O'Connor Simon: Summary Offences (Possession of High-power Laser Pointers) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Summary Offences (Possession of High-power Laser Pointers) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 25 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18900. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki):I would like to join with colleagues across the Chamber—it appears to be to put not too fine a point on it—to acknowledge Cam and the work that he has done to put the Summary Offences (Possession of High-power Laser Pointers) Amendment Bill in the House.As we begin to look at clause 1 and around the title I think it is appropriate to thank you again Cam for the work that you did. I think it is an honour to come through this House and to be able to put your name to a piece of legislation. As things change just like clause 1 has changed you have brought about changes through this bill and others in the Committee have acknowledged the work that has happened around this bill. It came in with a variety of intentions and through the process has been refined down. The best and foremost example is clause 1 the title. As it notes “this Act is the Summary Offences (Possession of High-power Laser Pointers) Amendment Act 2012.”What people at home may not know is there has been a simple change. It may initially seem semantic but what we have changed in clause 1 are the words “hand-held lasers” to “high-power laser pointers”. The member in the chair Dr Cam Calder has noted this was not necessarily his preference first and foremost. I think for most of us in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee working under the tutelage and support of David Bennett we all sort of just went with that colloquial notion of a hand-held laser.Phil Twyford: Tutelage?SIMON O’CONNOR: Tutelage. Well newer members have to accept the tutelage of older members; some would also say “wiser”. What we are drawing out here around clause 1 is that we did start with the title. We started with a title that reflected a colloquial understanding. We all would accept it is a hand-held laser—something that we would point. I am thinking my colleague the Hon Maurice Williamson would be right into the technology. No he is not so sure. But the key was that we were working within that colloquial expression of a hand-held laser and we have moved now to a high-power laser pointer. There is still some concern and there has been even though we have reported back to the House around this clause 1 that we may have missed some elements but what we wanted to do by redefining the title moving into this clause 1 was to point towards—no pun intended—the Customs Import Prohibition (High-power Laser Pointers) Order of 2013. This customs import prohibition around the high-power laser pointers is I suppose the mechanism the conduit and the basis of understanding of why we made this titular change.David Bennett: Titular!SIMON O’CONNOR: It may help the Committee. It certainly has helped me to understand a little bit. Titular change—yes that is right: a good Latin derivative there but we will not get into that and into declensions and conjugations even though it is to do with titles.David Bennett: It’s not Spanish then?SIMON O’CONNOR: It is not Spanish.So what we are saying here is around the title moving from hand-held to high-power lasers. That is linking us into the Customs Import Prohibition (High-power Laser Pointers) Order of 2013. It starts first and foremost with the fact that the Director-General of Health in his or her opinion understands that this device is commonly understood to be a laser pointer. It also refers—and there is an “and” here—that it is a battery-operated object. [Interruption] Well you can immediately see why we are moving away from the hand-held nature. We are trying to be a little bit broader here with the title of the bill—that it is a high-power laser pointer. I mean not for a moment am I suggesting that we are going to be taking a modern theodolite and shining it at a plane in the way that the Hon Paula Bennett experienced down in Invercargill but we are trying to say that there are lasers that could be of detriment to aviation that are more than simply hand held.Returning to the customs import prohibition which clause 1 links to eventually it is intended to be used by the hand. That is another element within the customs import order. It has a coherent beam. I think this is something that the Minister Paula Bennett was referring to and had asked for clarification about from the member in the chair. I would welcome that as well actually. It has to be a coherent beam. I suppose it is the nature of the laser hand-held or high-power that it has a coherent beam. We know about the milliwatts Dr Calder but we would also want to know whether there is an element of distance that is required here and where the coherence begins to break up. It may be too much within the physical realms but who knows? And 1 milliwatt—this is one of the critical reasons we did make the change there in clause 1 around the title to say it was a high-power laser. By referring to the customs order we were referring to this 1 milliwatt of power.