Mitchell Mark; Rurawhe AdrianHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to get the opportunity to stand and take a call on this bill. I'm not part of the Finance and Expenditure Committee I haven't sat on the committee but can I acknowledge the committee members that are in the House at the moment and those that aren't of course. Can I also acknowledge the chair Michael Wood because I understand that he has run a very good and a very fair process in what has been a truncated process.This isn't without precedent. I remember back in 2015 when I was chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee that because we had a rising threat of the possibility of returning foreign fighters coming to New Zealand and on intelligence information that the Government of the day had we decided that we needed to run a truncated process to put in place our countering foreign fighters legislation. I think we had a bit more time—we might have run that over a two- or three-week period—but we had support from the Opposition. I just want to acknowledge David Shearer Phil Goff and also the Hon Christopher Finlayson who worked with myself in making sure that we did hear all the submitters that wanted to come in front of the committee and that we could pass that legislation.It was important legislation because it was about protecting our country. When it comes to national security I think that's one thing where there should always try to be bipartisan support and a spirit of cooperation and work across this House. I've listened to the Green Party contributions and the appeal that I'd make to them is simply this: your language has changed and I think you realise that it had to change but I can tell you that back in 2015 you did just about everything you could to obstruct stop and prevent legislation that we were trying to pass in this House to make New Zealand safer. Now we're going to have to continue to do that—this is where it starts. This is just the start.This is a good piece of legislation. We support it. Yes we realise and we understand that there could be some fish hooks in there because of the speed at which it is being passed. I acknowledge the comments that have been made by the ACT leader David Seymour but one thing I can tell you as a Parliament is that we are committed to go back and we will support the Government if we need to make some changes. The important thing is that what we're saying as a nation is that we don't want to be a country in which military-style weapons can be generally available.I want to just go back and maybe provide a little anecdotal story. I was in Christchurch on Friday and I met up with an old friend of mine whom I served in the police with. Actually we both deployed as part of the Christchurch Special Tactics Group into the Coromandel back in the late 1990s. There had been four prisoners who had escaped from Pāremoremo—all dangerous violent offenders—and they'd managed to get themselves on to the Coromandel.Tim van de Molen: Tairua.Hon MARK MITCHELL: It was actually Tairua; that's right. It was Tairua. He was reminding me actually of the time when we had deployed in an air force Iroquois because there was a remote building at which there'd been some activity and we felt that maybe they'd split up and a couple of them were there. They had me with my police dog Zara where they'd put the harness on and they were hoisting me down on to the ground in quite a heavily dense sort of pine forest. All of a sudden they called that there had been a shot fired and I can tell you Mr Assistant Speaker that you will never feel so exposed than when you're 50 metres above the tree tops in a harness and you realise that the only target that they can really see—well I'll leave that to your imagination.Hon Scott Simpson: You were slimmer in those days.Hon MARK MITCHELL: And it's not a small target so I was a bit worried. But the point was that on that operation those four offenders had one objective and that was to break into primarily vacant farmhouses or holiday baches with the objective of getting firearms. They wanted to rearm themselves they wanted ammunition and they were after semi-automatics because they wanted to be able to do as much damage as quickly as they could.We were very very lucky that we actually managed to find them and take them into custody but the reason why he was reminding me of that—and I'm glad that he did—is that afterwards we were sitting in the squad room having a beer. Basically we'd been working for about five days solid to actually catch these guys. We were sitting in the squad room we opened a beer and we were sitting around and all of us that entire squad were saying Why would we have military-style weapons in New Zealand? What is the need for them?" That was 20 years ago.So I actually think that although it's taken a tragedy for us to act this was the right thing to do. We are sending a clear message as a nation that yep there are still going to be those who want to come here there are still going to be those who want to create harm there are still going to be those who will try to access a black market—we accept that. That's why we have to put trust in our law enforcement agencies and our intelligence agencies to be able to stop that and prevent them. But what we are saying as a nation is this: we're not going to tolerate having military-style weapons readily available to the public. I think that's a powerful and a strong message for us to send as a Parliament and to send as a nation.The one thing I would say is let's maintain the spirit of cooperation that we have seen in this Parliament during this process in the work that needs to be done in the coming weeks and months and years. Threats have not gone away and actually the fundamental—the one thing—that a Government is responsible for is the safety of their people. That's the one thing that a country relies on their Government to do—to keep them safe. And when I say "Government" I'm not absolving us from any responsibility. Although we sit on the Opposition benches let me make it very clear that we will support this Government to make sure that we do everything that we can to not experience another tragedy like the one that we've just been through in Christchurch where we know we're going to have to as a country continue to support the people who need to be supported in Christchurch.All the points that are being made today are that people's lives were wrecked in those 30 minutes. They will never be the same again but what we can do is we can continue to work together to make sure we do everything possible so that we can put a hand on our heart and say that we've done everything that we can to protect our country and to stop this ever happening again in New Zealand. Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call Dr Deborah Russell—five minutes."