McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm standing today to talk to what I saw in the Government's 2022 Budget in the Vote Police aspect. I'm looking at $562 million overall going into that police budget and you've got to ask: is this too little too late or is it just simply taxpayer abuse? I wonder if it is because when we look at the spend that this money is going to undertake we have a lot of questions to ask. I want to speak specifically to the firearms regime where a significant part of this funding is going to be going towards. I mean half a billion dollars is a really big amount of money and knowing that of course half a billion dollars came in through the proceeds of crime it would be great to see it go back to police. But we want to make sure that that spend is good and the Government has said that they're going to put $95 million into organised crime—that's great—but they've also said they're going to put $208 million into a firearms registry and I've got to wonder about the balance of spend there and the effectiveness of what it's actually going to achieve. Because in order for a database to be effective it needs to have three aspects to it: it needs to be complete it needs to be accurate and it needs to be kept up to date. And if you are going to get compliance—full compliance—from firearm owners they need to be assured that it's going to be secure. And we've already had issues with police not keeping information secure in the past and making available confiscation data when the buy-back occurred—available publicly on their database as was reported in the media. But the elephant in the room is about the gangs. And while we are trying to look at actually what's happening with the gangs what we're hearing in the news is about so many shootings occurring each week that even us as politicians start to lose track over how many have occurred. There was five on one Saturday night followed by another seven. I heard my colleague across the way today suggest that there were 12 overall; I actually calculated that there were 14 shootings that had occurred in under one week. So why would the gang members want to register their firearms? Why would they be compelled to do so when they are going about wreaking havoc in our communities already being unchecked? So who from that side of the House can tell those worried communities how a $208 million investment in registration of firearms is going to stop their kids' bedrooms from being shot up this weekend? Who from that side of the House can tell the Northlanders and the South Aucklanders why the number of violent gun crimes has increased by over 47 percent from 2018 to 2021? And who from that side of the House will tell communities that once they've spent the $208 million on a firearms registry that isn't working because they do not have full compliance from the gang members they need to put more money into it like Canada did—the billions of dollars for that regime? None of them across the House will say anything because Labour's answer is simply to throw more money at a problem instead of using what they've got—for example pursuit laws. If they actually went after the criminals if they went into the gang pads and they dismantled the firearms in there then we might actually be able to combat the problem with what we've got instead of throwing taxpayer money at it. And what happens with registration when technology moves faster than Parliament? What happens when 3-D guns come in and they're not registered or have serial numbers either? Law abiding firearm owners are not the problem yet police and Government constantly tell the public that we are—that firearms come solely from the licensed firearm owners. Yet both the police and the Government forget to say that over a dozen gang members were issued firearm licences and while they're mostly removed now they still don't need to comply. The KPIs for police are actually business as usual"; looking at what they need to do with pistols and trying to get licensing under control and in a better state. We look forward to that but we want safer communities not scared ones."