Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Mr Speaker. We stand in support of the Arms (Licence Holders' Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill because it's a pragmatic and common-sense step towards fixing a problem that should have been dealt with actually a fair time ago. In fact back in March 2021 we wrote to the Minister at the time Poto Williams asking for these types of changes to be made because what had happened was that the Government in their rush to move through legislation and reform hadn't anticipated or thought about the impact that it was actually going to have on the system. The one thing that I would say to the Minister is that the police are having to scramble and they're having to dedicate additional resource for firearms-vetting officers and the massive resource that it takes to try to correct a backlog of I think about 9000 applications 2000 of which are genuine firearms licence holders who actually started breaking the law in terms of the Arms Act through no fault of their own—Nicole McKee: It's 4000 now Mark.Hon MARK MITCHELL: It's 4000 is it? Nicole McKee was saying 4000 through no fault of their own. Quite simply they had engaged in the process in a legal way taking their responsibilities seriously and the system had let them down. Their licence had expired. They were then faced with the stress of realising that they were in breach of the Arms Act. So the Government themselves with their own changes have put them in this awful position where they're now in breach of the Arms Act. And what were they going to do with their firearms? They had to try and find and come up with solutions to deal with that problem which is stressful in itself. So they've created a real mess here.I want to acknowledge our firearms community. I want to acknowledge our hunting community. I was at the Sika Show at Mystery Creek a couple of weeks ago for the weekend. It was an outstanding show. It was well attended. It was well and truly a family event. There were fantastic exhibitors there. There were some amazing examples of conservation going on with the protection of kiwi with the trapping and shooting and removal of pests like stoats rabbits and possums. It was nice to get in amongst our firearms community. The one thing they highlighted was that when the Green Party held the conservation portfolio one thing it did that was very effective was that it brought them together; they actually started working together on a plan and they've become a very effective and a very strong group now in terms of working on conservation and making sure that the interests of our firearms community are actually advanced. And that's a good thing.In this House for too long we've seen MPs stand up and attack them. For me in the police portfolio let's not focus on our law-abiding firearms community. Yep we all acknowledge that you get the odd rotten apple in a barrel and that you need to have a process so that you can identify those—there's no problem with that—but if you actually want to have a look at where all the rotten apples are go over and have a look at organised crime and gangs. That's where the real issue lies. All the firearms violence that we see in this country has got nothing to do with our hunting community or our firearms community or our gun clubs. It has everything to do with gang members and gangsters that procure illegal weapons carry them and are prepared to use them. So the focus needs to return there and away from our firearms community. I want to apologise to them because—actually I know that Nicole McKee has been a very strong advocate for this as well—we wanted to see this change made a long time ago. Simeon Brown my predecessor wrote to the Minister back in March 2021 asking for this to change because we could see that there was a backlog and a pipeline being formed because of the changes that were made.Coming back to the police it's actually unfair on our police service and those in charge of trying to operationalise the changes that were made in this House when they have to look around their service which is stretched to breaking point at the moment because they are having to deal with a tsunami in the rise of serious criminal offending and youth and juvenile offending—a 50 percent increase in gang numbers—and yet they're told they're going to have to find more resource to put into this to start processing licences. So it's actually unfair on them too in terms of what is going on currently. So although we do support this and we want to—and by the way the Government wants to expedite this bill and take it under urgency. Of course we support that. We want to get this bill through as quickly as possible so that our legal firearms licence holders are not put in the invidious position where they engage in a system in good faith to try to have their licence renewed it goes past the expiry date and all of a sudden they are in breach of the Arms Act. So we want to see this bill passed as quickly as we can.Just very quickly—the Minister outlined what the bill does and it's fairly simple—if a licensed firearms licence holder is coming up to the expiry date they've applied for a renewal they've engaged in the process and it goes past the expiry date of their licence their licence will quite simply remain current up until the point that that renewal is made. And then from the point of the renewal that will be the starting date that the licence becomes valid. The bill also covers licensed arms dealers as well in terms of making sure that they get the same fair treatment that firearms licence holders get. So it is a good bill; we do support it. It's in the House way too late. There should have been action taken on this back in 2021 when my friend and colleague Simeon Brown wrote to the Minister asking for changes to be made and highlighting the issue. Way too late; way too slow. I'm pretty sure that Nicole McKee has done the same thing.The other thing that I found very interesting at the Sika expo was that there was no Labour stand or Green stand. There were no members there at all. There was no one there. I was there for the entire weekend. I was lucky enough to host our leader Chris Luxon on the Saturday with very very positive engagement. I expected the Government party to actually have at least some presence there to listen to a massive sector in New Zealand that have got a strong voice and have got solutions. And by the way like I said—I'm going to say it again—the conservation side of it: I walked away completely totally blown away. The amount of kids that are engaged in it and the amount of kids that are taking ownership of it—they're running their own Predator Free programmes all around the country. It was hugely encouraging in terms of seeing that engagement and seeing them wanting to drive us towards being predator free which is something that we all want.So I am very happy to stand in support of this bill. I sit on the Justice Committee. I'm sure that we will all work together to get this through the committee process as quickly as possible and back into this House and passed. Thank you.