Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I often say that select committees are where Parliament is at its best and I think that the work that we have done on the Finance and Expenditure Committee on this particular bill has been Parliament at its best that I have seen in my time at Parliament. That was because there was very much a common purpose and there was a common purpose also that enabled each party and each member of that committee to voice their views and for each to feel—and I certainly felt and I'm sure my colleagues from the National Party did—that our views were heard and even when we were not successful in promoting everything we thought should go in the bill we were given an opportunity to voice those and to have them recorded in our National Party view on the bill.This bill is not going to solve every issue around firearms. It is not going to stop someone being murdered with a firearm. But what it does do is it severely limits the ability of someone with murderous intent to go out and to get a military-style semi-automatic or a semi-automatic with a capacity to hold more than five rounds in it to then do damage. There is one reason to shoot a gun other than obviously target practice: the gun is designed to kill. The gun is not designed for anything else. It can kill animals it can kill people—that's what it does. And so from my point of view I look at the gun from the point of view of growing up on a farm on a dairy farm. My father had been a very keen hunter before World War II but as he said to me when he came back from World War II he didn't want to go hunting any more and I can understand that. But it was certainly something that was encouraged for my brothers on the farm and I have a brother who is a very keen collector and hunter and obviously many relatives like that. They are going to have what they have been able to do severely restricted and that is because Parliament has taken the stance that we do want to restrict access to guns that don't just kill but can kill a lot of people in a very short period of time. I think that is the big difference. We can certainly understand that firearms of any sort can kill but the big difference is a large number of people killed in a very short period of time without any opportunity for there to be a reaction or let's say an interruption in what they're trying to do. I don't see any reason why we need military-style semi-automatics or semi-automatics with very large cartridges in a country like New Zealand. Yes we do have pests. Yes we do have people who need to be able to shoot them but all the people that I'm aware of who shoot for hunting purposes tend to know how to aim and to shoot and to get their target. I'm sure they don't need 30 rounds to kill a deer. I'm sure they don't need 30 rounds to do anything. And the fact is that having the access to firearms at that level of lethality is simply totally unnecessary in a country like New Zealand. We are not a war zone and we do not wish to become a war zone. We are in fact a peaceful country and our peaceful life has been completely destroyed—or certainly interrupted—by someone with murderous intent and that is why we have had the opportunity to come to this bill. We've known for a long time that we have far too many high-capacity guns in New Zealand. Various reports—the Thorp report as an example was one entered into in 1997-98. Efforts were made and stopped: too hard too difficult too many people to be upset—all of these things. We also had various other attempts over the years and I certainly had various attempts to bring about law changes and two pretty minor law changes were able to be got through. Anything to do with firearms has always been met with a tremendous lobby from a group in the firearms community that I do not believe for a moment represent most firearm owners. When you've got 240000 New Zealanders who are licensed firearm users those people are not all part of the groups who think that they should have very high capacity semi-automatic weapons. We think it's important to look at a few things that are also not in the current bill and we in the National Party view this as an opportunity with the promised second tranche of legislation and more detail to come to address some of those. We are concerned at the delegation of power to the executive in charge of criminal law around what can be banned in the future. We know that this is something that may have to happen but then we are also very concerned that there needs to be a flow-on effect in terms of this House getting to change the law permanently. We are also concerned about no exemption for international sporting competitions. Our concern there is that we know that there is a regime that works very very well around weapons and that is around pistols. I was most impressed—and I think many on the committee were most impressed—with the submission from the Pistol Association and also around the regime that's been in place since the 1980s around who can own a pistol and how many times they have to turn up to a pistol club what their vetting is. It is thorough. It is so much more thorough than for any other weapon and there's a reason that it's thorough because of course pistols can be much easier to hide to be able to use without people knowing someone's got them in the first place. But the other thing with pistols though—they're not talking at the moment about having the sorts of massive magazines that some of these semi-automatic weapons have had in the past. So I'm concerned to make sure that we do help people in the international sporting competitions but that we do so in a very careful and very deliberate way. I am also concerned that there is no detail really on the amnesty and buy-back scheme. I think that this whole piece of legislation will work—what it will be based on is whether or not the buy-back scheme works. That is crucial otherwise why bother? We do not want to be party to criminalising 240000 New Zealanders—and of course we're not—and we do not want to be party to criminalising people who have legally purchased weapons that Parliament has previously said they could. So we expect those people to have a very good and thorough amnesty and buy-back scheme. There are questions around parts—whether or not there will be a buy-back on them—and there are questions around dealers. I think that the Government needs to come up with a thorough scheme that works on the basis of the fair price rather than a set price. I think anything less than a fair price is going to be met with resistance that we should not want to have. I also think this is an opportunity for the Government to revisit its previous opposition to firearms prohibition orders that were very much supported by the Law and Order Committee that met through 2016 and reported in 2017. Those will enable the Commissioner of Police to designate a gang member who had serious violent and firearms offences as someone with a firearms prohibition order. That would be able to be reviewed by the District Court and it would be something that would enable police when they suspected that there were firearms being kept by that person to be able to search the property. I would have thought that was a smart thing to do. It's the sort of thing that is available in some of the Australian states where they have very similar legislation to what we're talking about.The other thing with that is that we have some gang members who have come out and said that they're not going to give up their firearms. It is important for law-abiding New Zealanders with firearms—those firearms that are not subject to an exemption under this bill—that they know that those people who are not law-abiding New Zealanders who have stolen weapons or have weapons they should not have are giving up theirs too. They will want to know that the law is being fairly applied and that they're not treated as though they are the criminals when they're not the criminals.I think it's really important that Parliament overwhelmingly and hopefully unanimously—I cross my fingers as I say this—supports this bill. It is really important for us to do this and it is really important that when this becomes law we get in behind and help the Government to come up with some good decisions particularly around the amnesty and buy-back scheme and also the exemptions around sporting competitions. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this bill Mr Assistant Speaker.