McKee Nicole; Kuriger BarbaraHon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice): Thank you Madam Chair. I'll address the two questions that have been asked by the member from the Greens and the member from the Labour Party. To the first one from the member from the Greens Scott Willis. When you initiated the five minutes that you had to talk about licensed firearm owners who also commit crimes and spoke of the heinous one that we all are aware of that man did not have a firearms prohibition order (FPO) upon him and this bill is about those that do have firearms prohibition orders. But what's really I think quite important to note is that any licensed firearm owner that commits a crime—especially any of those 42 crimes that are within the old three-strikes regime and the new crimes that have been elected under the Misuse of Drugs Act the Arms Act the Psychoactive Substances Act and of course the three under the Crimes Act as well—any licensed firearm owner that does commit a crime in that space is more than likely going to have a firearms prohibition order placed upon them and then they will come under this regime.But I understand your concern and I'd just like to I guess advise the member that those that have current licenses licensed firearm owners actually are kept abreast by police of the way that they behave. They come to the attention of police if they do things like get multiple speeding tickets have a drink-driving conviction. And I would argue that licensed firearm owners are actually more looked upon by New Zealand Police than any other member of society for their compliance with the law and every law in New Zealand full stop. But once they break that law and if they commit any serious crime punishable by one year or more and any of those crimes that we've mentioned then they are eligible for a firearms prohibition order. And of course that means that they cannot frequent ranges they cannot go into retail stores that sell firearms they can't be around firearms or people with firearms. It would be unfortunate for them to get to that point but that's part of the conditions if they break those rules.When it comes to the person that you had mentioned there's an ongoing coronial inquiry at the moment as to how that person even obtained a licence in the first place. And I think that is a completely different argument—or not even an argument but discussion—to be had in the House in upcoming months as we look to rewrite the Arms Act.But for the firearms prohibition orders it's of no relevance for this particular bill that's going through. But I just want to assure the member that should a licensed firearm owner actually break the law and commit any of those crimes it is more than likely they will have an FPO placed upon them. And more importantly because they do know people with firearms and probably do have a whole lot of friend groups and associates it is really important that we are able to allow police to monitor the compliance with that FPO on those particular people.You ask what is an appropriate consequence for an unreasonable search of somebody? What safeguards are in place? I'd just like to reassure the member that we currently do have some safeguards. So as it mentions in the bill the search must be for the purpose of monitoring compliance with the FPO. It's not about looking for drugs or looking for other weapons it's about the compliance of the FPO. If the search is for another purpose the search could be found to be unreasonable under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 which we have discussed. And if this happened the evidence could be deemed to be inadmissible in court and the Crown could be liable to pay damages to the person. So not only would the evidence be inadmissible for prosecution if deemed so in circumstances where the Crown may have to pay damages—and there is already significant case law about this. So the member's tabled amendment I believe it already reflects current law and opportunities to look for redress where it is deemed that the search has been unreasonable or even breached the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act; we have case law already to allow for people to seek compensation.Moving to the member from the Labour Party who was asking about section 18 and section 18AA and the differences people need to understand that when criminals have firearms they tend to try and hide them they're not open with the fact that they have them. And people with firearms prohibition orders have been identified quite rightly as posing a very high risk to public safety. This new search power allows for the proactive monitoring of their compliance with the conditions of the firearms prohibition orders and those conditions can vary because the judge decides what those conditions are going to be on the individual. Under the current settings the searches can only be conducted where police have reasonable grounds to suspect an offence has been or is about to be committed and this late point of intervention limits the public safety benefits from the regime. We do not as I had mentioned earlier want police to be getting into a situation where a firearm is being presented at them because they weren't able to take it away when they were searching under compliance. It's really important that we give police those tools.When you asked about how the police are going to operate under this regime they're developing the guidance on how they're going to use this new power. Police have a lot of experience in searching people doing it in a reasonable manner complying with the law when they do it because if they don't do it right in the first place a lot of the evidence that they find will become inadmissible and we end up having criminals who were in possession of firearms potentially either using them against our front line which is unacceptable or getting away with it. We can't be having that. We've got to support our front line here. So the police will develop the operational guidance on how they will utilise this new power this Section 18AA. In all respect I believe that we're doing the right thing by allowing them to be able to try and take the guns off the gangs before they're used against our front line.CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): I'm going to take a call from Arena Williams but I am starting to hear some repeat questions from Part 1. Part 2 is actually really around the amendment to the Sentencing Act and the amendments to the Search and Surveillance Act is most of it. So I'm going to be listening very carefully now to questions on those two specific things rather than go over the some of the ground that we've already traversed.