Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Mr Speaker. While the Minister of Police is in the House let's address the first point about warrantless search powers because it's certainly no secret that our view on this side of the House—and the views are shared with the Police Association also—is that for this bill to be effective it needed an expansion of warrantless search powers to allow police to actually take guns out of the hands of gang members.So let's talk about those warrantless search powers. The Minister just stood up and he used an example where a grandfather was hosting a family doo at his home and he has a licence and he has his firearm safely tucked away in a safe and his granddaughter brings along a new boyfriend that has a Firearms Prohibition Order (FPO) which means that he's committed some sort of violent offending—one of the qualifying offences: they're all violence-related offences and we're adding strangulation; I hope that the granddaughter's actually being treated and looked after properly—and he arrives at the house. I just wonder Minister whether or not the grandfather even wants someone with an FPO inside his house where he's got his own firearms where he's a law-abiding citizen. But—Hon Members: He wouldn't know!Hon MARK MITCHELL: Just wait.So Minister let's look for a compromise—let's look for a compromise. As the Police Association put forward in a very good submission as we've spoken about on the Justice Committee before this was reported back let's go for a compromise: let's remove an extended warrantless search power from a premise but let's keep it for a person with an FPO in a vehicle. I think that would be a very good compromise Minister and that's been put to you. So I'd like whoever's going to take a call next to stand and explain to us why you wouldn't embrace that because you give me a scenario Minister—Hon Chris Hipkins: Someone picking up a hitchhiker to be the subject to a—Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh pick up a hitchhiker. Now these guys are the biggest apologists for gang members that I have ever come across and you know the Minister the Mr Fix-it Minister" comes in. It's blimmin "Mr Wrecking Ball Minister" ruining the tertiary education sector massive chronic truancy in our education system. The guy's come into police—I'd hate to see if he can do a worse job than Poto Williams but now I'm starting to wonder. Actually I think he's up to it—I think he's up to the job. What's he doing? He's sitting there making apologies and excuses for gang members. He's looking for reasons why our front-line police officers are unable to stop a gang member with an FPO as they're driving round our communities. And searching their vehicle—the trigger the test should quite simply be the existence of a firearms prohibition order.I'm telling you now Minister—and you've just done your tour around the country which I'm sure went very well; I hope that you got feedback and I hope that the front-line staff that are actually dealing with gangs provided you with the feedback that I get. That is the fact that they'd like to have the ability to stop gang members that are driving around their community. They're fearful of actually having firearms using firearms carrying firearms having firearms concealed in their vehicles. This FPO would have actually been quite effective as the Police Association highlighted.They said that this FPO will be effective if their front-line police officers—and by the way just in case the Minister was wondering the Police Association and I'm a member of it myself they get quite a bit of feedback; they get quite a bit of feedback from their members in the front line. They carefully consider this stuff. They're heavily invested in the safety of our police officers. And if they come to you and they make a submission you should put some weight behind that. If you don't want to listen to us if you don't want to listen to the Opposition when we're telling you that if you want to make this an effective firearms prohibition order that's actually going to be useful—because I'm telling you now and I'm making a prediction right now: the test of time on this firearms prohibition order it is not going to stand up. It's going to be useless. It's going to be ineffective. It's going to be used very little. It's applied by a judge. And then the police have to try and police it without the warrantless search powers. They've already got the powers—they've got powers under the Search and Surveillance Act around reasonable cause. That's good; that's a good test.But if you want to be effective if you actually want to take guns out of the hands of gang members—how many drive-by shootings Minister? How many drive-by shootings by gang members this year? He doesn't know. He won't know. But I can tell you Minister there's been over 140 drive-by shootings or firearms-related incidents right? That's atrocious for us in New Zealand. We should be the safest country in the world without a doubt. We're not. We're heading the wrong way on every measure. You had a chance. You had a chance to bring this bill to the House and you had a chance to put the powers in it that the police need to actually be effective and to make communities safer. Of course you're going to ignore us—I accept that. But to ignore the Police Association to ignore the one group that is heavily invested and is actually there to make sure that their members are looked after—to ignore them is atrocious.And by the way I want to come back to your point and I want to ask the Minister and say: will he make a concession? Will he make a concession because regardless of the politics—and we are on opposite ends of the spectrum on this there's no doubt about that but let's just for one minute park up the politics let the Minister sit down and actually go back and have another look at what's being proposed around a compromise. And the compromise is quite simply this—Hon Chris Hipkins: So he wants to slow the bill down now? He wanted to speed it up and now he wants to slow it down.Hon MARK MITCHELL: No no I don't want to slow the bill down. So the Minister is saying that because I'm saying "Let's try and work out the compromise that's been put forward." that's going to slow the bill down. He knows that that's rubbish. Have you not heard of a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) Minister? Do you not understand what an SOP is? Through committee stage we can actually introduce an SOP. If you agree to it and you support it then it'll be adopted in the bill. It doesn't slow anything down; it doesn't change the process. I'm surprised as the Leader of the House that he didn't know that.Harete Hipango: He does know.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yeah he does know; that's dead right. What I'm saying to you is this: let's sit down and let's have a genuine conversation about reaching a compromise. If we accept and say that you feel that it's a step too far that the police can have a warrantless search power to search a premises that an offender with an FPO is in and you think there's too much risk around that then I'll accept that—I'll accept that argument here in the House today. But let's have a compromise and give our front-line police officers who are out there trying to keep our community safe who are dealing with firearms incidents every day—six of them are being assaulted at the moment on a daily basis—let's give them the warrantless search power that they need to be able to stop a gang member that has an FPO and search them and search their vehicles and make sure—Hon Chris Hipkins: They already can.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Minister do you not understand? What's the test for reasonableness for them to be able to do that? I'd like the Minister to take another call if we give leave and actually explain to me what that test is. I don't think he understands. He doesn't understand the bill and the way that it works and he's brought it to this House—they cannot do that with this bill Minister. The thing that really disappoints me is we had two new senior officers from Police National Headquarters (PNHQ) who I put the same question to in front of the select committee and they gave different answers.Arena Williams: No they didn't.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh yes they did. Yes they did. They gave very different answers. We got a great big long completely different example given by one and then we had the other one turn around and say "Actually no that's not right." And we said to them "Can you come back and can you with clarity brief the committee on what you're actually asking." I'm disappointed—I'm disappointed that the commissioner and whoever was working on this in PNHQ weren't brave enough to come out and say "Our staff need some expanded powers to make sure that this bill would work."So I put it to the Minister—I put it to the Minister today—let's sit down let's look for a compromise. Let's actually give them some powers that will make this bill meaningful otherwise it's meaningless it's not going to achieve anything and we can come back here in 12 months and we can have a look at how effective it's been and what a great tool it's been to the police in terms of trying to get on top of the massive gun crime that we're seeing in New Zealand at the moment. And there is a compromise there to be had and it's quite simply this: give them a warrantless search power use the FPO as the trigger and allow them to search gang members or offenders or those people with an FPO—if they're in public allow them to search the vehicle or the person to ensure that they're not in breach of the FPO because let's just remember: the reason why the court has actually applied an FPO to them is because they've offended against one of those qualifying—serious violent offending.Just very quickly—I've run out of time—I did want to say that the select committee did support and thought it was important to include the offence of strangulation because in the last couple of weeks in Auckland we've seen two firearms-related homicide gang-related also and domestic-related and I can almost guarantee you that there was an escalation of violence that led towards those women being killed. So I think this was a good recommendation a good move by the committee. Thank you very much Mr Speaker."