O'Connor Simon: Summary Offences (Possession of High-power Laser Pointers) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Summary Offences (Possession of High-power Laser Pointers) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18914. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):I am very pleased. It is a good choice. I am biased though of course. I am very pleased to talk to clause 2 the commencement clause of the Summary Offences (Possession of High-power Laser Pointers) Amendment Bill. It is a little bit similar in fact to the first clause in so far as some simple elements got quite complicated as we heard in clause 1. Of course that was around the change of semantics in terminology; in the commencement clause it is obviously a debate around timing. Should we bring this about immediately? Should the Royal assent be granted quickly and efficiently or should it be held out for 28 days? As you can imagine with anything to do with dates there is a whole continuum of debate there. There was some thought of whether we should go out to 6 months. There was some thought that we should even look to 8 days and so forth. They have been too facetious.I did notice earlier when the member in the chair Dr Cam Calder the sponsor of the bill was noting the calendars he did lack clarity on whether it was a Julian calendar or a Gregorian calendar. I am very disappointed—very disappointed. But seriously this was an area that we debated quite a bit because on one side immediate commencement recognises the fact that this is an important bill and that there is a serious consequence here.I was talking to some friends last week on a different topic around what we would say is high risk but low frequency. There is a degree of that here but when you are talking about an airliner or even if it is just the Eagle unit helicopter—I have friends in the police particularly in Auckland who are noting the dangers even to the police helicopters—surely the argument goes we should put this into immediate effect.We as the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee debated that at length. The corollary to that and where we ultimately ended up though was that we needed time to embed the launch of the bill to seek Royal assent as is proper in this constitutional arrangement. What we thought was that 28 days allowed two things. First and foremost it gave an opportunity to our constabulary to the New Zealand Police to put its structures in motion in order to allow the police a full and proper consideration of what is required to get the paperwork sorted and to read through the various legal consequences because as other speakers I am sure have noted this bill itself relies on other legislation. We heard Mike Sabin earlier talking about the possession of knives and so forth so there are those elements that have to be considered.The second side though was the fairness of the law. I am no lawyer which may be a good thing for the country but one of the elements is that people have to understand the laws themselves—what I suppose we would look on in philosophy as natural justice—giving people the opportunity to understand what this law means and what it means for them. At the heart of this are hand-held lasers items that people are quite familiar with from those who use them for quite normal and adequate means be they a lecturer at a university or so forth or in an engineering firm to those with more nefarious intent. Whether or not Dr Calder those people are fluffy hirsute or otherwise is a point for another debate but we need people to fully understand—I am sorry I just had to get “hirsute” in tonight.The key though is what the appropriate timing is. I think what we have tried to note is the balance between those two points of tension. Do we get this bill under way immediately to show it is a serious piece of legislation or do we give enough time so that consideration can be undertaken by the constabulary by the police and so that people can understand what this law means to them? It is particularly for citizens who are used to carrying around a hand-held or a high-power laser so that they can fully appreciate what is required.I think that after a bit of debate in the select committee—and I note that the chair David Bennett a fine chair is here with me in the Chamber and a number of my colleagues—we came to the belief which we have now articulated in clause 2 the commencement clause that this Act comes into force on the day that is 28 days after the date on which it receives Royal assent. We thought that was a good spot so that we can take this bill—once it is completed in the House in a timely and appropriate manner which is quite germane to this clause in itself—and we can send it to the Governor-General. He can sign it on behalf of the Queen of New Zealand. We can get it into the statute book but then we have 28 days for consideration so that Kiwis can make—David Bennett: In 28 days?SIMON O’CONNOR: Well actually a lot of things can happen in 28 days. I believe you can even bite a player which seems to be in vogue at the moment. Fortunately this is not part of it. Again this was an area like clause 1 which took up a bit of time in the select committee as we considered the various options. I am hearing from my colleagues in the Chamber but I would be open to more discussion but I think that we came to a point that we felt was appropriate balancing those respective rights—