Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Chair. I rise on behalf of ACT for this very narrow and purposeful debate about clauses 1 and 2 the title and commencement. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): It doesn't have to be that narrow. Just looking at Speakers' ruling 112/6 which gives some latitude to summarise and make concluding remarks. DAVID SEYMOUR: Madam Chair with that encouragement—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): But that's not a wide brief OK?DAVID SEYMOUR: All right. Well strangely what I wanted to talk about was the word legislation" and particularly the role of the rule of law in this legislation and whether it's appropriate to call this an Arms "Legislation" Bill when actually new section 1A(2) set out in clause 5 on page 13 here says that "The regulatory regime established by this Act to achieve those purposes reflects the following principles: (a) that the possession and use of arms is a privilege;". Now I want to ask the Minister of Police how it is consistent with the rule of law to say that having firearms is a privilege. You see if it's a privilege then it's something that a person is lucky to have—maybe that they should feel grateful for and that can be taken away from them at a whim perhaps the whim of a police officer or other enforcement officer of the State. This stuff really matters because in a society where we have the rule of law anybody—people that some might see as the lowest of the low people that others might see as the highest of the high—has the right to look at the law of the land and say "I have rights. I have rights to my property. I have rights to be treated under due process." So does this Arms Legislation Bill really do that? If anything by saying it's a privilege to have firearms it departs from the principle that every New Zealander has equal rights under the law and says "Actually we're not talking about legislation; we're talking about privilege something that can be arbitrarily taken away at a whim." I quote F A Hayek who said that if freedom means anything it is the ability to make choices for oneself without concern for arbitrary coercion by another or others. As Hayek wrote in his excellent trilogy that I'm sure you will have read Madam Chair Law Legislation and Liberty it is impossible to separate the three concepts. I need the Minister to tell us: is he really committed to the rule of law where firearm owners actually have some rights or do they give it all up and should they just be grateful for what their local arms or other enforcement officer will let them have? That's critical. And it matters not just to firearm owners. It matters to everyone to know if the Government is committed to the rule of law and if the Minister is not committed to the rule of law he should take "legislation" out of the title of this bill. Now Madam Chair I hope I haven't taken your encouragement too widely. I'd now like to talk about the commencement part of the clauses. The commencement is usually rather mundane so far as pieces of legislation go. It's not too often that a committee of the whole House gets up on its hind legs and excited about commencement. But somehow mysteriously this Government has decided by changes to the commencement to make a policy issue out of commencement. And what is the substance of that commencement change? They've decided that this register is going to come into effect not after two years but after three. You have to ask why anybody could possibly think that a register in three years is a good idea but a register in two years is a bad idea. That's what we're being asked to believe by this Government and this Minister. New Zealand First have tried to take the credit for this delay. I can see the billboards now: "Vote New Zealand First and get bad law one year later". That's the promise of this change to the commencement clause.But we know from when New Zealand had a register that it didn't work. In 1982 when this Government—not this Government but an earlier one—commissioned a report what did that report say? Well one of the things it said was that of the nine homicides that happened in the previous year none of them—not one of those nine homicides using firearms in 1981—were helped to be solved by the register that New Zealand had. That's why in 1983 my birth year—this is how long ago it was—we got rid of a register. We can look around the world and refer back to the select committee's report on what the effectiveness of registers is and we can't find any evidence that registration works and as I mentioned earlier we've recently learnt from an Official Information Act request—not the information they want to give you; the information the law requires them to give us—that half of all firearms illegal firearms confiscated by the police in the past five years have had their serial numbers ground off. What use is a register then? But the problem with a register whether it's in two years or in three is not just that it's ineffective in solving crime; it's dangerous. We have seen and it's a great shame many leaks of Government data in recent years. Now perhaps the Minister is going to get up and say "I acknowledge this problem but give us an extra year and we'll fix it. We'll do what no other country's done what New Zealand's previously abandoned and what seems very dangerous." But it's dangerous because this Government seems to leak information like a sieve. Let me give you one example. There was a poor old pensioner who had a bit of trouble filling out his superannuation forms and that somehow became public. There was a list of people who had tried to get involved in the celebration of 250 years since Captain Cook arrived and their information leaked. Some of these things are almost amusing but when it is a list of where every firearm is and its type and where it's kept and who owns it up and down this country—a steal-to-order list for criminal elements. There's the great irony: one leak away from a steal-to-order list for the criminal elements. That's the difference between a firearm register and a disaster: one Government leak. This Minister comes to the House and says "The problem with illegal firearms is that people steal them off law-abiding people so law-abiding people can't have them." and then he says "We're going to come into this House and create a register that is one leak away from being a steal-to-order list for the most dangerous people in this country." This Minister's policies are part of the problem.So I say to this committee and to you Madam Chair and especially to our fine Minister from Napier: it doesn't matter if the register comes into being in two years or three years it's ineffective and it's dangerous. What really matters is that it never comes into effect at all. That's what's at stake if we're going to have a political debate. That's what people—licensed firearm owners and non-licensed firearm owners who want to live in a safe society alike—should be considering. They should be asking: do we really want to put our trust in a Government that tries to tell you an ineffective and dangerous firearm register will be safe in three years but not in two? That's what they're asking you to believe. I hope that the Minister will come to his senses take "legislation" out of this bill because it's nothing to do with legislation. In fact it's an affront to the rule of law—making firearm owners the only people in the country that are legally legislated as being privileged. Thank you Madam Chair."