SpeechSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Oh thank you very much Madam Speaker. It's always good to let the House know that I'll only speak for five minutes or close to it—it won't be a 10-minute oration. Look National—as per the earlier speakers—is supporting this bill. I've used the quote before and members will know it. Dr Emily Henderson will know this quote from Voltaire: The perfect is the enemy of the good." and ultimately we think this is a good bill. It's not a perfect bill. It's not the absolute—I don't know—sinecure or solution which the Government is putting forward. There are positives to this bill but it does not go far enough and I suppose that at this third reading the other message I'd like to put out to the public is that in some ways this is just a very light touch on what should be some more substantial—again to repeat that: more substantial—legal changes required. So the idea that we can better recover ill-gotten funds from those New Zealanders involved in crimes—particularly gangs—is a good thing. I don't think anyone in this House disagrees with that. I'm no lawyer but it's a bit of a legal switch from normally the onus of proof being usually on the Crown to prove that you have gotten these gains inappropriately shall we say but this bill says that ultimately we go to the person who's got thousands of dollars of cash or motorcycles houses or whatever gains and say "How on earth do you have these? You need to prove to us that you have not got these through illegitimate or"—of course—"criminal means." So conceptually we're all for that. As other speakers have touched on part of the rub around this bill was that it expands it to not just the likes of gangs and well-known criminals but their associates. So we're talking family members in particular but also friends and let's be really really clear that it's incredibly well-known that—and I'll just use gangs as an example. I want to stress that it's an example; it's not the example. Crime is committed by many people outside of gangs but gangs are prolific. They put those ill-gotten gains into the hands of their family members to in effect hide what they're doing. This bill does go some way to address that and the Justice Committee spent a lot of time trying to tease this through to make sure we were targeting the right associates and that there was the right threshold—for want of a better term—in order to initiate this and the right abilities for those people to be able to speak and to challenge what is happening. I think we're in an OK place and I use that term quite specifically. I don't think we're in a great place and I want to be really really clear in this third reading that I don't think that's a failure of the select committee or MPs or whatever. This is just a very difficult area and so it would be my expectation that we will end up revisiting this law at some point to try and tighten it up. The other element which was of concern was the threshold which I think is at $30000. There's been a lot of debate across the House over whether that should have been lower. I certainly sit on that side. I think it's better to trigger the law and trigger this particular piece of legislation earlier rather than not and then to allow the process to follow through. As I said at the start the perfect is the enemy of the good and I think National ultimately is happy to see this go through but we would of course like to see a lot more. If I could return to where I started: overall I think for the general public to understand the Government is making some moves but these are very very small moves in an area which is crime and we are seeing much much more crime—much more violent crime in particular—in our communities. To the public: do not be fooled that these are actually substantial steps towards a solution. They are steps indeed but not sufficient for what is required.My last plea particularly when we are talking about crime is a call—particularly with the events in recent days—for the laws to be rightly and justly applied to all people in all circumstances. I don't want to go down the rabbit-hole of the protests of the weekend but it's the plea to those in justice and the police that when it comes to criminal activity prosecute the law without fear or favour towards all people regardless of circumstance politics or ideologies. It's incredibly important that the rule of law be maintained and that the police undertake the activities and the protections of all New Zealanders of all their basic freedoms and rights at all times regardless of the politics. Sadly I think that in recent days we've seen the failure there and doubly so the failure to protect women in our community. But on that I commend the bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Tangi Utikere—a five-minute call."