Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Mr Speaker. Look firstly can I acknowledge the new incoming Minister of Justice because you know we have got a tough situation in this country without a doubt but she has come in with energy and she genuinely is bringing legislation to the House and is trying to pick up some momentum and get some momentum going. So I do want to genuinely acknowledge her for that. We are going to support the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill through this first reading to select committee. Actually I think that there are some very good amendments contained inside this bill.But I do want to highlight one issue—that is the fact that one of the amendments is the new Discharging [a] firearm with intent to intimidate" offence. I do want to highlight that there is a massive gap in the legislation that the Government has brought in terms of trying to deal with the gangs firearms and gun violence that we see perpetuating itself through this country on a weekly basis. If I just go back to the amendment the bill amends the Crimes Act 1961 and introduces a new offence for discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate in a public place. Currently there is an apparent gap in the law where law enforcement can intervene when a firearm is discharged with intent to intimidate but only when it is to intimidate those in a dwellinghouse. The bill enables the Crimes Act to address all situations where a firearm is discharged with the intent to intimidate any person or group of people. The bill sets a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment for this offence. That is a strong term of imprisonment which will bring me to my next point.But the point that I wanted to make around this is quite simply the fact that we have had a Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill come through the House that didn't have any new additional search powers. So that has meant that it's a more ineffective bill for the police to use operationally to try and prevent the use of firearms. Although this bill is trying to toughen up the law around the discharge of firearms there is still a big gap in terms of the Police having the legislation that it needs to stop that occurring in the first place. This bill is quite simply reactive—once the action has already taken place. When you're dealing with firearms firearm violence and drive-by shootings you want to avoid that first drive-by shooting because I don't know how we got away with it—it's only that we obviously had lady luck on our side—the fact that no members of the public were seriously injured or killed in any of the recent drive-by shootings that we witnessed.So I'm just signalling to the Minister that although good legislation there's a big gap there because this is reactive. The police need to be able to have some legislation and some new search powers that are proactive that allow them to actually be able to take action to be able to search to be able to confiscate to be able to take weapons off gang members—whether they're in their vehicle whether they're in a gang pad whether they're in their own home or an associate's home. And this bill just doesn't do it. So I don't know whether or not it would be within the scope of the bill to be able to look at that and look at fixing that at select committee. My guess is that it is probably outside the scope of the bill. But I did want to highlight to the Minister that there is a gap there and that if she's serious about it then she should take that up and have a look at it.That brings me to my next point which is a very interesting one in terms of the five years' imprisonment for this offence. Five years' imprisonment—that's actually a good sentence. I think that it genuinely does reflect the seriousness of the offending. But when you go back to the departmental disclosure statement the officials seem to have spent some time on whether or not this bill is consistent with New Zealand's international obligations. They've gone through that they've spelt it out very clearly and said that there are some deficiencies that we need to have a look at. They've gone through consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on which they've done consultation with the Attorney-General which is the right thing to do—that information has been posted to the Ministry of Justice website. But the thing that I find very interesting is that there hasn't been proper consultation done around the consistency with the Government's Treaty of Waitangi obligations—Hon Member: What?Hon MARK MITCHELL: —yeah. And the officials have been very clear when they said "Although there was no consultation with Māori"—so there's been no consultation with Māori at all on this bill. And yet I've heard Government Ministers stand in this House—I've heard Government Ministers stand in this House—time and time again and highlight the importance of consultation with our Treaty partners and iwi to see what the impact of this type of legislation is going to be on them because we all accept that Māori are overrepresented inside our criminal justice system. I've got my own views on that and they relate to social investment and going right back into people's lives getting right alongside them and trying to make sure that they don't come into our criminal justice system.But it's interesting that the officials have said "Although there was no consultation with Māori on the proposals in the Bill"—so there's been no consultation—"due to time constraints" because again this legislation has been rushed through and we all know that when you rush through legislation you don't always get a good outcome. "Officials consulted with relevant government agencies and analysed proposals in this Bill against the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Crown's Treaty obligations. Officials have identified strong Māori interests in some of the proposals particularly those which target gang activity. Māori are likely to be disproportionately affected by the proposals as they are both more likely to be gang members (three quarters of known adult gang members in Aotearoa are Māori men) and the victims of gang harms. Furthermore the fundamental rights involved necessarily impact the relationship between Māori and the Crown. As such the proposals potentially support the Crown's duty to actively protect Māori from harm while potentially undermining the principle of equity."So their own officials have actually come back and reported that there are big issues around this bill as relate to the Treaty of Waitangi obligations. I just find it incredible—maybe if the Attorney-General is in the House he can stand and take the call on this because he's definitely been consulted properly and he has reported on this in terms of consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. But maybe the next Labour speaker could take a call and explain to us why there has been no consultation with Māori on this bill. Thank you very much Mr Speaker."