Nash StuartHon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I think it's probably wise that I stand up and address the honourable member's Supplementary Order Paper and just give him a little bit of insight into why—well the committee obviously voted it down but I as a Minister didn't think it was a good idea anyway. There are two reasons. First of all as Mr Bishop has highlighted there are a number of exemptions in place at the moment and we looked at those in terms of the ability for those with bona fide licensed and registered pest control businesses. We need to ensure that those who undertake pest control have the ability to do so with the best weapon possible. Now in order to be able to get that exemption they need to be able to prove that there is no other weapon better than one which we are prohibiting under this bill. If they can prove that then they are allowed to do that. In terms of bona fide collectors' mementos we are going to have a look at the collector regime in stage two just to make sure we've got that right as well. We thought that at this stage with the truncated select committee process there was a lot there to consider. Keeping in mind this was about removing these guns from our community we thought that's best dealt with in stage two as well and Mr Bishop mentioned a couple of other exemption regimes. But the problem with any piece of legislation—whether it's firearms whether it's tax or whether it's anything—is the more exemptions you put in place the greater the number of loopholes that we provide for people to abuse the system. Now what we do know and what we learnt in the 2017 inquiry is that gangs or organised crime tend to get the vast majority of their guns through theft—they're stolen. Someone breaks into someone's house and they break into their safe and they steal a gun. Now the vast majority of the time it's not because the person who owned the weapon has been irresponsible; it's just because the thief knows the weapon is there or has fortuitously found this and got hold of the weapon. I feel that if we create an exemption for sports shooters then we would create a whole lot more opportunity for people to own these weapons which we want to get out of our community. The aim of this legislation is to remove as many of these guns as possible from our community. I acknowledge that if we were going to be pure about this we would say Absolutely no exemptions whatsoever." We would possibly follow the Australian model and say "Nothing—every single semi-automatic is gone." That would be the pure way to do it but it would not be the pragmatic way to do it. We looked at sporting competitions and we used the first test and we said "OK are there any Olympic or Commonwealth Games disciplines that require the sort of weapon that we are seeking to ban?" There are none. Then we dug a little deeper and we found there is one discipline called three-gun discipline and that's one that's brought up a lot. Then we found—and I understand that the select committee heard this—that a competitor can actually use a .22 to do this. Chris Bishop: No that's not right. Hon STUART NASH: Well that's what I'm told the select committee heard—that you can actually use a .22 to do this. So we thought "OK." The other thing we're not doing is we're not banning people from going offshore and competing in competitions. So— Hon Member: How are they going to practise? Hon STUART NASH: Absolutely—absolutely. But what we don't want to do is we don't want to have these weapons in our communities and let's be honest about this: if you get to the stage where you're in the top 10 in the world you've got to start down at the lowest level. No All Black starts playing rugby at the beginning of the season and ends up in the World Cup team. You start when you're five. If you want to be a competitive three-gun shooter and you want to use a weapon that is not a .22—it's one of these banned weapons—you're going to have to start somewhere. Chlöe Swarbrick: They're not even the top 10; they're the only 10. Hon STUART NASH: Absolutely. That means that at some point in time you're going to have to have access to these weapons. Now where do we draw the line? Do we say "OK a 10-year-old whose father is an expert in this"—or no let's not be too glib. "A 16-year-old can have access to this because he or she wants to be a competitive three-gun shooter and therefore we should allow it."? Well then do we stagger it—do we say "Well if they pass a certain level then they can continue."—or do we withdraw it? The point I'm trying to make—and I'm not being glib in this—is the more exemptions we create the more we water down the purpose of this legislation and that is to remove these semi-automatic assault rifles and military-style semi-automatics from our community. I absolutely believe that a sporting exemption would be against the spirit of this legislation."