Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee, a former spokesperson for the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Separating the Firearms Safety Authority from police - as the government is proposing - will be "horrible" and raise the risk to the public, a director of the Firearms Safety Authority says .
The comments were made to the inquest into the worshippers killed during the Christchurch terror attack.
It took a terrorist about a quarter of an hour to massacre 51 people at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in March 2019. His primary weapons were two AR-15-style semi-automatic centrefire rifles equipped with high-capacity magazines.
He legally bought the rifles after obtaining his firearms licence, starting the process within weeks of moving to New Zealand from Australia in August 2017.
Magazines were not regulated and could be bought by anyone, even without a licence.
Firearms Safety Authority director of partnerships Mike McIlraith told the inquest separating the regulator from police would raise the risk to the public.
"If the regulator - Te Tari Pūreke-Firearms Safety Authority - was to be separated from police, the harm risk will be significant, significantly increased."
While some had raised issues with the two entities not being independent, McIlraith said the authority used the support services of police, such as finance and human resources. But the authority had a "ring-fenced budget, and in recent government budget considerations, ours was left alone".
"We can focus on the regulatory outcome as one of the system's pillars," McIlraith told the inquest.
"Police focus on the criminal, Customs on the border, SIS on the higher-level risks. And so from the systems perspective, it's all connected now and to take it out - yeah, it will be horrible."
The authority had access to all police systems, and to separate the two would create legislative and privacy dilemmas, he said.
Mike McIlraith. Photo: RNZ / Ana Tovey
But separating the authority from police was part of the National Party and Act coalition agreement.
"Transfer responsibility for the Arms Act 1983, policy and regulation to the Ministry of Justice, and transfer the Firearms Safety Authority, administrator of the Act, to another department such as the Department of Internal Affairs," the agreement said.
It formed phase three of the government's overhaul of gun laws, which was being overseen by Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee, a former spokesperson for the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners.
McIlraith worked in firearms licensing for the police prior to the creation of the Firearms Safety Authority. The authority was created by the Labour government's gun reforms in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
Earlier this month, he detailed to the inquest how licensing staff were stretched and operating in an outdated and archaic system prior to the shootings.
Successive governments failed to adequately legislate for the risk of semi-automatic firearms from the time the firearms registry was scrapped in 1983 until the shootings in 2019, he said.
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