Andersen Ginny; Tolley AnneGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much Madam Speaker for the opportunity to speak on the High-power Laser Pointer Offences and Penalties Bill. I think it's important that we spell out exactly what this bill proposes to do. So the bill amends existing offence provisions and increases the penalties for use and possession of high-powered lasers and the bill doubles the maximum penalties to six months' imprisonment or a fine of $4000. It also amends clause 9 to make that any such offences committed with high-powered light lasers are punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment—14 years. What I would like to point to is that when the National Party was last in Government and I was a diligent worker for police I remember well when the introduction of legislation happened to introduce new penalties and new offences for the use of high-powered lasers. And since 2014 since that legislation has been introduced the problem has got worse—the problem has got worse. Instances of misuse have escalated dramatically since that legislation was introduced. The penalties as they stand were not applied despite a record number of incidents. So increasing the penalties for possession is highly unlikely to have an impact which is the desired one from those opposite. And so the rationale here is that if something's not working let's do it more—and some analogies can probably be drawn with the leadership but I won't go there.The third one in terms of increasing penalties—let's look at the psychology of increasing a penalty. Do you think the person sitting in the car at Wellington Airport who has the high-powered laser beam pointing at the air traffic control has got Radio New Zealand on with The House listening to that—that law was changed and the penalties have doubled—and suddenly flicks it off and puts it away? They don't; they do not know. So that is why increasing penalties blindly has zero impact upon offending rates or the outcome and that is why we oppose this bill. So let's have a look at the other issue that came up when I was working at police. The other issue that comes up when you are just increasing penalties is it is actually pretty tricky to catch someone pointing a laser. The ability to intercept someone and find where that beam is coming from is a tricky job and wouldn't you be far better off targeting illegal online sales? Wouldn't that be a better point to intercept them? Because if we've already introduced—as we have done—the Customs Import Prohibition (High-power Laser Pointers) Order in 2013 which states that hand-held high-power laser pointers are prohibited to import without a consent from the Ministry of Health shouldn't we be looking at how people are getting their hands on them without having that permit? I would argue that we should be taking a closer look at online sales and that would be a far more effective tool to try and curb some of the dangerous incidents that are happening instead of trying to threaten people with increased penalties and 14 years in prison. So I think that this has good intent—this bill—the idea of making people safer. The idea of giving pilots and air traffic control staff the confidence that their wellbeing and safety are looked after is a good idea but the execution of this bill the idea of how it's going to be carried out by threatening people with 14 years in prison is doomed to fail because it has failed since the initial legislation was introduced under the National Government previously.So looking at that that is the case for why we believe that this is not a good bill for addressing this problem—that there needs to be a far more thorough exploration of what this problem is—and if we look back into the history of where this comes from I can name another bill that was exactly the same and that was car crushing. It's the idea of coming to the end of a solution and scaring people with an outcome without actually analysing what the problem was. How many cars did we crush in New Zealand under that legislation? I think we did one or two and the time it took the Parliament to pass the legislation and to implement a bill that had zero impact on the problem was a real waste of time and effort and energy. If we're serious about turning things around we need to look at how people are getting their hands on these not just standing over them and threatening them with imprisonment. Thank you Madam Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Darroch Ball and introduce him to Hamish Walker!