Franks Stephen: Appropriation (2002/03 Supplementary Estimates) Bill — Second Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
Franks Stephen: Appropriation (2002/03 Supplementary Estimates) Bill — Second Reading Imprest Supply Debate 
[Volume:609;Page:6368] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I rise for the ACT party to say that we too will not vote for this motion. The amounts that the Government has been claiming and obtaining from New Zealanders to spend with or without approval have been excessive. In particular I want to focus on one small area of spending where it appears that the spending is planned without any knowing or conscious parliamentary approval. 
In the  
New Zealand Police Statement of Intent 2003/2004 
 distributed with the Budget package there is an item called output class 2. In that output class there is an item 2.4 “Firearms Licensing”. When we look at the description of the performance measures that are expected by the Government for firearms licensing we see it looks very similar to that for the current year. The police expected to receive 20000 to 25000 licence applications in 2002-03 the period we have almost completed and they expect to receive the same number in the next year to June 2004. The police also expect to inspect 100 percent of pistol clubs and their members to inspect 100 percent of arms dealers and to check them for security and legislation compliance and to contact 80 percent of the holders of expiring firearms licences. In other words it is exactly the same plan as now. The police expect 100 percent of licences to be processed within 30 working-days of the completion of inquiries and they expect the cost per licence to stay the same as it is now at $110. 
Why have I raised the issue of firearms licensing in the context of expenditure that has not been properly explained or flagged? There are two differences between the current year and what the police expect for the next year. First they expect to spend nearly $1 million more on the process. There is an arithmetic problem there. The police expect to spend $1 million more yet they state that the cost per licence issued will stay the same and the number of licences issued will stay the same. It may be that the police are stating that the charge per licence issued will stay the same—the charge to the licensee—but that the actual cost is something quite different from what is stated and will actually be $916000 more in the next period than the police anticipate spending on firearms licensing in the current year. 
The other little change is that there is a line that previously stated: “Number of firearms licences revoked” with no entry for the estimated output or performance measure this year. The police expect to revoke at least 100 firearms licences in the next year. There is a little footnote that states: “New measure introduced 2003/2004.” So we have a signal however oblique or covert forced out of the Government by the financial reporting and forecasting process that confirms the rumours we have been hearing—and indeed they are more than rumours; they are the simple statements of honest and concerned police staff—that the police will be expected in the next year to start another assault on their relationship with firearms users in this country. 
In the next year the police will be required to start a gun registration process despite the evidence that this House received in the report from the Law and Order Committee which considered the firearms amendment bill. The Labour members who went on to that committee were determined that they would not listen to the “Rambos in camo gear” as one of them described the gun lobby at the beginning of the process. The Minister and the police had said initially—the police of course with their arms up their back—that this country needed a firearms registration system such as that recommended by Sir Thomas Thorp. Despite all that preparation that committee came to the conclusion after hearing the evidence not only that was there no justification for proceeding but that firearms users were right in saying that there were no problems with lawful firearms owners—or no problems that would be solved by putting a complete new set of laws and requirements on them—that all the problems were with illegal firearms and that the illegal firearms problem was highly unlikely to be cured in any way by putting new burdens on lawful firearms owners. 
We have prospective expenditure here. I have no doubt that some of this imprest amount that the Government wants us presently to vote for without any detailed description may end up being spent as part of the anticipated cost of this new scheme. We have the expected waste of at least $1 million in new police money. We can assume that the cost is probably an awful lot more than $1 million if we look at the experience of one country that our left-wing socialist Government likes to compare itself with Canada. That country expected to spend $85 million on a firearms registration system that would mark it out from its southern neighbour the United States. The cost for each firearm was to be around $5 to $10 at most and the benefit in political gain was widely expected by the Canadian Government to be a no-brainer advantage with urban women in particular who were concerned about firearms offences. 
But what does Canada have 7 years later? The cost is just under a billion dollars now for Canada’s firearms registration scheme. It was $500 million by the end of the year 2000 and at least 30 percent of owners have still not registered. There has just been a revolt by the provincial governments which have decided they will not prosecute the owners of unregistered firearms. Registration has had no discernible effect on firearms offences and Canada has a registry that is almost completely unusable by the police because until it is complete it is completely useless. The police cannot rely on the firearms register for one of the purposes that was cited so often—that they need to know whether they can safely approach a house by knowing whether they risk a firearms offence being committed. The Canadian police cannot rely on any such register until they know that they have every firearm registered. The situation is that the Canadian Government itself has now admitted that the cost per firearm is somewhat over Can$100 and that it is no further ahead. 
Let us look a little closer in terms of our history at the United Kingdom. It banned handgun ownership after the Dunblane massacre. The United Kingdom had 2 years ago a 40 percent increase in handgun homicides. This year it looks as though the rate of armed robbery with handguns will be nearly double the rate that it was when the Government first started talking about that ban. There are no-go areas in the United Kingdom where the police simply will not police that kind of offence. 
The real tragedy about the spending that this Government is planning in this area is in fact that the problem of policing as it is with so many of the things that trouble New Zealanders—it is the same with dogs and with boy racers—is that the registration system or non-compliance by ordinary citizens is not the issue. Rather the problem is that the police have lost the confidence the equipment the resources and the ability to take the risk of going after the criminals. The fact is that the real dog problem—as with firearms; it is the same with dogs—is with people who do not register their dogs at all. The problem with firearms in this country is the same as it is in Australia and in the United Kingdom. It is the people who do not comply with the law that the police should worry about. 
What do we have instead? This Government sends the police out to chase generally law-abiding people—people who do register their cars and do comply with law—with instant fines and traffic tickets. The kind of resource that it will take from this Government that extra million dollars will be the mere tip of the iceberg. We know that when this Government comes out in the next week or so with a firearms registration proposal it will be wasted money and a political bribe.