Dean Jacqui; McKee Nicole; Williams PotoCHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members the House is in committee on the Appropriation (2021/22 Estimates) Bill. Before the dinner break we were considering Vote Police and I call Nicole McKee.NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Minister for answering the question that I posed before the dinner break. But I'm going to come back to that question the $23.5 million that's been allocated for the effective administration of the arms regulatory system. There were a couple of comments made by you Minister about licensed firearm owners and also dealers—those that need to be taught how to make their business work more legally and effectively. And I find that statement discourteous at the least to those that have been abiding by the law. There's 250000 of them and decreasing that have actually been taught how to buy and sell firearms as part of the process for receiving a firearms licence.Further to that Minister you mentioned about registration and how it will keep New Zealand safe. So one of my questions Minister is: with the $23.5 million allocation how much of that is going to go to the implementation of the registry? And further to that how is it going to help police to identify firearms that they find in illegal possession of people that have no serial numbers on them which are required for an effective registration to take place especially when the police themselves had noted in a reply to an Official Information Act request that 50 percent of seized firearms they receive do not have any serial numbers on them at all. And if I may Minister one more question: with the answers to Estimates questions on firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) there is a building fund of $12 million that has been put aside for those FPOs. You have indicated that it will occur before the end of this year but we are wondering whether or not you can share some information on what those FPOs will be like especially seeing as there's been a budget that has been allocated to it. And my last question Minister relates back to: when will an independent firearms authority be set up to effectively administer arms legislation and probably spending that $23.5 million in a better way? Thank you.Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): Thank you Madam Chair. I thank the member for her question. Perhaps if I could start with the firearms prohibition orders (FPOs) first. The intention for the FPOs—we will introduce legislation before the end of the year but the expectation of this Government has been really clear that we want to ensure that violent gangs you know and other criminals can't use firearms to threaten and intimidate. Now what we will do is the FPOs will prohibit high-risk people from accessing or being around or using firearms. So it will apply to the most serious offenders. The court will consider the person who is subject to an FPO as part of their sentencing following a conviction for a serious offence and the qualifying offences for FPOs are serious firearms offences that would disqualify somebody from holding a firearms licence serious violent offences as defined in section 86A of the Sentencing Act the offence of participation in an organised criminal group and also terrorism-related offences. So that is what is the intention of the FPO. With regards to licensing and the broader discussion around the registry we are in the process of building that at the moment. It will take about two years before we are ready to actually have a fully implemented registry system. So that is a process that's already started. We've started to recruit people to start the implementation of that. I do have an arms advisory group that is supporting some of the work that we are doing. Cabinet hasn't finalised the decisions on that so we're still working through that process. We're really clear. We want to get that right. The intention of the register is for us really to draw a line in the sand in terms of our knowledge of where firearms are in the community going forward because we know that it's very difficult—you know we've got 30 years of not having a register to catch up. This is for us being really clear—we want to draw a line in the sand. We want to start from this point forward having really good information about who owns firearms how they're being used and you know where they are. So I hope that gives you a sense about the direction of travel. It will take us a couple of years to put that in place. And we're working through that at the moment. Nicole McKee: Firearms authority?Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Now I apologise but I haven't managed to write down the—Hon Members: Firearms authority.Hon POTO WILLIAMS: —the apology? Sorry would that—Hon Members: Firearms authority.Hon POTO WILLIAMS: The firearms authority—let me get some more information on that and come back to you on that one.