Tuiono TeanauTEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker O'Connor. I rise to speak on behalf of Golriz Ghahraman who is our usual spokesperson for these sorts of issues but I'd also like to extend my congratulations on your ascension to the Chair. It looks good and it suits you. [Interjection] Am I greasing? Maybe maybe not.I rise in support of this bill. I see it in line with a number of the firearms suite of changes that have come through since the tragic terror attack on March 15. It was a time of deep distress and the ongoing trauma of that event particularly for our Muslim whānau is something that is still keenly felt today. So I see this law and this piece of legislation as moving in that direction and it is about keeping and maintaining that promise to that community but also to Aotearoa New Zealand in general.The Green Party has called for gun law reform for quite some time. Regulating gun violence falls within the kaupapa of the Green Party as one of our charter values is non-violence. Our vision of a justice system for Aotearoa New Zealand is one which values social responsibility appropriate decision-making and non-violent conflict resolution. These things should be paramount. In this system disputes are solved quickly and fairly everyone is entitled to justice no one is judged without a fair hearing everyone is given a reasonable chance to atone for past wrongs and reintegrate into society and everybody is treated with respect. In this system the law benefits everyone equitably. We get that balance right so that people can be safe and we can uphold people's access to the law.This bill is about getting that balance right. It is about improving public safety. It is about improving the safety of New Zealand communities by preventing those people who are deemed to be at high risk to not be able to access firearms and that is the general direction of this bill. We do that by amending the Arms Act and this way it will work—that is if someone has been convicted of a specified offence that's listed within the Act the firearms prohibition order will then be issued by the court and not issued by the police. I think that's the fine balance that we have struck with this piece of legislation moving forward and that's a good thing. If a person is serving a term of imprisonment it will come into action once they're released. 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. The bill allows a sentencing judge to issue a 10-year long firearms prohibition order when sentencing a convicted criminal. The exact conditions are up to the sentencing judge and there are suggested standard conditions in this bill. But the important thing to note here as well is that an FPO can be appealed just like any other sentence.I don't sit on the Justice Committee but I did read through some of the submissions on the website. I picked up the submission by the Rural Women New Zealand organisation which for me made the very clear point that violence is often gendered regardless of where it is and including in rural communities. So I just wanted to quote directly from their submission where they said Women deserve to be safe in their homes in their rural-based businesses and on their farms. Women living in rural New Zealand are more vulnerable in threatening and violent incidences where firearms are used or threatened to be used. Adverse impacts on rural communities also occur where there is an incident … or [an] accident in their community where a death or injury has been the result of the discharge of a firearm. Women are often those who support or organise support for anyone in the community affected by such an incident"—and they acknowledge that—"women are the glue that holds a community together." If it's good enough for the rural women it's good enough for the Greens. We also see that in terms of making sure that our communities are safe we've got to take care of all those other issues as well. We can do that by ensuring that we have liveable incomes liveable wages and making sure that everybody has a warm home. These are the social determinants that we need to focus on to make sure that our communities are as strong and as cohesive as possible.So we know that the safest communities are not those that are highly policed or very criminalised; the safest communities are those with access to secure warm dry accessible housing inclusive education meaningful work and when people are not in work with a social safety net that provides them with the opportunity not just to barely survive but to thrive. So we do want the Government to go ahead and regulate guns effectively because gun violence is a blight on our society. But we hope that the pain and hurt of victims of gun violence are not used as a means to dog whistle and to lean more and more in to policies that only make politicians look tough on crime when actually we need to be tough on poverty. So with that Green vision in mind I commend this bill to the House."