Clendon David: Summary Offences (Possession of Hand-held Lasers) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Summary Offences (Possession of Hand-held Lasers) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13741. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take a brief call on this Summary Offences (Possession of Hand-held Lasers) Amendment Bill. I have to say that when the Greens first sighted this bill we were somewhat ambivalent about it because of its inclusiveness. This point has been touched on—the fact that it does indeed make it an offence to possess any laser pointer means that even people carrying them would have to rely on fairly thin defences based on reasonable grounds and reasonable cause. We found that slightly less than persuasive in terms of the way the bill is worded. So as I say we are ambivalent about it. The inclusiveness is counting against it. It does in some way reflect Dr Calder’s personality. He is a very inclusive sort of fellow—not at all of the prophylactic sort of nature that Mr Bennett referred to. I was rather surprised to hear that.But more seriously I guess I was somewhat more persuaded to support this bill albeit we see it as flawed when I learnt that there are something like 100 incidents a year—twice a week effectively—where aircraft are endangered by misuse of these instruments these items. I would not suggest for a minute that anybody in this House would vote according to self-interest but it must be recognised that as MPs we all spend an awful lot of time at airports and in the air so of all people we are quite sensitive to the safety of air travel in New Zealand. If this is occurring twice a week—and of course I take Dr Calder at his word; I am sure it is well-grounded information—then that is a very serious problem. It is almost inevitable if it is happening a couple of times a week that at some point a pilot will lose control through being blasted with light losing his night vision or whatever it might be and we will see a tragedy occur.Having said that we do nevertheless feel that clearly the regulations are going to be put in place and given some work through the Ministry of Health and elsewhere to restrict the import of the high-powered instruments that are inevitably—well they are invariably going to present some danger if they are in the wrong hands. That was part of our objection initially—that the bill was focused at the wrong place to restrict the import of these. As I understand it I could purchase myself online tonight a very high-powered laser and wave it about willy-nilly with very little risk of being prosecuted unless I actively sought to disrupt an aircraft or a vehicle or whatever it might be. But I do think that now it seems that regulations will be in place perhaps this year to put some serious controls around the import of these things.They do have legitimate uses and astronomers are mentioned in this. I had the very fortunate experience about 2 years ago of visiting the Mount John Observatory inTekapō on a very dark very cold night. In the midst of an extraordinary experience which I would recommend to anybody who has not done it I saw those lasers being used appropriately by astronomers and people presenting to tourists and visitors to indicate constellations. They do have legitimate uses and I see that researchers and the Defence Force also have a reason to use these high-powered things.The notion as the bill is drafted is that anyone owning even a very very low-powered very inoffensive instrument could be liable to prosecution if they could not demonstrate reasonable cause. I think we have common ground with our Labour colleagues here. We would like to see some tightening up of the drafting and I am sure that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee will do some creative work. I accept Dr Calder’s analogy about possessing knives. Nobody is offended by someone carrying a pocket knife but walking through an urban environment with a large hunting knife in your pocket clearly would raise some questions about your purpose.But essentially we see that the intention of this bill is clear—and we respect that—to protect air travel drivers people who ought to be protected from the potential dangers inherent in these very very high-powered instruments. We do expect and we would like to see some redrafting of the bill just to perhaps put some clarity about the class 1 lasers for example which could be exempt perhaps but I will leave that to the select committee. So for the moment we are supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee. We look forward to being part of the debate about making it a better bill and achieving the ultimate goal of it which is about protecting people from the malicious use of these things. Kia ora.