Just 18 months after launching as a dedicated firearms regulator for New Zealand, Te Tari Pūreke - Firearms Safety Authority has recorded a big shift in trust and confidence in its work from the firearms community.

Te Tari Pūreke was launched on 30 November 2022 as New Zealand's first dedicated firearms regulatory authority. One of its early tasks was to undertake baseline surveys of support from firearms licence holders, the public, and its own staff. This was a recommendation from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack.

Eighteen months on, Te Tari Pūreke has just released the findings of a follow-up survey that repeated the same questions, and it shows a significant uplift in the trust and confidence levels held by the firearms licence holder community – positive gains of between 15% and 25% across a range of key indicators.

More than two-thirds (68%) of licence holders now have trust and confidence in Te Tari Pūreke management of firearms licensing (up from 42% in 2022); and 65% of licence holders have confidence in Te Tari Pūreke being effective in controlling the safe use and possession of firearms (up from 45% in 2022).

Te Tari Pūreke Executive Director Angela Brazier says a lot of progress has been made strengthening New Zealand’s firearms regulatory system, and it was telling that licence holder trust and confidence levels now matched those of the wider public generally.

“It’s been a really pleasing shift in support from the licence holder community,” she says. “We have worked hard as an organisation to lift our responsiveness and performance, and provide better service to licence holders, like removing the licencing backlog. I think these improvements are coming through these results.

“This of course was the period in which we introduced the Firearms Registry. We’ve put a real emphasis on the quality of our outreach and communications we are undertaking with licence holders, seeking to improve interactions in person, over the telephone, online, and in letters and email.

“All of this is still a work in progress, but it’s fantastic to see that these kinds of changes are showing up in improved trust and confidence.”

The latest survey also measures public trust and confidence. Results confirm the levels of trust held by the wider public have been maintained, with around two-thirds (64%) of the public continuing to have confidence in the way Te Tari Pūreke controls the safe use and possession of firearms in New Zealand (2022: 65%); and 65% in the way Te Tari Pūreke are manages firearms licensing (2022: 67%).

Meanwhile, the staff of Te Tari Pūreke have signalled their confidence in the internal health and culture of the organisation with large gains in employee satisfaction across a number of indicators. These include:

• Staff believe the instruction and training they receive has improved with satisfaction scores for training up from 63% in 2022 to 75% in 2024. • Satisfaction in the support employees receive to do their role also improving, rising 15% from 62% in 2022 to 77% in the latest survey. • Employees believe they have the tools they need to do the job has similarly had a marked increase, going up from 67% in 2022 to 78% today.

“As an organisation we will continue to work on those things that lift trust and confidence from the public, the licence holder community, and our own people,” says Angela Brazier.

“What we all have in common is wanting our families and communities to be safe from firearms harm. Te Tari Pūreke is committed to working with the sector – and the wider community - to listen and understand their ideas and feedback, as well as their challenges and concerns.

“While we are very pleased with these results, there is no reason to think we can’t continue building on this solid platform and lift them further in the coming years.”

© Scoop Media