Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill

With pleasure, I move, That the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill be now read a third time. We have had a useful discussion in the House, and it is pleasing to see that in the Committee of the whole House members agreed 110 to 9, which means there is general agreement in this House on this piece of legislation. It is eminently sensible legislation. It does not, as some people have tried to characterise it, extend the powers of the police, the Security Intelligence Service, or other Government agencies to intercept material. What it does do is put obligations on the telecommunications providers to facilitate interception, and to be technically capable to intercept communications going through their networks.

The bill is not prescriptive in the way in which interception is to be undertaken. There was nervousness and some apprehension on the part of the telecommunications providers that they would need to have technologies embedded in their systems. The bill is clear that that is not the case. Telecommunication providers will have the opportunity to determine what technologies they deploy, how, and when, and will be able to reduce their costs accordingly. What we are interested in is an outcome, not necessarily a technological solution. This bill does that.

I want to praise the good work of the Law and Order Committee. It has managed to bring together a number of amendments, give assurance to the industry, and resolve a number of issues. I am very pleased about that; it was excellent work. I think the House has had a very good debate on this legislation, and we are well and truly agreed on the merits of this bill.

On behalf of the National Party I would like to commence the third reading of this bill by saying—as we have through all stages of the bill—that we support the Minister’s legislation. I am pleased to hear the Minister say that we had a robust and reasonably good debate on the issues contained in the bill. I think that is true. I am a bit disappointed that the Minister did not take a call during the Committee stage, when members raised two or three issues of a technical nature, in particular, around the ministerial exemption. But putting that aside, I think it has been a debate that has, at the very least, put on the record a range of concerns and views that various parties have had over the passage and the content of this bill.

Just by way of recapping some of those issues in the third reading style, I think it is worth saying that legislation like this is finely balanced. It is a fine balance for members to pass legislation that, on the face of it, appears to interfere with the privacy rights of individuals and their ability to communicate directly with each other via telecommunication devices such as landlines, telephones, email, and the Internet. But that is not what this bill does, because, as the Minister rightly pointed out—and those are not words that fall easily from my mouth—this bill does not increase the powers of various surveillance agencies. It requires telecommunication providers to meet certain standards in respect of interception capability.

A number of issues have been raised in the bill about the costs of those interception capabilities. Issues have been raised about whether the Minister should have powers to grant exemptions at various stages throughout that process. I refer to the comments made by my colleague and friend, Mr Ron Mark, who said: “Well, Mr Power, don’t worry, there’s a panel of Ministers, who have to be consulted.”—a panel of what the legislation describes as responsible Ministers, who have to be chatted to when these decisions are made.

I say to Mr Mark that that does not satisfy me. If members look at who the responsible Ministers will be in light of the current Government, they will see that the Minister in Charge of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service is one, and the Minister Responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau is another. Presumably, that is just the Prime Minister. Lastly, and this is the really concerning bit, I see that one of the responsible Ministers includes the Minister of Police. It gives me no confidence that the Minister in charge of this bill, acting alone, will be curtailed by that “panel of Ministers”, as Mr Mark described it.

There are some other matters contained in Part 3 that members did not debate at any length, but are interesting issues that relate to the matter of costs, and where those costs are picked up for those particular surveillance agencies and telecommunications companies. Clause 18(2) specifies that a surveillance agency must pay the costs referred to—that is, the costs incurred by the network operator in conducting a surveillance—on “a date no less than 1 month”, and I see that the select committee changed the period from 2 months to 1 month, “after the date of the invoice or other appropriate document”.

I am pleased to see the razor sharp minds of members on the Law and Order Committee picking up on that. Had that point slipped by the chairman and his diligent team, network communication providers might have been out of pocket for 2 months. Lord knows it is unlikely that those companies would have been able to sustain that in their cash flows, but I see that the costs are now required to be paid within 1 month. Well done to the select committee and its chairman for picking up on that point! It will be helpful to the telecommunications industry.

More important though—and I think this is quite interesting, because it is a Government-driven requirement that the standards of surveillance must be met—the select committee has deemed it appropriate to retain a clause in the bill that deals with the resolution of disputes over costs. I would have thought that that was slightly unusual. I would have thought that legislation that included such a clause was slightly unusual. Presumably, the usual common-law remedies would be available to a telecommunications network company in the event that a surveillance agency did not meet its debts on time. However, in this case we see that the select committee has deemed it appropriate to place in the legislation a particular provision relating to the resolution of disputes over costs.

I guess the overall theme of the bill, and what the House and the Committee of the whole House spent most of their energy on, was whether the Government’s implementation of a bill such as the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill and the framework contained within it, being that of national security, was consistent with the assertions of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Minister of Defence, pre- and post-September 11, that New Zealand continues to live and operate an incredibly benign strategic environment. I know that many members in this House from the United Party, New Zealand First, the ACT party— and to be fair, the Green Party—addressed this issue during their second-reading contributions.

But the Government cannot, at a policy level, have it both ways. It cannot assert, in face of the evidence of Baghdad, Spain, Jakarta, Bali, and New York, that we live in an incredibly benign strategic environment. It cannot deploy troops to Afghanistan and Iraq and still tell New Zealanders that we live in an incredibly benign strategic environment, and then tell them that it needs legislation to help it collect information for national security. It cannot cut both ways. If we do not live in a benign strategic environment—which is what the National Party has asserted from a position long before September 11—then legislation like this would have been necessary back then as well.

When it is clear that we do not live in a benign strategic environment any longer, it seems to me that the Government needs to take stock of the way it produces its foreign policy statements. The best manifestation of that assertion is the bill before the House itself. If we did live in an environment where terrorism was not a reality, then presumably the fears that Mr Locke brought out about the provisions of this bill and its workings would not be valid and this bill would not be necessary. In fact, this bill is very necessary. National has supported it from start to finish, and will continue to do so through the third reading.

As chairman of the Law and Order Committee, I rise to take a very brief call—obviously to acknowledge the necessity of this bill, but also to be mindful of the appropriate checks and balances. Although the bill is essentially very technical, in my view it is a profoundly significant and important one.

I take the opportunity to acknowledge the good work of the committee—in particular, the deputy chairperson, Marc Alexander. I know that the previous speaker would join me in acknowledging the good work of the Hon Tony Ryall, Brian Connell, and of the Government members on the committee. I also thank Edwin Perry for his contribution and acknowledge his good work on the committee. He has now been replaced by Ron Mark.

Finally, this was in many ways—and I say it with sadness—an absolutely necessary bill. This is the reality of the times in which we live. We hope we have it right. We believe we have it right, and I commend this bill accordingly.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support this bill in its third reading. I have to say that the debate and discussion we have had has been somewhat passionate. In general, the views of members in the House are not shared by the Green Party, and I want to put that on record. The one thing I love about this country of ours is that we are a democratic nation. We are free to express our views and to have our say. We are free to stand up for those views in the highest court in the land and to express them without any fear whatsoever that our ability to do so will be interdicted, our lives threatened, or that we will be trampled on by the boot of the State in order to silence us because what we are saying is not popular, well-received, or liked.

In that respect I have to say that it is a good thing that we have parties in the House like the Greens. I probably will not be thanked for saying that by some of my political colleagues, but it is. Because at least there is that voice out there warning and cautioning people as to the loss of privacy and rights. However, I have to say that my views are somewhat different from theirs. This legislation has come about because of a need. What is that need? The need is based on the fact that we have organised crime in this country, simple burglars who have the technology to defeat our law enforcement agencies, and people who can roam around in cars at night. Take boy racers. The technology that boy racers have, courtesy of the telecommunications industry, is such that they give the police a very difficult time tracking their movements and curbing their unlawful activities. That is at the low end of the scale.

At the higher end of the scale we have burglars who would break into one’s home and steal one’s possessions. They are able to carry out their unlawful business because they can monitor the police airwaves. Why? Because our police force does not even have secure communications. How ridiculous is that? I will not use the word that comes to mind. I would say that it is extremely ridiculous. It is exceedingly ridiculous that the criminal fraternity can intercept the police’s communications but the police are not in a position to intercept theirs. What does that do? It hamstrings law enforcement agencies and does not assist law-abiding citizens who have had crimes committed against them.

Then there is the gang situation. Gangs are dealing, in an organised manner and on an international basis, in the trafficking of drugs. They pose a greater threat to our community, particularly to our children, and, as we are hearing more and more frequently, to young, vulnerable women, whom young male predators would exploit through the use of drugs—drug rape. The case involving Mr Isherwood is an example.

But at the top end of the scale, terrorism threatens our very existence, let alone our lifestyle. Sometimes we have to swallow a dead rat and accept that legislation such as the Crimes Amendment Act (No 6), the Terrorism Suppression Act, and now the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill need to exist if we are to guarantee safety and security to our people, our children, and our country. Everyone knows that this will not solve all the problems. Terrorists, by their very nature, are extremely adept at subverting systems and at ensuring they remain undetected. But when we have reports that a person who is No. 2 in al-Qaeda may well have visited this country, at least twice, one has to consider that he might have brought a cellphone with him, that it might have been a secure cellphone, and that even if the police or the telecommunications companies had known he was here and had moved to intercept him, they might not have been able to do so. That is a silly situation to allow to continue.

Mr Power’s concern and lack of confidence in a future National Government Cabinet really gives me great concern. The fact that he does not believe he has confidence in future National Ministers, led by Don Brash, to review an exemption proposal being proposed by a Minister gives me great cause for concern. I would simply say to him that under a New Zealand First - led coalition Government, he would not have those same concerns. I am pretty sure the clauses dealing with exemptions that the Government is passing could well be handled inside a Government that we are part of, or leading. I understand his concerns about lack of confidence in Mr Don Brash—

💬 Hon Annette King: Where is the National Party?

Yes, where is the National Party? It is a shame that Mr Power is not able to listen to me here in the House, but hopefully he is by other means. But I would tell him to take heart. He may not have confidence in his colleagues in a future National Government to exercise with confidence the duties and responsibilities under clause 11, and he may not have confidence in Don Brash, in Tony Ryall, or Nick Smith. But help is on its way: his party could always form a coalition with Labour. I am sure there is enough skill on that side of the House to overcome those deficiencies.

I am somewhat distracted, Mr Speaker, because I have never in my entire time in this House been here when one party chooses not to be represented. I do not know whether that is outside the Standing Orders, but it certainly has to be outside the Standing Orders in the eyes of the public for there not to be one National Party member in this Chamber—not one. So when the press is looking for an Opposition, I tell them that they can come to New Zealand First. We are standing here representing the Opposition. We will handle the workload on our own. We do not need to hide under the skirts of the National Party. We are quite capable of representing the opposing views of New Zealanders. If Don Brash does not want to do the job, then I am ready to step in with my leader, Winston Peters, to do it for him. It seems that he does not just run from debate—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The member will come back to the bill.

He does not just run from this Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill. Not only have I not seen him representing his views, but his entire caucus seems to be absent without leave.

I finish by saying that we should focus seriously on the need for this bill. If members of the House have any concerns, may I mention a few names: Riyadh, Istanbul, Manila, Bali, Baghdad, Australia—the various plots there—and Great Britain. If people are still in any doubt having listened to those names, they should consider the tens of thousands of victims and then read section B1 of today’s Dominion Post.

I said a long time ago after the attacks of September 11 that one needs to be very, very careful of the people we are dealing with internationally, when there are people who openly state: “Why kill a tiger if you can kill a lamb?”. That gives one an indication of the mentality and the drive behind the things they do. New Zealand is not a benign country. For anyone who wants to make an impact on the United States or Britain, there is no softer target than New Zealand. I sincerely hope and pray that we never see the day when we have people come into this country determined to make an impact, a political point, by killing Americans, Australians, or Britains on sovereign New Zealand soil. I simply say to people who would oppose such legislation that they should think about those things, because not only will Americans, Australians, and Britains be killed, there will be collateral damage that will involve innocent New Zealanders.

Members may think that my thoughts are a little far-fetched, but I know these people. I lived and worked in the Middle East for 6 years. My job was in the Defence Force. My speciality was inside a special force, and I worked with some very, very good people who dealt with these issues on a day-to-day basis. We are not a benign little country. We are part of the global community, and we are as vulnerable as anyone else to a terrorist organisation that may seek to make a point, regardless of the consequences involving innocent bystanders and people who played no part in the situation that they, the terrorist organisations, find themselves in.

The Green Party will be opposing the third reading of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill. We have said all along that the capacity to intercept emails will catch a few more criminals, but the serious criminals will all be able to get round the interception systems by using anonymisers, encryption, code words, Internet cafes, hotmail addresses, throwaway cellphones, or whatever it might be; it is very easy. All the big fish, whether or not they are terrorists, will get round the systems. However, millions of people will be affected because of the scale of the interception—even Waihopai intercepts millions of communications—and it will affect the privacy of many. As I said earlier, everyone has some very private aspects to their lives—be they personal, family, friends, sexual, or whatever—that they do not want intruded upon. We have so much on our computers and in our emails that is very private to us.

Also, large-scale electronic interception leads to a lot of mistakes. There have been plenty of examples of identity confusion in the big security scares in Europe involving bombs on planes. Recently a plane was stopped because of a 9-year-old kid on it, who clearly was not a terrorist. He just had a similar name to somebody on a huge database that presumably got out of control. Another way mistakes are made is when people use email. They do it very quickly, using irony, saying the opposite of what they mean, and using extreme language. Things can easily get out of context. We can see that with intelligence agencies, even in the case of Ahmed Zaoui.

The tape the Security Intelligence Service produced in evidence in that case is clearly just the tape of a tourist. He has himself on it. He did not mail it off to al-Qaeda. He brought it with him in luggage to New Zealand when he applied to the Immigration Service under his own name, knowing he would be interrogated. I will lend it to any member who wants to look at it. Obviously, the Security Intelligence Service has got it completely wrong in describing that as a “casing” video. That indicates that people can get the context completely wrong, and that applies in the area of emails, likewise.

There are examples from around the world. There is one from the Communications Security Establishment in Canada in terms of interception. One Canadian was put on a database because of two emails that were intercepted. In one she referred to her son’s play, “bombing”. The word “bombing” was picked up in a keyword search. She used a similar word in another email, then she was put on a high-security database. The way that this sort of mass interception operates and the way the results are recorded are very dangerous. We all receive hundreds and thousands of emails from people, and if we receive two emails from those who are believed to be suspicious people on a database, rightly or wrongly, then we could be put on a particular list. There is no real control over what use is made of those lists and who might have access to them, or over where they go around the world and over who uses them in the wrong context—using those errors, effectively against us, perhaps when we travel.

The consequences of these mistakes can be hugely inconvenient. I mentioned the case of the airline. A lot of inconvenience was caused to passengers when the airline got a person’s identity wrong. We can look at the example in Afghanistan last year, when the Americans claimed that a particular alleged terrorist, or Taliban member, was deemed to be in possession of a certain cellphone. So the Americans fixed the location of that cellphone when it was turned on, bombed the place, and killed nine kids. That was a very bad incident, and even the idea of bombing someone on suspicion of being the person with that cellphone or email address or whatever is very dangerous, and it shows how out of control some of those agencies are in reality.

The other point is in relation to crime fighting. It is actually quite inefficient and a wrong use of resources and a wrong set of priorities to concentrate on electronic intelligence to the extent that is happening in America, Australia, and now, it seems, New Zealand. The budget of the Government Communications Security Bureau, the electronic interception agency in New Zealand, is much greater than that of the Security Intelligence Service, and that is a waste because the idea that we can really get to the bad people just through this huge expenditure on electronic interception of cellphones, emails, or whatever, is wrong.

We see examples of that day to day with the Americans themselves, who, presumably, in Iraq have electronic surveillance across the whole country. But can they actually track down the people who are letting off these bombs across the country? I have not seen much evidence that they have been able to. A reliance on electronic interception for crime fighting, rather than on people on the ground doing the hard yards in the traditional way, leads to a false sense of complacency, particularly when the agencies doing this are largely unaccountable and have political biases.

That is the problem. Behind these walls of secrecy, there are political biases, which have been disclosed in some of the debate that has taken place in America, Britain, and Australia today. There have been cases recently, such as when Colin Powell went to the United Nations before the Iraq war and had all those pictures of mobile biological warfare labs and everything else. Even though Hans Blix and others were saying at the time that it was all wrong, they went ahead with it. Now it has been proved that it was all fictional and that there was no proper checking. It was creative intelligence for a political purpose, and that is what is happening today.

Unfortunately, New Zealand, by following along with this legislation, under the impetus of pressure from the United States, Australia, and Britain is part of our being an intelligence dependency and getting it wrong. I think this has come out in the Ahmed Zaoui case. It came out in the court judgment yesterday, too, in a quote from the director of the Security Intelligence Service, where clearly the Security Intelligence Service was most worried about getting offside with these overseas intelligence agencies. Accuracy or the rights of Ahmed Zaoui come second to that.

The quote from the Security Intelligence Service director in the court decision yesterday was: “If Mr Zaoui, with his public record, were allowed to settle here, that would indicate that New Zealand has a lower level of concern about security than other like-minded countries. That would impact adversely on New Zealand’s reputation with such countries and thus on New Zealand’s international wellbeing.” The fact that Ahmed Zaoui has been framed in overseas countries and those lies have been circulated by overseas intelligence agencies is secondary to the consideration, whereas the Refugee Status Appeals Authority actually analysed all that evidence, provided now by the Security Intelligence Service, and showed those cases to be frame-ups. So that is the problem we can get into when we get into this area of dependency on overseas intelligence agencies.

The material is all classified, and it is a circle of secrecy. Every country says: “We won’t give you information unless you keep it absolutely secret.’’, so the public of those countries, including New Zealand cannot even find out what is going on. We saw a case of that recently when I asked the Prime Minister whether media reports were true that New Zealand had received transcripts of interceptions of conversations of UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, we were told that it is all secret and we could not be told.

There is a problem, too, of this interception authorisation being extended in two bad ways. At the present time, it is just origin and destination numbers of one particular person that interception is to be focused on, but we could quite easily get into a system like the American Carnivore system, or extend what happens at Waihopai, where a combination of key words is put into the system, and a lot of people get caught in that net.

The other dangerous proposal that is coming up—and it has come up in Europe; there were references in the Guardian last October—is the demand that records of all the emails and phone calls be stored by the telecommunications agencies and Internet service providers for a year so that the agencies can look back over a whole year of people’s private lives, as reflected in those records.

So I think we must vote against this bill. It is an intrusion on our privacy. It is giving extra and unwarranted powers to intelligence agencies that have been found wanting, and we do not need it in our situation. We are not seriously subject to terrorist threats. We have not seen terrorist incidents, other than that carried out by the French intelligence agency in 1985 and the bombing of Trades Hall in 1984, and I do not think it is envisaged that these powers would result in the interception of French intelligence communications.

I rise on behalf of United Future in support of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill at its third reading. This bill ensures that technology is not a barrier to effective national and international security standards. Amongst other things, it essentially fixes a loophole in the Act passed in 1987 that allows for only voice messages to be intercepted by the authorities. This predated the widespread use of the Internet and email and so was grossly out of date. The bill places a legal obligation on network operators to have the technical capacity to intercept and monitor communications when an interception warrant is issued by the High Court and authorised by police, the Government Communications Security Bureau, or the Security Intelligence Service and has the agreement of the communications company. There is a process in place.

Network operators will be required to have the capability to isolate and intercept communications authorised, obtain relevant information about the cause, intercept unobtrusively while protecting the privacy of other communications, and obtain the information in a usable format.

There will also be a legislative duty to assist all service providers to provide reasonable assistance to the surveillance agencies in executing an interception warrant within their technical capability and on a cost-recovery basis. Network providers have indicated some concerns over not being able to fully recover costs or compensation incurred with an interception warrant, as their own staff may be required to provide technical assistance and that would take them away from their normal duties, not to mention the use of premises and systems. The Government has indicated that it will pay for interception capabilities of existing fixed or mobile voice networks implemented within 18 months of the legislation being enacted, not for Internet and email services, at a cost of up to $3 million. This applies only to those networks in operation as at 12 November 2002, the day the bill was introduced.

A 5-year phase-in period for other networks is aimed at helping to reduce the impact on the industry. If undertaken with general upgrades, the transition time will allow network operators to continue to choose systems, designs, and specifications for their own purposes. Compliance costs have been estimated at $12 million over the next 5 years, and a submission to the select committee from telecommunications companies, although disputing the estimated cost of compliance, upon further consultation with a number of other providers found that the original figure was confirmed as being reasonably accurate.

The theory is that whenever a periodic upgrade occurs in the future, the requirements established by this bill will be considered by providers as a matter of course. However, if such requirements prove difficult to achieve, then they might serve to inhibit the introduction of new technologies. The committee amended the bill to make it clear that network operators and service providers have the freedom to choose where and how they provide interception capability.

There are concerns that by creating higher barriers to entry to the industry, this bill will impinge on product design, development, and innovation. Although this is addressed in clause 5, “Purpose”, in the context of the New Zealand telecommunications environment competitors already find it difficult to compete with the monopolistic advantages held by Telecom New Zealand. In this respect, the good news is that the US, European countries, and Australia are seeking international user requirements that would require interception capability to be a standard design feature of new technology, and it is difficult for manufacturers to ignore the consumer muscle those markets can flex.

It is worth remembering that the surveillance agency is liable to pay for the costs in each instance of assistance provided by a service provider. The select committee amended the bill to require surveillance agencies to pay the bill within 1 month rather than 2 months, to lessen the financial burden on operators. The Law Commission initially suggested that those costs be recoverable through the District Courts, but I am pleased to see that the onus to recover costs is clearly spelt out without the need for this kind of action.

It is also relevant to point out that similar legislation in Australia, under the Commonwealth Telecommunications Communications Act 1997, and in the United Kingdom, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, require network operators to cover the costs of ensuring ongoing interception capability.

The select committee heard submissions in support of the bill from the Police Association, and even representatives from the telecommunications companies that supported the intent of the bill, recognising the need for interception capability to keep pace with technical advancements. United Future gave conditional support to this bill on first reading, subject to scrutiny by select committee. It was our concern that this bill must not alter or increase powers of surveillance agencies at the expense of protecting individual human rights. In this legislation the High Court warrant is intended to allay concerns about protection of privacy. Because of the need for police to seek a warrant to gain access to a network each time, the bill is not likely to encroach on existing privacy laws. We would be more concerned if surveillance agencies were continuously listening to communications traffic without needing warrants to do so. The interception capability requirements also specifically refer to privacy, including the ability to exclude communications that are not authorised to be intercepted.

Having said this, the bill is clearly a response to the increasing threat of terrorism in the wake of September 11. In the case of the Bali bombing, we have already witnessed the use of modern telecommunications by conspirators in the form of text messaging. This bill would bring us into line with the legal requirements for interception capability already in place in a number of countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. But this bill avoids some of the draconian measures in some of those other laws, such as the British Act for example, which forces the surrender of encryption fees on threat of a 2-year jail sentence. Nevertheless, passing the legislation adds further weight to our claims that we are contributing to the war on terror.

Information is one our most powerful weapons in the fight against terrorism, as we saw earlier this week in the pre-emptive raid carried out by authorities in the United Kingdom. There will be many conspiracy theorists, and the Greens are amongst them, I suspect, who will see this bill as increasing the powers of police and other law enforcement and security agencies to undertake surveillance, and this was reflected in some of the submissions to the committee as well. However, the bill does not extend in any way their existing powers; it merely enables them to keep pace with future technological changes.

I think members also need to keep the implications of this bill for domestic crime uppermost in their minds. This is something that I reiterated during the Committee stage. A member of the police electronic crimes unit described the current ability to access only some channels of communications used by criminals as being like police being allowed to breath-test only people driving white cars, while people in coloured cars can simply get away. They are unable to capture evidence and bring it to the courts, simply because they cannot get their hands on such evidence.

Non-voice communications were not the only problems for police. In 2001, the Government signalled that it would require public telecommunications networks to be interception-capable, but it emerged that Vodafone New Zealand did not have this capability, and police said that their ability to combat crime was being seriously eroded because of that. The value of interception capability to police cannot be underestimated. Even without the ability to intercept Internet, email, and some voice traffic, in the year to June 2000, police obtained 32 interception warrants, and 132 people were prosecuted for crimes where evidence of intercepted communications was used. Most electronic crimes investigated are of the old-fashioned kind such as drugs, fraud, sexual offending, and indecent publications, but which have an electronic component.

United Future welcomes the bill and supports it wholeheartedly and unreservedly in the fight against both the external threat to our security and the internal threat to our security from crime organisations.

Very briefly, I say the ACT party will be supporting this legislation—certainly not unreservedly, though, and I do not believe any member of Parliament who has studied this bill should accept it unreservedly. In an ideal world we would not favour these measures, because they are an intrusion by the State into what we regard as basic freedoms, civil liberties, and privacy. But on balance we have come to a firm view that we do not live in an ideal world—certainly not in these times—and it is for those reasons that this bill is necessary. The bill is certainly not accepted without reservation; it is accepted with considerable reservation. But we will be voting for it.

The question is, That the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill be now read a third time. Those in favour will say “Aye”, of the contrary opinion will say “No”. The Ayes have it.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Please excuse my failure to realise what was going on. The Greens are voting against this bill. Is there a second vote to be had?

We have actually passed the bill, but I can take the leave of the House that we have a vote. Is there any objection to my restating the question? There is.

I seek leave for the vote to be taken again on the third reading of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill.

Leave is sought to take it again. Is there any objection? There is not. I will return, then, to the situation where I state the question. I ask members to please pay attention. The question is, That the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill be now read a third time.