van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. This is a very important issue to get right. Firearm safety is hugely important for the wider public in New Zealand. There should be the ability for those who enjoy recreational hunting target shooting or any other pursuit that involves firearms to do so in a safe manner adhering to a specific set of rules and criteria. Whenever we're proposing changes to that we need to be looking at the intent: what are we trying to achieve? In this instance off the back of those horrific attacks on 15 March the intent is to improve safety and to reduce the ability for criminals to access firearms. That needs to be the focus.Now some of the proposals that are in this bill—yep no problem; we can support those. But so many of them are focusing unnecessarily on the law-abiding firearms users and changes that quite frankly would have no impact on the ability of criminals to access firearms or to conduct criminal activity with firearms. So the focus needs to be on criminals and it is extremely disappointing to note that in several instances now this Government has opposed our efforts to impose firearms prohibition orders. Now this is a direct mechanism to restrict access by the criminal element to these firearms and this as I mentioned is what we need to be focusing on: reducing the ability of criminals to access firearms. So I would hope actually—I'm disappointed they haven't but I would hope—that perhaps during select committee the Government might review that and support that proposal because that is one that we absolutely would like to see brought in under this legislation.Now in terms of those changes we supported the first raft of changes and we've heard a lot of debate around that. One of the things that's come out of that—the goodwill we talked to that—is there's some concern around the compensation for those that are currently going through this buy-back scheme with people questioning whether they are being compensated fairly. There are other aspects such as ammunition or safes and other security arrangements that are not being compensated and quite frankly should be because these New Zealand citizens who have up until recently legitimately held these firearms and conducted their recreational activities are now outside the law because of those law changes and they're feeling a bit frustrated. They're feeling a bit scared about being outside the law. These are law-abiding New Zealanders who have continuously acted within the realms of the law. Especially so because of the firearms requirements they are very cognisant of their responsibilities and don't like to be outside of that. So that is part of why we've seen such strong pushback and I've certainly heard that from constituents around the Waikato as well. So we need to be looking at that.The licensing term proposed under here reducing it to five years—what benefit does that bring? There's no benefit to that. That's not going to stop criminal activity; it's just adding extra costs on to firearms licence holders. That brings me to the cost recovery aspect proposed under this bill—and actually a number of the Government members I suspect haven't read it given their comments. I just refer to Kiritapu Allan. It is important to read this stuff. The devil is in the detail and the cost recovery suggests quite clearly that any costs associated with implementing this can be put back on firearms licence holders through their renewals. So things like the implementation of a firearms registry—that entire cost could be conveyed across to firearms licence holders and that would be a massive increase in costs for them and an unjustified increase I believe.So a registry? Look in principle I'm not opposed to a registry but I question the benefit of it. I would much rather see the cost of administering a registry implemented into a focused effort to reduce criminal behaviour and activity in relation to firearms. That's where the investment should be going and we've seen time and again this Government's focus has been not on actually restricting criminal access but on impinging rights through a raft of changes under this legislation—and I've earmarked a whole bunch of issues that I have with what they're putting forward here—rather than where the focus should be around getting tough on criminals.Dr Duncan Webb: Same old.TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Same old." says Dr Duncan Webb. He has no idea of the actual implications that this has on the firearms community in New Zealand. This Government needs to do a lot better and I hope that we can get some improvements at select committee."