Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): This bill is a classic case of overreach. We oppose this bill and for good reason. That's not to say we don't support firearms reform and we did in the first bill that went through this House.I as a firearm owner and licence holder was concerned about the proliferation of large magazine semi-automatic weapons that were available for sale and much of that was dealt with in the first firearms bill. However the thing that most worries me about the first bill was the significant delay in publishing the remuneration terms for the buy-back. That was a case of very poor implementation by the Government and that led to an appallingly low level of people handing in their rifles.We all talk about—we've collected 56000 weapons and we all think we're much safer but the reality is that we are not. We don't know how many weapons there are. It's anywhere between 1.1 and maybe 1.5 even though the police have been issuing import licences for these types of weapons coming in since 1983 but somehow we don't know the figure.But I can guarantee you that there will be thousands of these weapons that are wanted and should have been brought in and handed back but because of the poor implementation of the first round they have not. This has led to a case where we might feel we are safer but in fact we're not safer. That's my first issue with the way that this process has worked.In terms of this bill we did have two wins. National played an instrumental part in making sure that the licence duration changed. When the bill was introduced there was a requirement that there would be a five-year rollover of the licence period. We in the National Party fought that because that is not required. The statistics said and the argument was that you should be looking at and assessing new gun owners and we agreed that in the first rollover that's when you should be doing it in a five-year period. But thereafter people by that stage often get married and move into stable relationships don't move home so much and the 10-year period was deemed to be sufficient. That was the success that the National Party brought to this bill to reduce the initial period to five years but thereafter maintain it at 10 years.The other area that we had success on is the issue around dealer licences. We were concerned about guides going out—and we talked about hunting guides going out and taking people out in controlled situations and being captured by the dealer licensing requirements. We also talked about film armourers. Thankfully the committee listened to our protestations about those requirements in the proposed bill and the amendments got changed thanks to National.But there are so many things that we did not get through in this bill and it is to my great regret that we didn't. The first is around the regulation of clubs. Many of us MPs—and we all claim to represent a lot of urban electorates but those who have actually gone out and visited the pistol clubs the gun clubs in their electorate will find that in the main they are incredibly well organised they are very careful about safety they monitor people very well they do all the sort of things that every New Zealander would hope that they would be doing and best of all they teach young New Zealanders how to use the firearm safely. But this bill has now imposed stringent regulations on those clubs and I think that's wrong because if any of the organisations in New Zealand will help create a more safe environment and create an environment where young New Zealanders can use weapons in a safe manner the clubs of New Zealand are the very places where that should and does take place. Yet this bill cuts the core of them.It didn't just stop there. Our Government people wanted to make sure that the sporting clubs were also captured. So these are the gun ranges and all those sorts of things. We wanted notification of the gun ranges and the sporting clubs but no we've now got a certification regime and that is far more onerous. Also there's now a requirement for public liability. And as we heard from many of the speakers that puts an added financial cost and pressure on those types of organisations. In many cases many of them are going to choose not to carry on—and again that is a travesty.The sporting shooters: this is an area that we traversed widely in the first bill that got passed through this House. Again this is a small group of individuals who do competition shooting both domestically and internationally. They have expensive firearms. They are the ones that will be least keen to see their weapons burgled because their rifles their weapons will be the most precise and set up for their own situations so that they can compete. And hey presto! We had a Government who didn't see that they had a valid right that they were a very very safe category—probably the most safe category—because when they are competing internationally or even domestically they are subject to some of the rules that are the most stringent around safety and yet we could not get that through. And where was New Zealand First on that? Nowhere—nowhere.Then we had the collectors already subject to huge restrictions. Collectors have to have special-sized safes much thicker than the ordinary licence holder has like I do at home. They are subject to again a lot of scrutiny; checked every year. But hey presto! That wasn't enough. Even though we haven't had issues with collectors here we have a bill that places more restrictions on them. The requirement for storing parts off site and other areas—probably in less secure areas—again just overreach of compliance.Then we had the issue around pest control. Again many of us in this House come from farms own farms and know about it. What we're talking about is the legitimate destruction of pests that cause a lot of mayhem in New Zealand: goats deer pigs geese and paradise ducks are examples of this. There was this view that prevailed in the committee with certain members who thought that that was not a legitimate cause for farmers to be able to look after their land to make sure that these pests didn't ruin the natural habitat of New Zealand and yet weren't safe enough to be able to have weapons and to be able to go and shoot these animals when required. So we came up with this long-winded process that you've now got to form a company and it will have to be specially certified by the police and all that sort of stuff and the intent of it and all that sort of stuff. Of course there's this overriding impractical illogical view that you'll just be able to pick up the phone to a company and say Come and shoot my pest right now". But there are certain of those animals—birds for instance paradise ducks—that you only shoot when they've got young fledglings because at other times you can't get near them. But yet there was this incomprehensible lack of understanding about how you go about doing that. Where was New Zealand First in that argument? Nowhere.Again there was an issue of licensing of firearms. We have had a licensing arrangement in New Zealand before—we've had it before. We had it and we've heard about the Canadian examples and other jurisdictions. The issue with the licensing is that it has got to be accurate to be useful. We heard already from that small category of E-Cat firearm owners who are subject to the most stringent controls and are checked every year. They said even then that police couldn't keep their records about the number of firearms and all the registration around that accurate. Yet we're talking about going out and trying to register 250000 people and over a million rifles. It's not going to work—it's not going to work.I think this is one of the biggest issues the jurisdiction that this will impose on the police because this is a significant burden that they are now going to have to undertake. There was no consideration about how you might practically do that in the future."