy. And I want to finish by suggesting a better way forward which funnily enough Greg O'Connor the member for Ōhāriu actually suggested at the end of his speech. He said "We need a. joined-up approach and we need to make sure that crime doesn't pay for gangs." So here's ACT's policy and the Labour Party's welcome to it for free; we've got so many ideas that we can actually afford to give good ideas to the Government for free—that's how generous and filled with good ideas the ACT Party is. The National Party just announced a whole lot of ideas that they've got from ACT and we're prepared to do the same for Labour because we're just great people like that. We should say if you're a gang member with an illegal firearm and you are found committing a third crime such as drug dealing it's open season on your assets because last year there was $50 million of asset seizures on $500 million of P and if the tax rate is 10 percent no wonder business is booming. We've got to stop crime paying with a policy like that. This bill won't do it. Thank you Madam Speaker."