Andersen GinnyHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I'd like to ask a question under Part 2 under new section 111A Firearms prohibition order". There's two subsections—(1) and (2)—and it provides that "(1) When sentencing a specified offender the court may make a firearms prohibition order against the offender under Part 7A of the Arms Act". I did have an amendment up under Part 1 which I didn't have the opportunity to speak to—but I'd just be interested because I think it also fits here. I don't have it here but I'd like the Minister's view as to whether this would strengthen the current provision in terms of public safety. My amendment was in relation to the fact that down the line we potentially in New Zealand could see those more high-calibre weapons those military-style semi-automatic (MSSA) weapons. The Minister might have another term because she knows more than I do around technicalities around firearms. She may have another term apart from MSSAs that she prefers.CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I think we're getting into future pieces of legislation. Please relate it to the FPOs.Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: It does relate to this. I'm tying it back to this. So my question would be: if there was an offender who had one of those is there any provision or does she think it would be a provision of making it more stringent? So when a firearms prohibition order is being made against the offender and they have had access to or fired or—whatever—got their hands on one of those weapons which is more deadly as we know in New Zealand has she considered there being additional provisions? Because this is the first tranche of four tranches of firearms reforms the fourth being the rewriting of the Arms Act. There must be cognisance within the Government of what the later tranches will mean when we're writing this. What I'd like to understand from the Minister is: given the potential that there'll be changes to the firearms registry and also changes to what weapons are able to be used on ranges down the line what does this mean in terms of how we can make this firearms prohibition order as strong for public safety as it possibly can be? And therefore has she taken into consideration any additional safety protections for those criminals or offenders who have accessed those more high-calibre military-style semi-automatic weapons? One possibility would be for them to be able to have harsher conditions or they would be able to not be revoked or they were entrenched for 10 years. Have any of those concerns or any of those potential things being raised?I'd also like to speak to the amendment proposed as G which is under the name of my learned colleague the Hon Duncan Webb and that's to amend clause 14 new section 18AA(2). This provision proposes that it would remove the text that says "may exercise the power in subsection (1) without having reasonable grounds to suspect that any offence has been is being or will be committed by the person." and replace that with "must suspect that an offence against section 42A of the Arms Act has been or is being committed by the person in order to exercise the power in subsection (1)." And it's important to note that the select committee—and it's been acknowledged by the Minister and I thank her for that—made some really good changes in terms of that threshold of when you suspect that someone might have an FPO. But instead of just thinking that they could have one we've now moved on to say that the police officer has to believe that they've got some pretty good grounds that they've got one on them already. So this amendment is really taking that vein of reasoning to say let's raise that as well and replace it with "must suspect that an offence against section 42A of the Arms Act has in fact has been or is being committed by the person in order to exercise the power in subsection (1)."And just finally I'd also just like to ask that—you know we know that a lot of the weapons that we're going to be putting firearms prohibition orders on under this do come from that A category of weapons. So we know that as a weapon of choice quite often people are accessing those alpha-carbine weapons. They're easily cut off. They're quite popular with the criminal fraternity. And so my question would be: is there anything in addition to what we're doing here for public safety that can provide for the fact that A category weapons potentially could be in tranches down the line—[Time Expired]CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): James Meager. Oh he just ceded to the Hon Ginny Andersen.Hon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): That's nice. Thank you. So my question was that those A category weapons which do include alpha carbines are often around about 70 percent of the firearms seized by police which criminals are accessing. And there are views I know by the Minister that those A category weapons would be excluded potentially from the firearms registry down the line. Has she taken into account that if A category firearms were excluded from the firearms registry what the impact of that would be to this firearms prohibition order regime and are there any additional protections for public safety that we should be considering in order to give our police that front-line safety—Police have been quite vocal on this one—to make sure that the provision for those weapons that criminals are accessing are also able to be—I guess my question is: how is this working in conjunction with the firearms registry how is this working to ensure that front-line safety is given the maximised potential and has she taken into consideration those latter changes in the further tranches the firearms reform she's proposing when we're passing this legislation in relation to firearms prohibition orders?"