Bayly Andrew; Rurawhe AdrianANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Well Mr Speaker I feel like we've come to the end of a long road to be speaking on this Arms Legislation Bill this afternoon.Hon Nathan Guy: It's going to be reviewed again. The road does not end.ANDREW BAYLY: Yes I know it's going to be reviewed again Mr Guy—well maybe it depends whether New Zealand First gets back of course.When the Minister introduced the bill at the committee of the whole House he made this claim that this bill will keep New Zealanders safe and also will keep the guns off of the bad people. He implored us the National Party as to why we weren't going to support this bill. The simple answer is unfortunately this legislation won't achieve the objectives that it ought to—and it is with some shame that we've arrived at this point.We of course supported the first bill and as a firearm owner myself I too was concerned about the proliferation of semi-automatic weapons or rifles that were available for sale. And much of that was dealt with in the first bill now Act. However what we experienced after the passing of that first Act was a debacle in the sense that the delay in determining the remuneration that would be paid for returned rifles led to a significant loss of goodwill by the firearms community and that ultimately led to a rather small amount of rifles being handed back in. The estimate was approximately 56000 even though whilst the police weren't able to quantify it there is an estimated 250000 of such dangerous types of rifles in the community out with the gun fraternity at the moment. That is a shame—that is a real shame. I know we can pass laws that we're going to fine people and jail them and all that sort of stuff but unfortunately a lot of goodwill was lost and has resulted in many very old historic weapons being handed in that do meet the strict requirements of an automatic weapon but in reality offered absolutely no ability to be used in such a manner because of their age or the way that they would operate and I think that is a real shame. That is a case of poor implementation of this bill.We have asked the police continuously about this number of 250000. There are records of all the import records that show what of these types of rifles would have been imported to New Zealand—it is possible to quantify it—but even if it's within 20000 or 30000 if the figure is 250000 of them in total that is a staggering amount of them out in New Zealand. This bill—well actually the last bill—we actually were lucky enough to get two wins and National played an instrumental role in that. The first one was as a result of National's direct intervention; we were successful in persuading the committee to reduce the licence period from 10 years to five years.David Seymour: Success has many fathers.ANDREW BAYLY: That is a very significant piece of legislation and I know my good colleague from ACT supported that. The other area that we did get some headway around was the issue of dealer licences particularly in relation to guides and film operators and armourers in terms of their scope and how they were affected by the Act. But this bill perpetuates a number of real issues that we had with the original proposition and that is namely the issue firstly about regulation of clubs. We had a number of excellent presentations particularly from the pistol clubs who operate under the most stringent conditions. Like many of you I've visited them and they are excellent safety-conscious and do the most wonderful thing that if you do want to learn how to manage and fire weapons or firearms pistols whatever safely they will teach you how to do it in a safe manner. Unfortunately what the bill does is it imposes a whole lot of certification rules notification rules onerous having a requirement to have public liability and basically it is making it so much harder for those clubs that we are at risk of losing those wonderful little clubs all interspersed amongst our communities who do that great job of training people safely how to use these types of arms.The second one is really around sports shooters and this was a perennial problem when the first bill went through and certainly through this one. It is inconceivable that these people who are highly proficient highly skilled and actually a very small number of them who calibrate their arms that they use—they are so precious about them because they are personal to them in the way that they undertake competition and we fought hard for them to be able to be exempt under most of the regulations over this. Unfortunately we kept turning to New Zealand First during this process and where were they? Unfortunately they were not they were silent missing in action and if they'd just fronted up with us we could have overturned that particular aspect and supported our sporting shooters in New Zealand. Collectors have already been subject to a huge amount of regulation and of course they continue to have under these regulations ongoing onerous requirements.Pest control—this was traversed so numerously during the last time and this time and again we sought to find a practical solution for farmers and again it is unfortunate we arrived at the committee of the whole House yesterday to find that we couldn't make an adjustment and yet here we have Johnny-come-lately"—or should I say "Ronnie-come-lately"—who introduced a Supplementary Order Paper rather than turn up to the select committee and engage with us and be an active part of that select committee. We could have made those changes appropriately for farmers but what we've got is an overt pitch to get farmers' votes at the last moment and the worst thing is that if Mr Mark had ever turned up or even his other colleague had spoken up he could have changed it—if he'd just simply talked to us—because we had been pushing for it. But they're silent—they were silent.The other thing is fire protection orders. We are very concerned about the issue of how these arms will be able to be in the hands of gangs and people who use them for significant crime. And this is our principal issue with the bill: that the bill does not sufficiently stop or target those people in the community who are most likely to use these types of arms for their nefarious gains which is wrong. We should be focused wholly on those because unfortunately what we've ended up doing is targeting a lot of lawful New Zealanders.The other issue of course is the licensing of firearms and there's been a lot of traverse around this about whether it works or not. We heard from a number of E category licence holders—which is the highest category—how even under their arrangements where they have to record each rifle or pistol that they own as opposed to the general category where the person is certified that there were problems with the existing recording of their arms when they get checked every 12 months. So we are now going to move to a register for every firearm in New Zealand? That will entail a significant administrative burden. Guess what I said in my second reading speech! I said this: that I think it is wrong that the burden of this licensing of firearms has to be given to the police who have many other most pressing priorities. I went on to say that it was my view that there should be a new entity outside of police control. And again here we had yesterday in the committee of the whole House a new member who we've never seen anything from about it trying to claim that from the perspective of New Zealand First they—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member's time has expired."