SpeechSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I'll just step in and announce myself. Oh no—oh jolly good thank you Madam Speaker. Ha ha! Hey look thanks very much—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I knew the member was there. SIMON O'CONNOR: Oh jolly good. Thank you very much. Well multitasking is a skill I'm sure; it's not one that I have. Hey look the National Party is supporting this which won't be a surprise through to select committee. The primary reason as other colleagues have touched on is that we have been pushing for and putting forward bills over multiple parliaments for firearm protection orders. So this is a good step. I'd say it's more of a whimper than a bang and I might try to elaborate a little bit on that. But first and foremost I think it's an observation that the Government's side has been incredibly defensive around all of this failing to explain first and foremost why they have effectively voted down a number of previous bills and ideas put forward. They mentioned the likes of my good friend Brett Hudson and of course more recently Simeon Brown put forward a very good piece of legislation. They—that is Labour—threw it out which is rather ironic because we get lectured in this House often about how we should basically just vote most legislation through at first reading without thought so we can fix it up at select committee. But it is ironic as I say that that only applies to laws which of course the Government wants. So they're going to struggle I think and they have been struggling tonight—Labour that is—to explain why they voted down firearm protection orders particularly in light of the second defensive point coming from the Government. They're very keen to say that they're tough on crime and as an excellent colleague of mine has opined to me this evening Labour seems to believe that if they say something it happens: that their words are efficacious almost sacramental. They just say something and boom it happens. We're going to fix child poverty."—didn't happen. "We're going to solve KiwiBuild."—well that didn't happen. And around firearms: "We'll just say that the community's safer." Not really the case is it? You go to any of our electorates—certainly come to mine in Tāmaki at the moment: crime's up violent crime's up guns are being discharged left right and centre. I will admit Tāmaki is pretty much one of the safest areas in the country so that's a great starting point but this is even happening there now. It tells you this is a Government which has lost control and we know that gang numbers are heading towards 8000. I can tell you that within the Corrections portfolio the gangs are in control in many ways and yet this Government and its members tonight have the audacity to stand here and tell us they're doing a fine job because they took something like you know 60000 firearms off legal lawful New Zealanders without forgetting the obvious point which this bill is trying to address: it's the gangs primarily and other illegal people who have the weapons. But as I say it's a good bill somewhat headed in the right direction. There's some good elements to it but there are two pretty fundamental weaknesses which we would like to see addressed.First and foremost we want the police to be able to proactively issue these. There's no point in having these FPOs solely—you don't want these FPOs or firearms prohibition orders only issued after there's been an incident. There's no point after someone's been shot to then go in and take a firearm and the licence off a person. I mean if that's happened yes we want that power but you also want to be able to proactively remove access to firearms. If the police and we have high trust in the police or others even—we could actually expand the law. It could be a court order—who knows?—to say "You know what actually? If a person acts she shouldn't have access to a firearm." We want some proactivity in this space. The second element—and other colleagues I'm sure have talked to it but the Police Association Chris Cahill and the team have also talked about wanting to be able to have basically warrantless searches to be able to go into homes that they suspect have firearms and an FPO should be deployed. Again it sort of makes sense if you've ever been on sort of an operational side or have an operational mind. There's no point in declaring to the person from whom you want to take the firearm off that you're coming. We know from unfortunate experience that most of the times when police are raiding gang pads and the like the weapons are gone. So what's the point?So again this is a good bill overall. It sets the right tone; it just hasn't got the whole music score rightly laid out. So we'll take it to—or we hope that the House votes it through. We can do a bit of quick math—we should get there. We'll see it through to select committee invite the public to have their say. It will be very welcome to hear their particular views but as I say at least two things from the National side of the House: a bit of proactivity powers being given to the police—and look I'll admit we'll have to make sure we structure around that but they want some proactivity. The other is actually that we can explore a little bit further the search warrant side of things.So overall not bad. Could do better. But as I return to one of my opening themes we on this side of the House do not buy—and I actually think New Zealanders on the ground do not buy—the rhetoric from this Government that they are somehow safer under a Labour Government. If you don't believe me one needs only go and look at the statistics borne out anecdotally and quantitatively to see that things are getting worse. So yeah we'll leave it there. I think I gave that a shot."