Mooney Joseph; O'Connor GregJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Mr Speaker and congratulations on your appointment. Look I'm rising to speak on the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill. So this is something that the National Party supports. It's a bill that protects undercover officers investigating a suspected offence from liability in respect of those offences and also in respect of the offences of conspiring or attempting to commit those offences and other specified offences. So it disqualifies anyone who has one of these prohibition orders from holding a firearms licence and it provides that a person who has had at any time a firearms prohibition order made against them can't be found a fit and proper person to be in possession of a firearm or an airgun. It defines the circumstances under which the FPO the firearms prohibition order can be made the effect of it the standing conditions and the provisions for variation of the standing conditions and also the provision for special conditions commencement and duration modification replacement and appeals against decisions to make or not to make an FPO. It also makes it an offence to breach a firearms prohibition order or to supply firearms or other related items to a person who is subject to that firearms prohibition order. The bill says that a court can make a firearms prohibition order against an offender who is 18 years or over if they are convicted of a specified offence in the Arms Act 1983 the Crimes Act 1961 or the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. The court must be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that it's reasonable necessary and appropriate to issue one of these orders in order to manage the risk that the offender poses to public safety. The bill also sets out a series of standard and special conditions for a firearms prohibition order and the penalties of breaching those conditions. The order continues in force for 10 years and will take effect from either the date the order was made or where the offender is sentenced to a term of imprisonment from the date that they are released from custody. So this is certainly to address an issue that has been deeply concerning to our communities in recent times unfortunately with a rise of illegal firearms' use. Particularly in our biggest city Auckland unfortunately far too many firearms are being used on streets—particularly in what appear to be gang wars. So this gives the police an additional toolset which they can use to address those persons who certainly should not be in possession of firearms and which gives the court the power to issue one of these orders against them and enables the police to have those additional powers. The National Party does have some disappointments with this bill despite supporting it. The National Party's of the view that it did take too long for the Government to bring it in as it was recommended to them in 2017 for their first hundred days. However they vetoed several attempts to bring this critical safety measure into force. It is good however that they are doing this now. The National Party's also of the view that it's disappointing the Government did not listen to the Police Association or the Opposition and put some warrantless search powers into the bill to enforce the ability of the police to address the issues of people of particular concern. In the words of the Police Association This bill will not be a game changer without those powers." However again I would say that at least this is a step in the right direction and does give some additional powers to the police and to the courts in respect of persons who should not ever be in possession of firearms. Mark Mitchell has a Supplementary Order Paper which would give police greater powers to get firearms out of the hands of those who pose a danger to the community. Those new powers would allow police to search the person and vehicles of people who are subject to a firearms prohibition order for firearms at any time.So the objective of the bill is to ensure that the person subject to one of these orders will not be able to use access or be around firearms. The person will also not be able to live in or visit locations where there are firearms or associate with someone who has them in their physical possession unless permitted by the court. So there are some quite strict conditions around this and this is to address that issue of persons who the court has determined need these particular conditions because of their risk factors that the court can take into account and that they should not ever be—at least during this time frame that the court determines of 10 years in force of these firearms prohibition orders. So with that I commend the bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The sitting will resume at 7 p.m.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m."