Hipkins Chris; O'Connor GregThird ReadingHon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Police): I move That the Arms (Licence Holders' Applications for New Licences) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.Law-abiding firearms owners shouldn't be affected by firearms licence - processing delays. It is the aim of this bill to ensure that law-abiding citizens can continue to legally use and possess firearms. The scope of this bill is quite a tight one. It's designed to ensure that this matter can be dealt with as quickly as possible. I do want to thank members across the House for their goodwill in helping to facilitate the speedy passage of this bill. I do acknowledge that the select committee process was therefore a very truncated one. Some firearms licence holders have already been affected because their licence has expired and they've been waiting for a new licence to be approved. In the meantime they find themselves potentially unlawfully possessing firearms. That is an unacceptable situation. They should not be placed in that situation and this bill will remedy that matter.The number of licence holders in this situation is going to continue to grow as we reach the 10-year peak caused of course by the decision taken by this House in 1992 to do away with lifetime firearms licences and move to 10-year licences. These 10-year peaks are not new. They have occurred regularly and this bill will hopefully bring that matter to a close and this will be the last time we have to go through this experience. There are of course some additional challenges that do make the Police's job more difficult in that regard. There is increased scrutiny required for licence applications following the royal commission of inquiry into the terrorist attack on the Christchurch mosques. And of course they've also been dealing with the impacts of COVID-19 - related delays because of lockdowns and the like. The Police have been making operational changes to ensure that they're processing licences as quickly and expeditiously as they can. However that alone will not be sufficient to ensure that more firearms licence holders are not placed in the situation where they effectively are unable to comply. So this bill deals with the issue by ensuring that they all continue to be legal in their possession of firearms even whilst they're waiting for their new licence to be approved. Finally there is a technical matter which is that the bill allows for electronic notices to be issued electronically. I'm going to go through this in detail because I know it's been an issue that has been discussed. The current Arms Act does enable electronic notices to be issued through the registry but this needed to be expanded to enable electronic notices directly to an email address. An amendment was made during the select committee to ensure that this is delivered to an electronic email address that the recipient has agreed to use as the address for service. The bill will improve efficiencies for licence holders range operators and the police by enabling these notices to be issued using electronic means. A number of people in the community do prefer that and of course there are challenges even with traditional mail. Those challenges are only going to continue to grow as traditional mail becomes less and less frequent and as we become more and more used to not using it any more. People don't empty their letterboxes every day in the way they used to and there are going to be challenges either way. Electronic means of communication is the way of the present and the way of the future and so we do need to allow for that to be used more broadly in this context.Again I want to thank the select committee for its very speedy consideration of the bill and I want to thank the House for the goodwill that has been shown in ensuring that this bill can pass through its remaining stages quickly.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.