Andersen GinnyHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. This is the first of four tranches of firearms reforms being undertaken by this Government. The first being firearm prohibition orders (FPOs) second being loosening the safety regulations on pistol and non-pistol ranges the third being reviewing the firearms registry and the fourth is rewriting the Arms Act. The FPO's regime is somewhat counterintuitive. The first pillar is at contradiction to the second the third and the fourth of this range of reforms because it's with its National Party hand that this Government is claiming it's making it harder for criminals to get a gun with FPOs But with its ACT Party hand it is making it easier by loosening the safety restrictions on guns and ranges and weakening the firearms registry. Nicole McKee is on record saying regarding the firearms registry I think the full A category licensing regime is not going to be effective. It's going to be too costly. It's going to make people fearful for their own safety." So we have the Minister responsible for firearm prohibition orders stating that the gun of choice by criminals which is the Alfa Carbine rifle—easily cut down—would be excluded from pillar three of this range of reforms. Therefore endangering front-line police and communities. So my point is what is the purpose of introducing a strengthened firearms prohibition order regime when in the same tranche of reforms firearms are able to be more easily accessed by criminals if our firearms registry is undermined and A category weapons such as Alfa Carbines are excluded from them?The Labour Party opposes the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Amendment Bill for two main reasons. The first one is that we believe that there has been insufficient time for the regime introduced under the Labour Government that introduced firearm prohibition orders to sufficiently bed in. The process right through—the select committee process submissions the information that we received from officials nowhere in that information was there an evaluation of the existing scheme in terms of how it was working and whether or not there was any need to strengthen the existing regime. And that is a real concern. We have a Government that is introducing warrantless causeless search powers without even taking the time to evaluate whether the existing firearm prohibition orders scheme is operating well or not.Because the truth is they don't care whether it's operating well or not. They've made an election promise and they want to deliver on that irrespective of what is working well or not now and irrespective of the actual impact it will make. And even more as I've pointed out they're undermining the whole purpose of this by weakening the firearms registry and making A category weapons potentially far more able to be accessed by criminals and far harder for our police officers to be able to track them.The second main reason that we oppose this bill is that we consider the new search powers to be too broad and they could be exercised without cause to suspect a person is in fact breaching their firearm prohibition order. Where we got to was—the scenario we worked through is that if you had a friend and unbeknown to you they had a firearm prohibition order on them if that person came to your house or was in your car the police would be able to come in and search my whole house if the friend was at dinner. I might not know that person had a firearm prohibition order on them. The police only need to suspect that that person has a firearm prohibition order on them in order for a warrantless search of that entire premises. That is how this law currently runs and that gives very wide and sweeping powers that are able to now be used in New Zealand once this passes.The firearm prohibition legislation passed under the last Government strengthened the existing provisions under search and surveillance to be able to enable those to work. In addition to this new search powers were also introduced under the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Act which enables police to apply for up to 14-day warrant from a judge when there has been inter-gang conflict or heightened tensions. It is this new provision under the CAIL or Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Act that has worked very effectively in a number of situations right across New Zealand where there have been heightened gang tensions and police have stated that this is a strong tool to have in the kit to enable that. The benefit of that search power is it's confined to a 14-day period not a carte blanche search for any time. It's when it's needed when there's heightened tensions those powers are able to be called upon. Many submitters during the time at select committee raised concerns that this search power was too broad and could be exercised without cause to suspect that a person was breaching the conditions of their FPO. The legislation would also mean as I've already pointed out that someone who was in the company of someone is able to have their vehicle or complete house be searched. The problem we have with measures like this is it really is window dressing. It's window dressing to show that an increase of power is going to help police work more effectively where in the same day we see close to 250 jobs being cut from Police. These are people who directly help the front line operate who will have a direct role in supporting and enabling front-line police to be able to do their job effectively and get back out on the street. To not be tied up with paperwork and filling out warrants and doing all the work you need to prepare to go to court. Those people are being laid off which means sworn police officers will now have to do much of the paperwork that FPOs will be—the follow up work and the work around preparing for court and going to apply for one of these. That work will now be falling more to front-line police officers due to the fact that we've had all of those non-sworn police workers now without a job.So that's why I feel that mechanisms like this—increasing search powers—are window dressing to show the shop front's looking great but if you take a look behind the scenes it's not working so well at all. In fact there's going to be more and more pressure on our front line to have to do this work as well as all of the other work required with all of those jobs being cut from within Police.The other point I would make is that it's going to be really difficult to identify the person as a gang member and what is the process for demonstrating they're affiliated with the gang? There's a provision now that you're able to get out of a firearm prohibition order early and they have to demonstrate good behaviour in order to do that. So this is for someone who's got an FPO on them. There's a new provision now you can have that lifted. That's an area in the bill we still believe is quite unclear and we're unsure why they've put that into place.I could go on in lots of areas but the main point I would like to sum up with is really the stark contradiction in the suite of firearms reforms that we have proclaiming to get tougher on criminals to try and make sure they don't get their hands on dangerous weapons but in the same suite we have changes to the regulations and safety requirements on our guns and ranges which now means there's no recording of sales and ammunition. That's a loophole that has been exploited and used by a terrorist to train on a range. There's now a loophole there where a criminal can get hands on ammunition and that previously didn't exist.Secondly as I've already stated with guns not being included in the firearms registry the other area which is still a real concern is that the Minister responsible still wants to see military style semi-automatic weapons—have that ban lifted and have them able to be used on ranges and in competitions. What is the point of having an FPO if this Government is going to bring back military style semi-automatic weapons? It's just ludicrous. This is window dressing that shows this Government wants to look tough but when we take a look under the hood there is a big mess going on right here and it's New Zealanders' safety and police officers' safety that's at risk."