Hipkins ChrisFIREARMS PROHIBITION ORDERS LEGISLATION BILLSecond ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Police): I move that the Firearms Prohibition Orders—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry is there a legislative statement?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Oh sorry—I do. I present a legislative statement on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website and I would ask members who are on their feet having conversations to please leave if you're leaving or sit down if you're staying.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you Mr Speaker. I move That the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill be now read a second time.It is good to be at this point as the House progresses this important legislation ahead of schedule so that we can get this law into force so that it provides the additional tools to the New Zealand Police and others so that they can ensure that we are dealing with the escalating range of violent activity that we have seen and so that we can make sure that guns are being kept out of the hands of those who might do harm to others with them. I want to thank the Justice Committee for their intelligent work in bringing this bill back before the House before it was due so that we can pass it ahead of schedule. We're intending to complete the remaining stages of the bill early next week. I understand that the committee received a range of submissions on the bill and that they have made some proposed revisions to that and I thank them for the work that they have done on that. There is broad support for the idea that we should have firearms prohibition orders. I'm very pleased to be part of a Government that's actually delivering on something that was first promised in 2014 and then promised again in 2016 and never actually delivered but this Government is getting on and delivering it and I am very pleased to be part of that. There are a couple of amendments to the bill that I do want to touch on. One is the change that's being made to add to the bill section 189A of the Crimes Act which is strangulation and suffocation as a qualifying offence. What that means is that a person convicted of the offence of strangulation or suffocation could now have a firearms prohibition order imposed upon them and that would mean that they would be unable to legally buy possess use or access a firearm or a related item for 10 years after their release from custody. I think that that is a welcome addition. I thank the select committee for their careful consideration of issues around domestic and family violence. That is an addition made as a result of those deliberations and I think that that is a good one. There is evidence of a link between family violence at that more extreme end and firearms use and particularly there are well-established links between non-fatal strangulation and subsequent homicide and family harm situations. So there's a very clear evidence base for including that. The committee considered a number of other potential changes and there was significant debate at the committee around the issue of warrantless search powers. I would point out that this bill does expand the range of circumstances in which the police can use the existing warrantless search powers that they already have under the search and surveillance legislation that's already in place. If they have reason to suspect that somebody who has a firearms prohibition order against them has firearms in their possession then they can search them without a warrant. But we also balanced it up and we did consider whether that should be expanded further so that they no longer had to suspect that somebody would have a firearm. The most likely outcome of that is that we would see more instances where law-abiding firearms owners who have done nothing wrong—Hon Mark Mitchell: Where's the evidence?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —could be subject to a warrantless search and there is international evidence—there is international evidence—to suggest that where those sorts of powers have been put in place those broad sweeping powers with a lack of accountability around them it's actually law-abiding firearms owners that end up being the ones who are unfairly targeted and subjected to that. I'll give the member an example. If let's say a grandfather who is a law-abiding firearms owner who has firearms safely stored and does everything right has the family around for Christmas dinner and unbeknownst to them the granddaughter brings the new boyfriend who unbeknownst to the rest of the family has a firearms prohibition order against him then the grandfather could be subjected to a warrantless search. He could absolutely be subject to a warrantless search under the proposal put forward by the National Party. That would happen. That would be a legal law-abiding firearms owner being subjected to a warrantless search under the proposal put forward by the National Party and that is not something this Government is willing to adopt. So we have carefully balanced the issues around search and surveillance as the last National Government did. They carefully worked their way through the circumstances under which police should be allowed a warrantless search power and the conditions under which they should have to go and get a warrant in order to undertake a search. Those rules were actually put in place under the last National Government. They worked through those issues and they stopped short of giving the police warrantless search powers where there weren't reasonable grounds for suspicion. That was a decision of the National Government of the day. That's not a decision reached by this Government. That is the position that was agreed by the last National Government and it is the one that we are continuing to uphold. The last National Government made the decision that in order to conduct a warrantless search the police should have to have reasonable grounds for suspicion. That is the position of this Government as well. I would almost bet money that it will be the position of the next National Government whenever that happens because regularly they talk tough in Opposition and then when they get into Government and they consider the issues and the interconnection between issues suddenly their position changes—suddenly their position changes. I suspect that's exactly what is going to happen again because if it was simple and it was easy why didn't they pass firearms prohibition orders when they first thought about them in 2014? Why didn't they pass firearms prohibition orders the second time they decided to do it in 2016? They didn't do it. They had nine years to do it and they didn't do it. Our Government has actually done it and we are—or not quite yet. Not quite yet. We will do it early next week. We will pass that into law and we've worked through all of the ins and outs of it carefully to get the balance right to make sure that people who are following the law and who are not doing anything wrong are not unfairly targeted by this law. The people that should be targeted are the people who are convicted of violent offences and who the courts determine should not hold firearms. They are the people that should be targeted not others and unfortunately the clear message from the National Party is that anyone could be targeted because that's effectively what warrantless search powers do if there aren't some parameters around when they can and cannot be used. National wants to have warrantless search powers with very few—very few—restrictions in order to ensure that the rights of law-abiding New Zealanders are not infringed by the use of those. That is not something that this Government will do. Ultimately the law as proposed in this bill reaches the right balance and I commend it to the House. Hon Mark Mitchell: Mr Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Oh the Hon Mark Mitchell—you've used a few minutes already!