Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party to support the Arms (Prohibited Firearms Magazines and Parts) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge the Minister of Police for his second reading speech and I also want to acknowledge the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who are present in the Chamber. It's a blast from the past for me to return to the halcyon days of the Finance and Expenditure Committee that I was on in the last Parliament. It was a temporary substitution for me but I miss that committee and I want to acknowledge the chair Michael Wood who I thought did an outstanding job actually of chairing the committee. It was a heavy workload for the Finance and Expenditure Committee in the last week or so and Mr Wood did a really good job of steering the bill through the committee and hearing all the submitters in a respectful way. I want to acknowledge the process because I think actually the last week or so has been the Parliament working really constructively and effectively. It shows actually what members can do when they put their minds to something. Even with the short amount of time when members want to genuinely work in good faith in a bipartisan and constructive way—even with a short amount of time and with thousands of submissions to process and hear it actually just shows what Parliament can do and I think in some ways this is a really good example of Parliament doing a good job. I'm not one who believes that you should look too closely at the weight of opinion one way or the other when it comes to submissions to a select committee. Frequently you hear members say Well 80 percent of submissions were opposed to a particular course of action. Therefore we should do something." They're not scientific polls; they're self-selecting by definition—it tends to be the people who choose to submit. In particular when it comes to something like the End of Life Choice Bill—which I know the Parliament will be debating at some point—91 percent of submitters were opposed. Well that's all well and good but actually that's wildly divergent from public polls on the issue. But I do note for the House that when it comes to this bill you wouldn't really know it from the media but 60 percent of submissions were actually in support of the bill and if you'd listened to the media and some of the wild comments in previous days one would be forgiven for not actually thinking that from some of the comments in the media. But actually the majority of submitters were in favour of the bill. Again I don't make the point as an argument as to why we should pass the bill but I do note it for the House's record because I do think it is interesting. It's another example of where the public commentary is perhaps actually diverging from the public view. We support the bill. We support the intentions laid out in the bill that the Minister has recognised. We have issued not a minority report because in the National Party we're supporting the bill but we have issued a National Party statement—I suppose you would call it—in the commentary on the bill in the select committee commentary that we put together collectively. I want to outline a few issues where we think the committee could have come to a different view and where the House could come to a different view. The first is that we are concerned about the delegation of power to the executive to change the criminal law. There are quite wide sweeping powers in this bill for the executive—for the Cabinet in reality—to change through fiat the criminal law and we in the National Party believe that is constitutionally inappropriate. To give you an example the bill allows the executive to declare by Order in Council specific ammunition to be prohibited ammunition and possession of that ammunition is a criminal offence except the actual ammunition that is to be prohibited is not named in the bill. We received advice from the officials that things like armour-piercing bullets will be banned—well that's fine. That should be in the primary legislation—I mean if the officials know that's what they want to ban now then it should be in the primary legislation. They talk about armour-piercing incendiary tracer and other ancillary types of military ammunition. We think it should be in the bill. Then there are the so-called "Henry VIII" clauses which allow the Government to amend the primary Act—the Arms Act—by regulation and we received advice from the Regulations Review Committee about the concerns to do with that. We have recommended as a committee a tightening up of that particular provision in the bill but the constitutional repugnance of that position remains. The executive should not have the power to change the criminal law through fiat. The criminal law should be changed through parliamentary action only. So we are concerned about that. The other point I wanted to make is around international sporting competitions. Now we went back and forth on this a lot. I can understand the argument of those who don't support the carve-out and exemption for them—I can. We in the National Party have sympathy for the argument that those who compete in international sporting shooting competitions are going to be hard-done-by as a result of this bill. I acknowledge what the Minister said which was that no Olympic or Commonwealth Games sporting competitions will be affected by the bill but that doesn't really solve the problem which is that many hundreds of people will be affected by this prohibition. I don't believe it was beyond the wit of the committee or beyond our competence to design a regime similar to that of the pistol-shooting clubs and pistol-shooting competitions which the officials acknowledged to us works really well. There are heavy restrictions around pistol-shooting pistol-shooting competitions and pistol-shooting clubs. I believe it must be within the Parliament's competence and ability to design a regime that allows for this very narrow class of people to compete in international competitions that involve what are now going to be prohibited weapons. I acknowledge those aren't the Olympic Games but they are international competitions and actually New Zealand competes really well on the world stage in those competitions. I think that under appropriate regulation and strict scrutiny we could do that and the officials sort of signalled and the Government sort of signalled that we might be able to look at that as part of phase two of the reforms. We will certainly be advancing that position in the National Party because we think it's possible to design a regime.I want to mention antiques and mementoes. We had some critical submissions from those who were very concerned that historical antiques and mementoes family heirlooms guns—you know maybe World War I and World War II or Vietnam War guns passed down through the generations—may be affected. We've made it very clear as a committee that that is not the case and that with appropriate controls they will be unaffected and I think that is correct. Likewise too the Airsoft people described memorably by Ben Allen the president of Airsoft Sports New Zealand as just a bunch of geeks running around in the bush pretending to play soldiers—they will be unaffected as well. I think that is appropriate and likewise paintball competitions. The committee unfortunately did not take up my suggestion of a press gallery versus Finance and Expenditure Committee paintball game. Maybe that's something we can do once we've passed the third reading. I want to draw the House's attention also to the submission of Rapid Advanced Manufacturing of Tauranga. This is a high-tech local growing company—well not local to here but local to Tauranga. It is a growing company. They make firearm suppressors and other equipment using 3D metal manufacturing. It's a very high-technology company. They export to the international market—to defence contractors and other countries and companies. They require semi-automatic weapons for testing. Obviously no one is going to take their suppressors—which I'm told are extremely expensive and high-tech—unless they've been tested properly so they require high-capacity magazines and they require semi-automatic weapons. Now we've been assured by the officials that through the transitional regulations they will be allowed to continue doing what they're doing. I would like to see a carve-out for them. I think it's possible and I want to signal now that we'll be putting forward a Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House stage in order to make it very clear that they can carry on doing what they're doing. Partly some of these issues are to do with the speed at which the Parliament was considering it but we have an opportunity in the committee of the whole House stage to make sure that groups like Rapid Advanced Manufacturing can be dealt with as well. Finally in my last 30 seconds I want to make it very clear that we think the Government must come to the House soon and come to the public with details of the buy-back scheme and the amnesty and say how the buy-back will work. We want to make it clear that we think the buy-back should be at market rates for the valuations of weapons and we also think that dealers should be included. There are some people out there who have tens of thousands of dollars' worth of stock. They can't return it to the supplier. They can't sell it into the market or they won't be able to once tomorrow passes and the bill passes. They are going to be out of pocket through no fault of their own. We believe the buy-back should include dealers. I think the Government's signalled it won't. This is a good bill. I commend it to the House."