Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): I am so proud of us. We have worked so hard over quite a short period of time and we have worked in the Finance and Expenditure Committee to get the best bill that we could in the shortest amount of time. Even when we have not agreed we have been able to be civil and adult and that is something that I think we can pat ourselves on the back for.I also want to say to New Zealanders who have purchased guns over the years that are now going to be following the Royal assent of this bill prohibited items that they need to hand those in. We need to have—and we have said this in our National Party view in the report—a very good buy-back system in place. We have talked in the last few weeks about how much money that will cost. We know it's a lot of money whichever end of the spectrum we're talking about but I say: how much is a life worth? How much are 50 lives worth? And how many other times could the atrocity that happened in Christchurch happen again?We have already seen that our Anzac Day is coming up our day of national mourning—to me anyway. We in this debating chamber a war memorial to our dead are now seeing our Anzac Day being affected and I've never in my years in Parliament seen us at such a high security level—the highest security level that we've ever had. I don't believe that that's just chance. I don't believe that's just to encourage us to get this bill through. I believe it's there because it's needed and I speak as a former Minister of Police. I would not for a moment expect that that security rating would be in place if it wasn't needed.We've had some very good submissions on this bill from members of the public and I want to thank those people who came and made their submissions—the 20 that we heard. It's less than a week ago although actually those members of the committee I'm sure will agree with me that it feels like it was about three weeks ago—so much has happened since then. I will say that most of the people who came to submit came with a constructive outlook to say what they thought we could improve and we listened to those and some changes were agreed in the select committee particularly around antique firearms what we could do around some of the airsoft and paintball guns—all of those sorts of things—and we also were concerned to make sure as a committee that we gave exemptions around the commercial wild animal and animal pest-control businesses.In the National Party we felt we could have done more for those people who are sports shooters and who engage in international competitions—our competitive shooting sports. We would like to hope that in the second tranche of legislation that could be addressed. I was personally and I think we all were very impressed with the quality of the submission from the pistol shooters' association. They have a very good system which I've heard of before obviously but to have them run through exactly how it worked gave me a lot of confidence in that system being able to be used for people engaged in sporting events where some of these higher calibre or higher capacity weapons are used—that we could bring that in for them.We are concerned about the firearms prohibition orders not being in this bill and we'd like the Minister to come back to us on that. We think that is very important. Why we think that's very important is that most of the people we're talking about whose firearms will now be subject to the law and will be illegal and must be handed in are law-abiding New Zealanders who have purchased their weapons and the accessories and everything else that goes with them from firearms dealers. They have done so within the law and some of those people feel very strongly towards their firearms and their weapons and they in many cases feel that they are being targeted or picked on I could say in more colloquial terms. Those people must know that the Government and Parliament take seriously the fact that we know that some of our violent gang members in New Zealand have firearms that are not legally owned that they do not have licences for and that are also prohibited items under the law. Those people—those law-abiding New Zealanders—need to be encouraged through a very good and generous buy-back scheme to hand in their weapons and they also need to be encouraged by this Parliament saying that we're going to be asking not just law-abiding people to hand in their weapons but also people who are not law-abiding. I think that is something that we are going to want to hear more from the Government on.It's not often that peace breaks out in Parliament but to most intents and purposes—I won't say all" because not entirely—it has over this matter. We have all been deeply moved by what happened in Christchurch by the murder of 50 people and the attempted murder of many more. We have all been deeply moved. It could have happened anywhere. It happened in two mosques. It could have happened in a kindergarten. It could have happened in a church. It could have happened in a school. For any New Zealanders who think well it wasn't some place that they would go it could have been. It could have been anywhere. It's the sort of thing that happens and we could say a person who has done this has done this for particular reasons. It's not only that person we need to be concerned about and worried about—that they have access to firearms—or only people with those sorts of thoughts and those drivers. There are other people as well.I just think that New Zealand cannot continue down the path of having a generally unarmed police force and a highly armed population. We can't have that. We've seen other countries where they have armed police all the time. We've seen where they have great access to firearms. It doesn't necessarily make people safer—not if everyone else has them as well—and so I think that it is important that we do this. This is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we will pass during this Parliament because it's not only about keeping people safe; it's about putting a marker in the sand for our New Zealand culture It's saying that yes firearms are necessary in the agricultural sphere and yes firearms are necessary and desirable for hunters—yes they are—but actually living in Thorndon do you really need one? And the answer for many people will be no.I think there will be more people who hand in their firearms than those who have to under the law. I think there will be people looking at their firearms and saying "Do I need this? Can this be stolen? Can it be used against people? What if my child got access to this?" I hope this legislation makes a real difference to our culture in New Zealand. I hope too that the second tranche and particularly the buy-back scheme addresses the absolute concerns that some gun owners have. I hope that the more quickly we can deal with those issues the better I believe it will be for New Zealanders.In the meantime while people are still waiting for further detail—I know we've got some detail today about the buy-back scheme—and until gun owners can start speaking to other gun owners about them being treated fairly which is what they want then we will have more people putting out false information about what this bill actually says. We've seen quite a lot of that haven't we? Many of us have been subject to a lot of lobbying which people are entitled to do. Some of it has been patently wrong. If we answered all of those emails and other bits of lobbying then we would do nothing else all day. So I think our best answer to those who are concerned about this law is to put the information out there as quickly and as fairly as possible and get that scheme going as soon as possible. This has been a good opportunity for the Government and the Opposition to work together for New Zealand and I would hope that the Government will keep us informed and ask for our support on other matters pertaining to these firearms laws."