Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Madam Speaker. It's nice to see Golriz Ghahraman return to the House after a lengthy absence. Welcome back—and there she goes. Madam Speaker if you'll forgive me a very brief—she's back. That's great.Golriz Ghahraman: Point of order. Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm not sure if members are allowed to actually refer to whether or not other members are present in the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Yes it was on the margins. I heard and I listened the member actually hadn't gone anywhere. I think it was more in the nature of—well I'm assuming—a throwaway aside. So thank you for bringing that to my attention.DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you. You try to be gracious to the Green Party and that's what you get back. Out of interest for the member the Speaker's rulings are not as specific as she might think; there are actually reasonable exceptions to that ruling and that would normally have been one. But in any case there you go be gracious to the Greens that's what you get.Madam Speaker if you'll forgive me one more indulgence before addressing this Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill. I've also just spoken to a journalist who has been prohibited by the Speaker from going outside to speak to protesters. I feel the need to put that on the record that first of all that's an unacceptable breach of press freedom for the Speaker to effectively say the only way that journalists can report on events is from on high on a balcony looking down. But more importantly it's a tremendous own goal that only confirms some of the worst and wildest suspicions of those protesters. I think that needs to be recorded—that if that's true the Speaker I don't think has acted well in those circumstances.To turn to the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill the ACT Party is very pleased to be supporting this piece of legislation. It represents a quantum shift in the quality of legislation that this Government and its predecessor bring to the House in terms of firearm control. Let me count the ways—there's three things I really like about this piece of legislation. First and foremost it is actually being done with due process made the way that laws should be made. I've said in this House many times that if firearm laws are worth doing then they are worth doing right. This piece of legislation has had prior consultation before being introduced it's been debated in the House now it's going to be referred to the Justice Committee—I would hope and assume from the indications we've had so far—for a full six-month consultation of the public and examination so that people can have their say and MPs can do their job on the Justice Committee to properly examine the bill.That is a far cry from what we experienced in 2019 when this Parliament—with the exception of one member in Opposition I might add—rushed through hasty knee-jerk and ultimately highly ineffective legislation banning select types of firearms for political theatre over public safety. So I have to congratulate the Government for actually putting some proper due process back into the way it brings firearms legislation to this House and I look forward to people being able to submit to the Justice Committee and the Justice Committee being able to listen and hopefully make sensible amendments if needed to add to the consultation that has already been undertaken. So that is a very big tick.The second thing I like about this bill and we like in ACT is that this particular piece of legislation is focused not on the types of firearms but on the types of people that have them. There are basically two approaches to firearm legislation. One of them we have tried over several decades of trying to define exactly what sort of firearms people should be able to have. Now within reason that is actually not a bad thing. For example people have never had outside of collectors' items automatic firearms in this country. People haven't had what are called assault rifles outside of collectors in this country.To try and define exactly what is for example a military-style semi-automatic weapon" has turned into a ludicrous array of court cases and arguments that ultimately turn on how many screws attach the stock of the firearm to the rest of the piece. That is an absolute folly to try and micro-regulate the types of firearms instead of the types of people. We saw it in the House just today when our hapless police Minister stood up and said 60000 military-style semi-automatic firearms had been confiscated. She was asked whether she was sure about that and she stood up and she fumbled and mumbled and said "Oh I think I've been advised but I don't know. I'll probably have to come back and correct it." Even our police Minister struggles to know what types of firearms she's talking about.So having a piece of legislation that focuses on the types of people that have them is the second big improvement in the Government's approach to firearms legislation behind actually having proper due process and consultation like this Parliament was set up to do. The important thing here is that we're focusing on the criminals with firearms. You see when we had former Mike Hosking panellist Stuart Nash in charge of firearm legislation he was entirely focused on trying to make sure that the licensed law-abiding fit and proper firearm owners were criminals and the only effect was that the criminals became firearm owners. He banned 60000 firearms—we can't ask the current Minister of Police what type they were because she doesn't know—and yet there were actually 240000. Let me get that right—he banned 240000; he collected 60000. Well the gangs know where the other 180000 went. For the first time in our country's history the majority of serving police officers want to carry firearms themselves because there are so many of them out in the streets and New Zealanders hear about their misuse each and every day.So this piece of legislation that says "If you are convicted of a select number of offences the court can issue a firearms prohibition order and you may not have a firearm be near a firearm be on a premise such as a gun shop or licenced firearm owner's home where firearms are not locked up." It keeps the bad people away from firearms instead of the shameful knee-jerk ineffective legacy of trying to stop people who have shown themselves to be fit and proper from lawfully using firearms. So that is the second big improvement in this piece of legislation.The final thing that I really like about this piece of legislation is that it's not going to affect people the way it might have affected those who were simply in the way or in an unfortunate circumstance. Prior pieces of legislation introduced by other parties to this House would have made criminals of people who were inadvertently in the way of firearms and that was wrong it would have been difficult to enforce and laws that don't work are ultimately unsustainable.If we want to prevent the kinds of terrible atrocities that sparked off the wave of firearm legislation that has occurred over the last two years then we need to focus on making sure that the wrong people the people who have shown their character to be unfit to have firearms don't have them. We also need to accept that firearms are present in New Zealand; that is a physical reality that can't easily be changed by our laws. If we make it so difficult and lose the trust of the good law-abiding people who have been deemed fit and proper then we're going to end up in a much worse space than we have been. That's what the last two years have shown since Stuart Nash cavalierly banned a whole lot of firearms and ended up with more of them on the streets with the gangs leading to the police wanting to be armed themselves because it's got so bad. Instead if we start targeting the people who shouldn't have firearms then there is some hope of good lawmaking laws that are respected and safer streets for New Zealanders.I want to commend again this bill to the House I want to thank the Government for coming around to a more sensible way of making firearm legislation and I want to give my best wishes to the Justice Committee and all those who submit to it for a civilised constructive exchange which improves this bill further. Thank you Madam Speaker."