Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill another in line with the suite of firearms changes that came through—as others have pointed out—after the tragic terror attack on March 15th which was last term. I do remember it as most New Zealanders as a time of deep distress where at least—at that moment—we had one promise and that was to fix our gun laws.The Green Party has called for gun law reform for quite some time and I do want to acknowledge past leaders of our party and our movement for pointing out that violence is something that is a concern to us and something that New Zealand shouldn't really ascribe to the American-style laissez-faire approach to gun regulation.We found ourselves in a way over the years and decades more and more going down that road whereby the Green Party policy began to align with what New Zealand Police was asking for which was an uncomfortable and strange position for us to be in. It was only after the attack on March 15th that the Government of the day—and I do commend our previous Government for actually taking action but I do note as well that successive Governments of both parties had not.So this is one of the other reforms that comes—and there's been other different legislation that's come through. We were concerned initially when we last term began our work with the previous Minister on this about the issue of association and how that was going to be defined. In the end we feel that the balance has been reached that's OK and that's safe.But I do want to just raise the issue of taking away rights or access based on association that we're seeing pop up increasingly in our criminal justice reforms and the way that that does degrade the rule of law and so we do need to look at it carefully. Where we've landed here is association between people who've had bans or who've had breaches of firearms law and where firearms are stored. So it's kind of at least going precisely to the problem that we're trying to solve rather than to say for example as we've seen in this House regularly—and I've seen in the courts as someone who worked in criminal justice for about a decade before coming in here—where we do things like oppose people's housing and State housing or being able to access bail based on an associate that's unproved or unrelated to the problem that we're trying to solve which is the safety of the community.I want to just briefly touch on some of the search and surveillance stuff. It's about the power to search the power to take away the fundamental rights of us all to privacy which then leads to searches of homes of cars of phones but also of our person eventually. To say that that can be done ad hoc and without a judicial oversight mechanism where there's an objective standard being imposed; objective being for example where there is cause for—suspicion is the standard adopted here but we also go to reasonable belief where we have more stringent rules in our search and seizure arms in legislation. To say that we can take that away and to leave it to the discretion of for example a police officer is anarchy actually—to say that there is no legislative measure that we would impose where we have an actual evidential burden on police before they can enter a home take things away search our bodies for example.It's pretty wild to say that there are political parties in Parliament in New Zealand where we have a very high standard of the rule of law who actually think that that might be OK especially looking at the statistics that we have in our police force that's been repeatedly proven over and over again to say that police without judicial oversight or legislative standards being imposed on their actions are far more likely—far far more likely to the point of being double—to search people to stop people to charge people based on race. So that's been proven—that's already been proven. The Prime Minister's previous Chief Science Advisor found that to be proven. So people's opinions don't come into things that have been proven; you can hold an opinion about how pretty a picture is but you can't hold an opinion about fact—scientific fact—that's been proven right?So for lawmakers in this House to say we want to take away any measures of oversight over a policing body with the mighty force of the State weighing down on communities is to say that we don't care so much about law and order or crime but we care about making ourselves look tough on crime and we don't support that. We support evidence we support safety and we support the types of justice measures that in fact prevent crime. I've heard Government members talk about preventing crime; yes better more accessible more enforceable firearms laws do prevent violence but that's not where it ends. That's a small measure. So we do want to see the Government's justice agenda look properly and invest properly—that means resource—actual measures that again we know prevent crime.I do commend this bill but I would like to see us actually focus on what keeps our communities inclusive what addresses addiction what addresses mental health issues—because we know most people in prison are also suffering from undiagnosed mental health challenges but also brain injury—things like actual healthcare things that actually keep our communities safe. Commending this bill but looking forward to actual resource and actual crime prevention as well.