McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to talk to the Arms (Licence Holders' Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill. I support this bill along with the ACT Party and I suspect a large number of licensed firearms holders who have been caught up in the delays including dealers. This has been a long time coming and my colleague from across the way—Mark Mitchell—has already spoken of a letter that was written back in March 2021. When I was with the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners we wrote a letter in February of 2021. I actually wrote a letter to the Minister for COVID-19 Response back in September 2021 asking for an extension under COVID rules. I wrote again to the former Minister of Police on 6 October 2021 and again to the new Minister of Police on 11 August 2022—this year. It's nice to finally see an acknowledgment of what the licensed firearms owners the legal firearm-owning community have been going through and to see a piece of legislation—I never thought I'd say it but actually I'm going to support an arms amendment bill that's going through this House. I never thought I'd say that but this is a good one and it's something that we do need to support. I just want to touch on some things that were said by other members in this House and I will go to a Green Party member who spoke about the sunset clause and a need for it. The whole reason why there's no sunset clause within this bill is because the peak of firearms licensing—the numbers that are going to come through—will actually be in 2026. It's not happening right now. It's starting to increase now and it will peak in 2026 with an estimated 40000 people seeking to renew their licences in that year alone. The way that this bell curve works is that from this year 2022 onwards to 2026 it will gradually increase each year and then by 2026 it's reached its peak and it will start to come down again in 2027 and 2028. The whole idea of this bill is to be able to flatten that curve over a period of time and it will not happen in just a few years. It will take decades to be able to flatten that curve and the 2026-27 review that is going to happen was something that this House had all agreed to when they put through their urgent laws back in 2020. They said then that we would have a review to see how it's going so that was the standard. That was always going to happen and this has nothing to do with it. I've heard people talk about the delays that have happened since the 1992 regulations and I'd just like to put some of this into some proper context for everybody. We used to have lifetime licences. In 1992 we then moved to a 10-year licensing system and the way it operated back then was that people were automatically moved in alphabetical order on to a 10-year licence. But it was happening so slowly that it was decided to just move everybody en masse and that's why we'll have such a massive big peak in 2026. Of course it happened again in 2006 and 2016 and we're expecting it in 2026. It's been exacerbated by the fact that with the arms law amendment changes made in 2020 we've now introduced five-year licensing for new licence applicants. That started in 2021 meaning that they are also going to come up for their first renewal in 2026 adding to the 40000 that are already going to be implicated at that time. I thought that this was quite an interesting concept that we needed to show everyone because I've heard from across the House that the reason why we have delays is because of the 1992 regulations. With respect the reason why we have delays is because this House rushed through legislation without thinking about the consequences of it. I heard the Minister of Police say that part of the reason for the delays is because licensed firearms owners were not fulfilling their obligations and nor were the referees and that's absolute nonsense. I have so many emails and communications from people who have said First of all we cannot email the police because they will not give us an email address for the person that we're dealing with. We cannot phone anybody. They will not give us the name. There is no contact phone number. They will not reply to emails to the generated list. They will no longer turn up at the times when previous vetters were available." which was after hours for those people that worked. Now they only work from 9 till 4 Monday to Friday and everyone is expected to take time off work to be able to go and have their interview at the time allocated by the vetter; not at the time when the applicant or the referee is free and available for that interview. Not only that but the number of people who have told me that they have been waiting six months eight months 12 months two years for the police to get hold of them for this interview. This is not the fault of licensed firearms owners; this is the fault of rushed legislation. It's the consequence of what happens when we don't think out the full consequences of rushing through laws. The licensing delays are not at the number of 2000 which I have heard constantly repeated today. It actually sits at 4413 people being impacted. There are 3172 new licence applications on top of that and not only that but there are renewals for endorsements that are also behind including 128 pistol endorsements. This is quite relevant because in order to maintain a pistol endorsement you must shoot at your pistol club 12 times a year. That's pretty hard to do if your pistol endorsement has expired and you're waiting six to eight months for it to be renewed. That ability to be able to complete your 12 becomes strained and in some cases people are unable to do that. This bill goes towards trying to re-establish the trust and confidence again between the licensed firearms community and the New Zealand Police. It is essential that we get that back because in our old regime while it may not have been absolutely perfect it was nearly there and a lot of it had to do with the ability for the licensed community to integrate and speak with their local police arms officer and let them know of things that were of concern to them. Now they don't even know the name of their local police arms officer let alone be able to go and approach them. Further to this we must remember that among licensed firearms owners as my colleague has said there are a few bad apples. There were 29 gang members that were given firearm licences back in 2017 and 12 of them still had licences in 2021. After massive work from the ACT Party we have got it down to one and I believe that that's because we kept forcing police to address that issue. Another one: 5887 firearms have been confiscated through our customs officers being able to use their X-ray machines to X-ray containers coming into the ports. That's a huge amount—5887—but it could be bigger because only 2 to 5 percent of those containers have been X-rayed. So it's not licensed firearms owners here that are providing gangs with guns. We are not the issue; the issue is poor legislation. We have a few questions that we will be asking through the select committee process such as whether or not the service of documents through email will need to have a receipt whether or not there are practicalities around how a person with an expired licence can still produce that licence to buy and sell ammunition or even partake in sport and also whether or not this is retrospective to the 4413 people who are currently sitting in limbo. I expect that the dealers will also have a few questions on this—for example how they go about arranging their imports with an expired licence and so whether or not a temporary licence will be there for them. This is a time-sensitive issue. It's a clear and urgent safety issue that must be addressed and this is one of the reasons why we support this bill going through under urgency. We support it not because it's of political convenience to the Government but because it has immediate relief to the safety concerns of the firearms owners and the general public. We look forward to this bill going through by Christmas so that some of our hunters can make sure there is food on the table for Christmas Day."