Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It is an honour actually to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and speak on this Arms (Prohibited Firearms Magazines and Parts) Amendment Bill such a significant piece of legislation that we are bringing through with some urgency because of an extraordinary event. It was actually a privilege to sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and to be subbed on for this process. I think all of us on there felt the responsibility that we were under. I would like to commend the Minister of Police for his leadership and decisiveness in bringing this bill forward in such a timely manner. I would also like to commend the chairman Michael Wood who I think demonstrated actually a master class in chairing select committee. He was clear he was accurate he was fair and he displayed a very high level of competence.I would like to also just commend the colleagues across the House. This was a collective sense of purpose that we had. We were all there to achieve the same end and while I note in the report the other parties' minority views they were all essentially around the margins. The tenor of what we're trying to do is totally supported across the House and it was as Chris Bishop said a fine example of the Parliament working together. Because it was such a herculean effort from the officials—I think at one stage they had officials from 10 departments seconded on to this bill with the weight of the 13000 submissions coming in within 48 hours—it behoves me to mention Steven Mitchell Tara Elmes and Siobhan Coffey who fronted that for the officials. Also I'd like to commend Assistant Commissioner Tusha Penny for the way that she represented the New Zealand Police and the important role that they played in shaping this legislation. There has been some criticism of the process. It has been very truncated but as we have heard this is an issue that's been well traversed in the past. We were here in 1992 and we were here in 1995 with the Thorp report. We couldn't get Matt Robson's member's bill—which that could have been picked up with the incoming Labour Government in 2005—over the line and we failed to act on the select committee report of 2017. So any criticism that we are not over this issue and that we are not fully aware of the implications is I believe unfounded. I also felt that though we were given a limited number of oral submissions the ones we got reflected a huge spectrum of this debate. As mentioned we had the widest social context come in from the likes of the Muslim community and from the likes of Mayor Lianne Dalziel. We had the gun interests represented. There was a spectrum there including the colourful Mr Loder who seemed to have quite a relationship with Ms Collins and David Tipple of course who turned it into a little bit of a media sideshow which actually was a bit of a pity because this at its heart is a very technical bill about hardware and firearms that are going to be either in or out of the scope of use for people with an A category licence. He of all people had probably the most knowledge of anyone in New Zealand as to what was out there and he could have helped us draw that line. I felt that was a missed opportunity during the submissions. Of course we also had the one I really want to touch on—which is pretty pertinent—which was the Federated Farmers' submission. First of all one of the things we have done in this iteration of the bill is to expand the use of restricted semi-automatic weapons on private land. As it was first drafted it was only going to be able to be on conservation land which is totally untenable. There's 5 million hectares of hill country out there that is challenged by pests and wild animals so we needed to broaden that and so we have done that. Federated Farmers did want us to provide an exemption for farmers under very restricted conditions to get access to some of these higher-spectrum rifles. The committee considered that long and hard. We came down on the side of keeping it within professional pest control companies and to not widen the scope too much at this stage. But I agree with Ian McKelvie in his previous contribution and I think we may have to revisit that. I think that we need to keep it tight at the start and New Zealand First fully supports that. But there are significant challenges on our farms. It's not just rabbits and possums but you're looking at wallabies tahr goats and deer and of course deer pose a TB threat as well as a threat to pasture and crops. There are geese too of course which sort of fall in between the cracks in some of the statutory organisations. But they are also a considerable pest and they eat a lot of grass so we need to probably go back and look at that. I note that it must have been Miles Anderson the spokesperson for Federated Farmers who must have been going through his Shane Jones' Book of Rhetoric" because he's described this drafting of the bill as giving farmers the equivalent of a toothbrush to paint the Auckland Harbour Bridge which I think is not being totally fair. We need to keep this clear: farmers and hunters still have access to semi-automatic weapons—a .22 with up to 10 mags and semi-automatic shotguns with up to five rounds. Pistols are unaffected by this particular clause—they're already very tightly restricted as we have already heard—and there are still of course higher-calibre weapons available in bulk action. So for the vast majority of people this is not going to affect them. There is a small subgroup—Federated Farmers consider it to be in the low hundreds—that may need some weapons but I think we need more time to consider where we're going to draw the line there. In terms of some of the others issues raised with regard to the professional sports shooting New Zealand First had some sympathy as well for that subgroup of people who are disadvantaged. There's no doubt that they will be disadvantaged by it but it's around the proportions and it's around the intent of taking these weapons out of circulation and the determination of this Parliament to do so. I think what concerns us as a committee and certainly as New Zealand First is that it actually does give a pathway. While it's a very narrow sport at the moment it does then provide a pathway for individuals to get involved in this sport and to get access to these guns and I think that's something that we really need to think long and hard about before we grant any exemptions in that direction. The other thing that came up at the eleventh hour was the manufacturers. It appears we have a small arms industry or an accessories industry rather than arms and some quite successful small niche businesses. We as a committee were determined not to put their businesses out of business by putting in place essentially a law that would have made their operations unlawful. So we have got a little carve-out for them. There's a temporary ability to put some regulations in to protect their interests so that they've got access to some guns to test their scopes and their accessories where they have formed a niche for themselves. But we've got to go back and think why we're doing this. You know with all these exemptions and all the submissions that are coming to us we're doing this because there are far too many weapons out there. There was the gunman in Christchurch who had an A category licence with a legal firearm purchased through a retail outlet. He drove a gaping hole through our licensing and arms regulations and we have been found wanting. We've been warned so many times in the past. Lianne Dalziel told us with genuine emotion that she had been there in 1992. She had sat where we sit. She had had the chance to do what we now have the chance to do and it is time for us to finish the job. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker."