Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Kia hora te marino kia whakapapa pounamu te moana aroha atu aroha mai tātou i a tātou tēnā tātou katoa. [May the calm be widespread may the sea lie flat like greenstone love and be loved all of us together greetings to all.]I once again rise in remembrance of and with deep sorrow for the victims of the terror attack at the two Christchurch mosques on 15 March. Fifty lives were lost that day and others were unimaginably injured with injuries that they will likely suffer from for the rest of their lives. So just over three weeks after that atrocity took place I am so proud that this House has come together that the Government has come together that all across the benches of this House of Representatives we have stood together to begin the change that's necessary in making New Zealand safe.We are committed to standing together with the victims in their grief and shock across this country but we are also committed to making real change. Part of that is to acknowledge that for the affected communities—for Christchurch and for our Muslim for our migrant and for our refugee communities right around the country—that grief and that sorrow comes with very real fear as they walk their kids to school every day; as they gather at places of worship; as they send their elderly their nanas and their grandads off to the shops; and as teenagers catch buses at night and still face let's admit it a little bit of abuse too. We've had all of that reported as well. Now that doesn't just feel degrading and unsettling; it comes with terror. For them their lives are now touched by this ongoing fear. That's what terror intends to do and it is our job to make sure everyone in New Zealand and everyone in our communities feels safe. That's what this change is about.In fact the people in those affected communities have come to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and they've let us know what this means to them. We've had Mustafa Farouk the president of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand and we've had members of the Islamic Women's Council of New Zealand come to select committee and ask for this change some speaking on behalf of the victims who can't speak for themselves. We heard from that community in the wake of this tragedy even in the days following it saying as Saeed Ahmed did—the president of the Hawke's Bay Islamic centre—that while the fear was ongoing the love and the unity in New Zealand really helped. What also helped was knowing that the Government had committed to taking action on gun control.Let's also remember that other communities other victims will benefit from this new law. We have some of the world's highest rates of domestic and sexual violence and we know that domestic violence victims and their families and whānau will benefit from knowing that the very very maximised kind of harm that this kind of weapon is designed to cause is no longer going to be something that they have to face as a legal part of our gun ownership scheme.I want to acknowledge the incredible hard work of that select committee. They came together at short notice. They dropped everything sat late at night and began early in the morning. They brought their collective wisdom and they did that mahi together. It was a mammoth task but it showed again the strength and the commitment across this House to taking real action.Let's acknowledge that this bill is long overdue. The cost of doing nothing has been too high. Too many people have been hurt. It has been recommended that we do this time and again by the Police Association by experts commissioned to recommend changes on our gun laws and by community members and their recommendations have been ignored. It is time to make this change. I think I want to acknowledge also at this point that it is change that comes to this House—in part at least—through people power because let's not forget that some 70000 New Zealanders signed a petition that was presented on the steps of this House only five days after the atrocity in Christchurch happened. Over 60 percent of the submitters to the select committee wanted this change. So New Zealand wants this change. They want it now and we have that strong mandate to carry forward the change that they want to make our communities safe to acknowledge that many out there were actually shocked to find that military-style semi-automatics were so easy to obtain in New Zealand.This bill as it came to us last week will ban military-style semi-automatic firearms and any parts or modifications that would make an ordinarily legal weapon behave like a semi-automatic weapon—essentially banning weapons that do maximise harm and allow for the kind of mass killing that we saw in Christchurch. These are weapons that have no place in civilised society. The legislation will create new definitions for firearms magazines parts and ammunition and it will create an amnesty for those who already own them. I think the amnesty is the right thing to do and I would urge all firearms owners who own any of the affected parts or firearms to consider whether they really need those and to hand them in now or as part of the amnesty. The expedited process that we've taken has been appropriate in assuring members of the public who actually were shocked that we live in a community where this type of military-style weapon was so easy to obtain that actually change is coming and it's being done now.The select committee process and the report have resulted in recommendations changing the bill so that pest controllers can use semi-automatic rifles on private land as well as Department of Conservation land. It has also called—and this is where the Green Party does diverge from the recommendations—for exemptions allowing owners of heirloom firearms or what are called bona fide collectors" to hold the soon-to-be-banned firearms if parts are kept in a separate location from the firearms themselves. Now the Green Party considers that this exemption is at odds with the purpose of the amendment and we call for collectors' firearms to be made permanently inoperable rather than just essentially separated into parts that can then be reassembled giving the weapon life again in a way that the bill does not intend. We stand on that position with a number of submitters who felt that the exemption should actually be removed or that at least the weapons should be required to be made inoperable. In fact we agree with the Police Association in its submission to the committee who expressed concern and said that the collectors category was at risk of expanding significantly in order to make allowance for that type of weapon to be held.We do support this change wholeheartedly though as the Green Party has over many years called for a tightening of our gun laws. That comes as part of our charter principle of non-violence and being born of the peace movement. We've called numerous times for New Zealand to commit to building a peaceful society. I am so heartened at the community conversations that come from the atrocity in Christchurch. More than gun control we are having conversations about the kind of inclusive equal society that we want to be. People who have never before necessarily faced some of those hard conversations and hard truths are now facing the history we've had with not gun violence per se but all of the underlying causes of violence whether that's our colonial history whether that's ongoing racism that we see on the rise today both online and out there on our streets.We are going to change our culture to reclaim our values of inclusion and equality. We are doing this making this first step in that change to honour the victims. It is a long-overdue change and it's not where we're going to stop. Further gun law changes will come down the track in a longer process and we look forward to working together on establishing finally a gun registry and making other changes that will make tighter the regulation of our gun laws and our licensing standards. So we're making all of these changes we're facing those hard truths we're addressing the underlying causes of violence and we're taking the worst of the weapons off our streets for the victims but also because that's what a responsible compassionate society would do. Thanks."