Scott AlastairALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you Madam Speaker for the opportunity to speak in support of the Subordinate Legislation Confirmation Bill (No 4). As the Minister Chris Hipkins has rightly set out it can be considered a rubber-stamping exercise. These bills from time to time come before the Regulations Review Committee to check that the rules and regulations are not doing something that is outside the scope of the relevant Act. The committee does take the responsibility of that seriously.You'll see in the select committee report that as the Minister said there are a number of bills or confirmations that were made including for example the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act Animal Products Act Arms Act Biosecurity Act Civil Aviation Act and so on. But I would also like to focus on the confirmation and we did end up confirming the Arms Act which relates to the ammunition which the Minister referred to earlier. We took a couple of sessions. We had the police in twice to explain themselves and the way that they came to their conclusions. We were concerned that the police could possibly be seen to be able to act outside of the purpose of the Act away from the policy settings of the Government of the day or the Minister and so as I say we brought the police in twice to explain to us their thought processes.We had a number of complaints that we ran alongside the process of confirmation and these complaints raised concerns that the committee also had I guess one could say. Those issues were around just the idea that one can ban this or that. We're talking about tracer ammunition. We're talking about armour-piercing ammunition. We had to satisfy ourselves not that they should be banned but that the rules and regulations that were before us fitted into the purpose of the Minister's legislation in the first place.We heard from the Police as well. So we heard about tracer ammunition. On this side of the House we don't like banning things just for the sake of it. We think people should take personal responsibility and should not be dictated to overly by any Government of the day. So banning stuff we take seriously. In this situation we agreed that tracer ammunition and armour-piercing ammunition the way it was described should be banned. Even though people liked to use some of this type of ammunition it seemed to me that one of the main arguments for using it was simply because it was cheap it was readily available and it was ammunition that had been discarded from other jurisdictions and found its way into New Zealand. That is not a good enough reason on its own.We took that armour-piercing ammunition and the tracer ammunition and the effects that that could have on the way that police deal with criminals—and deal with themselves actually—very seriously. So we agreed unanimously—it was a unanimous committee report which was good—that this confirmation should take place to enable the legislation to be passed and to be effected.The other issue was around the consultation process. We were as a committee critical of the Police's process around consultation. That has been made clear in the select committee. The Police heard that. We were all—not some of us; we were all—concerned about the process: that some of the people that could have been included were not. But that did not stop us from confirming these instruments. That was not in itself a reason not to confirm or to disallow.The other issue was around the term military-style". "Military-style ammunition" was not a very helpful description—not a very helpful description of what we were talking about. What we were talking about was particular types of ammunition that had particular effects when it was used—so for example the armour-piercing ammunition. In my view we shouldn't have even mentioned the word "military-style". In fact it's not in the order. It's not in the legislation. There's nothing mentioning "military-style" except in our report and in some of the commentary around the bills. So not helpful because we were concerned about the effects that this banning would have on the general public and on the police and so we wanted to talk specifically about the types of ammunition—not military-style in general.The other issue was the idea that there should have been—and this is part of the complaint process—compensation for the banning of this particular type of ammunition. We've had compensation made for banned firearms—fair enough. That was what the Government wanted to do. That's for them to decide. But the Government decided not to compensate for the banning of ammunition. So the question was whether that was enough to disallow this instrument. What we discussed and concluded was that that was not the ambit of the Regulations Review Committee. That was a question of policy. The policy was set by the Government and the policy that they determined was that this particular banned ammunition should not be compensated for. So whether you agree with the policy or not that was not our consideration—whether the policy was good or bad. We stuck to our mandate. We said that it complied and so we unanimously confirmed all of that regulation and confirmation powers relating to the ammunition and the complaints that related to it.So that's all I'll say. It was a very collegial committee. As I say we agreed. Many of us on both sides had very strong views in this regard and we came to a very satisfactory conclusion. I commend it to the House.Bill read a second time."