O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Just for anyone listening at home to the debate this afternoon that sort of might be tempted to believe some of the things they're hearing our prisons are full of gang members and gang associates and more are going in there every day. Now I'm not going to stand here and rubbish—contradict—what's been said by the Opposition because that's the problem with both firearms and gangs. They make very good sexy speeches in the House on both sides and for all hues of Government but unfortunately if we believe that what we're going to do here is all of a sudden have some mystical ability to diminish the power and influence of gangs then we are wrong. What we will do we will take a coordinated approach a joined-up approach a strategic approach which will ensure that we start at the recruiting level and we finish at the top level where people relatively few people are making a lot of money. It's important to understand how we reached this place and these are two things that come together: guns and gangs. Now gangs have always been with us. They've been right through—you go to the back streets of the United Kingdom in the 1800s in the Victorian age there were gangs. There have always been. And the essence of gangs is a sphere of intimidation. It's the ability to get someone else to go to jail for you to get someone else to take a bullet a knife or what else for you. So it's very important that we actually understand where the power of gangs comes from and as I say it comes from that sphere of intimidation. These gangs are also very hierarchal. So what we risk by taking a piecemeal approach to this is that we will play at the edges we will tinker at the edges but we won't actually be able to deal with the real issue which no country has actually been able to do.So in parallel with this we've also had a firearm problem which again has transcended Governments and it's important to understand how we've arrived at this because when we look at this bill or any other bill we need to understand exactly what the problem is we're trying to solve. Now firearms became an issue—there will be those in the House who probably had firearms. Probably Mr McKelvie and myself may be the only ones under the old system where each firearm was actually licensed and actually it wasn't the person who was licensed it was the firearm. So going through the process of buying a firearm meant every firearm at some stage was seen by a police officer and would be recorded. So every firearm someone was responsible for—it was very obvious who owned it. We could trace that back so the owner of the firearm had responsibility for it. That was a paper-based system.Before computers probably about five years too early a decision was made that because the paper-based system had collapsed—and while you might be able to get some records locally for your local firearms trying to do that nationally was pretty much impossible. So a decision was made and I think most in retrospect would say the wrong decision was made that firearms' owners would be licensed instead. What that meant is that all of a sudden no one was responsible for individual firearms and so a plethora of firearms began entering the country. The police didn't invest money in monitoring the firearms law and that got out of control as well and was shown up on several occasions. It was shown up by the shootings in Otago when of course we had the Aramoana shootings. Even on that occasion it showed that there was an individual who even though he should have been picked up by the system wasn't and worse still he was able to buy as many firearms as he liked. That wasn't fixed at the time as well as it could have been. There were a couple of changes made and again there were a couple of High Court cases where police attempted to control the numbers of firearms coming into the country. Unfortunately the courts ordered against police and what was a trickle of firearms coming into the country became an absolute avalanche and to this day nobody knows how many firearms there are in this country.In a previous iteration or a previous job I had we were pushing hard to get an inquiry into firearms in New Zealand and it took the shooting for four police officers in Kawerau before the then Minister Judith Collins agreed to actually have an inquiry. As the previous speaker Mr Bishop pointed out some reasonable recommendations came from the select committee; unfortunately the good ones were blocked by the New Zealand First representative and so what could have been an opportunity taken was actually missed.So coming back to the bill Madam Speaker which I can see even with your mask on you are seeking me to do it's important to know what was happening with the gangs at the same time. Around about 2012 to 2013 the numbers of gangs started to rise particularly the Mongrel Mob and the Mongrel Mob were running the prisons. And what the other gangs realised was that they needed numbers so the numbers of gang members needed to be increased by the other gangs so they could actually hold their own in prison. Across this also we had the 501s where despite the fact that we were getting on apparently quite well with the Government at the time we then started to get planeloads of the worst of our criminals trained in Australia; they came and hit our shores. So we got the planets aligned quite badly for all these things to come together.I come to the bill now and why this bill—[Interruption] Well there are some things to commend it and my previous opponent in Ōhāriu Brett Hudson was lucky enough to get this bill redrawn—there was a lot wrong with the bill and there still is because it is rather piecemeal. What is absolutely necessary and the reason I've arrived at this place speaking about firearms and gangs and putting them together is that just looking at either of these things in isolation simply will not work. I know in the past when I trained detectives if you look at the Crimes Act and look at the Arms Act you'll see some very similar pieces of legislation because so often when we've arrived at this time whoever's been in Government someone has come up We've got a problem let's pass another piece of legislation." What you end up is some virtually identical pieces of legislation that again are relatively meaningless. Anyone who generally comes before the courts charged with a firearms offence associated with a crime generally gets a pretty good send off and there is legislation that enables a judge who is well informed to actually deal with it.So what we really require now is the firearm protection orders need to be part of a broader piece of legislation because I go back to what I said: the people who will be carrying the firearms the people who have the firearms the people who have got the violence convictions they are not the ones who are going to be going to prison because they don't actually carry the firearms—they don't have them. I go back to what I said: the essence of gangs is that sphere of intimidation and the sphere of intimidation means that you can get people to go across some border for you into the Waikato to sell drugs to bring the money back with firearms and apparently a bit of KFC as well because if you are told to do that you will do that even though it is actually a fraught activity. The chances of you getting caught are very high—and they were caught and many gang members are caught and as I said before that is why our prisons are actually full and getting fuller of gang members every day.So this doesn't require the next speaker to stand up here and lambast this Government past Governments future Governments for what they have and haven't done because that will get us nowhere. You could go through Hansard and see that speeches like that have been made from time immemorial. What it does require is a well-thought-out coordinated joined-up piece of legislation that will incorporate much of what's in this bill but will also incorporate good asset seizure which will see gang members who turn up in a flash vehicle a flash motorcycle or anything flash or with a hundred thousand dollars' worth of jewellery on them—that that can be taken unless they can show that it was legally acquired. This is the type of joined-up legislation these are the types of joined-up strategies that are going to be absolutely necessary so that those who succeed us in this House are making these same speeches in 25 years' time. Thank you Madam Speaker."