McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak to the second reading of the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Bill another bill that we are supporting this evening—one that we also feel doesn't go quite far enough but it goes further than what we had and with that we want to support it.There were 14 submitters. We had organisations and individuals and six people gave oral evidence. The officials included the Ministry of Justice the Ministry of Transport and the New Zealand Police. The bill creates new powers and offences to assist police to prevent and respond to harm caused by criminal offending. It includes search powers for weapons when gang conflicts are occurring and tools to disrupt potential money-laundering activities.This bill amends four Acts. The Crimes Act 1961 is the first one. It's about discharging a firearm with intent to intimidate. I don't understand why we are amending this bill and I do not understand why we are putting this clause into the Crimes Act legislation. It's already in the Arms Act legislation at section 48 where there is an offence for discharging a firearm airgun pistol or restricted weapon in or near a dwellinghouse or public place. The difference is that under the Arms Act the offence is liable for a conviction of imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine of $10000 and it will be placed upon a person if the person without reasonable excuse discharges a firearm airgun pistol or restricted weapon in or near a dwellinghouse or a public place so as to—(a) endanger property; or (b) endanger annoy or frighten any person." The difference here is five years with no fine as opposed to six months and $10000 and the Labour Government is making a hoo-ha saying they're actually doing something when they already had legislation which was not being used. We now have two sets of legislation.We're also amending the Land Transport Act 1998 so that vehicles can be seized and impounded. Amending the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 gives two new powers: allowing the issue of a warrant to search and seize weapons during a gang conflict and the power to seize cash found in suspicious circumstances and over $10000. The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing Terrorism Act 2009 is also being changed to prohibit cash transactions over a specified value for certain high-value goods.We've only made amendments as a select committee to the search and seizure provisions in the bill. We have new sections inserted by clause 20 amending the Search and Surveillance Act where a judge can issue a warrant for search and seizure if he is satisfied that first of all a gang conflict does exist—that there is one or more gangs involved—and by issuing the warrant the community will be better for it because the potential harm will be gone. The warrant can be issued in respect of either a place or a vehicle and the committee decided to amend the bill so that the provisions around either a place or a vehicle could be applied either separately or together.Another provision in the bill is that the occupier who is the subject of a search either of a vehicle or of a property should receive a redacted copy of the search warrant—redacted because there's a possibility that there will be multiple occupiers at multiple addresses or with multiple vehicles that are still to be searched so the redaction would relate to whom else is on the list to be searched. However there was a requirement that if the officer did not have that warrant upon them then they would have seven days in which to provide it after the search. The committee decided to amend clause 22 of the bill so that if a warrant was issued under section 18D(2) and 18D(3) of the Search and Surveillance Act which relates to searching a property and which is where a warrant is issued after a judge is satisfied that there are reasonable grounds that gang conflict and property ownership by specified persons criteria are met then the seven-day pass to provide a warrant should not stand because those being searched had already been fully identified and there was no reason why a redacted warrant should not be available. However if the warrant issued is done so under section 18D(4) and (5) which relates to vehicles then another amendment the committee made includes how that warrant should be executed and allows the seven-day right to produce that warrant if it's not immediately available.There is the introduction of a clause that allows police to dispose of any weapons that they seize and I asked officials multiple times during the select committee process the advice for what happens if say the weapon seized is found to be a stolen firearm from a legitimate owner. I questioned whether or not that firearm would have to be destroyed or whether it would be returned to the owner if the owner is found. I was advised by officials and New Zealand Police that all attempts to find the legitimate owner and return the property are made before any destruction process is undertaken. And I wanted to speak so that it is recorded in Hansard that the expected outcome of finding stolen firearms that were legitimately owned is that they are then returned to the rightful owners and that details around processes to identify the legitimate owners are undertaken and can be requested by the Official Information Act. There is nothing in the legislation to protect legitimate owners who are also victims of crime and ensure that they are told that the item had been found and to apply for their possessions to not be destroyed; however upon questioning I was assured that this would not be a problem if police knew who the legitimate firearm owner is.There is a new clause in this bill that introduces the ability for police to seize cash found on premises equating to $10000 or more where a satisfactory explanation for why that cash is there and where it came from is not given. Police can apply to hold that cash for a short period of time and if the occupant searched can produce legitimate reason for having that cash and where it came from they can get it back pretty smartly because of the short time frame that police have to actually be able to hold it. But there was a clause that allowed police via the Governor-General to be able to change that $10000 threshold either by increasing or reducing it and this concerned us as a committee—that the threshold could decrease especially when we know that some of our Pasifika immigrant families often have cash that they send on to their families back in the islands. The change we have made means that rather than having a provision that allows the threshold to change by amendment it has to change by prescribed regulation instead.We changed requirements around the reporting of executing search warrants so that cash seizures have to be reported back to the issuing officer. Reports will need to be included as to whether the search warrant was actually executed the type of weapons that were seized and whether other powers were also exercised like the seizure of cash and any criminal proceedings that eventuated because of the items found from the executing warrant.There's a few amendments here that we have made that we again had robust discussion about during select committee and I'm grateful for everybody's contribution to be able to get to a point where we could—even though we're not quite 100 percent happy we're happy enough to support the changes going through because we need to show a harder stance on criminals on organised activity and for those that use weapons.So we on this side of the House are happy to support this bill through its second reading."