Parliamentary debates: Thursday, 23 July 2026

09:01

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m pleased to be leading the Arms Bill through the committee of the whole House stage. First, a quick overview of the bill as a whole. This bill will overhaul New Zealand’s firearms laws, the first full rewrite of the legislation in over 40 years. In particular, the bill repeals and replaces the outdated Arms Act 1983 to deliver fairer, fit for purpose firearm laws. It also strengthens our country’s commitment to public safety and an effective firearm regulation.

Public safety is at the heart of the Arms Bill. Stronger enforcement measures will also help keep firearms out of criminal hands. The bill introduces new offences and tougher penalties to close loopholes and tackle emerging threats like 3-D printed firearms. It also automatically disqualifies criminal gang members from holding a firearms licence. Importantly, the bill separates day-to-day firearms regulation from front-line law enforcement by establishing a new independent arms regulator. This independent regulating agency will focus on clear and consistent oversight of firearms licensing, education, and compliance. It will operate at arm’s length from police to enhance transparency and public trust. This separation will allow police to concentrate on pursuing criminals who put the public at risk, not on law-abiding licensed firearm owners. The arms regulator will work constructively with the firearms community to ensure safe practices and support responsible firearm ownership.

At the same time, the bill simplifies and streamlines compliance for responsible firearm owners by rewriting the law in plain English and removing unnecessary complexity. I’ve been told by licensed firearm owners that the current Arms Act is burdensome to navigate and difficult to understand. I hope that these changes will lead people to have a better understanding of their obligations under the Act.

Together, these reforms will deliver stronger firearms laws that will better protect the public and the simpler regulatory system that supports compliance. I’d like to acknowledge the Justice Committee and all submitters for their thoughtful input during the bill’s select committee stage. Over 8,000 New Zealanders made submissions on this bill. Their contributions, along with the committee’s recommendations, have helped to refine and strengthen the bill’s provisions.

Now, I turn to what is being discussed today. As is often the case when Cabinet committees hear from submitters, a range of potential improvements to the bill have been identified and I’d like to amend the bill to reflect these. I’m proposing an Amendment Paper which will remove all references to permanent deactivation in the bill to reflect an earlier Cabinet decision; better aligned penalties in order to address inconsistencies and ensure similarity across like provisions; make changes to the operation of the Firearms Licensing Review Committee to ensure it can be implemented effectively; remove the clauses in the bill that allow the arms regulator to proactively extend firearms licences; remove the need for both an endorsement and a permit to possess or to acquire major parts for restricted items, streamlining requirements for people who are able to possess them; and ensure that police can access licensed dealer records to support their law enforcement functions.

What will result from these amendments is a safer and more user-friendly firearms regulatory regime. For far too long, our firearm laws have been piecemeal, burdensome, and insufficient at stopping serious offenders. We are fixing that. This comprehensive reform strikes the right balance. It strengthens public safety, holds offenders to account, and supports responsible firearm users. It is my privilege to champion these much-needed changes in the committee today as part of our commitment to uphold law and order and also keep our communities safe.

Mr Chair, I’m happy to take questions as we proceed with the debate on this bill.

09:06

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’ll just be working through the bill as it runs. Under Part 1—for purposes of this Act, I’ve got some questions for the Associate Minister of Justice that I’d be interested to get her views on to understand not only the bill, but some of the amendments that have been put forward just recently that we have been working our way through last night.

Under the purpose of this this bill—and we had good information about this in the Justice Committee as well—but there’s two parts to that purpose, and that’s to “promote the safe possession and use of firearms;” and also to “impose controls to prevent the possession and use of arms for criminal activity.” It’s “criminal activity”, those are the words that I’d really like to concentrate on because what this bill also does is it removes the ability of sworn police officers having any ability within the regulator to have a view on that. My concern is that it potentially weakens the public safety focus of this bill by having an ideological approach that removes uniformed police officers, or sworn police officers—those that have office of the constable—from having a role within that regulator and having a say on how that’s operating.

I’m really interested—this will be a theme as we come through different parts of this bill because it is a real question from us inside of Labour, and surprisingly not National, that they’re quite comfortable with just simply removing police officers from having the ability to prevent the possession of firearm and possession of use and having a say in terms of this new regulator that’s being established through this legislation. If it was genuinely wanting to promote the safe possession and use of firearms—as the purpose in clause 3, Part 1, states—then why are police officers being removed from that? Because it would seem to me that that’s just simply an ideological approach that has an aversion to police officers when most New Zealanders would think they have a pretty good head on their shoulders for understanding risks associated with firearms and how to prevent those, so I’m interested to hear that.

I won’t take the full call, but I’m also interested under the next clause, under the principles, that “The arms regulatory regime [is] established [in] this Act to achieve the purposes”, again stating “that the possession and use of firearms is a privilege;”. That’s great. I mean, anyone doing anything involving arms must act in the interests of personal safety and public safety. If public safety is running right through the purposes of this bill and the principles of this bill, I’m really interested to hear from the Minister why police can’t make decisions within the new regulator, and why police are actually being discriminated against. I’ve had a letter just recently from uniformed police officers who would like to keep their jobs within the Firearms Safety Authority, and they don’t understand why they’re being prevented from being able to play a role in public safety.

09:09

I invite the member to actually study the parts of the bill—she’s had quite a lot of time to be able to do that—because what she’s asking relates to different parts of the bill. This is about the clauses setting out the bill’s purpose and principles, of which nothing has been changed. All we’ve done is put it into plain language, but there’s been no changes made within that bill. When we get to the part that is specifically about what the member is asking, I invite her that we have discussion at that stage.

09:10

Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to thank the Minister for beginning this committee stage with an explanation of the different parts of the Amendment Paper, which I understand was tabled last night. That was really helpful for the committee’s scrutiny of this Amendment Paper, and we will follow the Hon Ginny Andersen’s lead when we come to the amendment provisions.

What I want to ask the Minister is a more general question about the operation of this Amendment Paper. She’s set out for us the substantive changes, but throughout the bill a number of language changes, syntax changes have been made—they’re more than drafting changes that could be made when the bill is finalised. But for the ease of the committee—really just because we’re here in an extended sitting—is there anything in those changes which are throughout—the smaller sentence changes—which would give the law a different effect? Are there changes where you have instructed officials to take, say, a more hard line on something which was discretionary, within a rule-maker’s power? Are there changes from “may” to “must”? Are there wording changes in the provisions which are not set out in your preamble at this committee stage that are part of the five substantive changes which you set out? To assist the committee in doing our scrutiny work, should we focus on those substantive changes, or are there also things in the Amendment Paper which are worthy of some discussion around the temperature of the regulator? For instance, the wording to remove the sorts of restricted arms, like permanently deactivated firearms—you’ve highlighted that, but then that has a number of flow-on changes which are throughout the bill.

It would just be really useful for the Minister to clarify what the instruction was. She has said it is plain English drafting, and that is a good thing. We should make sure that our legislation is accessible to the people who use it. But are there also sort of temperature changes, for want of a better word?

09:12

I thank the member for her question. I think it’s actually quite a relevant one, because it is a substantial Amendment Paper that’s been put in place. What I will say to the member is in answer to all of her questions, yes, to all of it. This isn’t an amendment to the Arms Act 1983. This is an amendment to a new Arms Bill. What I will say is I have prepared on every single clause that’s within the bill, including where a change has been made by this particular Amendment Paper, and including every change that’s been made by the select committee.

As we start to move through each clause, I will highlight what’s been changed with the Amendment Paper, and I will highlight what’s been changed by the select committee as well, and let you know if there’s been plain language used in order to make this work clearer for all of us and make it easier to understand. So, in answer to the member’s question, what might be important to you may not be important to me, so it would be hard for me to stand here right now and say to you what is substantial and what’s not. If you will indulge me as we work through all the clauses, I will point out to you what is actually in the Amendment Paper, clause by clause and in each part.

09:13

Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. This is quite an important piece of legislation, and I appreciate the Minister’s commitment to this and coming into the Chamber. A question I have—two questions, actually—for the Minister. In “Purposes of this Act”, clause 3(a), it states that the purpose is to “promote the safe possession and use of arms;”. So my question to the Minister: is this to promote more arms or not? Because it’s a critical question that I think New Zealanders would like to know. I am from rural New Zealand, and very aware of the need for, and utilisation of, arms in rural areas by people who are running farming operations and all the rest of it—pest control and the like. The reality is we’ve had, for quite some time, a declining population in the rural areas. We’ve had, I guess, more efficient use of arms for pest control, so the reality is there’s probably fewer people using arms in rural New Zealand because there are fewer people there. And it does go to quite a substantial—not just philosophical but important—issue: are we going to see more arms or less arms as a result of this piece of legislation? I think the public need to know.

The purposes of the Act promote the safe possession—and it is promote the use of arms? Or are they tied in? The member has been an advocate for the use of arms, and sporting uses of them, and I appreciate that, but if she’s come to the House and brought this legislation through to promote more arms into this country, then I think we need to be aware of that. Promoting the safe use of what we have, and the wise utilisation of what we need, is fine, but if it is to promote more arms, at a time when we have fewer people in rural New Zealand, then the question—of course, the sporting use of arms, I understand that—can the Minister clarify whether she actually intends to promote, as the purposes of the Act say, greater use of arms or more arms?

The second question that I have for her is around the value of uniforms across this country. My colleague has asked a question around the role that uniformed police will play in the oversight of this. So it is in the purposes of the Act, and the promotion of—

Just for the member’s information, that part comes up in Part 7.

I appreciate that, thank you, and I’ll go to that. I’ll ask that question in Part 7. But I ask, in promoting the safe possession and use of arms, whether that does include the value of uniformed police through that whole purpose. I welcome answers from the Minister.

09:17

I’m a little bit surprised by the question, because the purpose and the principles of the Act have been carried over from what Labour put in. I have made no changes whatsoever. It’s not about promoting people purchasing firearms. If you read the purpose of the Act, it’s to promote the safe possession, and therefore use, of firearms, just as Labour had put in. So if that wasn’t understood back in 2019, 2020, then it actually speaks volumes to why we’re at this juncture that we are right now.

But to give another answer, I think promoting the safe use and the safe possession of firearms has been sorely missed since 2019. Once we do get to parts further on, where we will change the name of the Firearms Safety Authority to Firearms Safety and Education, that will help to promote safe use and possession. In answer to the question, are we going to get more firearms? How would I know? I’m not a member of New Zealand’s society that is licensed or unlicensed to be able to say that they’re going to all of a sudden say this bill’s going to allow them to purchase more firearms. What this bill does is promote public safety. It makes sure that New Zealand Police can concentrate on their core business that they do so well, which is the effective enforcement of these bills, and ensure that those people that are licence holders will be able to be educated in how to possess and use their firearms in a safe manner.

09:19

I’m just going to take a short call, because I have a very specific question for the Minister, and it’s in relation to her Amendment Paper that has been tabled in the committee. And just on that, because it has been tabled so late, and it’s certainly substantive in its length, to be able to work through it to find where the differences are between what the committee has reported back and then what is in the Minister’s Amendment Paper, it’s going to take us some time this morning, so I think you can expect more questions. In order to be helpful, if I look at the Minister’s Amendment Paper on page 22, which relates back to the report back from the—

Have you got clause numbers?

Yes, I’m going to get there in a second.

OK, cool.

So it’s Part 1—I’m just giving the page numbers first and then the clause numbers, and so I’m just getting there—and page 21 of the Justice Committee report back. So, clause, page numbers, I’m looking at Part 1, clause 5. So it’s subpart 2, clause 5, where it talks about an approved ammunition seller. This is on the Minister’s Amendment Paper 658, page 21, and then working over to page 22. It has a definition of an arms item, and on the report back of the bill, it excludes (b)(ii) “permanently deactivated firearms”. That has been amended in the Minister’s Amendment Paper, so it has removed “permanently deactivated firearms”. My question is, why? Why has this been put into the Minister’s Amendment Paper today? It’s different, and, obviously, a permanently deactivated firearm, we know they don’t necessarily present risk, but they do exist. So, I’m interested in what the Minister’s rationale is for removing that part about a permanently deactivated firearm and what that actually means in terms of the impact on the entire bill. So just noting that I’m not an expert on this, but these are the kinds of questions we’re going to have because they have come in at a late stage, they haven’t been able to go through that select committee process, and so this is the opportunity for our members, such as ourselves, to be scrutinising this on behalf of New Zealanders just to find out what the rationale for that particular change from the Minister is. Thank you.

09:21

Mr Chair, thank you. I understand the reasoning for asking the question. I think it’s a good one, and because it is in the Amendment Paper, it gives me an opportunity to speak to it. In the original bill, we were looking to allow people to be able to deactivate their firearms and still be in possession of them. This was thinking of people who may have inherited a firearm, say, from a grandparent, but don’t actually have a licence. We thought that if you can deactivate it, then maybe you can keep that as part of family history. But feedback that we got from submissions—those that we went out and spoke to and those that actually came into the select committee—had concerns around a deactivated firearm. They were worried that, you know, if you could deactivate it, could you reactivate it? Could a criminal get hold of it from an unlicensed person and perhaps reactivate it? Could it potentially be a public safety issue as a result? Could somebody have a deactivated firearm and start waving it around at a shopkeeper, for example? So I removed it from the bill because I actually saw it as the potential public safety risk of people having what looked like—or what actually are—real firearms, but don’t work.

While we’re on this, though, I think I’ll bring up the other pieces of the Amendment Paper that is in clause 5 regarding, for example, a change in wording: changing “excluding” to “including” in the definition of a restricted part. That’s to clarify that all parts of a restricted firearm and restricted weapons are subject to licencing, import, and endorsement requirements, that are no longer captured by the permit to possess requirements that only apply to restricted firearm and restricted weapons. Those were in clauses 20 and 31.

Also, we are amending the definition of “firearm” to remove the exclusions for “airgun” and “an exempt airgun”. Airguns do not fall under the definition of a firearm because the projectile from airguns are not discharged by a force of explosive. These exclusions are therefore unnecessary. So that addresses all of the amendments to clause 5 in the Amendment Paper.

09:23

Thank you, Mr Chair. Can I begin by just thanking the Minister for her statement earlier that we’d be walking through, piece by piece, to best understand the new amendments versus the recommendations from the committee. I have some general comments/questions for the Minister who spoke about the purpose and principles of the Act and those largely remaining the same. Of course, obviously, there’s an opportunity for clarification when amendments like this are made to a full Act.

My first questions are around the direction of the bill, which directs decision makers to act in the interests of personal community and public safety, but that doesn’t have a statutory definition of the composite term. I am just wanting the Minister to clarify, for the purposes of the Act, whether public safety is intended to import the same meaning it bears in comparable regulatory statutes and how a licence holder or the regulator is to resolve a conflict between personal and community safety where the two principles point in different directions. For clarification, for example, there could be an amendment that inserts a new subclause in clause 4 that would say something to the effect of “in the event of conflict between the principles in clause 4(b), the principle that best protects public safety prevails.”, thereby just elevating the public safety considerations should those two come into conflict with one another.

I also just had a question in relation to clause 5. Just noting that there are a number of exemptions there, all done through regulation. The question is whether that is the appropriate way in which to have what to my mind are fundamental policy decisions made, or whether those exemptions should sit within the legislation itself or be subject to sunset clauses, and certainly be disallowable instruments so you could have a narrower framing of how those powers would be exercised, just because there does seem to be a large amount of discretion provided to the Minister. So I’d love the Minister’s feedback on those issues.

09:26

Mr Chair, thank you. Looking at the principles, and the principle in clause 4(b), what was given to the House when the original bill was tabled—clause 4(b) was added: “that anyone doing anything involving arms must act in the interests of personal and public safety.” That was put in there to ensure that every single person who is in charge of a firearm would come under the control—well, not control; making sure that their principles and purposes align with the Arms Act so they’re not doing anything that would be illegal. To give you an example, there could be an armed services person who is allowed to use firearms in the course of their employment, but without a firearms licence, can’t go hunting, for example, and say that just because I’m a member of the Defence Force somewhere and I use firearms in my everyday work, I can then go out and hunt, and that sort of thing. It means that everybody has to apply the laws to them. I think that we do have that quite clear within there.

The monitoring—I’m actually not quite sure what the member’s talking about in clause 5 about exemptions because I can’t see exemptions in clause 5. Could the member just clarify that?

09:27

I can. This is the definition of what is an exempt blank-firing gun, for example. I’m just questioning whether it’s an appropriate mechanism to exempt by regulation as opposed to via primary legislation or through a narrower tool—so a disallowable instrument or providing some sort of sunset clause and requiring them for later legislation. It just allows quite a broad scope for the Minister to make those fairly significant decisions about what is within the regime versus what is exempt.

09:28

Thank you, Mr Chair. What we’ve done is actually broadened the list of arms items. This is part of the plain language exercise and consolidating and making sure that the bill makes sense. In the interpretation for “arms item”, we have taken what has been other items in other sections of interpretation and put them under an arms item list to try and consolidate it and make it all reasonably placed into the one area. So that’s why you have a list there. In the previous bill, the list had arms—well, not so much arms items, but this list throughout the interpretation. All we’ve done is just bring it into one place.

09:29

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’d just like to speak to clause 5 under “Interpretation”. I’ve only got one tabled amendment on clause 5, and it’s in relation to the specification around “monitoring department”. It is the primary Act.

Can you read that out because it actually hasn’t landed with us yet.

Clause 5, in my amendment in relation to monitoring department in clause 5 of the “Interpretation” section of the bill. I don’t have a number, sorry; it’s been recently tabled, but there’s only one amendment in my name for clause 5.

Presently, it reads in the bill: “ ‘monitoring department’ means the department, departmental agency, or interdepartmental venture (as named in Part 1, 2, or 4 of Schedule 2 of the Public Service Act 2020) that, with the authority of the Prime Minister, is responsible for the administration of this Act”, and when I go to that provision, it says the “Ministry of Justice”. This is quite a significant shift. In the past, in New Zealand, arms have always been administered by the New Zealand Police, and so my tabled amendment proposes to replace in clause 5 the definition of “monitoring department” with “the New Zealand Police”.

I’m even comfortable, if the Minister is open to it, with having more than one so that you’d still get Police intelligence and Police information and front-line expertise in that space, but this tabled amendment amends the Arms Bill to amend the definition to enable keeping it with the New Zealand Police. If they’re going to be the host agency for the Arms Regulator, as the monitoring department, that would help to alleviate some of the major weaknesses that are in this bill. Police are more at risk than any other group from the illegal manufacture, distribution, and use of firearms, and so we and many others believe that this “no blue shirts” rule for the new firearms regulatory agency will potentially weaken intelligence gathering, enforcement, and licensing, and it triangulates that relationship and weakens it further. I think that it’s a sensible amendment—

Just for the member’s information, your amendment hasn’t been lodged.

It has been lodged?

It hasn’t been lodged, so—

Oh, it hasn’t been lodged? OK, I’ll check that out, and I’ll make sure that that’s happening. It’s on its way—I think they’ve just gone to the office now.

Oh, filing—do the hui.

It should be coming out. The proposal is that we would like to—

Your Minister couldn’t lodge her amendment till last night.

Yeah, we only got it last night—so there. I’m really keen to hear from the Minister her views on including the New Zealand Police. Clearly, National don’t want the police having a say over firearms safety in New Zealand because they’ve been quite happy to allow this change to happen, but on our side of the House, we actually think that the police have a clear role. By inserting the New Zealand Police into the interpretation section as a monitoring department—we’d be really interested to hear the Minister’s views on that.

09:32

Thank you, Mr Chair. To the member Vanushi Walters, I think I have another answer for you about the question of why it was not in the regulations. The answer is that this was both in the Act and the regulations originally, and so, for plain English reasons, we’re putting all of the existing exempt firearms into the same place to make sure that they’re not in both. I hope that answers that question.

For the definition of “monitoring department”, we are definitely going to be removing “New Zealand Police” from the regulatory side of firearms administration, leaving them with their core business, which they do so well at, which is the enforcement of our arms law, and that is allowing them to concentrate on that. In order for that to occur, and as part of the separation, we need to ensure that there is a monitoring department, and that’s why they’re in there. The monitoring department has been agreed by Cabinet to be the Ministry of Justice, who will work very, very closely with New Zealand Police.

The member Ginny Andersen had said that she was concerned about intelligence and information not being passed over, but that will not be a reality at all. These two organisations will work very, very closely together. They will also have the information-sharing agreement set up, as well as the monitoring department establishing red flag agreements and information sharing with other entities such as the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, as well. We’re actually going to be strengthening this process, rather than what the scaremongering is that’s coming from the other side, saying that we’ll be weakening it.

09:34

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just speaking to what the Associate Minister of Justice has helpfully added and to my colleague the Hon Ginny Andersen’s amendment, which is coming, I wanted to ask the Minister when Cabinet made the decision to make the monitoring department the Ministry of Justice, because the bill as presented left that open. Clause 312 of the bill was the sort of openly worded monitoring department clause.

The reason I bring it up in this section is because it is relevant to clause 5, which has their definition, and what the Minister has told us is that Cabinet did decide that. But the reason why it was open, I imagine, in the first draft of the bill was because the bill was presented to Parliament without that decision and the bill, when it was drafted, was open-minded as to what the monitoring department would be. I want the Minister to clarify: did she present a bill to the House where the Cabinet policy position was not made?

I also want to ask her whether it’s quite correct that Cabinet did make this decision because, yes, it was part of the New Zealand First, ACT, and National coalition agreement that the monitoring department would not be the New Zealand Police, but I just wanted to be clear around whether the policy decisions that were taken by Cabinet reflected that position, because the coalition agreement doesn’t have the effect of a public decision itself. We can’t look at that decision, and we don’t know what advice would inform that decision, if any, and so I just wanted her to clarify at what point that decision was made, because I can’t find it.

The second question I have is about the clause 5 definition of deactivated firearms. I also want to understand whether that position which was taken at the beginning of this bill’s process to include something that is arguable about whether it is a firearm or not was a deliberate decision on behalf of the Cabinet and then that position changed. She’s been really helpful at outlining it, and I understand the rationale for taking it out—she has provided that. What I want to understand is why the deliberate decision was made to put it in and then take it out. What representations did she receive to, I guess, change her mind that the sorts of deactivated firearms that we’re talking about here do not now need any of the protections, given that it’s a graded protection? We’re not talking about the same protections that exist for rifles; we’re talking about a sort of a shade of grey here, where you might require some protections around, say, the storage and keeping of those sorts of deactivated weapons.

Has she received further evidence around how many of these arms—well, these things might have been included in a regulatory net that was drawn at the beginning of this bill, and is that the reason? Are there just so many of these things and that’s why they need to come out, or is it actually the opposite, which is that there is a very small number but that they impact people in sort of deeper ways? It is also legitimate for a Government to make a decision about a small number of people who are legitimately impacted in a way which is unfairly burdensome, but we just want to know the sort of scope of why this was an important change to make from A to B.

09:38

Thank you, Mr Chair. The member refers to another section with regard to the monitoring department. In clause 5 is the definition of the “monitoring department”, but the reason why the two words “monitoring department” came in was because it was a select committee change that asked for them to be identified as that. The Ministry of Justice had of course been accepted by Cabinet as being the new regulator. That decision was made in Cabinet decisions. I’m not quite sure how Labour thinks the process of making law goes, but we actually do have agreement in Cabinet to go through and do things. We don’t have single Ministers just going about, standing in the chair and saying that they’re the ones that have done this, and so the monitoring department is within the select committee changes, which they wanted to make.

Just some more additions for the member Vanushi Waters’ question—

Walters.

—Walters, sorry; sorry to the member—on why definitions are going into regulations rather than into the Act. That was for flexibility, noting that it’s subject to consultation under clause 364A.

09:39

Thank you very much. Again, these seem like perhaps minor and insignificant questions, but it is a huge Amendment Paper 658 that’s been dumped in the House. I’m asking the Minister—and it comes from my, perhaps, trade portfolio suspicions, going from what you might call a negative list to a positive list. In clause 5, under the definition of “import”, in (a), it is quite critical, because all firearms coming into New Zealand—or the vast majority—of course, are imported. It’s defining an import, and it says, “to bring the item, or cause the item to be brought, into New Zealand; or to send the item, or cause the item to be sent, to New Zealand; but”, and the previous bill said, “does not include doing any of the things in paragraph (a)”, and that has been changed now in the Amendment Paper to “excludes”.

The question for the Minister is to why we did that. That may seem like a simple change of language, but, actually, in legal terms, some of these things do matter. I’m sure that there is a reason for this to be changed, and so I just ask if the Minister can explain to the House why. Have the legal implications down the track, when these things will be challenged—and given that the exclusion refers to firearms that can possibly be transiting through New Zealand, then claims have been made, of course, and we’ve seen it with methamphetamine and other illegal products, that we become a transit hub for illegal and illicit goods. If these things fall off a truck in New Zealand on their way through, and we’ve excluded close scrutiny, then are we exposing ourselves to the risk of these firearms, supposedly in transit through New Zealand, falling into the hands of gangs or some other people who may hold them illegally?

It comes down to that change of wording but whether the implications actually go way beyond that because of possible abuse of the situation for arms that might be transiting or supposedly transiting through our country.

09:42

Thank you, Mr Chair. The reason for that exclusion that the member has asked for is because imports that come into New Zealand do need an import licence. That creates a whole lot of bureaucracy. There are firearms that transit through New Zealand where the person is actually not stopping in New Zealand; they’re on their way to another country. But under our current legislation, even though the firearm itself would not be leaving the airport, they would have to go through an entire import/export permit process in order to just be able to stop here in New Zealand and to get on another plane and carry on. That change there doesn’t work for some items that are not staying in New Zealand. The drafting choice for this was for symmetry and consistency. “Excludes” versus “does not include” is really just to make sure that it’s really quite clear in the legislation.

A New Zealand entity should not be responsible for importing arms items that are simply just passing through the country. This was, again, to get rid of red tape, to make sure that there weren’t any extra processes that were put on people, because the regime that is in place at the moment for importing and exporting firearms is really quite extensive. It could include a hold-up of a person trying to just get to another destination because they can’t get their import and therefore export permits as well. All this is doing is allowing the transit of firearms that are stopping briefly in New Zealand to be able to carry through.

The import definition change was also agreed by the Justice Committee, and this definition of import is one of the things that the select committee had actually asked to be changed, so we have decided it was a really good idea and we’re going to do it.

09:44

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you, Minister McKee, for your engagement today. I came in at the tail end of the consideration of this bill through the Justice Committee, so it would be good just to clarify a few things today. My question is around clause 5, “antique firearm”. “Any firearm or pistol that is held in the possession of any person solely as an antique (but not as a copy or replica of an antique);”—that makes perfect sense. Then: “(B) is not designed for firing, and is not capable of firing, rimfire or centrefire cartridge ammunition;”, which makes sense. But the question I had was around subpara—

What page are you on?

That is on page 21. But the crux of my question to the Minister was: “does not include any firearm or pistol manufactured after 1899”. I was just wondering how you landed on that date. Look at a Royal Enfield, for example. Production started around 1895, but then they were produced up until around 1941. I was just wondering why 1899 specifically. Thank you.

09:45

That date was carried over from the previous Arms Act.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I just had some questions. We know that prohibited weapon, as referred to—I think it’s the same. That’s my question. When we’re referring, in the interpretation section, to restricted weapon—“has the same meaning as in section 11”—and we talk about restricted firearms, I just wanted to clarify if that was what was previously called a prohibited weapon. I know that the—because I’m going between the two papers—Amendment Paper 658 spells out “semi-automatic firearm” and “semi-automatic pistol” and gives quite detailed descriptions. For example, semi-automatic says, “fires a cartridge and ejects its case; and unless all cartridges loaded have been fired, chambers another cartridge”. For semi-automatic pistol, it means it “when loaded, with each pull of the trigger, fires a cartridge and ejects the cartridge case; and unless all loaded cartridges have been fired, automatically loads another cartridge in the firearm’s chamber”.

I’m interested, because of your expertise in this, Minister—you know this well—what consultation did you take into account, when we’re quite specifically designing the practicalities or, I guess, the engineering practicalities of how a semi-automatic firearm actually operates? In that, I’m just interested to know—we know that weapons can be modified; there was the instance with March 15th, when you had a weapon being modified to make it fully automatic—whether she’s comfortable with the existing provisions within the current interpretation section to cover off the fact that we know technology emerges and new ways can be developed in terms of how you convert a semi-automatic firearm into a fully automatic weapon, and whether that is sufficient protection, by stating them as being restricted. Just that final point is where does the definition sit around the prohibited weapon, the fully automatic weapons, and is she comfortable with the definitions that currently exist to sufficiently futureproof the ability to modify weapons to make them fully automatic?

09:48

Thank you, Mr Chair. We have changed the definition of “prohibited firearms” and “prohibited weapons” to “restricted firearms” and “restricted weapons”, in a way to make the wording within the Act more positive and move away from the negativity that was introduced in 2019 and again in 2020, making it quite user-friendly. The member is fundamentally incorrect when she says that on the March 15th incident, the guy, Brenton Tarrant, was able to convert his firearm to fully automatic. That is incorrect—completely incorrect—and probably speaks to why we have such a mess of an Arms Bill right now. Fully automatic firearms are not allowed to be used in New Zealand. They never have been. It’s just wrong that that’s even been introduced.

Restricted weapons have been carried over. Prohibited firearms are now restricted weapons. We never had a term called a “prohibited weapon”. New technologies can be accounted for through regulations. A change that we’ve proposed in the Amendment Paper 658 is to delete subclause 11(b) so that a major firearm part of a restricted weapon—and this is a part of a restricted weapon—is not, within itself, considered an entire restricted weapon. That then requires an endorsement and a permit to possess. That is mainly because some of those parts can actually be put on unrestricted firearms—what we would now call standard firearms. To ensure that they don’t need endorsements and endorsement licensing, we have made those changes within this Amendment Paper.

09:50

Just further to that point—and thank you to the Minister; I appreciate she’s got expertise—I’d be really interested to know, in the instance of March 15, then, what did occur, and she does know more than me, in this space. I’m just interested to understand—if that was incorrect, how I reflected it—if she could specify exactly what did happen, then, and then highlight how the current legislation would prevent that from occurring in future.

What happened there was you had a type of firearm—it’s called an AR-15. You could have it as a standard type firearm, which means a person on an A Category licence could have it, or you could have it with certain combinations of items on it, which would then turn it into an E Category or a military-style semi-automatic (MSSA) type firearm. Now, for that to occur, that firearm would need any one of five aspects on that firearm, such as a pistol grip, a bayonet lug, a folding stock, a muzzle break, and, finally, a large-capacity magazine. What Brenton Tarrant did was he had a standard firearm, an A Category AR-15, that did not have any of those live components making it an MSSA, and he went and bought a large capacity magazine. The moment he introduced that to the standard firearm, he then converted it to an E Category.

In 2019, the law was changed so that large-capacity magazines—and this was one thing I had been advocating for since 2012, personally—would need to have an endorsement so that you couldn’t get people with standard licences going and buying a large-capacity magazine and introducing it to their standard licence, converting it—not because we thought there would be a massacre but because we thought someone would accidentally go and buy one of these thinking, “Well, I can legally buy it.”, not realising that when they actually put it into that firearm, they had converted it. That is what that person did, and the law was changed in 2019, thankfully, to ensure that only people who had the endorsement could buy those large-capacity magazines in the future. I will note, however, that that was missed out on pistol magazines, and so people could still go about buying large-capacity pistol magazines, and the change later on in this bill is actually restricting large-capacity pistol magazines to only those with endorsements as well—just to clarify that, and closing loopholes.

09:52

Thank you, Mr Chair. I know that Part 1 actually does extend quite a bit, and then I will be on clause 5. But I’m happy to be on a separate clause, noting that I do have a few questions for clause 9, in this case.

Can I just check, for clarification, Minister—and thank you so much for your engagement, as always. I want to discuss, this morning, the regulation section, later on, but I just want to check: the way that I’m reading clause 9, “Meaning of restricted firearm”, it means that particularly when we’re looking at clause 9(1)(b), I just want that clarification of the fact that you can only include new firearms declared by Order in Council under secondary legislation, but secondary legislation would not be able to remove the existing criteria for restricted firearms. I see you can only add more things but not remove things through secondary legislation. That’s the first point of clarification I would like from the Minister.

From what we’ve been discussing, and, Minister, from what you’ve been saying, as well, you do have emerging new technology or the way that things can be modified or manufactured and may need to be considered at a later date through secondary legislation. I think that flexibility is important, but, yes, I just wanted to check that you can only add but not take away.

09:54

In secondary legislation, any Government of the day can remove whatever they like—in fact, they can do it coming from a legislative process as well. So, yes, we can add, and we’ve put in there that we want to be able to add, and be able to add quickly, and make a point of that so that we’re sending a clear signal that, if we do get dangerous items appear, we can add them to the list.

Once they’re added to the list, why would you remove it? If it’s been deemed to be really dangerous, why would you remove it? However, any Government of the day has the ability to go into secondary legislation and amend whatever they like. But, as we are on clause 9, I would like to point to a specific amendment in the Amendment Paper, where we are proposing to delete clause 9(1)(c) so that a major firearm part of the restricted weapon is, by itself, not considered a restricted firearm that requires an endorsement and a permit to possess, as I had just mentioned in the previous part—it’s here as well.

09:55

Thank you so much. That is very helpful because that answers my next question, which is on the deleted section. I do acknowledge what the Minister is saying. I guess the thing that I was sort of looking for is that I know that the secondary legislation is able to add and take away, but it won’t be able to, in some ways, change some of the criteria we’re seeing in clause 9(1)(a), in particular—some of those. But, from what the Minister said, I’m actually quite happy with how that would land, and I do agree that flexibility is needed.

Can I just check, moving on to clause 11—I’m just signalling to you, Mr Chair, that there is still quite a few more clauses here, as well as Schedule 1, which I want to check with the Minister on; I just wanted to wait until the conversation around interpretations is done before I move on to a further clause. There has also been quite a few changes to clause 11 in Amendment Paper 658. I wonder if the Minister wouldn’t mind just elucidating for the committee why that has been updated. It looks like it is a simplification rather than explicitly excluding anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions, but can I just check whether there is a rationale? Does that mean that anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions are now included under the meaning of “restricted weapons”?

09:56

Yes, it does. Anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions are not included in the definition of “restricted weapon”. All the drafting changes in this particular clause were done by the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) to clarify, simplify, and put things into the right place. And just coming back to changing the criteria—the first point that the member pulled out—you can’t change the criteria in primary legislation through regulations; you can only do it in regulations, and Cabinet needs to agree. It can’t be something that an individual Minister does; it needs to go through a Cabinet process.

I have just been given a list. A drafting change about munitions is included under clause 364. So, as I mentioned, it was just about PCO tidying up. The current Arms Act 1983 has duplications all throughout it, so what we’ve tried to do is just clarify: remove it where it’s been duplicated, put it into the right place, and you will see this throughout the bill, and, hopefully, we’ll be fast enough to be able to come up and say exactly where we’ve put certain things, as I have here—it’s gone to clause 364.

09:58

Thank you so much, Minister; I really appreciate that. I just want to move on to the next sections. I will come back to Schedule 1, but I’m going to move on to clause 13 now, and I specifically want to note clauses 13(5) and (6).

I understand, in terms of clause 13, particularly if you’re looking at subclause (2), “subsection (1) is subject to subsections (3) and (4)”. Those are happening kind of domestically, and this is under the remit and control of the Crown, but subclauses (5) and (6) of clause 13 are not, and I specifically want to look at subclause (5): “Nothing in this Act makes it unlawful for any person who is a visiting law enforcement officer from another country to do any of the following,”. I guess the question here, just for clarification, is that if we do have someone from an overseas jurisdiction coming here to Aotearoa New Zealand, does this clause mean that they can carry firearms that will be considered restricted under this legislation, because they are coming from an overseas jurisdiction that is not under the control of our Crown? And what is the process, then, that will be required to ensure that that person has the right requirements to be able to carry such a firearm here?

09:59

Thank you, Mr Chair. To the member, clause 13(5) and (6) is a carryover, straight over, from the Arms Act 1983, and so that’s always been in place. In regard to what they bring over, there will be consultation with New Zealand Police, Customs, and Immigration at the time. No doubt there will be agreements that have been in place as well. It’s operational. That has always been occurring. There’s just been a bit of a carryover, but, effectively, they ultimately need to be authorised by New Zealand Police before they even land here.

While I may, we also have changes on the Amendment Paper in regard to clause 13, to include a reference to “restricted ammunition” so that the exemptions that apply to the Crown also apply to the carriage and possession of restricted ammunition instead of just standard ammunition. The select committee also, at subclauses 13(5) and 13(7), wanted clarification, so we have replaced “chief executive”, in clause 13(5), with “the Commissioner [of Police]” to maintain consistency and avoid any unintended consequences. We’ve also removed “good faith” wording in clause 13(7) to align with the existing wording of section 3(6) in the Arms Act, as per the select committee’s request.

10:01

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just have a couple of final questions for the Minister on Part 1. This is to do, now, with Schedule 1, clause 12.

Minister, I’m going to use your Amendment Paper 658 page numbers just for clarity. This is page 219 and onwards as well. In terms of “Transitional, savings, and related provisions”, I know that there is a bit of a break with how this will come into effect on 23 September, but there’s also, later on, when we will discuss the commencement date, also a secondary commencement date on 23 July 2027. I just want to check: in terms of the licences that have been mentioned as well as the ammunition sellers, what sorts of communications will need to be done or have been done already with licence holders, and also with ammunition sellers, in terms of some of the changes and the transition that’s required in terms of compliance with the new legislation as they started taking effect? That’s my first question.

Just moving on to—

Sorry, Mr Xu-Nan, would you mind just referring to the piece of Schedule 1 you were referring to?

Yes, this is pages 219 and 220 on the Amendment Paper. This is, I guess, clauses 2 to 9 of Schedule 1—Part 1, under Schedule 1, “Provisions relating to Act as enacted”.

Thank you very much.

That’s my first question around licences and ammunition sellers as well.

Moving on through the schedule, there are also other things in terms of importing and also transitional requirements for shooting clubs and shooting ranges. There’s quite a few things in there. I wonder if the Minister wouldn’t mind just highlighting, in general, how some of those transitional measures are going to work and how—for licence holders, ammunition sellers, shooting ranges, and importers—that communication is going to work to ensure that there’s a smooth transition from the old regime to the new one.

10:03

Thank you, Madam Chair. In regard to the ammunition sellers, the select committee had asked for some drafting changes to be made since its introduction, just to make it clearer in regard to time frames for commencement, which would have been adjusted. It’s enabling a firearms licence holder who sells or supplies ammunition to be treated as an approved ammunition seller until 22 February 2028 or before that date if the licence holder applies to be an approved ammunition seller.

Let me just put this in plain English. You sometimes have, say, a retail store, and a person might be working at that retail store, but they don’t have a firearms licence, and yet you get somebody that comes in and says, “I want to buy ammunition.” They cannot legally sell them that ammunition, because they don’t have a firearms licence, so we’re introducing an ammunition seller clause for those businesses so that it means that a person can still work in that store and only sell ammunition to a person, but they need to go through a process, and they need to be approved by the regulator. It’s not just anybody that comes in can automatically get it. They have to go through that approval regime as well.

If the Member can ask me the next question again, I forgot what it was, sorry.

10:05

Sorry, it was just on importers as well and, I guess, again, the transitional measures we’re looking at for shooting ranges and importers and how the Minister’s intending on communicating with the people in terms of the transition from the old regime to the new one. That’s all. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for re-asking. Communicating all of these changes is going to be quite a big thing for the regulator to do, but it will be an operational matter for them to be able to get out there how they’re going to go about doing this. More importantly, the different time frames, because a large amount of the bill will come into effect from 23 September this year—but there are other challenges, as we go through, to make sure that IT is up to spec before we actually start making some of these changes. The bill, in full, will be operational by February 2028. That’s when everything will be implemented, so there will be different scales of information that go to people as required. We don’t want to bombard everybody with absolutely everything but, rather, with what people need to know and understand their obligations will be at the time that the different changes are proceeding.

10:06

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Minister. Now, I just want to touch on clause 9 and take a few minutes on that. That is on page 33. I think it raises a wider issue about whether this firearms bill is keeping pace with the developments in the market and with the experience of comparable jurisdictions. Over recent years, we’ve seen the emergence of a class of firearm commonly referred to as the push button rifle, and just for the House’s awareness, these firearms use a mechanism that allows the working parts to be released with a button. While they’ve been designed to fit within the existing legal definitions, their appearance and operation have led to an increasing discussion about where they should properly sit within a modern firearms regulatory framework.

I suppose what concerns me is that these firearms are increasingly available and are establishing a presence in New Zealand. Information released by written parliamentary questions confirms that import permits have been issued for push button rifles capable of accepting the STANAG 4179 or the AR-15 Peden detachable magazines, including models such as the Alcor 223 push button and the Ranger 223 push button rifle as well. I raised this in my second reading speech when we were debating this bill, and the Government has confirmed that 81 Ranger push button rifles came in over the last two years, of which 80 have come in as at 14 June this year. Eighty-one firearms is a relatively small number, compared to the wider firearms market, and I’m not suggesting that the people who lawfully own these firearms are doing anything wrong. Law-abiding firearms owners should not be unfairly categorised—

Do you have a question, Mr Rosewarne?

The crux of my question, Minister, is: what assessment has the Government made around the increasing number of push button rifles entering New Zealand? What assurance can she give to the people of New Zealand that the framework established for this bill adequately addresses the risks associated with centre-fire push button 223 rifles?

My second question to that is: given that New South Wales has chosen to place tighter controls on push button riffles, what consideration has the Minister given to that approach, and why has it concluded that a different legislative response is appropriate in the New Zealand context? Thank you.

10:10

I see Labour are still trying to rush through, trying to ban different types of firearms without evidence, without data, without consultation, as well. We are rewriting the firearms Act to make sure that we have a really fit for purpose regime, and the first thing we get is an Amendment Paper that’s looking to put more restrictions on different types of firearms just because that’s something that New South Wales has done. I will note that, if the member has a look at what the other states in Australia are doing, they’re actually starting to jack up on some of the rushed legislation that is starting to occur over there. We’re not looking to Australia; we’re looking to really good lawmaking processes here in New Zealand—lawmaking processes that require consultation with the users.

When it comes to the push-button firearms, we are not interested at this stage in trying to rewrite an arms law to ban something that has shown no evidence of any harm in New Zealand. In fact, what I’ve heard is that these particular types of firearms are really beneficial for people with disabilities—those that have been unable to open bolts themselves, who may be missing digits on their hands. To just even think that because somebody else has said there might be an issue and there is no evidence, we should jump on that bandwagon—that’s why it’s so important that we keep this Government in its coalition and going next term, because that sort of attitude is really disappointing.

10:11

I appreciate her views in relation to push-button or button-release firearms, but I just wanted to understand—she did reference New South Wales, and I’ve done a little bit of reading up about what happened in New South Wales—specifically why she thought that was not the right pathway to go down, because we thought over here that the New South Wales model was actually quite a good one of being proactive in terms of looking at an area which is emerging that may have some potential dangers in relation to that.

I appreciate her argument that people within the disability community may have an easier way of physically being able to operate a firearm if a push-button gun is able to be used freely—a self-projecting lever button or similar release-repeating firearm. I guess the fear I’ve seen in some of the communications that have come into my email box is that people seem to think they’re very similar to a rapid-fire weapon, which would be a military-style semi-automatic weapon or a rapid-fire weapon, which have been used in the past for quick dispensation of ammunition, which can be deadly in mass events, which we’ve seen in New Zealand and other places around the world. I just really wanted to understand if the Minister had looked at New South Wales as a model, and specifically why she thinks that is not a viable option for New Zealand, if it would provide safety.

While I’m up, I just wanted to ask one further quick question on the previous clause, which was under restricted airguns. I’ve also had some information showing that some of the velocity, some of the power under some of those newly designed airguns, can be pretty strong. Is she comfortable with the current settings around restricted airguns? These aren’t just the airsoft or paintball type ones; these are the other kind. There’s been some instances of them being used on animals with some really pretty awful results as a consequence of that. Given your background, Minister, and experience in this space, I’m interested to know about the more modern airguns which have quite strong firepower: whether the current seatings under this legislation are sufficient to protect things such as people using them on animals and that being really quite awful.

10:14 · to the member

I did not raise New South Wales; her colleague did. I responded to that and invited him to look at all the other states in Australia who are fast rejecting some of the legislation that their Federal Government is asking them to look at.

In regard to airguns, yes, airguns are starting to get different what we’ll call joules of energy. I understand that the Justice Committee looked at this; perhaps this is the reason why the member is raising it. We will be addressing this when we start to go through the regulations. We believe that this actually requires further consultation, because just setting an energy limit on a particular airgun may have unintended consequences on others, but there are some that are coming through that have a high velocity, hence they’ve become restricted airguns. We have decided that, instead of trying to set something in primary legislation, that is worth a consultation process for secondary legislation, as to whether or not we set a kilojoules or a joules velocity for those particular firearms or not.

10:15

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just go back to clause 9 here, and I was a little concerned with the dismissive way in which the Associate Minister of Justice answered the question from my colleague Dan Rosewarne. It was a legitimate question about push-button firearms, and I guess the question to the Minister is—and she claims she is, but when it comes to new and innovative ways, Kiwis are great at this. We’re always using off-the-label chemicals. We innovate; we have the number eight wire. So it will be with firearms too, whether it be 3D printing or the push- button firearm, which I’m not familiar with. I’m asking the Minister: is she taking a precautionary approach?

She dismisses change in legislation offshore, and so when it comes to restricted firearms—and I’ll tell you one thing: visiting Washington, having visited after we had changed this legislation in Government, they were in awe of what we’d been able to do and were praising us for our bravery and our effectiveness in reducing harm across our nation. We’re stepping back from that, and the Minister claims that it’s to enable the wise and careful use of firearms. We’re not trying to ban the use of firearms, but we are looking at restricted firearms and defining them in clause 9, so I’m asking the Minister whether she is genuinely taking a precautionary or a dismissive approach to new innovations.

If push-button firearms are available now, even in small numbers—and the Minister is saying, “Well, they may be of use for people who have disabilities.” I can accept that; for what purpose, I’m not too sure. The question is whether that opens a door for some evil use of a firearm, and whether the push-button mechanism then means it should be a restricted firearm is something that I would hope the Minister, rather than dismissing, actually investigates more carefully. I’m not quite sure whether my colleague might put an amendment up, but we would hope that this comprehensive Amendment Paper, having looked at ongoing and evolving information and technical tidy-ups, would include push-button firearms, in the precautionary way that we hope this whole legislation is being approached.

10:18

Madam Chair, to the member: I’m not trying to be dismissive at all, but push-button firearms are not new. They’ve been around for a very long time. They were around in 2019 and 2020, as well. They are a type of firearm that has come to the attention of people because New South Wales has decided to take the precautionary approach. We on this side of the House want to take an evidence-based approach and make sure that any decisions we make are made based on data, facts, and evidence rather than being concerned.

It’s a different type of way of being able to utilise a firearm, as I mentioned, especially for those people with disabilities. The member asked, and I don’t know where that might be; it would possibly be on a shooting range for competitions for those people. Also, the bill itself includes broad regulation-making powers so that we do accommodate new technology, like the 3D printing technology, as well, so if there’s advancement, for example, on that type of firearm or another type of firearm, another different action, it can be looked at and looked at quickly. We’ve made sure that we’ve put that emphasis in the bill so that we can be addressing different types of firearms and their actions in the future if we get evidence and data to say that there is concern. If we start looking at restricting, we are putting red tape and compliance on people, again, who have done nothing wrong, based on no evidence that there is concern, apart from the concern of legislators who mostly don’t even understand how this type of tool or sporting equipment may work. So that’s why we are not addressing it here; it is not new technology.

When the member mentioned about visiting Washington, one thing I do really need to point out is that we do not have a regime in New Zealand that is anything like the United States. They have the Second Amendment which gives them the right to bear arms, including the right to bear arms for self-defence. We do not have that here in New Zealand. I know that they are alarmed about the amount of firearm deaths over in America. We are not America, we are New Zealand, and the regime that we had previously, before 2019, made us the best in the world. We were recognised as having the best firearms legislation in the world. Now we’re recognised as having the most confusing legislation in the world.

Before I accept a closure motion, I’d just like to point out that since I’ve been in the chair, we have traversed the same topics over and over. So I am looking for new material, please.

10:21

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question relates to the new clause under Subpart 3—this is clause 13—and it relates to the change of the drafting. So the initial drafting said, “(i) a member of the New Zealand Defence Force or a member of the cadet forces;”, and that was split out into two separate points. And it just made me consider whether we ought to have different levels of exclusion for the defence force as opposed to the cadets, because, essentially, one might expect that the defence force had broader exceptions than the cadet force.

The question is whether the Minister turned her mind to splitting out those levels of exemption. And indeed, you could do that—you could have the defence force, and potentially the police in their very own category, as having broad exemptions, and then have a separate set of exemptions which are more restricted, potentially using language like “authorised training activities” instead of that person’s “duties”. Or you could specify that it needed to be under direct supervision. You could also specify the areas in which that subgroup B could exercise the ability to carry restricted weapons, etc.

It just seemed to me to make sense that you would have two separate categories: one that was police and defence, and the second that was cadets and others. And the separation of those two—what was initially one point into two—suggested that that might be appealing. If the Minister didn’t turn her mind to that, what was the intention of separating out those two separate groups?

10:23

I think what’s really important here is the fact that under the purpose and principles of the Act—I think it’s at clause 3—we have made a different approach here. We were saying that everybody who is in charge of firearms, regardless of where they are—and I mentioned earlier because we have traversed this, about how the defence force or those in the armed services will still need to ensure that they are under the same regime. Well, not under the same regime; they work under their regime, but they still apply the same safety aspects here.

In regard to this, there is no substantive change at all. All we’ve done is a drafting change to provide clarity as researchers at the New Zealand Defence Force have regulatory requirements, but not the military—they don’t. So that’s why there’s a little bit of a change there, but we’re also, in the interests of safety, making sure that everyone is still captured under the greater Arms Act.

10:24

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just had a question in relation to clause 11, under “Interpretation”. I know the Minister’s already spoken about her reasoning around the classification of restricted weapons, but my question here is in and around the ability under clause 11(a) where it provides, “anything, whether or not a firearm (as [identified] … in section 5), declared by the Governor-General, by Order in Council” may be a restricted weapon.

I just wanted to clarify with the Minister, whether that means that a future change to what is classified as a prohibited, or under this definition, restricted weapon, whether that means that future amendments to what is classified under that category are able to be done by Order in Council, and whether she thinks, if that is the case, whether that’s a sufficient check. Because I know that there are members of the community who have been impacted negatively by firearm safety, who are of the view that an Order in Council is an insufficient protection to changing what would be classified as a prohibited or restricted weapon. There is a degree of concern around public safety that that bar is simply not quite strong enough to protect, potentially, making those military style, semi-automatic weapons less prohibitive or not restricted at some stage in the future.

I’m interested to know what advice she’s received in relation to this, and whether she can reassure New Zealanders that simply having a change by an Order in Council is a sufficient protection in place to prevent situations such as 15 March from occurring again in the future.

10:26

This is basically a carryover, and it’s the way that things have operated in the past, in regard to defining restricted weapons as anything been declared by Order in Council. This is the way that it was in the bill previously. It’s carrying over section 4. It’s got some drafting changes to improve the clarity of the provision, but, effectively, this clause is about having the ability to enable a firearm to become a restricted weapon by way of Order in Council as the previous Government had used in the past. The member’s now asking me if I can use it to change back and go the other way.

I’m looking at the intent of this bill. I mean, anything that—a Government can do anything that they want. The difference with this Government is that we would consult first about how you would go about doing it, and instead of changing it in a piece of legislation, you would change it in Order in Council, especially with really fast-moving situations, like say a 3D printed firearm all of a sudden tuned up and was widely available, and it became of some sort of concern. You want to be able to restrict it as quickly as possible.

The member asking about unrestricting, I mean, that’s just going against what it is that we are trying to do here, which is improve public safety. I would expect and hope, because I’m a big fan of consultation, that we would go about a due process if we were ever to do that again.

10:27

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 658 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

The question is that Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to clause 3(a) be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment to clause 5 replacing the definition of “monitoring department” be agreed to.

The question is that Dan Rosewarne’s tabled amendment inserting clause 9(1)(a)(vi) relating to centrefire firearms be agreed to.

The question is that Dan Rosewarne’s tabled amendment inserting clause 9(1)(a)(vi) relating to pushbutton firearms be agreed to.

10:34

Thank you, Madam Chair. I start by having just a few questions for the Associate Minister of Justice on Part 2, clause 14, and potentially the Minister may also, probably, respond to other parts, because I think it’s quite a general one.

I’m curious to know: clause 14(3), in terms of the offence—now, we’ll see lots of “offence” and different requirements later on in the bill, but over here it says, offence is “not exceeding 3 years if the person, without reasonable excuse, contravenes this section.”—“this section” being holding a firearm licence or visitor licence. As we see later on in the bill, there is also offence of different year requirements, or different limits on years, as well as some of, if we’re looking at clauses 251 to 254, there is also a fine attached to it, ranging between $15,000 to $20,000. I guess, the first question is: what’s the rationale for there not being a fine attached to this section, and also how does, then, this section interact with later sections, such as clauses 251 to 254? That being my first question.

My second question is also—I guess, it might be quite obvious, but I do want to have it on Hansard that the assumption would be that a firearms licence or visitor licence is a current one, because I do know that the definition part doesn’t explicitly state “an expired licence or etc.”, and noting that clause 76 does say the “Duration of [a] licence”. Would that be the correct assumption to say that they must hold a current firearms licence? Those are my three questions for clause 14.

I am just going to move to clause 18, very briefly, and this is just on the back of the Minister’s previous response on airguns. I think the Minister has also acknowledged that this is something that Governments will continue to monitor in terms of the power and velocity of the airguns. But I’m just checking, in here, whether the Minister considers that it be the right balance, that “airgun” as currently stated under clause 18(1) does not require any form of licence—and, if it gets to a stage where airguns would then have the similar impact or potential harm as a standard firearm, would that be something that needs to be considered: to include a licence requirement, or incorporate it under a standard firearms licence?

10:37

The clause 14 referring to a person requiring a firearms licence to possess a standard firearm sets out that they do need to have a firearms licence. There are other penalties for people who don’t have a firearms licence and are in possession of firearms. This is relating to the penalties for a person who does have a licence and are not behaving, so to speak. The penalty has been increased from one-year imprisonment, or a maximum fine of $15,000, to three years imprisonment solely. We have actually gone through the entire offence regime, which has been dawdled with here and there—tinkered with—over the last 40 years. So you will see an upgrade in the offences, an upgrade in some of the fines. You specifically asked a question about “Why not a $15,000 fine?”, it’s because we are ensuring, throughout all of the offence regime, that they all line up with each other.

10:38

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I had a question in relation to Part 2, clause 14, which is the “Requirement for possession of [a] standard firearm” and also the defence to prosecution under that particular clause. Clause 14 specifies “A person may [only] possess a standard firearm only if the person holds a firearms licence or visitor licence.” The only exception or defence to prosecution under that is: “Defence to prosecution for offence under section 14” is that if the defendant proves the standard firearm in their possession for the use was under the immediate supervision of a firearms licence holder, and at all times they were in possession of a standard firearm, they were under the immediate supervision of a firearms licence holder. So, for example, on a gun range, the way I understand that to work is that someone who doesn’t hold a firearms licence, if they’re standing beside someone who does hold a firearms licence, they are legally allowed to shoot that firearm and operate it.

Now, what we do know, and there have been reports that I have seen through the Official Information Act (OIA), is that there have been instances where, for example, a gang member has been in that situation. Under legislation, we know that gang members are prohibited from having a firearms licence and from having access to firearms. My question for the Minister is: if that person who is under the supervision is also a member of an organised criminal group that’s been listed under legislation that we have, if they’re clearly a gang member, is that still a “Defence to prosecution for offence under section 14”, as set out in clause 15 of the bill?

We do know that there have been instances that we have seen through OIAs to the Police and there have been reports that members of organised criminal groups or gangs have been on firearms ranges, on gun ranges, practising using weapons, because they’ve been the guest of someone who is a member of that club or they have been under the immediate supervision of someone who has a firearms licence. I’m just wanting to seek reassurance from the Minister as to what protections would be in place for public safety in order to prevent a defence to prosecution under section 14 if the supervising person with the firearms licence is in fact supervising someone who is a gang member.

The next point I’d like to understand is, what if they don’t know? What if they’ve lied or they’ve taken their jacket off, but they still are a gang member and they’re practising on a range? Is that still a defence?

10:41

I think that last point that the member just raised, which is, “What if they don’t know?” Well, if they don’t know—“they” being the person that is on the range that is running the range, for example—then they don’t know what they don’t know. Clause 14 is actually setting out what is required for those people with a standard licence.

In regard to gang members, there’s a whole other series of different clauses throughout the bill that actually deal with that. Anyone can use a firearm under the immediate supervision of a licensed firearm owner, unless they’re excluded from doing so. Gang members with a firearms prohibition order (FPO) placed upon them are excluded from doing so. That is something that the member’s party had brought in under the last Government, the FPO regime, and this Government has come in and made them tighter off the back of that to ensure the public safety outcome that the member is also looking for. We worked harder on that as well to make sure that we were trying to close some of those gaps that had arisen.

Clause 14, in the situations that the member had expressed, would not be used to charge a person; there would be other clauses throughout the bill that would be used to try to ensure that the right people were able to be in possession of firearms, including under immediate supervision.

10:43

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m also on clause 14. I just wanted to clarify with the Minister: when I first read this clause, I thought that its intention was to replace current section 45 of the Act, and I was comparing both language and penalties, but just from the Minister’s earlier comment, it sounded like perhaps that’s not the case. The current penalty under section 45 was four years, and it looked to me like it had gone down to three, but I’ve probably got the section wrong.

Section 20.

Section 20? OK—well, that make sense. My read of the comparison to section 45 may then not be relevant, but could the Minister confirm that the language that is contained in current section 45 is still there in a sufficiently broad way to cover things like stockpiling without necessarily criminal intent? My current read of section 45 is that it’s quite broad in its language; it talks about sufficient purpose, and lawful and proper purpose, which is quite different from “without reasonable excuse”. I’m just wondering whether that scope to cover stockpiling is still there.

Then, on clause 16, “Requirement for possession of blank-firing gun”, I note that in the current legislation, there’s no precise offence around that—prosecutions could be brought under possessing an imitation firearm. Now, we have these two offences that sit side by side; we have “possession of a blank-firing gun” and “imitation firearm” with two quite different penalty regimes. Under “blank-firing gun”, we have “imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years”, no financial penalty; and for “imitation firearm”, the penalty has been increased to two years and $15,000. I’m just wondering whether there’s a risk of almost duplicate offences, or how the Minister sees those two offences operating separately—just giving me a sense of what the factual circumstances would be in terms of the different application of those two offences given the very different penalties that apply.

10:45

One of the things that we’re bringing in is that you were allowed to a have a blank-firing gun without the requirement to have a licence—that’s always been the way. You can remember at the racing track at school, they would use the blank-firing guns to start your races, and we use them all over the country. But, more recently, police have found that gang members in particular are starting to convert or are trying to convert some blank-firing guns into operational guns. This is why we are now putting it into legislation to ensure that they are actually captured under the regime.

We’re not using those very much now; there’s only small rural schools that are using them, so we think that we can actually progress past. We’re basically saying that, effectively, those that are still out there can still be held, because we don’t want people having to rush out and get licences, but if they’re being imported into New Zealand or somebody new wants to purchase one, they need to have a firearms licence, in order to try to close what we think could be a public safety gap in that respect.

When it comes to the different offences and the penalties, it was quite a job to go through and not only look at what we had in the Arms Act and make sure that we bring it up to a standard that is also dissuasive for those without licences to be in possession—so we don’t want to incentivise people by having low penalties; we want to make sure that only the right, fit, and proper people are in charge or able to possess some of these firearms. When you have a look at the offences, not only has it been upgraded based on what we think we needed to do within the Arms Act but we had to look comparatively at other pieces of legislation, like the Crimes Act, the Sentencing Act, etc., to ensure that they also aligned with other regimes there.

I’m not going to go throughout this specifically answering why we have increased or decreased to this amount, because I think I can just cover that off by saying that we are increasing penalties across the board to improve public safety by disincentivising people from trying to use firearms in an illegal manner.

10:48

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. There should be an amendment—it’s just been lodged a few minutes ago, so if it’s not there, it should be there shortly. It was just further to—here it comes now—the “Defence to prosecution for offence under section 14”. My proposed amendment is to add another subclause that says, “this defence cannot be used where the defendant is a revoked or a suspended licence holder”.

I appreciate the Minister’s comments that there are provisions in other parts of the Act that provide for gang members, but I think this would be a sensible change to the bill that would make it very clear right from the outset, and potentially would also help clarify situations, if prosecuting in a court of law, where if the person who is being supervised by the lawful firearms licence holder is in fact someone is in fact someone who has had a firearms licence revoked or suspended, that defence simply would not apply. That would make it incredibly clear in law, and it would also provide further protections to all of that.

We could actually add that provision under clauses 15(c), 17(c), 19(c), 23(4), 25(3), 41(3), 43(c), 45(4), and 49(c). It would be consistent right throughout the legislation that there’s quite simply no way at all that someone could use that defence if they have had their firearms licence suspended or revoked. I think this is a sensible public safety measure. The Minister said at the outset that the focus of this bill is increasing public safety. I’d be really interested to understand from her whether she thinks this amendment would in fact make the law clearer and enable our courts to clearly prosecute when someone has circumvented public safety, and whether she’d be open to adopting this change.

10:50

Again, this particular clause is a carryover. It’s equivalent to section 22(2)(a) of the Arms Act. As it currently stands, I think it has been working quite well. It does not need to just ban everybody outright, including people who have been suspended. They have not been revoked. Suspension quite often can mean that somebody might need to have some hands-on work with them, and this will allow them to be able to do that.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Ahh—

Madam Chair, we’re only at 16. Madam Chair, we’ve only just started Part 2.

Yes, I know, but nobody was seeking was a call either. The Hon Ginny Andersen.

10:51

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Very lucky.

You’re very lucky.

I would like to ask the Associate Minister of Justice in relation to the requirement for possession of an airgun; that’s under clause 18 of Part 2. The current provision in the primary bill states that—and it’s also covered off in the amendment as well—under 18(1)(a) “A person may only possess an airgun if the person is over the age of 18; or (b) aged between 16 and 18 years and holds a firearms licence or visitor licence.” It goes on to provide that “A person commits an offence [under this] is liable [for a] conviction or a fine not exceeding $1,000 … without reasonable excuse, [or] contravenes that section.”

I’m really interested to know—I’ve received some information that airguns, the numbers are increasing. I’m wanting to know if the Minister has received any advice on the number of airguns being used and whether she’s seen an increase in importation and use of airguns at all, and whether she is concerned if there’s any safety concerns over someone aged 16 who’s able to access one of these. I do note that the defence to a prosecution under this—it’s clearly laid out that it’s a defence for prosecution if “the airgun was in their possession for use under the immediate supervision of someone [who is] over the age of 18.” In that situation, you could have someone who’s 16 and someone who’s 18 using an airgun. I referred to it earlier around another provision that some of the calibre—I don’t know if that’s the right word—but the velocity or the strength of the power of those airguns, some of those are pretty powerful these days. Just interested to know whether she thinks it’s a sufficient public safety protection that we would potentially have someone who’s 16 years old operating one of these weapons who doesn’t have a firearms licence, under the supervision of someone who’s 18 years old, and whether she’s comfortable with that in the legislation.

10:53

This section is a carryover, once again, of the Arms Act 1983 in regard to who can be in possession of an air rifle or airgun. It does make mention that if someone aged between 16 and 18 wants to purchase one of these, or be in possession of these, they actually need a firearms licence to do so. It’s only over the age of 18 where they don’t. There is a category of restricted airgun that speaks to the high velocity joules that the member was referring to, and I have already covered previously around those joules and how that will be addressed in regulations as to whether or not a velocity needs to be set, but that will be done in a novel way—it’s called consultation with the community.

10:54

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to move on a bit further into Part 2, into clause 21, and it provides—I don’t understand actually why it’s in the amendment as well, but never mind; it’s in both—“Exception if repairs or modifications to pistol or restricted weapons undertaken by a licenced business.” This section provides that section 21B, which is a requirement for the possession of a pistol or restricted weapon and endorsements. That was endorsements being made specific to the pistol, the issue of a permit to an import pistol, or the permit to possess the pistol.

In this section, there is an exception if modifications are made, I understand, by a licensed business following repair and modification, and if it has not been out of the possession of the individual for more than 21 days. I’m interested to understand whether she thinks—and I need to actually check—whether she is reassured. What advice has the Associate Minister of Justice received that there won’t be unauthorised modification of firearms as a result of having that carve-out that is an exception if repairs or modifications are made to a pistol or a restricted weapon by a licensed business?

I would also like to know—we know that there are some rapid-fire weapons that are used—that there’s a carve-out for, say, pest control and for specific purposes. We know that those are permitted. If someone wants to have repairs done to one of those weapons, are there sufficient protections in place that they won’t get into the wrong hands? If there is—I’d also be interested to know how: do we know the difference between what is a modification and what is a repair, and are there any kind of eyes over what’s happening once those weapons come into a licensed business?

10:56

I’d like to thank the Justice Committee for the change that they had suggested of moving from a seven-day possession for a gunsmith through to 21 days. It was really important that this change was made, because when Labour rushed through their laws, as part of that, it was determined, not necessarily in the legislation, but by police policy that they would stop gunsmiths from being able to hold stocks of supplies, such as, say, if there was a broken trigger—they’d have triggers and firing pins—they’re no longer actually allowed to hold those stocks. And so a person comes in and they bring in their firearm for a repair or a modification, and the gunsmith has no stock. They’ve actually got to try and apply to get it either from somewhere in New Zealand, which is quite rare, or get them in from overseas, which with the current state of the world is actually quite hard to get parts in. The gunsmiths have said to us we’re spending more time on a computer trying to fill out forms for being in possession and they’re finding it very cumbersome. It means they actually can’t get on with the jobs that they have been tasked to complete.

Another side to this is where it might be a very quick job. It could be that, say, for example, somebody’s firing pin isn’t working properly; the bolt just needs to be quickly disassembled, cleaned, put back, and it can be given back to that individual. That’s what was envisaged at first: to be able to keep it for seven days so you can do a quick repair job without having to spend more time on the computer filling in the paperwork than actually doing the job. I commend the select committee for doing that, especially with the unavailability of parts and the very limited number of gunsmiths that we have around New Zealand.

With unauthorised modifications throughout this bill, anything that modifies a firearm in a way that could perhaps make it become a restricted-type firearm does need approval from the regulator first. To not get that approval would be committing an offence in itself. Then what we find, actually, is that the gunsmiths around New Zealand are really good people, very law-abiding people, who have a business that they want to maintain, and of course, it’s a service that the 220,000 licensed firearm owners do need to have.

I will point out that, during the select committee stage, the bill was asked to be extended, the timeframe extended to 21 days based off that select committee, and there are proposed changes in the Amendment Paper to clause 21, and that is in regard to the definition of modification. The effect of this is that a licensed business undertaking a modification to a pistol or restricted weapon to permanently deactivate it must have a permit to import or possess the pistol or restricted weapon, and the owner of the pistol or restricted weapon must have a permit to import or possess before it is returned to them. Cabinet has agreed to rescind its previous decision to enable the permanently deactivated firearms, as I had mentioned before, but I’m just bringing it up again because it’s in the Amendment Paper and you’ve given me clause 21 to be able to speak to that.

11:00

Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, it is a genuine question; it’s one of clarification for the Minister. It’s about the use of restricted firearms and it’s in relation to biosecurity and pest control. What I’m just a little confused about is the qualifications of the individuals—and I know if they are employees of a company, then they are permitted to use it.

What clause are you speaking to, sorry?

Sorry, we’re talking about clause 30 here, “Exception for employees of approved ammunition sellers”, or “Requirements for possession of restricted firearm”, which is clause 31—

Thank you.

—and whether the Minister considered and whether there was a need for any greater checks and balances of employees of companies that are permitted to hold these firearms and use them, and whether a character check or other requirement is a sensible way forward. I’m just familiar with the realities, I guess, of people who will be working for many of these companies. Many will be familiar with firearms, but when it comes to the restricted firearms, I guess—and the Minister has acknowledged herself—this law places greater obligations, checks and balances, on the company and access to those firearms.

The one around “the personal use of” is something that I’d just seek some clarity from the Minister on. I know she probably will have an answer and that’s great, but I just think it would be good to have it in the House.

11:01

Thank you, Madam Chair. You’ll have a company that might do pest control and every individual that works for that company will have to have their own endorsement to be able to use restricted firearms. In order for them to work for that company and use restricted firearms, they must have their own personal endorsement. The company itself doesn’t have an endorsement as a company, but they have permission to operate from the regulator.

The reason why we’ve bought this in is because, quite often, pest controllers—and a lot of them are Department of Conservation workers, actually, from Government agencies—they’ll be out in the nether, nether lands, way out there where there is no reception, and they may be in a helicopter or they may be on land. At times, they will have to use different types of firearms. One might be using a shotgun from a helicopter, for example, and another one might be using a rifle. What they use will depend on where they are shooting and what the background is, and making sure that they use the correct type of firearm for the environment that they’re in is extremely important.

Under current legislation, it would mean that “Well, we’ve flown over to here; I now need to use a shotgun instead of a rifle. Wait a minute. I can’t shoot. I’ve got to go back in to do a transfer—get on the computer and do a transfer—to be able to use that firearm.” What this is allowing those pest controllers to do in that environment is to be able to swap firearms with each other so that they can still do their job without having to do all the unnecessary paperwork. They can just get on with doing it. The reason why we have agreed to this extension for them is because they are fit and proper. They have been given an endorsement, so that means that they’ve gone through the rigmaroles—even more so than a standard firearms licence—to be able to achieve the pest control wording.

I’ve also got here biosecurity: yeah, they still need the endorsements. The change relates to permits and pre-approved agreements.

11:03

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I know the Minister, at several stages through the debate, has referred to parts of the former Arms Act that have carried over. I’m just interested to hear from her about section 49A in the 1983 Act, which expressly makes it an offence for any revoked licence holder to possess a firearm or ammunition in any circumstances if they are not a person authorised expressly by application of the Act to be in possession. This is because a revoked person is not fit and proper to possess or use a firearm. But it seems to be—and this is my question—that this hasn’t carried over into the present Arms Bill. There seems to be no provision in the Arms Bill, and I can’t see it in the Minister’s Amendment Paper 658, either. There is no reference to section 49, as the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) offer notes. There’s no fine print inserted by PCO that refers to the former Act.

I know that the Minister has, in the past discussion, stated about the prosecution for unlawful possession if a person is under immediate supervision of a licence holder—but my concern is there is no immediate supervision provision as it was in the old Act, which is designed for situations where you might have a younger person or a trainee learning how to use a firearm who’s out hunting or in a shooting range. It’s not to allow a revoked person to keep hunting with their mates and shooting at rangers with their mates.

Essentially, my concern is that the fact that it’s not carried over from the 1983 Act and it’s not explicitly stated around whether section 49A is there—it kind of appears to be a bit of a get-out-of-jail card for revoked licence holders to be able to keep using their guns. I’d be really interested to know what the rationale is for why that provision in the former 1983 Arms Act, section 49A, has not been carried over as far as I am aware into the Arms Bill or into her Amendment Paper 658 that was just recently tabled.

11:06

I am not going to go through the Arms Act 1983 to specifically pull out exactly the clause at the member has spoken to, because I’m really interested in the Arms Bill that we have in front of us right now. What I do have are our different clauses, and I’ll talk about where I can see some carry-over or some changes—modifications—that have been made in those particular ones.

What I will point out to the member, though, is a massive amount of duplication that has been found throughout the Arms Act 1983. While something may have been removed in clause 49, as the member points out, it is more than likely it has been inserted elsewhere for better clarity and in a better place. It may not be in the section, it may be somewhere else, but we have a robust piece of legislation that will keep the public safe and there are no gaps in this legislation.

11:07

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I will be quick in terms of my questions for the Minister. Firstly, on clause 26, it sets out a single penalty regardless of whether the offender is an individual or a licensed business. I just want to know whether the Minister considered a higher culpability for a licensed business given the greater scale, in my view, of the risk there. Then, in clause—

Can I please get you to confirm the clause for us.

Clause 20, subclause (6)—the seven years. Then, clause 23: this is the reverse-onus offence. I just wanted to get an understanding of whether the Minister considered being more specific about what the accused was required to prove or whether that would be left to common law.

My third and final question is in relation to deleting “expressly or by implication”, in terms of being “authorised or permitted”. Is the Minister’s intention to suggest that the individual must show expressly and that it cannot be via implication, or—

Which clause is that one?

This is clause 23, and I’m asking specifically about subclause (1).

Subclause (1). Thank you.

11:08

Clause 20, as the member alluded to, is equivalent to section 19C of the current Act. Again, just some drafting changes for clarity there. Clause 23 is carrying over section 36(5) and section 50(5) of the Arms Act, with drafting changes, again, for clarity and for plain language. My expectation is that the removal of certain words is to increase that clarity and plain language throughout the bill, and to also give some consistency for the wording that is used throughout the bill.

11:09

Thank you very much. Just to clarify that the Minister confirmed that section 49A has not been carried over, and that she did not point to a place in the bill where it has been replicated. I think people deserve an answer. That was a clear provision to prevent someone who—you know, it’s a safety issue. I think it’s only fair that a person who is not fit and proper shouldn’t have access to guns. I really would love her to point to one part in the Arms Bill that provides for that provision that previously existed under the 1993 Arms Act. Where is it?

11:10

Thank you. If a person doesn’t have a licence, they can’t behave like they have a licence. I think it’s quite as simple as that. There’s no need to carry over every single provision of the Arms Act. What we have done is tidy it up to ensure that we do have consistency and clarity throughout the bill. If the member is going to sit on the past Arms Act and ask why every clause hasn’t been rewritten into the new Arms Act, we would say we wouldn’t have a whole new Arms Act. We’re tidying it up; we’re making it efficient. For those that have been revoked and don’t have a licence, they should not behave like they do. Maybe the member wants them to, but we don’t.

11:11

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to ask the Associate Minister of Justice a couple of questions on clause 23. This is to do with the defence. My first question is quite a straightforward one, which is on clause 23(2), in terms of the defence, and I’m assuming all four criteria need to be met for the defence to stand—being my first question. My second question is: are those four criteria, paragraphs (a) to (d), exclusive, as in, they are the only four criteria that, for example, anyone would consider as a defence?

My second question is around clause 23(3). For that, it doesn’t explicitly state that the person needs to hold a firearms licence, but the supervisor of the person needs to hold a firearms licence. I’m assuming that, with clause 23(3), this kind of defence is exclusively in relation to shooting ranges.

I guess my final question for clause 23 is that nothing in this part, I’m assuming, exonerates or exempts a person if there should be any sort of injury or harm to another person—I would assume, right?

I just want to check those three questions for clause 23. I admit this is purely out of my personal curiosity, but I want to check with the Minister, for clause 24, what is a pistol carbine conversion kit and what is it used for?

11:13

One of the things that we have done within the Arms Act is actually start to introduce what a defence would be to a certain offence. The reason for that is to help people understand—especially with a whole new rewrite—what the requirements are and what they need to do. While we say it is a defence, we’re basically outright, in clause 23(2)(a) through to (d), saying if you are doing all of these, this is your defence. It’s in an effort that the layman could then pick up the Act and go, “Oh, I can do that.”, because it can be quite confusing—legislation, for the man on the street, can be quite confusing. That’s why we’ve laid it out there.

Now, I was asked whether or not that’s an exhaustive list. That’s not up to me to decide. That would be up to a judge or the regulator to decide. There could be something else where a review committee might decide, actually, they have another defence, but this is just to make it quite clear that these particular things are a defence.

In answer to the member’s question about clause 23(3) and pistols and ranges as an example, in New Zealand, you are only allowed to shoot a pistol on a range. You’re not allowed to shoot them anywhere else in the country. You can’t take them hunting. They can only be used on a range. That’s why we make specific carve-outs here about pistols and also the immediate supervision.

A pistol carbine conversion kit is, effectively, where you can take—I’m trying to think of how to not be so technical with my answer. You can buy a conversion kit and you can add it to a pistol and turn it into something else. It’s, effectively—it’s that. We’re restricting that, because if you think about it, pistols are short firearms. You might be able to convert it into a carbine, which makes it a longer-type firearm with a pistol grip on it—easily concealable if in the wrong hands. You want to be able to ensure that we keep that technology really, really tight as well.

11:15

Just two quick follow-up questions. Thank you so much, Minister. I just want to check that the criteria—and this is also clarity, I think, from what the Minister is saying, for the public. If a member of the public looks at clause 23(2), they need to know they need to fulfil, at the minimum, all four requirements, right, for a defence, because it’s “and, and, and”? Cool—I got a nod from the Minister. That’s enough for me.

In terms of clause 24, with the pistol carbine conversion but also any endorsement, I’m assuming that’s all going to be captured in a register of some sort as well, so we’re able to keep track of that, right?

11:16

Yes. Anything that’s pistol-related requires an endorsement to possess. You need to have an endorsement on your licence to even have a pistol. I’ll just point out here that that actually requires a pistol club to back you, to support you in your application, even to have an endorsement to have a pistol licence full stop. Then anything that you purchase for that pistol, like the pistol conversion kit, would need to have a permit to possess as well as to import, if you were, indeed, doing that as well.

Thank you. I do have a question around the clause 27 requirement for possession of large-capacity pistol magazines. I just wanted to clarify—I know we have raised this, and I took notes when the Minister answered last night on the failure to carry over section 49A. She stated, I understood, “revoked people shouldn’t behave like that”. My concern is, well, shouldn’t it be Parliament’s job to write the law to ensure that there are, in fact, consequences when revoked people do actually behave like that? We can’t just operate on the basis that we’re hoping and they shouldn’t be doing that. That doesn’t seem like a very effective way of approaching public safety.

I’m still interested to know from the Minister—haven’t got an answer yet—where are the section 49 protections in the new bill? Give me the page, give me the section—

I’ll just point out to the member that the Minister has addressed that question.

I haven’t had the section. She hasn’t told me the section of the bill—

She has addressed the question.

No, I’m asking—where is it in the bill? It’s not question time. I want to know where it is in the bill.

It’s a new bill. We’re not carrying over every single section.

My question is: where is the protection for someone that was in the older—can you show me the section in here where it exists? That’s all I’m asking—that’s all I’m asking.

I flagged earlier on that I had a question in relation to that, which was on clause 27. It states that a person may possess a large-capacity pistol magazine only if the person holds a firearms licence or visitor licence that bears an endorsement permitting them to possess a pistol. Thank you for the explanation you gave my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan in relation to how you convert. I’m really interested to understand: when we went through the changes to the firearms ranges, there were greater protections in place, particularly for pistols, more so than other weapons that would be like a .22 or other long-barrel - type firearms. One of the reasons we were told in select committee back then was in relation to the fact that a pistol can be concealed. That’s why it’s seen as a potentially more dangerous weapon. I’m really interested to know if that is the same logic that’s been used here in terms of the, I guess, probably, extra protections put on requirements for the conversion for pistols. Is there greater emphasis on making sure that’s specified in this legislation for the very same reasons that were put forward in the changes to firearms ranges—if she could speak to that?

11:19

The member is really caught up on section 49A and I think actually probably went about trying to misquote me or—not misquote, but sort of try and put my words somewhere where they weren’t. Effectively, if a person is revoked, they can be revoked for all sorts of things. I know that the member has it that, in her mind, it could just be for criminal activity or serious violent activity, but some people are revoked or suspended for things to do with alcohol. It might be a driving offence for example, which they’ve been revoked for. It doesn’t mean that you’re not fit and proper to be under the immediate supervision of another person. In regard to different regimes—and I had said to the member—I had addressed it by saying we have other clauses throughout here. I had mentioned, so I will mention it again to the member: the Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) regime will stop people from even being on a range. Therefore, they will not be able to be under immediate supervision if they have an FPO upon them. There are other areas throughout this where we are ensuring that those that should not be in possession of firearms or using them are not—but we are not coming down with a hammer on every single person for every single thing that they might do, especially if they’ve been suspended for something that is quite minor.

I refer the member perhaps to clause 157 for the FPOs. In regard to the prohibited magazines—the large capacity pistol magazines—this is closing a loophole that Labour had left after 2019. This is ensuring again that only large capacity pistol magazines can be possessed by those people with the pistol endorsements; to stop anyone with a standard firearms licence or not. What we had in the previous regime was that you didn’t even need a firearms licence to go buy a large capacity magazine. One loophole was closed there—finally, since I’ve been asking since 2012 for that to happen. Since then, we’re now also closing another loophole that was not addressed in previous legislation by ensuring that the large capacity pistol magazines are also maintained only by fit and proper people with the correct endorsements.

11:22

Minister, I’m just looking at clause 28 and I’ve just been trying to work out what the effect is of the proposed change in language. It changes “a person may possess a part of a restricted weapon only if the person holds a firearms licence” etc. to “a person may possess a major firearm, part of a restricted weapon, or any other part of a restricted weapon.” I would have thought that that second part captured the first, so that the original drafting was sufficient and clear enough to ensure that we were covering any part—whether it be a major part or a less major part.

I’m then looking at new clause 31: the requirements for possession of restricted firearm. I note the change to the language in subclause 2(b) which says, “the licensed business takes or took possession of the restricted firearm from another person”. Is it possible that the licensed business could take possession from another licensed business, in which case, wouldn’t the original language be more suitable? Or specifying the words after “from another person” and adding the language “or another licensed business”—that’s my second question.

Then my third is in relation to the penalties. Subclause 4—and I absolutely understand that the Minister isn’t going to speak about an increase or decrease to every penalty within what is a very substantial bill. I do know that the offences under this section are quite broad; you could have an unlicensed premises, you could have licensed but unendorsed, or you could have lapsed endorsement, perhaps. The scale of offending, again, seems to me to be quite broad, but we do have a singular penalty. So I’m just wanting the Minister’s view on whether she believes that it is appropriate that that scale of offending all fits within that seven-year cap on penalties. Thank you.

11:24

I’m advised that—in regard to the penalty side of it—because under the Sentencing Act the court can impose a fine of any amount if an offence is punishable by imprisonment, we want people to be punished by imprisonment and not get a fine instead of it to show the severity and seriousness in which we take those potential causes. That’s why fines have been removed to make sure that prison is the requirement there. Under section 28, this was for emphasis really—and to make it very, very clear what our expectations are.

11:25

I’m going to jump on to a couple of new sections, noting that my colleagues may have questions for other sections. I want to first start with clause 38. Minister, you’ve made some changes in the Amendment Paper 658 on clause 38(1)(b)(ii). That’s helped clarify that we’re looking at the whole entire process of making and also production. One of the questions then—it occurred to me as I’m reading the Minister’s amendment—is what happens when it comes to, for example, storage or transport in between some of that production? Is that being captured now by the changes we’re seeing in clause 38(1)(b)(ii)?

I do want to jump on to a further section—this is something that I am curious about—and that’s clause 54. This is to do with selling arms or ammunition by mail order or online, and what I specifically want to ask is clause 54(1)(a) is signed by the purchaser—can I get the clarification from the Minister that “signed by the purchaser” is at the point of purchase or does it also include a signed delivery? Now, the reason I ask this is that an item referred to in subsection 1 could refer to a standard firearm. If you buy a standard firearm online and it gets delivered to your house, you’re not there to pick it up, and it was just left on your doorstep, is there a requirement for signed delivery in those cases? Or should it be more explicit, like you can buy ammunitions etc. without a signature, but if you are buying anything that could be a firearm or turn into a firearm in itself, it would require a signed delivery? I just want to check clarifications on that.

11:27

In response to section 54, the mail-order purchasing came in quite a long time ago. I won’t mention her name, but there was a journalist who tested the provision and found a loophole—so that came in at that time. What it effectively meant was that we didn’t want mail order just going to anybody, especially people who were unlicensed. When a purchase occurs, you actually have to go through the regulator to get signoff, and that regulator will double check that the seller and the buyer both have the appropriate licences and endorsements. When they sign these particular forms will depend on who they are at what stage they sign them. It will depend on where they are, as well, because someone can go down to your local Firearms Safety Authority—it will become your local FSA—to get it. Some will do it online; some will go in person.

Effectively, it’s confirming that the purchaser and the seller both have firearm licences, that the transaction that’s taking place is being recorded, and the stage at which it’s signed will occur before the transaction takes place. You’re effectively putting the regulator in the middle of it to understand exactly when these transactions are taking place, and that they are lawful in the way that they are taking place. Especially when people may live in different parts of the country—one in the North Island, one in the South Island—in ensuring that we know exactly where and how that firearm, or parts or ammunition, is being moved from one place to another both legally and in the correct manner.

11:29

Just a follow up clarification, because what I was referring to is not so much the purchasing side for online orders, but the delivery side. If you go through all these processes and you buy it, and it gets delivered but you’re not home, and it is just left on your doorstep—I want to check if that needs to be a consideration.

Yes. They will definitely need to be signed if that occurs, which I think is what is happening right now. There is a provision—a bit of a policy—that’s gone through, where they’re not actually being delivered to your home. They’re not being left on the doorstep; they’re being delivered to a business, say, a retail shop, say, a Hunting & Fishing, or to a gunsmith. It’s being delivered to a place. So if you say, “I’m not going to be home. I’m at work. I can’t take delivery of it.”, it won’t be delivered, effectively, but it can be delivered to a business on your behalf who will also sign for it and will also have to do a transaction to get it back to you. It should all be captured.

11:30

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’ve got a question for the Associate Minister of Justice in relation to Part 2, clause 40, and specifically to clause 41. Clause 40 is “Requirements for selling or supplying standard firearm, blank-firing gun, or airgun”, and clause 41 is “Defence to prosecution for offence under section 40”.

The guts of it is that a person can supply or sell a standard firearm to another person only if they meet the right requirements, and it is a defence to that offence if that person took reasonable steps to ascertain whether the person to whom they sold or supplied the standard firearm was a licensed firearms holder or was a licensed firearms business, in fact. The reason I ask this question is because we know that straw purchasing is a problem in New Zealand. We’ve got this information from New Zealand Police, where there might be instances where someone is making a legal purchase of a firearm but then it falls into the hands of someone who is not legal, or a criminal, or doesn’t have a licence.

I know that there have been successful prosecutions, but I’m really interested to understand, from the Minister’s point of view: what are those reasonable steps to ascertain whether the person to whom they sold or supplied the standard firearm was actually a licence holder? Because, then, we also see situations where—and this is slightly different but she might want to comment on it—there’s been, like, a burglary or a robbery that wasn’t really, but someone’s kind of just left the keys out and they’ve taken the guns that were left in the garage.

I think it’s really important, if we’re talking about being able to deter people from engaging in getting their hands on weapons illegally, that there needs to be strong protections in place that don’t incentivise people who are legal firearms owners profiting or being able to undertake straw purchasing in order for criminals to get their hands on weapons, when otherwise they wouldn’t have access to it. I’m really interested to understand, from her point of view, what those reasonable steps should be to ascertain whether the person to whom they sold or supplied the standard firearm was a licence holder or a licensed business, and whether there is sufficient protection in place to prevent and deter straw purchasing from occurring in New Zealand.

11:33

As I mentioned earlier, we have put within the Arms Act what defences are to certain clauses. With the changes of a whole new arms regime coming through, we want to make it quite clear to the users—a quarter of a million people out there—exactly what their rights and obligations are.

When the member asked, “What is a reasonable step?”, a reasonable step would be asking to look at a firearms licence. It could actually be where somebody turns up and goes to purchase a firearm off an individual and they don’t even bother to show that they are in possession of a firearms licence. A reasonable step would be to double-check that a person actually has a licence.

11:34

Thank you, Madam Chair. A similar clause but a slightly different question. I just wanted to ask the Associate Minister of Justice to confirm, kind of, the logic behind the slightly different reverse burden standards in clause 37, compared to clause 41.

In clause 37, “A person commits an offence and is liable on conviction … for a term not exceeding 3 years if the person, without reasonable excuse, contravenes [that] section”. Then, in clause 41, we have a much more explicit set of requirements of proof and the deletion in the clause above of the language “without reasonable excuse”. There appears to be a distinctly different choice being made about that reverse onus, and, on my reading—although, I’d be grateful for the Minister’s view—the clause 37 approach allows for a broader range of opportunities for an accused individual to justify why they weren’t compliant. Clauses 40 and 41 offer a much narrower set of reasons for the accused person to justify why they’re in breach. I’m just wondering whether that was intentional.

11:35

Thank you, Madam Chair. Clause 37 is not a reverse onus clause, so I’m quite happy with the way this is set up.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have two additional questions for this part, and one of them is around clause 60—I guess Subpart 6, in general, in terms of business activities. I’m just curious as to whether this is something where, for example, the business will have certain compliance requirements or there will be monitoring to ensure—let’s say, in clause 60—that there will be, like, annual or biannual checks that, indeed, all of the businesses have employees that hold firearm licences. Or would the checks and compliance requirement be proactive, rather than reactive, as in someone makes a complaint and then people will go into investigate? Or is it something of the nature of the business itself needing to require an update? I just want to check in terms of the compliance requirement. That’s my first question.

My second question is around clause 65, also noting that this is a clause that has some changes in terms of the Associate Minister of Justice’s Amendment Paper 658. As far as I can see, the main change is around the previous clause 65(2)(b), which is that the licensed business must have a permit to possess each of the items, but that has now been moved to “the chief executive must be satisfied”. I just want to check on the rationale for moving it from the business, I guess, producing it—I guess—as opposed to, now, the chief executive requiring that information from the business, if the Minister wouldn’t mind just clarifying that change.

11:37

Thank you. I’m hoping that my answer to you about clause 60 is answering the question, because I wasn’t too clear on the question.

Let me explain why we’ve done this particular clause: it’s permitting an employee of a licensed business to assist with the carrying out of the business activity. Effectively, under the regime that we have right now—and I’m going to come back to a retail shop—the owner of a retail shop will have an endorsement and be able to operate the business to be able to sell firearms and ammunition, and that person might also be able to sell, to people with the correct endorsements, restricted types of firearms, as well. The employees that work there also have to have an endorsement to be able to do this sort of thing. Effectively, we’re saying that this is just compounding the amount of people who, at the moment, also have to be renewed every 12 months.

We’ve actually changed it so that we’re expanding the scope that people are able to sell but also making sure that those employees are the correct type of employees that have the special knowledge, without having to get the endorsement. It’s just a bit of trying to clarify it, get rid of a bit of red tape, but still keep it quite strong so that the regulator knows who those employees are, but they don’t have to go through this 12-monthly regime of having to get an endorsement. They’ll still be looked at, they’ll still need to have a firearms licence, but they won’t necessarily need to have those endorsements. Clause 60 is about compliance requirements.

Clause 65, the firearms licence holder seeks to—it’s about manufacturing. I’m just going to say, because I wasn’t quite sure, as well, about what your question was there on clause 65.

What’s the change?

The chief executive approval, including the type and quantity and, in some cases, justification before manufacturing specific classes of items with regulatory consequences for non-compliances. It means, basically, that the licensed business needs to obtain approval from the chief executive—this is the chief executive of the new monitoring agency—for the type and quantity of what it is that they want to manufacture, so they just don’t go off and do whatever they want, and make whatever they want without getting some of that approval first, especially under certain circumstances as defined from clauses 64 through to 66. It’s basically putting regulatory consequences in there for non-compliance, and making sure that they don’t just go on and start manufacturing.

While we are on clause 65, and it’s within the Amendment Paper so that I can bring it up, I’d just like to mention proposed amendment to clause 65 to fix a drafting error and clarify the clause also applies—no, because we took that out. Sorry, that’s out of the Amendment Paper. It’s all good.

Madam Chair.

Is this a clarification?

Just to clarify.

OK. Thanks.

11:41

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just for clause 60. Thank you, Minister. You actually answered my question, I think, which is the fact that the employees or the business conducting this activity will still be monitored and checked, which means that for anything else that comes with it, they will still get notifications saying, “Hey, you should renew your firearms licence.”, and all of that is still being tracked. It does answer my question that the agency or the new board or whatever is still continuously monitoring, so that’s helpful. Thank you.

The Hon Ginny Andersen—I am just going to say at this point that we’re sort of getting to the pointy end of this part, so short, sharp clarifications. Thank you.

Yes, sure. My question is relation to the museum workers who “possess, display and store arms items, ammunition and restricted ammunitions” in clause 63. I know that we made changes at select committee and I know there have been subsequent changes from the Minister’s Amendment Paper 658, but if she could clarify. There’s been quite a bit of work done in and around museum workers and also their not requiring endorsements or permits to possess a whole range of things like restricted firearms, restricted magazines, pistols. I’m just interested to understand, first of all, the rationale behind any particular reasons why there is an exemption for endorsements in those spaces. I’m assuming it’s because public safety is at a lower risk, but if she could just clarify for me. I’ve gone through the committee’s report back; I’ve gone through the primary legislation, and then I’ve gone to her amendment. I just wanted to understand exactly what the changes had been that have been recently made, specific to museum workers.

11:42

This, again, is in line with some other modifications that we’ve made, but, effectively, generally, not all of museum workers are firearm enthusiasts; they’re just there to have a job. Because they are working in museums—I’ll think of Waiouru National Army Museum for example—you’ll have your curators who will have the proper endorsements, but the person that’s sitting on the front counter accepting people coming in might also be the person that’s asked to help to move displays from one place to another. Under the current regime, they would need an endorsement to be able to just touch one of these. They quite often don’t even shoot firearms; they’re just there for a job. So this carve-out for them was to ensure that the museum workers don’t have to go through the same sort of regime of having to get a firearms licence, therefore putting security in their home and being looked at all the time, when they don’t have any firearms at home and have no intention of having firearms at home. So for those particular individuals, it stops the museum having to pay out for endorsements every 12 months for them as well, and just allows them to go to work and do their job. But I assure the member that within the museum cohort, those curators will have the appropriate endorsements.

11:44

Thank you very much. I just have one other question in relation to subpart 8. It pertains to clause 64 and clause 65, that certain business licence holders may manufacture restricted items. I know that there have been provisions somewhere in the bill around 3D firearms as a new development. I’m just interested to understand from the Minister whether those provisions around requirements for manufacture of certain arms does in fact include 3D, and if not, why not? I understand that “An individual who’s a licensed business, or the senior manager of a body corporate” are able to do. For those ones that are licensed and able to, does that include 3D or has that been completely prohibited and that sits outside?

I’m interested to understand if there are kind of future considerations as to the way things may evolve. So even while we know now that there’s a real concern with police with 3D printer manufactured firearms that can be downloaded on the internet and used, is there a situation in the future where legal firearms could be made by manufacturers, and do we need to have an understanding or a provision for the future development of technology and how that might be utilised?

11:45

I’m hoping that I’m actually able to capture that future technology aspect within the Arms Bill. When it comes specifically to 3D printing or manufacturing, manufacturing includes any type of method at all, so that includes 3D printing. The carve-out that we’ve had is that we have some amazing businesses in New Zealand—world-leading businesses in New Zealand—who are manufacturing, by 3D printing, firearm components that are now being asked for by defence agencies all over the world. We want to be able to continue to be world leaders in that space and not prohibit them from being able to continue to manufacture in that respect. But we do need to put some guidelines around them, ensuring that, for the purpose of manufacturing, they do have the correct licence to be able to do that.

As I mentioned earlier about how there’s a policy that gunsmiths are not allowed to hold parts to be able to fix different types of firearms, we’re now seeing the use of 3D printing coming in to manufacture some parts in order for quick fixing of certain types of firearms. This is really essential because, to give an example, there’s a requirement as a pistol endorsement holder that the person who has that endorsement must do 12 competitions per year. If their pistol is broken and they can’t get a part for another six to nine months, then they aren’t fulfilling the other legislative aspect, so we have made an ability for 3D printing to occur in New Zealand for specific types of items. Some will need a manufacturing licence and some will just require having a normal standard firearms licence, but the ability to manufacture arms parts or firearms without a licence at all will be completely illegal.

11:47

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 2 set out on Amendment Paper 658 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment inserting subclause (3A) into clause 29 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment inserting new clause 49A be agreed to.

The Hon Ginny Andersen’s tabled amendment inserting “unless the defendant is a revoked or suspended licence holder” into Part 2 is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.

11:52

Sorry, I wasn’t sure if the Minister was going to make a comment.

That’s all right. I just wasn’t sure if the Minister was going to—

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to start with clause 67, and I do want to pull in a couple of threads for clause 67, and also, at this stage, clause 68. My first question is on clause 67(1)(a), which is that a person may apply if the person is over the age of 16, but it also has requirements on what some of the disqualifying factors are. In terms of firearms prohibition orders (FPOs), what I can see in clause 289 is that the FPO is only for age 18 and above. So I guess the question is: if something happens between the age of 16 and 18, what happens between that? It looks like you can hold a firearm licence from 16, but FPOs only apply if you’re over 18. That’s my first question.

My second question is on clause 68. I think we’ll have quite a few questions on clauses 67 and 68, but the one I want to focus on in clause 68 is (a)(iii), which is about certain offences under the Crimes Act. I’m really pleased to see that section 189A, around strangulation, is in there because we know that that is quite an important factor that has been added in. I want to check with the Minister: why, then, is section 232 on aggravated burglary and section 235 on aggravated robbery not included here as offences that would disqualify a person from holding a firearms licence? Those two are my two questions on clauses 67 and 68.

11:54

Thank you, Madam Chair. In regard to clause 67—sorry, I’m just quickly reading my notes while I’m standing. OK, in regard to clause 67, the member asked the question about 16-year-olds, for example. A 16-year-old can apply for a firearms licence, and when they apply for a firearms licence, they have to be judged to be fit and proper. If you have someone aged between 16 and 18 and, say, they’ve done ram raids, for example, there’s no gap here, because they would never be judged to be a fit and proper person to be in charge of a firearm at the age of 16 if they have that type of history behind them. The same with the firearms prohibition orders. They just wouldn’t be fit and proper.

The offences that the member specified are actually covered in clause 68(a)(ii). What we have got here—I’ll just mention this comes from the select committee; it’s a change that select committee asked for—was to ensure that people convicted under the Arms Act 1983 will remain disqualified under the new Arms Act when it comes in. It’s not answering that member’s question, but I’m just pointing out a select committee change that will ensure that there is a carry-over of information of disqualifications from the old Arms Act to the new one.

11:56

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Minister—

Please make sure, for the House, that you call when you want a call, because if I don’t hear anything and it’s quiet, we stop.

Thank you. Thanks for that clarification, Chair, and thanks to the Minister and the officials for providing the responses to the questions. They’ve been very fruitful to date, so thank you.

My question is around clause 69 on page 69, “Persons who may be found not fit and proper to hold firearms licence”. I don’t disagree with that clause overall, but it does not properly reflect the way risks present in 2026. The reality is that radicalisation, organisation, and the promotion of violence and extremism increasingly take place online. Warning signs are often visible in digital behaviour, the content that people share, and in what they post, like in Facebook comments and the causes that they hit the “like” button on. At the moment, clause 69(1)(n), on page 70 on the next page, captures this through general language, particularly around patterns of behaviour and extreme extremism, but it does so implicitly, not explicitly. The amendment that I’m proposing makes that explicit. It inserts a new provision confirming that relevant online activity, including promoting or engaging with content or extremist material, posting threatening comments, or participating in groups who support those views is directly relevant to whether someone is a fit and proper person.

Now, under clause 69(1)(o), for someone to be assessed as a risk to the national security of New Zealand or another State, the bar would be very high and the public would expect that one would not be a fit and proper person well before they meet that threshold. I believe that we need to address that. So my question to the Minister is, if someone is openly posting hateful or extremist views online, say on a MP’s Facebook page or an online chat group, that may raise concern for the average member of the public or, for that matter, for police, but not necessarily meet the threshold that would warrant intervention by our security agencies. Shouldn’t that be enough to raise serious concerns about whether they are fit to hold a forearms licence?

Also, Minister, given the pace of online radicalisation, why would we not make this provision explicit in the legislation rather than relying on a broad interpretation? Thank you.

11:59

Thank you, Madam Chair. The member is, in an effort, I think, trying to give me scenarios, perhaps, and it’s not our position as legislation or lawmakers to try and counter every scenario but to give a broad regime available to the regulator. We feel confident that the bill gives the regulator the discretion to consider a wide range of factors. That could be the factors such as the member has considered himself: what might happen online; what might happen on Facebook or on Twitter or on Instagram; and who says what. Some people may be offended by things that are said and others may not be, so that’s not a threshold for us to decide here, but it will be a threshold for the regulator to decide on. Also, the regulator may look at whether or not there’s a consistency in this, and whether, as the member has mentioned, there appears to be a type of radicalisation: it’s not happened on one social media forum, but it’s happened over a lot or it’s happened over a period of time. Again, that’s not for us to address here, but for the regulator to have the tools, which I’m hoping that this section gives them, to be able to ascertain whether a person is fit and proper to hold a firearms licence. And this includes extreme or concerning online behaviour. So they can and will be able to have a look at that behaviour and make determinations.

Clause 69(1)(n) allows the regulator to find a person not fit and proper if they have shown patterns—like I have just mentioned—of behaviour that demonstrate a “tendency to exhibit, encourage, or promote violence, hatred, or extremism;” We’re also going to be establishing, as you’ll know later on within the bill, a red flag agreement between other agencies, so that there is information sharing, because what we’ve found under the current regime is one organisation might know of some extreme behaviour but have not shared that with the police at this stage. We want them to be able to share that with police and with the regulator, and if the regulator finds anything concerning, be able to share that as well with these other Government agencies.

The red flag system will actually help identify more extremist behaviour quicker, into the future. I feel that we have really nailed it there. What I will do is thank the select committee for the changes that they had considered in clause 69. I do note that across the House there was agreement, unanimous agreement, with the amendments that have been done, so I’m a bit confused as to why the Opposition are actually opposing the amendments that you’ve agreed with in the Amendment Paper. That’s up to them, but it just seems a bit bizarre that we’ve gone about it that way. But I thank you, anyway, for the changes that have been made in clause 69 with the way that fit and proper is captured, the test is captured.

Also, there’s a change to clause 69(1)(h)(ii) in the Amendment Paper from “any regulations” to say, “any regulations made under this Act or” previous versions of this Act. Once again, just to ensure that those that were in or captured under the Arms Act 1983 will continue to be captured under the new Act.

12:03

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I appreciate the Minister’s willingness to engage on these issues. I’m coming back to refer to the amendment of my colleague Dan Rosewarne, and I’m trying to understand the consistency, because as I read through clause 69 here, given that I’ve raised the issue of taking the precautionary approach, and maybe that’s not one that the Minister sees as necessary—that is, she doesn’t see it as necessary to go any further than we should. In clause 69, paragraph (h), (i), (j), (k)—(j), let’s take that—that a person may be deemed not fit and proper if they abuse alcohol—it says, “(j) abuses alcohol, or is dependent on alcohol, to an extent that detrimentally affects their judgement or behaviour;” That probably covers half the population. Unfortunately, as a nation, we do use alcohol; it’s used in a positive way a lot of the time. But there would be many, many, many people who have abused alcohol at different times. I’m not saying that this is necessarily wrong because I know the intent here, but it is quite wide-ranging.

So to have this provision in clause 69, but then not to support, and perhaps the Minister might support the amendment of my colleague Dan Rosewarne, where he says, “have shown patterns of behaviour”—so this is not just a one-off—“patterns of behaviour including through online activity or associations, demonstrating a tendency to exhibit or encourage violence or hatred”. I would have thought that his amendment is actually quite well focused in an area, and yet the one referencing alcohol was quite wide-ranging. It’s the consistency through this legislation that I seek some clarity from the Minister on. I’m not necessarily saying that the alcohol one is wrong, although I could probably fit into that myself. From time to time, I’ve abused alcohol. If you go back through my life at university or whatever, most of us would have.

Again, depending on the time and the incident that it may be used as a judgement, a lot of people could be eliminated, but I know that the amendment put up by my colleague Dan Rosewarne, that’s actually—I would say widely accepted as a fair judgement on actually deeming someone not to be fit and proper. I guess the question comes back to the Minister’s approach to that, and whether she can leave the door open to what I think will be quite a sensible amendment.

12:06

For those that have firearm licences, they know that they have to learn the seven basic rules of firearm safety. The seventh rule is avoid alcohol and drugs while using firearms, and this particular paragraph (j), of clause 69, is talking about abusing, not just having a tinkle here and there, or a couple of drinks after the rugby game on a Saturday night, but it would demonstrate a show of abuse or dependency on alcohol, which of course impairs judgement, as those that have licences are taught when they go through that licensing regime. There’s a little bit of a difference there, because you are taught it. In fact, you’re tested on it at the time that you go about getting your licence. Abuse of alcohol or drugs, or being dependent upon them in such a way that it is detrimental to your behaviour or the way that you could handle firearms, is why that is in there.

When it comes to online behaviour, I think that needs to be a pattern, which the chief executive will be able to pick up, will be able to look at. But as I mentioned earlier to the member who has the amendment, there are some forms of communication online which some people feel offended by and others do not, and I don’t think that that is warranted within this regime as it currently is. I think that that is a determination, which should be able to be made upon the regulator. I come back again to the red flag sharing agreement, where if it is flagged with the regulator and the regulator goes out to other agencies, and the NZSIS might say, actually we’ve found some issues with this person, then you see a pattern of behaviour where the determination can be made as to whether they are fit and proper. But I will explain, or say, that the alcohol and drugs, that’s all part of your testing to get a firearms licence. That’s why it’s here in this respect.

12:08

Thank you, and I appreciate the response from the Minister on that. Can I just, then, question around what is in clause 69, paragraph (j) and (k)—"affects their judgement or behaviour;” I’ll put forward a proposition that I think could be probably supported in science, that any level of drug or alcohol intake does affect your judgement. I’m sure that those using firearms for sporting purposes would not consume any, because of the effect on their performance. So I guess the question comes down to—again with reference to the online stuff—that the Minister’s prepared to say we need more specificity on that, on what someone deems to be perhaps risky online behaviour or views.

I would suggest that it’s probably easier to specify that, than it is to nail down the effect on someone’s judgement with the consumption of alcohol and drugs. Again, to come back to my point around clarity on this and whether interpretation by someone at some point in the system may end up being not what is intended here. I know the Minister is talking about extremes, but actually, any alcohol will affect anyone’s judgement when it comes to the use of firearms or vehicles. There is a threshold in the use of vehicles. I guess the question is: should there be a threshold for firearms—that is, one drink or two drinks? How do we make an assessment over a fit and proper person having consumed alcohol or drugs being insufficiently impaired to ensure that they are always making the right judgement?

12:10

Thank you, Madam Chair. If we look at past history and the way that people have behaved, if you are drunk behind the wheel or drugged behind the wheel, so to speak, you’re committing offences. You’re not showing fit and proper behaviour. If you’re doing it multiple times, you’re showing a pattern of that and you’re not being responsible. I know, as a person who has represented New Zealand multiple times in shooting, you’re quite right that we don’t touch alcohol, especially while we’re preparing for international matches. I also don’t touch coffee, because coffee makes your heart rate go up, and that is extremely detrimental when you come to do these international shoots or competitions, I should say.

When it comes to drugs as well, you have to potentially think about prescription medication. Again, this comes back to what I’m excited about, the introduction of Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand. Through all of the firearms licensing regime, people are taught at the time that they get their licences how being impaired by drugs or alcohol could mean that you end up losing your licence as a result. I don’t think that we need to put a determination on it. People are taught and told that guns and alcohol do not mix, full stop, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t partake at all. If it gets to a point where somebody has, say, gone duck shooting and then left the maimai, stopped at the pub, had a few drinks and got drunk, as has happened in the past, leaving firearms unattended in their vehicles, there are other avenues to be able to combat that and that could also mean losing their licence.

Madam—

I feel like this is a clarification. I know the Hon Ginny Andersen wants a call, but yeah.

12:12

It is indeed a clarification; it might be an extrapolation. The Minister, in what she said before, would she be implying that there shouldn’t be any alcohol in the maimai? That might slow down some of the celebration of duck shooting day. I understand the point she was making, but it’s not well-understood by many shooters, I would suggest, around duck shooting, or certainly at the start of the season. The Opposition’s not advocating that we should be absolutely honest; what we’re saying is that we should be consistent with what we include in the legislation here. That will be interpreted sensibly, we hope, but reference to online harm should be in here also with the same sensible interpretation. But the absence of it actually does leave the door wide open, I would suggest.

12:13

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. My question is in relation to the fit and proper provision. I mean, this really goes to the heart of the whole basis of having firearms legislation. It is to determine who is, in fact, fit and proper to hold a firearms licence. I note that this is probably one of the biggest problems that Labour has with this legislation. It appears that police are completely removed from any observation on how a person is determined to be fit and proper to hold a firearms licence. From my understanding, the chief executive of the new entity that this legislation established is primarily responsible for determining who, in fact, would be fit and proper and all of the provisions that come in under that.

As discussed by my colleague Damien O’Connor, whether it’s alcohol or mental health or physical illness or mental illness, all those factors are there. But my concern is that I know that there is an ideological problem with having police involved with firearms licensing because, potentially, of the way that they went round firearms ranges and made a lot of recommendations that improve safety. That sort of didn’t sit well within the firearms community. There seems to be this kind of—

Oh, rubbish.

—mistrust with police.

Can I ask—because before I was in the House and I was watching a previous part; the involvement of police was discussed then—if it’s something really specific, clause-wise, to this part. I don’t think we want to relitigate the whole issue of police being involved, because I have heard the Minister answer that question.

My question is, when the chief executive makes their determination that someone is, in fact, not fit and proper, what police information or intelligence is able to be utilised in making that determination? What provisions are made within this legislation to facilitate the free-flowing of intelligence from front-line New Zealand police to the decision-making process that enables a determination to be made under this provision?

12:15

As I’ve mentioned before, there are information-sharing agreements that will be able to be worked out not just between police and the regulator but between the regulator and other Government agencies as well to get information sharing. Information sharing is already occurring right now. We have the Firearms Safety Authority who are going to become Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand, and there will be no lapse in any information sharing whatsoever. There was never any intention for that to occur. Things will carry on in that respect to ensure only fit and proper people have access to firearms.

12:16

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m just picking up on what the Minister said in terms of information sharing. I’m curious about clause 69(1)(a). It might be an existing practice that has carried over, but I do want to know how we get information from someone overseas regarding when we’re looking at determining if the person is fit and proper. Clause 69(1) says, “or overseas that is punishable by a term of imprisonment”, so I just want to check with the Minister, how do we get some of that information?

12:17

The current requirement is that if a person has been overseas for a certain period of time—I think it might be six months; it could be three—they need to get a written letter from the authorities in the country that they’ve been in to say that they are clear, in other words, that they haven’t committed any major crimes over there. If they have committed crimes, those crimes need to be listed, and the regulator will then understand whether or not they fit within the New Zealand regime of fit and proper.

Thank you. I think I might be confusing a later section. I was thinking about it from a perspective of someone from overseas coming here, but that will be considered as a visitor licence which we’ll discuss later, right? OK. That’s clear. Thank you.

I’m going to move on to clause 73. Inform—described in section 69(1). I wanted to check if this clause 73(1) covers—and I apologise if I missed it—the requirement for a firearms licence holder to declare when their firearms are stolen or missing. I assume it’s somewhere, but I can’t see it in this part.

12:18

Yes. There is a legal requirement. If firearms are stolen or lost, this must be reported to the regulator. That’s ongoing and will definitely stay there. That’s very, very important that there is a requirement there. But as we are on—sorry, the one that you’re looking for has actually been moved to clause 134. That covers that one in particular.

But while we are on clause 73, I again just want to take the opportunity of thanking the Justice Committee for accepting the departmental report recommendation that cause 73(1)(c) be changed to refer to a constable or member of the arms regulator. The drafting reflects the terms “arms officer or a constable”. We’re just clearing up the language there. Including constables in this clause expressly authorises members of police to request a licence holder to produce on demand any arms item—so that’s arms items, firearms, and ammunition. This may be relevant when a police officer is trying to carry out a law enforcement duty. I thank the select committee for that.

I also have a proposed change in the Amendment Paper for clause 73 to require an arms officer to provide evidence that they are an arms officer. At the moment, if New Zealand police come and rock up, turn up at your door, knock on your door, you can tell because they’re wearing a uniform. When we move to arms officers under Firearms Safety and Education New Zealand, they won’t have police uniforms and so I want them to be able to show ID to confirm that they are exactly who they are.

12:20

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am on clause 72. This is the disclosure of certain matters, or not, to the applicant and what’s required. This is the clause that, essentially, says that disclosure isn’t required under a set of circumstances. My question relates both to this clause but then also to the appeal rights, which are two pages along, where the chief executive can refer applications to the Firearms Licensing Review Committee if there is a complaint or ask for a reconsideration. Firstly, is there an obligation to inform the person who has had their application declined that information has been withheld, or is that information simply withheld? Is there an opportunity for that individual to seek information as to whether information was withheld or not and introduce that into the review process? I also can’t see anywhere in clause 81 that allows the review committee the same powers to withhold information, but should that information flow on to the review committee, we would potentially want them to also be able to withhold information too—so just making sure that’s covered.

Just one other thing—I note that on information sharing, we do have an amendment on the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. Is there also provision for information sharing to the Government Communications Security Bureau or is that not required?

12:21

Thank you, Madam Chair. At the moment, it’s with the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, but I expect that if it’s found that there are other agencies that need to start sharing information, that will occur as well. But we have identified that these are the areas where there should be information sharing.

On clause 71, about the grounds for withholding certain information and being informed of the right of refusal, effectively, if somebody is refused because of some confidential information, I think it will actually depend on what that information is and where it has come from as to whether or not the applicant will be told the details of that. But my expectation is that they will be told that they are refused and then also told that they have the ability to go to the licensing review committee.

We have proposed an amendment—I’ve just been told. I’m thinking on to it. We’re proposing an amendment to bring the information disclosure requirements in clause 318 in line with clause 72 to ensure that there are consistent information disclosure requirements between the regulator and the review committee. Then, again, at clause 81(2), the member quite rightly brought up, well, what about the licensing review committee? Within the Amendment Paper, we’re amending it to make sure that they come under the same regime as well—so, again, keeping private information or confidential information confidential only to them and not disclosing it automatically if it would be not in the interests of national security or a person’s welfare.

12:23

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to signal to you as well, Madam Chair, these are my final questions—for me, anyway—for Subpart 1 before moving on to Subpart 2, noting that others may have additional questions. I do apologise—

I just note that you’re the only person that stood up to take a call on this part on this now, so tell me what your final questions are.

OK. Cool. I do apologise, going back a little bit on clause 71. Can I just check with the Minister: if a person was denied the issuance of a firearm licence—I know they can have an appeal process, but if, let’s say, the appeal process was unsuccessful, is that permanent, or, let’s say, in five years’ time, they can choose to apply again and will be treated independently and separately, with a potentially different outcome, or is that just a one-off; if you’re being rejected and denied, that’s it? That’s my first question.

My second question is to do with clause—actually, just the removal in Amendment Paper 658. Can I check with the Minister: why has clause 77 been removed as a part of the Minister’s amendment, on “Extension of firearm licence for up to 3 years pending determination of application for new firearm licence”?

12:25

Within the Amendment Paper, we are looking to delete clause 77—that’s right—because it was initially intended to assist the regulator to flatten the demand curve. If you may indulge me just a little bit, back in the 1990s, after Aramoana, we moved from a lifetime licence to a 10-year licence, and every licensed firearm holder in New Zealand got moved into this 10-year licence over a short period of time, over a three-year period. That basically occurred in 1994, ’95, ’96. What that means is they all come up for renewal at the same time, in 10 years’ time. To give you an example, on average, we look at renewing around 14,000 licences per year, but at the moment, 2024, ’25, ’26, the regulator is trying to renew about 50,000 licences all in the one year.

The idea was to try and extend it a bit and allow the regulator some time and, of course, eventually flatten what we call the bell curve as well. But we had some adverse commentary that came back in submissions about that. Some people were concerned that they were paying for a 10-year licence and someone else might get a 13-year licence. We have got ideas on other ways of being able to fix that, because there’s still a problem. However, we’re just not going to bring that into here. I think I’ve covered that.

12:26

The other question was around if they got rejected for a licence issuance, whether that’s a one-off—they can’t reapply again—or they can. Yep.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, it depends on what it is that they’ve been rejected for and whether or not—for example, as you mentioned, the firearms prohibition order automatically stops them from being able to apply within the five-year period. I’m not sure if my officials can check if there is a period of time for if they are actually told no, that they can’t. OK, so it’s only five years. It’s a five-year stand down if a licence is revoked. If somebody, say, for the first time, applies for a licence and they don’t get it, it might be because they don’t have the security in place. We shouldn’t stop them for five years just because they might be living in a flat and can’t put a safe in, for example. We don’t want to stop them from having the opportunity to reapply again once they get everything in order. But if they’ve been revoked from having a firearms licence, they cannot reapply for five years.

The Hon Ginny Andersen. I just want to make note we’re not going back to Subpart 1, because that’s where—

12:28

No, I’m on to Subpart 2, rest assured—moving forward.

OK. Great. Thank you.

Subpart 2, “Business licences”—I’ve just got a question in relation to the provision in clauses 82(2) and (3) in terms of applying for a business licence. There’s a specific provision in there, “An application for a business licence to carry on the business activity specified in section 6(1)(a)(iii)”, which would relate to the manufacture of any restricted items, and it specifies in clause 82(2) that they can only be made by a person who, before 12 April 2019, was in the business of manufacturing restricted parts and restricted magazines for the purposes of permitted supply and who continues, for those purposes, to manufacture restricted parts and magazines.

I’m just interested to know why it is that particular date. Essentially, you’re saying anyone who is manufacturing these prohibited or restricted items, magazines—that’s the line in the sand. I’m interested to know from the Minister why that date; whether it’s just a carry-over from previous legislation or whether that’s a new thing; what’s the rationale behind enabling those ones who were manufacturing those restricted or prohibited items before then; and why, after that date, there can be no new—I’m assuming that means that anyone applying for a business licence who has started up their business after 12 April 2019 can’t do that. Just interested to hear from the Minister in and around why that particular date has been marked out in legislation.

12:30

I might ask the member why that date was put in there, because it was put in in the 2019 piece of legislation that was rushed through. But it won’t stop anyone else from being able to establish a new business under new controls by the regulator, and, of course, they will have a different name now as well. They won’t be under a dealer’s licence; they will come under a business licence, or they may come under a manufacturing licence. Really, this is about what was in place before this new piece of legislation comes in.

Thank you. Looking at clause 82—there are multiple parts when you’re looking at a business, right? You have to go through the Companies Register and apply to set up a company. Can I just check, what is the process, either existing or new, for a business that wants to apply for a business licence? Are they given any advice that they should secure a business licence first for the selling of firearms before actually setting up a business and then having all of the costs incurred to set up a business? What is the order of setting up the business and also getting the licence that is needed to actually sell the product that the business is set up for? That’s my first question.

My next question is around—this is a business licence, but in clause 82(2) and (3), it also talks about manufacturing, so you’re also talking about an endorsement component to it. Would a business licence applicant be able to apply for a licence and relevant endorsement at the same time—this will probably cover a question later on when we’re talking about endorsement—or do they have to apply for the licence first and be able to show that they are able to conduct the business with their existing licence before applying for any sort of additional endorsements such as manufacturing, etc? That’s my second question for clause 82.

My last question for now is on clause 87, and that’s to do with gun shows. I do note over here that it says, “The chief executive may … for a period not exceeding 5 days”. Does that five days specifically refer to the number of days that are for the gun show—as in, that the gun show is open or active, I guess—or does the five days also include set-up and pack-down days?

12:33

Thank you, Madam Chair. Clause 6 of the bill sets out what activities would require a person to apply for a business licence. Upon looking at those activities, an individual can then decide whether or not to apply for that business licence. It’s not the business that’s applying; it’s the individual that is applying. They will not necessarily need to have a business set up—you don’t sort of say, “Can I get a licence to go set the business up?” They can apply for both at the same time. I think someone applying for both a licence and the business licence for the first time at the same time might raise some red flags there for the regulator.

When it comes to the gun shows, I’ll again think explicitly about a show that I frequent every year and have done for a couple of decades now. It’s called the Sika Show, which used to be held in Taupō and is now held in Hamilton. It operates on a Saturday and a Sunday, and people come from all over the country, with quite extensive arrays of things. They usually are spending a day to travel, the Friday to set up, the Saturday and Sunday of the show, pack down on the Sunday, and get back to where they need to be on the Monday. It’s allowing time for all of those items to not be at the business but either be on the road or be at the excellent show that the Sika Show is.

12:34

Thank you very much. I have a question in relation to the hiring out of firearms for the use by a bona fide theatre company. I know anyone listening will remember the tragic case that happened in the United States, where there was an instance where live rounds were placed in a firearm used on a movie set, where someone tragically lost their life. I appreciate this sets out clear areas for where standard firearms and restricted pistols—

I think it’s clause 88. I’m just clarifying, is this clause 88?

Clause 88, yep—“Hiring out firearms for use by bona fide theatre company, etc.” I’m interested to know whether, while it specifies a theatre company, is that film as well, or is that under a separate provision? In New Zealand, we have an increasing number of international movies being made; we know that firearms are often used on sets in movies. I’m interested to understand whether clause 88 includes film situations where you’ve got a business licence being provided for that basis, and what protections are in place to reassure New Zealanders that there is consideration to how those weapons are used on a set and to make sure that there are blanks in a weapon and not live rounds?

12:36

I think clause 88(1) answers the member’s question. It’s in regard to “for use by a bona fide theatre company or society, cinematic or television film production company, or video recording production company.” It’s all there. One of the good things I think that we’ve done here is introduce a new penalty—a maximum fine of $10,000 for contravening that particular clause.

Thank you, Madam Chair—two very quick questions from me. The first is on clause 84; I’m just trying to look for whether there’s an appeal right for a negative decision on the granting of a business licence. Also, on clause 86, I was looking at subclauses (3) and (4), which essentially allow those activities to be carried out in places other than as specified. I would have thought that for subclause (4), the wording “must” would be more appropriate.

Clause 86, was that? Sorry, can you clarify?

Sorry, this is clause 86(4). It currently says, “a business licence may be issued with a condition described in that provision”— that’s the condition about it being a different location—“and other conditions necessary to provide for the safe use and secure storage of the firearms concerned.” I just would have thought that perhaps a “must” directive in that clause would have been more suitable, just given the fact that we’re now speaking about arms that might be used outside of even those places that from time to time are regularly used for theatrical productions and are maybe used to having to stand up additional monitoring—and in this case, we’re talking about completely different places.

12:38

With the Firearms Licensing Review Committee, they will not be able to hear appeals about that particular refusal that the member mentioned. However, that person can still appeal to the District Court.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m actually going to move on to the next two Subparts; Subpart 3, “Museum licences” and Subpart 4, “Museum worker licences”. Can I just check—this might be an existing provision and system that’s already in place around museums—is there a threshold on what then constitutes a firearm?

For example, if you have—oh, I’m going to be anachronistic about this—like a 17th century musket, etc., would that still fulfill the requirement, or is it something that is so old that it would no longer be under the requirement of what is considered a firearm or a restricted firearm? Is there such a thing or is it that anything that potentially is able to use ammunition at any point in time, regardless of how many hundred years old it is, would be considered a firearm that then requires a museum to have a licence or a museum worker licence. That’s my first question.

Sorry, which clause was it in the Subpart?

Let’s say clause 99(2)(b)(iia) and (iib). I guess just a general understanding of what is the breadth of the time period we’re looking at when we’re looking at what could be held within a museum.

I’m curious to know in terms of Subpart 4, “Museum worker licences”—and, particularly, I’m looking at clause 113, which is around “Museum worker licence not [being] transferable”, noting that the definition of museum worker includes volunteers. Can I just check, does that mean that, with something like the Auckland War Memorial Museum, where you’re going to get a number of volunteers, each of those volunteers who could potentially be required to possess, display, or store an armed item—every single one of them, then, will be requiring a museum worker licence?

12:40

In response to the member’s question about antique firearms and the definition of firearm, they are completely covered in the definition section at the very beginning, including the antique and what establishes an antique, and what establishes a firearm. It’s all clearly defined in those definitions.

In response to the volunteers at a museum and whether or not they would require a museum licence, if they are handling firearms, they currently require an endorsement—not only a firearms licence, but, if it’s a restricted firearm, an endorsement for that, as well. So, before, if they’re already doing this, they are under a regime that is very costly for them as volunteers and time-consuming, because those endorsements require renewal every 12 months at the moment. We’re actually relaxing it a bit for them to say, “Well, you’re not taking them home; all you’re doing is trying to help out there.” So they would have to apply for a museum licence instead of all the other licences.

12:41

Just one quick clarification. I think that makes a lot of sense, Minister, because with the volunteers, like, say, in terms of Auckland War Memorial Museum, a volunteer may also only work a few hours a week, and—OK, cool, that’s really helpful. I do have questions, but I would then be moving on to the next part, so—

It would be really helpful—so they’re on the next part? There’s no more subpart questions?

No, no, no—there is Subpart 5 on visitor licences—

Yes, there are. I’d just be quite pleased if the member—we’ve been on this part for a period of time. If there are some other clarifications on the other subparts, now would be a good time.

Are you happy for me to move on to Subpart 5?

Yes, I am.

OK, cool. Just checking, because I know that other members may have questions.

I know, but you were the only person, as I mentioned before, taking calls and I have taken a couple of additional calls, but when you called about the subparts—I’d like you to just get your other clarifications about the subparts.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll have you know, for me, I’m done with Subpart 3 and Subpart 4. I’m only going to be focusing on Subpart 5 now.

Subpart 5, clause 121—I think this is the kind of clarification that I was looking for previously, which the Minister did clarify. In terms of clauses 121 and 123, if a person is visiting from overseas jurisdictions, how would our Government be able to check if that particular visitor has any criminal history or any other circumstances that would determine if they are not a fit and proper person to hold a visitor licence? I can see the list of requirements in subclauses (1) to (3), but I just want to know—how would we know?

12:43

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m glad that the member is liking these amendments, and I hope that he votes for them when it comes time to. However, what I will say is that within—I previously mentioned, actually, with the overseas characterisations, how you’d have to get letters. It’s the same sort of regime here. For example, somebody wants to come from overseas and they want to enter a shooting competition. As part of getting their application for a visitor licence, they’ll have to show that they are legally allowed to have firearms in the country that they are in. If they are returning to New Zealand after spending a couple of years overseas, even if they are Kiwis who have held a firearms licence here in New Zealand, if they’ve been overseas for a period of time, they actually have to get letters from overseas authorities to confirm that they have been fit and proper while they’ve been over there, even though they are New Zealanders, as well.

While we are on clause 123, I’ll point out that within Amendment Paper 658 I’m proposing a change to clause 123(1)(i)(ii) to say “any regulations made under this Act [or previous versions of this Act]”, to address the concern from the regulator that, as it was drafted, the clause could be interpreted as not being limited to only arms regulations.

12:45

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I just have a question in relation to Subpart 5. I did have a museum one, but I’ll let that go. The question I have—I know that in New Zealand, it’s a decent industry; we have people coming into New Zealand, whether it’s for helicopter hunting or inversions like that, and that there are grounds for not only a visitor licence as provided in clause 121 but there’s also persons who are found to be not fit and proper to hold a visitor licence.

I’m just really interested to know, from the Minister’s experience, when there’s international information that sometimes New Zealand might not have access to if they’re coming from, for example, the United States or another country where our authorities don’t have access to what may be available, what kind of reassurances can we hear from the regulators or the chief executive of the new regulator to be able to determine if someone’s not, in fact, fit and proper, particularly given that we live in an age of artificial intelligence, where official documents can easily be falsified? And so, I’m really interested to understand, if we have people who are not New Zealand citizens coming into our country specifically to undertake sporting activities with firearms, how can we be reassured that the documentation and evidence that they’re providing the regulator is, in fact, bona fide and there aren’t risks there?

I understand this is a good industry which brings money into New Zealand businesses and provides a good source of income. At the same time, if we’re letting people loose with a gun to go hunting, that could be risky. What checks and balances are in place to understand that the documentation that they’re providing is, in fact, verifying that they are a fit and proper person? That test is quite different when you’re a New Zealand citizen; you have access to all their criminal records, you have access to all of their previous—even health records, if you wanted to go that far. But we don’t have access to that same level of detail if they’re not a New Zealand citizen, so how can we be reassured that with clause 123, we can actually be able to determine that?

12:47

There will be different areas that will have different ways of being able to look at this. To give various examples, if a person from Australia belongs to the local fullbore club and they’ve made the Australian rifle team and they’re coming to New Zealand to shoot in the Ballinger Belt, they will not only belong to a club; they’ll likely be online with a whole lot of activity that they have been undertaking as representatives of their country. They will have a licence, and they will fit the criteria, whatever that criteria may be, that the regulator sets, and it will be the regulator setting that criteria, not me.

If it’s a person that is coming to hunt as an individual and they have a licence from their country, depending on what that country is, the regulator will set the criteria for what they need to see from that individual, from that particular country. I’m not going to go through every single country in the world as to what that criteria may possibly be. That will be up for the regulator to determine. If a person comes from overseas and they want to do a hunting trip, for example, and they have no licence, they will not be issued a New Zealand firearms licence. Rather, they would be able to undertake their hunting activity under the immediate supervision of a New Zealand licence holder.

12:49

Thank you, Madam Chair. I actually want to move on a little bit further. I’m now on Subpart 7, clause 139. This is page 99 of the Minister’s Amendment Paper 658. My question for clause 139—I guess, just in general, in terms of the “Surrender of licence”, can I just check that when we are looking at the surrender of a licence, would the person then be able to reapply at a later date? Is that something that is allowed? And, in that case, is there any requirement for, potentially, a stand-down period there? I assume not, but I would be keen to hear from the Associate Minister of Justice. I do want to check that there was—I’m trying to find which section it was on. Sorry, this is now on clause 157, which is the effect of revocation of firearms licence, on page 107 of Amendment Paper 658. It does say that “a person whose firearm licence is revoked must immediately surrender their…licence”, but it doesn’t necessarily have a particular timeframe to it. I’m assuming, in this case, “immediately” is as soon as reasonably practicable, or is the police officer there on the spot and you’re handing it over?

12:50

Thank you, Madam Chair. In regard to clause 139, if a person surrenders their firearms licence, they may be surrendering it for any reason whatsoever; they don’t even need to tell the regulator why. It could be that they’re moving overseas. It could be that they’re moving flats or they’ve got a new partner who doesn’t want firearms being stored there. There are all sorts of reasons, so a person who surrenders their licence will be able to apply for a licence at any other stage. The difference will be that when they apply for a licence again, it’s being treated as a brand-new licence. Instead of being issued a 10-year licence, they will come back to a five-year licence because it’s treated as a new licence regardless of the reason that they surrendered it.

I just note that in clause 157, immediate is immediate. It could be that the police or the regulators there, they’ve been revoked and are expected to hand over immediately. It could be that they don’t have their wallet on them, and so they can’t say, “Well, I can’t give it to you right now because my wallet’s not here.” They’ll be expected to immediately go get it and hand it back in. Well, this is really important because we don’t want someone who’s possibly been revoked to then go out and buy a whole lot of firearms straight away because they’ve got that licence, so immediate does mean immediate. I will point out that in clause 157 within the Amendment Paper, I’m also proposing to add a reference to restricted ammunition, including that in clause 157(2)(a) and (b), and also at 157(3).

12:52

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am actually just standing to commend the Associate Minister of Justice for the language in clause 123(1)(f), which is around someone inflicting or who has inflicted family violence against another person. I just think that’s quite a unique subclause because it doesn’t require a conviction, it requires grounds. The only suggestion that I would make is detaching it from only New Zealand legislation. I would have encouraged drafting around all comparable legislation overseas to ensure that we caught a situation where someone had not yet been convicted of a serious offence or any of those offences listed in clause 122, but where, if a family member made a serious allegation under comparable legislation in another country, that could be brought to the attention of decision makers as well. It may be too late for an amendment.

So the question?

I was just going to say it may be too late for an amendment on that, but if the Associate Minister of Justice was willing to broaden out the language, my suggestion would be language that included potential liability under comparable legislation overseas, something like that. What that would mean is just capturing the fact that serious sexual violence complaints could be made against people travelling to New Zealand by people who are outside New Zealand. At present, I don’t believe that that’s captured by the current wording, but, certainly, the sentiment of that particular subparagraph I think is fantastic and spot on, and my preference would be for it to be expanded, so just asking the Minister to consider that.

12:54

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think that it is covered, actually, at clause 123(1)(h), where it talks about overseas, and people who have been charged or committed with an offence equivalent to offences referred to in paragraphs (a), (b), or (c). Turning the page there on the Amendment Paper there, clause 123(1)(h)(ii) says, “has had an order made against them equivalent to the orders referred to [above].” I thank the member for also just pointing out that this is a clause that I thought also needed to be there and be clarified that way. Thank you.

Members, the time has come for me to report progress, but I will also say to anyone who is contemplating a closure motion at 12.55 p.m. when everyone’s got select committees to go to, we do not have time to go through a voting process now. Thank you.

Progress to be reported.