Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise and I will congratulate the member who's had his bill pulled from the ballot. I'm sure it's very exciting but I do have to note that—Chris Bishop: It is. It's happened three times now—it's great.GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Well congratulations Mr Bishop. It's been three times. Unfortunately this particular time—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: We always thought you were a jammy prick!GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Ha ha! Unfortunately on this particular occasion the bill does seem to be seeking to solve or address a problem that's near non-existent based on the stats and based on my 12 years working in the criminal justice system at the front lines of the system that this bill will go on to be implemented in.The police say that the instances of patched gang members being issued a firearms licence are very rare" and I do have to start with—and we should all come back to—the Arms Act 1983 which actually gives the power to any commissioned police officer to decline or revoke firearms licences if they are of the opinion that the person is not a fit and proper person to hold that licence. That includes looking at their previous convictions and other indications that they may be violent or erratic or improper as the Act says to hold a firearms licence.So what are we adding here? What are we adding by talking about gangs? Could it be that we are just adding a little bit of what our justice system has been built on over the past nine years which is knee-jerk reactions oversimplifications and drawing on a whole lot of prejudice? We're not basing this justice policy on evidence. We're not basing it on any actual need even. We're costing the taxpayer a whole lot more money in implementing this whilst we should actually stop and admit that all this does is broaden the scope of instances where police can search someone without a warrant.Warrantless searches—it's a slippery slope right? We already have a standard for assessing whether or not someone is a fit and proper person to hold a firearms licence. What we're doing now is we're saying that police can stop people based on a mere suspicion without having to get any judicial oversight without having to meet the standards of our normal search warrants which we have in our justice system because we believe in due process and we believe in people's rights to be free from arbitrary search and seizure. We're doing away with that for what? Because in very rare instances based on the police's own report there may be a patched gang member that holds a firearms licence.Well we all know that there are demographics attached to the kinds of people that get stopped and arbitrarily searched the kinds of people who then get charged the kinds of people who are sentenced to lengthy periods of imprisonment and we have to look at who our criminal justice system targets disproportionately in that way—and it is young Māori men. So we're making a marginalised group who's already suffering—disproportionately imprisoned disproportionately not accessing the kinds of things that they need to stay crime-free—more vulnerable to warrantless searches by the police to arbitrarily being stopped and searched by association.We don't have guilt by association in New Zealand for good reason and it's laws like this it's justice policies like this that open up our communities to prejudice. Nothing in this bill will actually solve a problem that exists. Nothing in this bill will actually stop crime committed by way of firearms or not. We're just adding more knee-jerk reaction types of baseless justice policy to our system.We on this side of the House are committed to bringing down the prison population to actually addressing crime to putting in funding not to stop people not to constantly harass people on the street not to make ourselves look tough on crime but actually to address the causes of offending by putting that money into drug and alcohol addiction services mental health services and by investing in jobs houses and the stability of our communities. So the Green Party won't be supporting this bill because it really doesn't address a live problem in our justice system; it creates more. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."