Meager James; Salesa JennyJAMES MEAGER (National—Rangitata): Thank you Madam Speaker. I look forward to attending the parliamentary hunt with the previous speaker Scott Willis at the end of the year. Given his experience in firearms I think it will be an interesting opportunity for not only myself but all members of Parliament if they're interested to find out a bit more about what hunting and shooting is about in New Zealand. It has a long and storied history in this country.I'm happy to bring a member a copy of the bill because I think it might be wise to refresh about what this bill actually does. The bill is strengthening firearms prohibition orders (FPOs). It is making it harder for certain types of people to access firearms. That is what this bill does.The bill extends on the changes made back in 2022 by the previous Government by the Labour Government who brought them in. I suspect the reason that they brought them in is outlined in the initial briefing provided to the committee. I'll quote some figures from the initial briefing. That briefing said from 2020 to 2021 there were 26 deaths and 625 injuries reported from violence involving firearms. Gangs and organised criminal groups drive a large portion of firearms harm. In one police investigation in 2021 to 2022 approximately 1800 firearms were seized in an operation to disrupt the illegal possession and use of firearms by gangs and organised criminal groups. I suspect that is what the genesis of the firearms prohibitions orders were all about—that and significant pressure from the Opposition at the time led by Mark Mitchell and I know that because I helped him draft his member's bill at the time. That is why we have the FPO regime.The reason why this regime is being strengthened is because the coalition Government and the parties that formed this Government didn't think it was strong enough—it needed some strengthening. That's what this particular bill is about.As a committee we worked very very diligently and very hard to get it into a shape that we hope the House will support. I'd like to thank all members of the Justice Committee for their work on this bill. We tackled quite a number of gnarly issues but I would like to acknowledge the continued and consistent good work by the likes of Dr Duncan Webb Ginny Andersen Tracey McLellan Tamatha Paul and Tākuta Ferris who as Opposition MPs are always very constructive and very helpful members of the committee and of course members on the Government side as well. So can I just acknowledge the work of the committee.I'd also just like to acknowledge the advice provided by the Ministry of Justice. We actually went back and forth on a number of issues which you will see outlined in the select committee report including the extent to which warrantless searches can be undertaken the extent to which we are focusing on whether or not someone is an associate of an individual who is a gang member or someone who is associated with a gang—we thought that was an important distinction—and also tackling some of those issues around what is the threshold of police needing to suspect whether or not someone has an FPO. Actually as a committee we wrangled with that issue back and forth and we actually strengthened that by changing it to reasonably believe" rather than "suspect". So hopefully that will relieve some of Mr Willis' concerns. So I wanted to thank the Ministry of Justice for their advice.I thank the Office of the Clerk for their advice on the legislative quality and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for the drafting too.Can I also acknowledge the 40-odd groups and individuals who submitted on the bill and we heard from 11 individuals. Interestingly there was roughly a fifty-fifty split actually. So for a Justice Committee bill that's relatively unique. Generally we have a lot of people who either really like or really dislike a bill. But this one was very evenly split which I think represents some of the feeling across the House.Now in the couple of minutes I've got remaining I just wanted to touch on the key changes made in this bill because that after all is the purpose of a second reading—it is to look at what was discussed in the select committee look at how the bill has changed what conversations were going on and whether or not the House accepts the recommendations of the select committee to make any amendments to the bill. So very very briefly as outlined before by Hon Nicole McKee Associate Minister of Justice and some other members we have changed that definition of whom can be issued with an FPO and we've decided to include people who are associates of a gang. And to make that clear and to put this on the record for the Hansard in case this ever gets to court at some point: we consider this to be people who are associated by way of participating in criminal offending or demonstrating support for the gangs activities and aims or attending gang events. That's the kind of thing we're talking about. We're not talking about someone's legal adviser or work colleague or an uncle or an auntie. That's specifically what we're talking about.We made a few changes to when an FPO could be made. We thought that some of the original offences listed in the bill weren't strictly associated with the types of offending that we were thinking about. So though those offences have been narrowed down to in particular crimes against people crimes against property and threatening and conspiring.There are changes in there around varying and modifying FPOs. One of the significant ones we looked at was what happens when you are an individual who owns or is in possession of a property. Under the original bill if you owned a property but weren't present that property could still be searched in your absence. So we thought that was a step too far in terms of warrantless searches so we made the recommendation to remove ownership and amend new section 18AA(1)(c) which went more towards a person having influence control or direct access to. The final one I'll touch on is the conversation we had around what happens if you're staying in a hotel and you are subject to an FPO—can the police then search every other room in that hotel? Of course the advice that came back from the ministry was that no that would constitute in all likelihood an unreasonable search and seizure in that hotel. So we always have the fall-back provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in terms of the reasonableness of search and seizure requirements.I think that generally covers the main changes to the bill. We think the bill has been strengthened in a significant way. I want to thank the members of the Justice Committee for their hard work on it and commend the bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Mālō 'aupito."