Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition): Thank you Mr Speaker. I join with the Prime Minister in thanking the commissioners for their work. It's obviously been an extremely onerous difficult task for them. They've clearly with the 800 pages of their report shown that they have taken it incredibly seriously and they have listened to everybody who has spoken to them.We received as the Opposition an embargoed copy of the report at 10 o'clock this morning but we have had an opportunity to certainly look at quite a lot of the report in relation to the recommendations. We think there's a great deal of information in the report which needs to be carefully absorbed and considered and we'll be spending some time over the coming months and weeks doing exactly that. This is a wide-ranging report that must be treated with utmost respect but the recommendations within it must be also properly scrutinised. The atrocities committed on 15 March 2019 were the actions of an evil terrorist in that they were designed to spread fear and to silence those who did not share his world view. However the actions of New Zealanders following that in their denouncing of him and what he stood for has shown that he failed miserably if his outcome was to change our way of life and our way of thinking. We have shown as a nation that we are not prepared to give in to fear that we are not prepared to tolerate extreme hate and that we are not prepared to let anything like the wickedness that took place on March 15 to ever happen in New Zealand again. The Opposition stands ready to work constructively with the Government on this and we will learn from this experience and make New Zealand a safer place in which to work and to live. I think that shows the value of having a royal commission and its ability to probe very deeply into issues like this. I'd like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the 51 victims who lost their lives that day the dozens more who witnessed and survived the attack the brave police officers who rushed in to help the doctors and the nurses and the paramedics who worked tirelessly to save lives and the people of New Zealand who rallied together to say that this is not us. I'd like to acknowledge again everyone involved in the royal commission of inquiry not just the commissioners but all of those who worked—all the secretariat—and all of those who gave evidence in their submissions to the royal commission and to acknowledge the tremendous support that New Zealanders received from all over the world in the wake of the attacks. The world was horrified just like we were because we're not used to seeing ourselves as a country where this happens and that's because we just haven't seen this level of terrorism attack that I can ever think of. Certainly it is something that we have had—issues of terrorism and proposed terrorism in this country—but they have been able to be foiled or various things have taken place and they very seldom see the light of day in the media. Ultimately no matter the failings by various people or departments or agencies there is one person who is utterly responsible for the actions of that day and that person is now serving a life sentence without parole in a New Zealand maximum security prison—a very good place for him to be. But it appears that certain systems within Government could have and should have performed better in the lead-up to that extraordinarily brutal event. I would not like the people who were involved in those agencies though to feel that they were the people responsible for that person's actions. We always know that there are failings in any system and that people make judgment calls that sometimes are shown to be wrong but there was one person responsible and that one person is the terrorist. In principle we support strengthening the role of New Zealand's security intelligence agencies to safeguard against any repeat of these terrible actions. I think that in many ways many New Zealanders have become extremely complacent to the view that we live at the very bottom of the world and nobody takes much notice of us but we are unfortunately a country that can sometimes be seen as ripe for attack and this was one of those times. But we must tread very carefully in this area because we must safeguard New Zealanders' rights and liberties because otherwise we will end up creating the very society that this terrorist eventually wanted us to create which is one which is not a liberal democracy and not one where other people's views can be different from our own and we don't resort to violence. We have an obligation to safeguard our liberties and our rights. It's worth remembering that we will not be able to completely stop terrible crimes like this but we can certainly do some things to assist. We must do everything that we can to suppress it but we cannot sacrifice our freedoms or otherwise we will lose so much of what we hold dear. We acknowledge in the National Party that this report found our security agencies' concentration on the threat of Islamic extremist terrorism was not the reason this terrorist's actions went undetected. What is clear from this report is that even though there were clear failures from organisations that could have put roadblocks in the way of this individual he was not part of some wider group or larger movement. He was in fact a terrorist hiding in plain sight. Turning now to firearms it would appear that police guidelines around firearms licensing have fallen well short of expectations. It's clear that this terrorist should never have been able to obtain a firearms licence. It shows the value of having a royal commission that we were able to come to this conclusion with the full facts in front of us. We support moves by the police to improve their training and firearms licence - vetting and we expect that this will make New Zealand a safer place. We supported the first tranche of firearms legislation that followed this attack but we are concerned that moves since then have largely been regulations that will burden law-abiding New Zealanders with more cost rather than getting guns out of the hands of criminals and we believe that it is time for us as a Parliament to adopt the firearms prohibition orders to take guns off gangs and other criminals. We also want to acknowledge the work of those who worked with the victims. We acknowledge that the report recommends ongoing recovery support for affected whānau survivors and witnesses. I don't believe anybody could ever overcome such an enormous tragedy in their lives and to their communities so in principle we believe that a victims' commissioner should be considered. We'd certainly put in place an adviser on victims to the Minister of Justice and we believe this is something that should be continued with and extended. We must always remember that New Zealand must be a place of safety for everyone: for people who come to live in New Zealand for those of us fortunate enough to have been born here and for people who have come to see New Zealand as a refuge. They and we deserve New Zealand to be that place. We are the best little country in the world and we deserve to have every New Zealander know that this is a safe place for them. So in principle we support many of the recommendations. We want to work with the Government to bring about a better outcome for our country. Thank you.