Faafoi Kris: Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7238. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Thank you very much Mr Speaker for the opportunity to speak to the third reading of the Arms (Military Style Semi-automatic Firearms and Import Controls) Amendment Bill. Yesterday in the general debate the Minister of Police took an opportunity to disagree with me on a number of things that were police portfolio related and I respect her right to do that in this House. I look forward to continuing to disagree with her on a number of issues around police-related matters over the next couple of years. But I think one thing that we will agree on is the safety of our front-line police officers. 
One issue in this piece of legislation that we are debating today will I think take some serious steps towards ensuring the safety of our front-line police officers and that is the provision that will restrict the importation of airguns that have the appearance of the real thing. As the Minister of Police said in her contribution to the debate earlier on there is at least one incident a week where an imitation of a military-style semi-automatic or a pistol is presented and police officers are forced to escalate that incident. Usually it means the calling out of our armed offenders squad—serious resources—and of course they have to take those call-outs very seriously because they do not know whether the firearm that has been presented is the real thing and could cause harm to members of the public the people who are brandishing the weapon or of course the police officers involved. 
Our police officers hold an occupation—and it is not just a job—that very few in our country have. They go to work every day fully knowing that they could put themselves in serious danger and that—as was the case for I think at least 81 police officers here in New Zealand—they could pay the ultimate price. In terms of restricting the importation of these lookalike weapons these weapons that look like military-style weapons and pistols I think that this legislation is very good in terms of protecting our front-line officers. In that respect we will have one point in this piece of legislation that the Minister and I can agree on. As I say 81 officers in New Zealand have paid the ultimate price serving their communities and on 1 October this year we did commemorate those fallen officers.  
This bill defines what a military-style semi-automatic firearm is. I am not a firearm enthusiast just by nature of not being around them when I was growing up. Essentially the definition of a military-style semi-automatic is a firearm that has a magazine ejects a cartridge and then loads another cartridge into the chamber has 10 or 15 cartridges in that magazine and has a pistol grip—that is now a military-style semi-automatic rifle.  
I am sure that Richard Prosser being a gun enthusiast will have something more to say in much greater detail and he will elucidate to the rest of the House exactly what this means. For those at home that is the new definition of what a military-style semi-automatic is under the legislation. As the Minister said it does clarify for the many gun enthusiasts out there in the community what a military-style semi-automatic is now.  
We also did want to point to the regulation-making power in the legislation that we are debating today because there was some concern at the Law and Order Committee—and this went through the Law and Order Committee that I sat on in a previous Parliament—from those who submitted on the bill that the regulation-making power gave police too much power in defining what these military-style semi-automatics are. I think it is good that the bill has been amended to make sure that there is a time frame in which subordinate legislation has to be passed through this House for making any new regulations that come under actual legislation within this House.  
This legislation was of great interest at the select committee. I understand there were over 250 submissions and 71 people were heard in person. I guess when you think there are nearly a quarter of a million people holding firearms licences out there it does not really surprise us as to the level of interest that this bill has created.  
Another aspect of this bill that we think is a positive thing is that if there is a dispute around the classification of a firearm—if someone has brought something in and they think it passes the test and the police force or those who are looking at the firearm disagree—that firearm owner can go to the District Court and launch an appeal to question whether or not that classification of that firearm is valid. I think that is a positive move given the serious concerns that the firearm owners had during the select committee process. I actually did sit on one select committee meeting on this bill in the last Parliament and it was full of gun enthusiasts who were very very concerned about that point indeed. 
 I am not a firearm owner but as I said before there are nearly a quarter of a million licensed firearm owners in New Zealand so we know that the responsible ownership of firearms is very very important to many Kiwis. I think that through the select committee process some changes have been made to I hope allay the fears of a lot of the gun enthusiasts out there who thought that they may get caught up in this and thought that their sporting use of firearms or their hunting with firearms may be affected by this. But I do hope that through the select committee process we have had the ability to allay the fears of those people who were worried about what this Parliament was doing. 
There was one bone of contention from the Labour Party perspective at the select committee and that was around the establishment of an independent reference group. It was something that we offered up as a bit of a safeguard against some of the concerns the firearms owners had at the time. But we understand that the view of the committee was that it was out of the scope of the bill and that the police are actually doing some of their own work to establish an arms advisory group. One thing that we mentioned in the second reading debate I believe was that we are hoping to keep a close eye on whether the police follow through on that work because we do think there needs to be some expert advice given to the Minister and also to the police around some of the changes to the technology. It is rapidly changing especially when you are looking at introducing regulations swiftly around the changes in technology around the police 
I just wanted to finish by saying that the aspect of the bill around the restriction on the importation of lookalike weapons is I think very very important to our front-line police officers and also to resourcing. As the Minister said having one incident a week where a lookalike weapon has been presented and the police are escalating that into a serious issue is one too many and we definitely support the part of the bill that restricts the importation of those lookalike weapons. So we do support this bill.