McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill and I may start my commentary addressing some of the comments that have been made by others including those that have just been made by the Green member who's quickly leaving the Chamber where she actually made a comment about—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Order!Golriz Ghahraman: Point of order Mr Speaker. I believe that was fairly obviously an out-of-order comment by the member just now so I ask you to address that.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Well with due respect I did address it and I pulled her up on that.Stuart Smith: Now she can go.Tim van de Molen: Where are you going?NICOLE McKEE: When the comment was made by the Green Party delegate that there were—Golriz Ghahraman: Mr Speaker point of order—sorry. I consider the very loud interjections by National Party members there clearly out of order and actually making a mockery of your action sir.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): No it's certainly not out of order.NICOLE McKEE: Third time lucky. When the Green member just made comments about legislation that she said actually she finds—I don't recall the exact words but it's something that the Green Party would never do. I'd just like to remind everybody that when it came to search and surveillance it's exactly what every party in this House apart from ACT voted for. The difference is that we have legislation in place at the moment that allows the search of licensed firearm owners' homes and not the criminals'. Part of what the firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) are looking to do is to weigh up and balance some of that so that the licensed firearm owners are not the target. The ACT Party will be supporting the firearms prohibition orders as they progress through today and also next week. We support the bill and the minor changes that have been made within it specifically the bill's purpose. The purpose of the bill is to improve public safety by prohibition of high-risk people from accessing firearms. That's really important. From our perspective sitting on this side of the House regardless of whether National introduced it or talked about it in 2014 or whether Labour are doing it now the fact that it's actually happening now is very important because we have a 47 percent increase in gun crime in New Zealand since 2018 and a lot of it has come since the firearms reforms that occurred in 2019. So regardless it is urgent.The thing that actually disappoints me is that when National brought their firearms prohibition orders bill before the House we could have got that changed and we could have had this implemented already making a big difference. So taking the time to ensure that the bill goes through under a particular party's name is actually not doing the best we can to keep our communities safe from gun crime.What I do like about this bill is that it is court ordered. It's not police who will make the decisions on whether an FPO should be placed on a person. That means evidence has to be produced. It's not just ad hoc that anybody can have an FPO slapped on them. I really do like the point that we now have the strangulation clause added to the specified violent offences. I think that's very important and I will address that a little bit later on. I also like the idea of the changes in the broad definition that allows the court to define what is necessary when setting the conditions of an FPO to being what is reasonably necessary". At this point we'll just go to the scenario that the Minister talked about where he suggested that if you have a nephew or a son that turns up at a father or uncle's place for Christmas and they have a firearms licence the search and seizure would be occurring on that father or uncle's home. In actual fact the bill itself says that that person can be there as long as the firearms are secured in the police-approved secure facility. So I don't quite understand where the Minister was coming from with that because there's a whole lot of other things that need to occur in the home for that to actually happen.I do have a couple of concerns though. The explanation for the distance a person must be from a firing range—this was brought up at the Justice Committee and the answer from Police or answer from the officials was that they were waiting for Police to finish their regulations on clubs and ranges which is overdue at the moment and that their idea was that the court can determine whether or not a person was close to a firing range. I think that's quite unacceptable because we have ranges in facilities where there is more than one activity taking place and that's all over the country. We should make sure that we actually have a reasonable understanding of what is determined to be a firing range when we put this law into place.I also question clause 12 which inserts section 69(1A) where we were talking about how the convicting court must order the forfeiture of any firearms or parts thereof to the Crown. I had quite a few concerns about whether or not a person with an FPO was found with a stolen firearm and whether or not that firearm could be identified and returned to its owner instead of having to be seized. The Police did assure us at the time that they would make all endeavours to return firearms to the legal owners if indeed they were being illegally held or stolen so I just want to put that on the record as well. There were submissions made by the likes of the Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (COLFO) who had queries about residing and whether or not a person is defined as being two days in any 12 months residing at one particular place. This was raised by COLFO because when we talked about tangi and the fact that people could be in a place for three days the answer that we got back was that a person may actually apply to the courts for a variation to their order. So I'd like to keep that on the record as well.Gun Control New Zealand—well they made a raft of public statements most recently saying that firearms in criminal hands have come from the licensed firearm community. That's misinformation and it continues and it is detrimental in the rebuilding of relationships which have fallen by the wayside. The 2016 and 2017 inquiry into the illegal possession of firearms actually showed that there were several ways that gangs were getting hold of firearms and this includes illegal manufacture and illegal importation. In fact as recently as 21 July Radio New Zealand had pointed out that drug intersections are up from 452 in the first quarter of 2011 to more than 1000 in the first quarters of 2016 onward in regard to Customs seizures at the border. They find drugs they find cash and they find firearms. Between 2014 and September 2020 5887 firearms were found at the border and that was only with 2 to 5 percent of containers being checked. That tells me that if we were able to check more containers we might actually be able to find the real source and stop attacking the licensed firearm owners as being the only source of illegal firearms. For a bunch of academics they really do run their narrative on a lot of hyperbole. So you know just make sure that we can build relationships so that we can move forward to keep our country safe together from the illegal use of harmful firearms when they are used by those criminals. Rural Women New Zealand and victim advocacy groups spoke about domestic violence and their wish that FPOs were put on to protection orders as well. What it means now is that we have these new specified violent offences which are 40 offences—they have been increased to 41 including strangulation. That's in response to those victim advocacy groups and Rural Women New Zealand coming and saying to us as a select committee that they have real concerns. I hope that this goes some way to addressing the concerns that they have. With the National Party they did put in a differing view and it was regarding warrantless search powers for the police and there's been quite a bit of discussion about that across the House. I've been really concerned. Licensed firearm owners have been the target of warrantless searches already. They still are. I understand that the Labour Party are wanting to make sure that they're not giving them the ability to do that more but we also need to give police the teeth. So if we can have some sort of way where a person with an FPO is able to be targeted specifically and not their families then I think we should look to consider it. Further and in closing the ACT Party have a gang control order in the ballot box under my name and I think that this will go hand in hand with the firearms prohibition orders. The Labour Party have already said that this is one of many things that we need to do. There is no one answer. ACT's gang control orders will specifically target the gang members that are also using illegal firearms and I hope that you can support that. ACT supports this bill."