McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It gives me—well I guess it's a privilege really to have an opportunity to speak on what probably is a historic piece of legislation for this House. I too want to acknowledge the Prime Minister and the efforts of the leadership of this House and all parties—almost all parties—within it. I also want to acknowledge the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and above all the officials. Probably some of them would have been having bad dreams I would imagine during last weekend in particular when they worked four days in a row to get this piece of legislation to the stage it's at now.Like many New Zealanders I think we'll always remember where we were on that fateful Friday the 15th. I'd have to say that I was at the central districts Fieldays with many thousands of others and I think the way the disbelief just slowly crept in to that event probably was the way disbelief slowly crept into New Zealand as to how this had happened and the result we got from it. Obviously it's changed New Zealand and the change in this law is a very important part of that.I'd like to think that this piece of law might go down in history as a benchmark in legislation-making but I accept that the short consultation time is probably not ideal for most of our law. I want to commend the select committee chair and those who chose the submitters who came to submit to us because I thought it was a broad range of submitters. Whilst there were over 13000 submissions I thought the submitters who submitted to us gave us a very good view of almost every—well almost every view you could get of this piece of legislation. I make no apologies to those who weren't heard because I think there was only one way to get this bill through in the manner that it's got to this point in the House and I think it's most important that we did that.I want to make a couple of comments on what I think are very important issues going forward and I have commented on that already but I want to comment further on it because I think the need for broad publicity of where we've got to with this piece of legislation—particularly around the amnesty and what is and what isn't a legal piece of firearms equipment now—is hugely important. I think it's essential that we get that done and that we get it done urgently and make that publicity work. It's going to be difficult to get to some people because as I've said earlier there will be people in New Zealand who have got no idea they've got these weapons in their possession and who don't have a licence to own them and have never needed to have a licence to own them because they didn't know they were there. I think that will be much more common than we believe because some of what effectively could be 100-year-old pieces of equipment that are no longer legal will have sat in houses for years and years. So it is essential that we get that publicity done and get it done very well.It's essential also that that buy-back scheme when it is instigated is—as I think I heard the Prime Minister say earlier—effective that it's fair and that it gives people the incentive to get these guns out and in the police's hands or in hands of the buy-back scheme as quickly as we possibly can because for it to work effectively we need to get them all. That's the next piece I want to turn to because I think that as this Act is reviewed going forward—and it no doubt will be—and as the second tranche of legislation comes to the House it's essential that we find ways of extracting the weapons out of those people who have no reason to own them and have no licence to own them because the underworld will have many of these guns. There will be many of them in unknown places in New Zealand.How we get them out is going to be most important to the success of this whole piece of legislation because a failure to do that of course will mean the legislation effectively has failed. So I think we need to make sure that in the course of the next few months and the next piece of legislation we find very effective ways of getting those guns out of our community and getting them destroyed basically. It's essential that that happens.I want to say a brief word about the 250000 people who currently have gun licences in New Zealand many of whom will own pieces of equipment—weapons and bits of weapons—that are no longer available. Before this event happened they were perfectly legal and law-abiding citizens of New Zealand. I make no apology for the fact that they will have to give those weapons up—I think that's part of the game—but they will feel a little victimised. I think that we should make sure that that process is as easy and as pleasant for them as possible because they were as I said perfectly law-abiding citizens of New Zealand and they had complied with every piece of the law. So I think a little sympathy for them needs to be expressed in this House not because I think as I said we need to make an apology for doing what we've done—it's absolutely essential that we did what we did and they will play their part in that I'm sure because they are as I said law-abiding citizens of New Zealand.I don't have much more to add to that. I think it is a very important piece of legislation for New Zealand going forward and I think it will go a long way. Once we get the effective buy-back in place it will go a long way to ensuring that anyone who has a weapon like this in New Zealand clearly shouldn't have it and so that will make it very easy for the police to manage.The last piece of stuff I want to briefly talk about—and the Minister spoke about it earlier today—is the fact that the less people who have access to these guns the easier it is to control it. I think whilst there's always going to be a need for these types of weapons in New Zealand and a specific need for them we need to make sure as we go forward that that need is catered for in a reasonable manner. So I'm pleased to commend this bill to the House. I think it's an extremely important bit of legislation and I'm pleased to have been part of a very efficient system—the select committee—that put that in place. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.