Bishop Chris; Mallard TrevorCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party to lend our support to the Arms (Prohibited Firearms Magazines and Parts) Amendment Bill. In the start of my contribution I want to on behalf of the party acknowledge the Prime Minister for her remarks in opening this third reading debate and also acknowledge her leadership in the hours and days and weeks following the shooting. I have received many comments in the last few weeks around your leadership Prime Minister and I think all of New Zealand has been impressed by your steadfastness at a time of great trial for our country. I also want to acknowledge the Minister Stuart Nash who has worked quite collaboratively with those of us in the Opposition on this regime that we're about to pass into law. And I want to acknowledge Michael Wood who chaired the committee in I think a very good fashion—a quick fashion but a very good fashion.There are three incontrovertible facts about what happened on 15 March. Number one: the shooter had a firearms licence. Number two: he had legal weapons—albeit illegally modified but they were legal weapons. Thirdly: using those legal weapons and with a firearms licence 50 people were massacred in cold blood in a place of worship where they should have been at peace and at prayer. I've been personally reflecting quite deeply on that and I have to say I thought about it almost straight away actually because as our police spokesperson with responsibility for firearms one of my first thoughts following the news on that Friday night was: how did this happen and where's this going to go next? I thought it was pretty inevitable what the Prime Minister came out and said on that Friday night and I agreed with it.I spent most of the weekend thinking about it and then on Sunday I remembered what an individual who owns a gun shop had told me. I won't name the person but as part of my work in the police portfolio and firearms I've been going around the country. I now remember a man saying to me There is a loophole in our law. The loophole is: if you wanted to do something like Christchurch you get an AR-15 and you get a high-capacity magazine and you've got it—that's what you can do." I remember thinking when I was told that some months ago just how wrong it was and I've been reflecting quite deeply on that over the last few days and weeks. There is a loophole in the law and it's that exact loophole that the individual exploited on the evening of Friday 15 March.It is true that these weapons are designed to kill. They can be used for legitimate purposes—we've talked about it in the Finance and Expenditure Committee—with an exemption regime but their fundamental purpose is to kill. I think it is undoubtedly true that this will make New Zealand a safer place. New Zealand will be a better country for having as many weapons like this off the streets.There are people who say gangs and other criminals won't respect the law and there will be people who abuse the law like there always are. There will always be criminals and actually we need to do more to take illegal weapons off our gangs. I hope that the Government will work with us in good faith in phase two around firearms prohibition orders. I think they're a common-sense change that I think everyone can get behind.We do need to do more and it is true that there will be people who don't give up their guns but as with what happened in Australia post-1996 when John Howard that great Australian Prime Minister showed leadership as well and the number of guns reduced and the vast majority of people handed back their guns in exchange for compensation the country became a safer place—and actually just like Australia became a safer place New Zealand will become a safer place as well. That is fundamentally why the National Party is supporting this. We thought it was important that the Parliament speak as unanimously as possible that we put to rest once and for all the ongoing debate around military-style semi-automatics and semi-automatics generally and actually when 99 percent of Parliament speaks with essentially one voice in some ways it's a lot easier to withstand the political consequences.Now we have the Labour Party in Government alongside New Zealand First and I acknowledge the braveness of the position that they took. Mr Patterson and Ron Mark and the Rt Hon Winston Peters as Deputy Prime Minister—quite a brave position actually for them to take alongside a Labour Cabinet to work alongside the National Party and the Green Party as well for Parliament to speak with as unanimous a voice as possible. Hopefully the politicking around this will now essentially cease because we are going to say once and for all that with very rare exceptions military-style weapons are not welcome in New Zealand.I welcome the exemptions in the bill. I think it is important that we have commercial pest control for example. I think it is important that heirlooms mementos are well dealt with. We spent quite a bit of time at committee trying to get that regime as right as possible. I suspect that there will have to be a few modifications in phase two of the reforms but I think it's important that Parliament sends the message that antiques and historical artefacts mementos are largely untouched by this bill.I do want to say that I do genuinely think there is a role for international sporting competitions when it comes to semi-automatic weapons. I think it is possible as I've just made the point in the committee stage—we think it is possible—to design a regime where a small amount of people have access to semi-automatics to compete internationally. They don't compete in the Olympics they don't compete in the Commonwealth Games but there are people who compete on the world stage in some cases doing very well for New Zealand and if we can design a regime around pistols around pistol clubs and pistol competitions—and we were told by the officials that that regime is working well—it must be within the competence of Parliament to do the same around international sporting competitions. I extend the hand of friendship to the Minister again to try and work through that. Potentially that's something that's going to come in phase two.But overall the committee worked very collaboratively together. It was a quick process but we heard from lots of different people and we did receive good advice from the police and the various officials were well shepherded as I say by Michael Wood in the chair. We produced a report that I think has improved the bill and now we've reach the third reading. Parliament has acted very swiftly. As I mentioned before it was important that Parliament do that swiftly and I agree with the remarks around the Prime Minister as to why Parliament had to act so fast.In the end I just finish my remarks by returning to where I started my contribution which is that on 15 March the man who caused such carnage in one of our most beautiful cities had a firearms licence. He had legal weapons. In the future that will not be allowed to be the case and hopefully the third incontrovertible fact about 15 March will not happen in the future which is the senseless massacre of 50 people at prayer. Thank you Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: Michael Wood for a five-minute call."