Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. It is my intention to move that the bill be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for consideration, that the committee present its final report on or before 31 May 2005, that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, and during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Order 191 and Standing Order 194(1)(b) and (c).

This brief bill contains three matters. The first relates to the expiry of the designations of terrorist organisations. Provisions in the existing Act mean that New Zealand’s designations of terrorist organisations, including several hundred organisations listed by the United Nations Security Council, expire after 3 years unless renewed by order of the High Court. The drafting of that provision created the unintended need for each designation to be renewed individually, meaning that it would be impossible to renew the first 318 United Nations Security Council - listed designations that New Zealand has listed before they expire in October. That would put New Zealand in breach of Security Council Resolution 1373, which was passed unanimously by the United Nations in the wake of September 11, and of other related resolutions.

In order to avoid that, this bill will extend the designations for 2 years after the date on which the select committee reports to Parliament. The extension will allow the select committee review of the Act, due to be reported back by 1 December 2005, to consider fully what changes, if any, should be made to the renewal process. At the time the original bill was first introduced, there was uncertainty as to the nature and the extent of the terrorism phenomenon. An assumption that some designations might be short lived has since proved to be false, and New Zealand now has over 420 designated terrorist organisations, all of which are on the United Nations Security Council list, and is considering adding more groups to that list.

The second change proposed involves extending the provisions of the Act that prohibit the financing of terrorism. Although the Act currently prohibits the financing of designated terrorist organisations, or financing that is known or intended to be used for the purpose of carrying out terrorist acts, it may not cover general financial support not directly linked to a specific terrorist act to an organisation that is involved in terrorism. That would cover things such as the payment of general routine expenses, rent, etc. To address that potential loophole the bill creates a new offence, as new section 8(2A) of the principal Act, that will criminalise the provision of general financial support to all terrorist organisations, whether designated or not. That is needed if New Zealand is to comply fully with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 and the standards required by the OECD’s financial action task force. Given the fluidity of terrorist movements and the unpredictable emergence of new terrorist groups, that change is the most workable way to ensure that New Zealand remains compliant with international obligations prohibiting the funding of terrorist organisations.

The third proposal in the bill involves a technical amendment to change an existing reference from the Chief Justice to the Chief High Court Judge. Section 38(3) of the principal Act states that if information presented, or proposed to be presented, in support of an application to the High Court includes classified security information, the proceedings must be heard and determined by the Chief Justice, by one or more judges nominated by the Chief Justice, or by both. With the creation of the Supreme Court since the principal legislation went through and the Chief Justice’s membership of the Supreme Court now, it is obviously more appropriate that the person specified for that function should be the Chief High Court Judge.

I commend this bill to the House.

The National Party will support this bill going to the select committee. I will not take an unnecessarily long time to speak, but I have a couple of points to make on this issue. The first is, and I think it is worthwhile for us to remember this, that we do not live in a benign society—anything but. If any people, anywhere in the world, think that they are not in a situation where they could be involved in terrorism, then they should think again. No country is immune—none at all. Indeed, it worries me that we may well be seen to be a soft target. We need to be sure that we are playing our part and doing our bit to make sure that our people are protected as best as we are able. We need to play our part, and I am glad—although it took a while to drag the Labour Government into this—that at least we now have Labour accepting that there is an issue that we need to address. This bill brings that issue to the House’s attention.

The second part that I want to refer to specifically is the issue of the funding that the Minister has referred to, and again I think that is a very useful addition to the substantive legislation, in as much as there are many ways that one could fiddle the legislation, if one likes, if one is clever enough—and there are a whole lot of people who are clever enough. The Minister has put into this bill provisions for us to try to make sure that we cover every possible way that terrorism may be funded. I think it is important, as we take this bill through, that the select committee gives that proper consideration.

September 11 will be remembered, probably, for ever—certainly for centuries—and it will no doubt be referred to in many, many debates around the world for many, many years to come. One of the things that I am pleased about is that, generally, this Parliament takes terrorism seriously, and that every member of this Parliament takes it seriously. It pleases me that with the exception of one or two members we all speak, generally, with the same voice in expressing our concerns and our worries that there are people in this world who will use terrorism as a way to achieve their ends. Terrorism is not acceptable, and we as a Parliament and as a country, on behalf of our people, will do everything we can to make sure that it does not affect our shores.

I, certainly, as a member of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, want to speak on this bill. I acknowledge that the chairperson of that committee will also do so very shortly as well, and acknowledge that for us on the select committee this will be a very important task, and will be an exercise that one would hope would have a broad cross-section of support right across this Chamber. Obviously, in a democracy, we acknowledge that there will be those who have concerns with aspects of this bill, and that is the natural process of a parliamentary democracy with checks and balances. I believe that that is appropriate and useful.

I will just take the time, if I can, to again highlight the key points of the bill, which I think was more than adequately done by the Minister. I certainly intended to take a full 10-minute call on this bill, but I will not; I will keep my speech reasonably brief.

Obviously this bill amends the Terrorism Suppression Act. The key issue from my point of view is that the principal Act provides that designation as a terrorist organisation expires after 3 years, unless it is renewed by an order of the High Court. This, of course, has created the unintended need for each designation to be renewed individually. Of course, it would be impossible to renew all of those 318 listed designations before they expire next October and, of course, that would put New Zealand in breach of the relevant Security Council resolution. So the bill extends the expiry date for 2 years to 2007. That extension will allow a select committee review of the Act and to fully consider what changes, if any, should be made to the renewal process, and for any resulting changes to be implemented.

I just finally acknowledge the previous speaker. Yes, we do live in a world where terrorism is, indeed, a very serious threat. Hopefully through the robust consideration of the select committee we will ensure that innocent people are not caught up in this. That is very important. But we will be very focused that the security and integrity of our country is protected at the same time.

New Zealand First supports this bill going to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. As a member of that select committee I look forward to giving full consideration to it, and to the submissions on it, and considering it again when it is reported back to the House.

The Green Party is opposed to this bill. Of course we are opposed to people financing terrorist acts themselves—real terrorist acts: bombing, injuring, or murdering people. They are crimes, and they must be punished accordingly. But are terrorist crimes any different from similar crimes that are not committed with a political, ideological, or religious purpose in mind? Murder is murder, whether one murders someone in a bank raid or in a politically motivated terrorist act. It is still murder and should have the same penalty.

Our Crimes Act already punishes people if they finance criminal activities or conspire to commit such activities. The Terrorism Suppression Act also at present penalises financing of such activities, although it problematically introduces different penalties for supporting such crimes of violence than exist in the Crimes Act.

There is also the problem of the definition of terrorists or terrorist groups in the Terrorism Suppression Act, which I will discuss a bit later on. However, this current bill goes beyond what is in the current criminal law, as I understand it. It penalises people who are not financing terrorist activities as such, but who are helping “an organisation that is involved in terrorism (eg, the payment of general routine expenses such as rent, etc).” That is a bit from the explanatory note of the bill.

So if we were doing this under ordinary criminal law, it would mean, for example, punishing a family for paying the rent of a family member who might happen to be involved in a criminal gang, who happens to live at home with his or her family, or someone who does something similar for a flatmate who happens to be involved in criminal activities. I am indicating that because it gets us into a much more difficult and a greyer area.

This problem can be even worse in the case of alleged terrorists or terrorist groups, because to be designated as a terrorist or terrorist group under the Terrorism Suppression Act the said terrorist does not need to have any record whatsoever of having carried out a terrorist act. The person or group needs only to be deemed by the Prime Minister of the day to have such an intention. So we are in a grey area, particularly when the designation of who is or who is not a terrorist is made by political authorities, not by judicial ones; and mistakes are made in this regard, because when we give the decision to a political figure the political prejudices and agendas that operate at the time can lead to the designation of some groups and individuals as terrorist when they should not be.

We just need to look at a parallel case—that is, at how Ahmed Zaoui has been treated by authorities in New Zealand. In effect he has been treated as a terrorist. True, he has not been officially designated as a terrorist under the Terrorism Suppression Act, so the Dominican friars who are currently covering his rent cannot be thrown in jail under this amendment. However, members will see the problem.

The so-called war on terrorism operates a bit like the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s when all sorts of people were labelled as communists. Rumour and media stories became proof that someone was a terrorist. The refugee status branch of our Immigration Service acted in precisely this way in the Zaoui case. It actually wrote in its decision that because of all the media accusations that the refugee status branch had got from the Internet against Mr Zaoui it could not take the chance of giving him refugee status. Fortunately, the Refugee Status Appeals Authority did a more objective and thorough determination and overruled the refugee status branch.

Much later in the saga around Mr Zaoui we had a police mistake. Last year the police were rapped over the knuckles by our Prime Minister, Helen Clark, because they confused Mr Zaoui’s Islamic Salvation Front with the terrorist Algerian organisation, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). The whole designation process is so loose. In the 3 years of the operation of the Terrorism Suppression Act not a single individual or group operating in New Zealand, or even outside of New Zealand, has been designated as terrorist after a specific analysis by the New Zealand Government authorities. The terrorist individuals and organisations on the list so far have simply been transferred from the UN list.

However, there are problems with that UN list—as the United Nations high panel reported last year when it indicated that people had been “wrongly placed or retained” on such lists. It is pretty clear that people end up on such UN lists mainly at the behest of the United States Government. I think we know that the Bush administration does not particularly care if it gets things wrong in matters of who is and who is not a terrorist. We need only to look at what has been happening in the American detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, where alleged terrorists have been kept for years without explicit evidence, or trials, and without the right to see a lawyer. Many of those who have finally been released, such as last year four Britons, have been found to have had nothing to do with terrorism. The Britons I refer to just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But so far as I can tell, there is no hint of an admission of error, apology, or compensation from the Bush administration for their wrongful detention.

One of the clauses in the bill is to extend for 2 years the 318 designations of al-Qaeda and Taliban related terrorist entities under the Terrorism Suppression Act that will otherwise expire in October this year unless each designation is extended by the High Court. The particular problem with this is that we know from Kofi Annan’s high-level panel that some of these designations are almost certainly wrong, and as the panel indicated the list needs reassessment

So how can Parliament knowingly renew these terrorist designations without any analysis when it knows that some of them are almost certainly wrong? This is not conscionable. We can cause great upset and injustice when we start criminalising fund-raising not for terrorist acts, but for community groups allegedly associated with terrorism, particularly with all the political agendas running in the Bush administration and elsewhere.

We could take, for example, a US group called Global Relief, which was the second-largest Islamic charity in the US. Three years ago two dozen FBI agents raided its headquarters in Chicago without warrant, carted off all its records, and froze $900,000 of its assets. Later, it was designated a terrorist organisation by the US Treasury Department and is now effectively shut down, even though none of its principals have been charged with any crimes. Those principals have not been able to challenge effectively the Government’s actions in court, because they were confronted with a barrier of statements like: “The evidence we have against you is classified and we can’t tell you what it is.” That has shades, of course, of the Zaoui case. It has turned out in the United States that what has surfaced in terms of some of the evidence against Global Relief has come from newspaper clippings.

In the explanatory note to the bill, the Government claims that the amendments are: “… necessary to ensure that New Zealand fully complies with international standards for counter terrorist financing, as set out and assessed by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF),”. I have looked at the special recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering on terrorist financing, and I cannot see that those would require such an amendment.

I assure the House that I will speak briefly, in support of this Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2). I want to offer a clarification, and one substantive point in favour of the bill, and to give the House an assurance.

The clarification I offer is that it may have been lost in the course of the last speech that it was from a member of the Green Party, which is opposed to the suppression of terrorism in New Zealand. As I tried to listen to that speech, I almost became persuaded that Mr Locke had a point. We do not need anti-terrorism legislation; we could simply let the Greens loose on every terrorist organisation, and they could bore them into submission and surrender!

More seriously, the substantive point that I want to make is that this is relatively straightforward legislation. The rollover of the designations is simply a practical move, because otherwise the courts would do nothing more for the next 2 years but deal with those designations. I do not think the citizenry would find that to be particularly satisfactory. With regard to the extension in clause 8, which the Minister referred to, it is important to note that clause 4 refers to what those terrorist organisations might be, and that is organisations that, although not designated as terrorist, have actually been involved in the carrying out of one or more terrorist acts. I think the concern that we are broadening the law unnecessarily is dealt with by that provision.

My final point is to offer the House in general, and my colleagues on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee in particular, an assurance that even though the resolution that accompanies the introduction of this bill gives the committee wide powers to sit all over the place, I do not intend that we use those powers anything other than sparsely. I hope that, with the cooperation that normally prevails in the committee, we can get by without using them. But I am conscious that there is a deadline in place, and that is why it is necessary to have that requirement.

💬 Ron Mark: Couldn’t we go to Iraq to sample first-hand the terrorism experience?

If it were possible that that could be arranged, it might be that we came back with one or two members less.

💬 Ron Mark: Learn to understand the terrorists! Be at one with them!

Yes, we could try to bond with them, and they might well try to bond with one or two from our side. But, more seriously, I simply say on United Future’s behalf—and I echo the comments made by other speakers—that we cannot be too vigilant in terms of our response to international terrorism. This legislation is a sensible step forward, and I welcome its introduction.

I will speak briefly on this bill and perhaps refer to the prior motion. As has been stated by many, this legislation is necessary because of the fact that the designations will expire if it does not happen. Let us imagine the situation if this legislation were not passed. Three hundred and eighteen designations, including those of al-Qaeda, would lapse. I imagine that even Keith Locke could not support that, yet I suspect he will vote against this bill, so we will find out. The bill is absolutely necessary.

However, I turn to another point. Over the last few days New Zealanders have been watching on their televisions and reading in their newspapers about momentous events in the Middle East. There looks to be a new breakthrough between Israel and Palestine—the first real hope for many, many years of progress in that conflict. There was a huge participation in the vote in Iraq, at enormous risk, by literally millions of Iraqis. Even those who opposed the war would recognise that that is a real measure of progress. I would go further to suggest that we would not have seen the progress between Israel and Palestine without that same progress in Iraq, and we will be seeing it in other Middle Eastern countries. Even in Saudi Arabia there seem to be tentative steps being made towards democratic reform.

Those are fundamental outcomes of the world’s commitment to anti-terrorism legislation. It is the beneficial by-product of the world saying in unity in the United Nations back in 2000 that terrorism was not the way of the future—it was not the way forward. That is why it was the United Nations that made those designations. Frankly, I was surprised to hear Mr Locke being critical of that. I always understood that he and his party, with some reservations, were supporters of the United Nations. If one is a supporter of the United Nations, one accepts the consensus view on those terrorist organisations. They are organisations that, by the widest possible consensus, are seen literally as the enemies of peace-loving people. They are the people who attack the foundations of democracy and the rule of law.

So it is right today that we pass this bill to the select committee to maintain those designations because they will expire otherwise. That is the problem. So this legislation is necessary.

I will turn very briefly to the review. That review will be wide ranging. There is no doubt that the committee struggled long and hard with many of those definitions and it is almost certainly the case that they need a further considered review. The resolution passed in 2001 by the United Nations was very, very wide-ranging indeed, and a whole range of legislation, particularly the counter-terrorism legislation, has been a response to that. But I think that most people would concede that the select committee struggled with a range of those definitions, so it is time to look at the legislation as a whole to see whether the balance has been correctly struck. So I support both the motion and this bill.

I want to say this point in closing. The fight against terrorism is actually a fight for democracy and the rule of law, and we are seeing expressions of that in the Middle East. I would hope that that would be recognised broadly, or unanimously, within this Parliament, yet there is one party—the Green Party—that consistently turns its face against that recognition. Those members will find themselves arguing against the unanimous voice of mankind, the United Nations, which has said that certain people are enemies of freedom and the rule of law, and that their activities need to be stopped in a lawful and reasonable way. New Zealand has a proud record on this, and that is why the National Party is proud and wants to support these two measures.

The ACT party also rises in support of the motion to refer this bill to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, and also to reflect with some sadness that at this point of recommending the bill to the select committee, there is not unanimous support across the House for it. I, too, question the logic of the Green Party and its objection to this bill. I listened most carefully to Mr Locke, because quite often I find myself in agreement with him, and I say to him that I am also quite clear that we do not want to be passing, in a fit of panic, legislation that diminishes our freedoms in a vain hope of, say, stopping terrorists. But when we look at this bill, it is quite clear what it is setting out to do.

Let us think about it. If we look at the principal Act, what is a “terrorist act”? What is a “terrorist group”? It is a group that is set up to induce terror in a civilian population or to unduly compel or to force a Government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act. So it is an organisation that is prepared to scare civilians in order to get a Government to undertake a particular course of action.

The outcomes resulting from this terror are referred to in section 5(3) as: “(a) the death of, or serious bodily injury to, 1 or more persons … (b) a serious risk to the health or safety of a population: (c) destruction of, or serious damage to, property of great value or importance, or major economic loss, or major environmental damage … (d) serious interference with, or serious disruption to, an infrastructure facility, if likely to endanger human life: (e) introduction or release of a disease-bearing organism, if likely to devastate the national economy of a country.”

So we are talking about organisations such as al-Qaeda, which are committed to scaring civilian populations through threats of disease, through bombings, blowing up power stations, or whatever. Well, I would have thought that the Greens would be against that. I would have thought that those members were opposed to 9/11.

Now I will cut particularly to what this bill is addressing, which is this. It is already an offence to finance such terrorist acts—and it should be, because just as the man whose finger is on the trigger is responsible, so too is the man who gives that terrorist the wherewithal to do that damage. Those people are terrorists, too. I ask whether Mr Locke can see that.

💬 Dr Wayne Mapp: He can’t.

No, I do not think that he can. This is the next question, which is what the bill is seeking to do: what about the financier who is not actually financing the bomb, but is paying the rent that finances the terrorist organisation in other ways? Well, I say that that person’s hand is on the trigger, too. The people who funded the terrorists of 9/11 are guilty of a crime, but under the Greens, they would not be—would they? Should those people be allowed to go free? If someone is giving sustenance, accommodation, and the wherewithal to do such a monstrous act as 9/11, knowing full well what they are doing, have they committed a crime? Well, according to the Greens, the answer is: “No, they haven’t committed a crime.” I say to the Greens that those people have committed a crime against humanity, and what this legislation is doing is recognising that.

We can have our political differences, and we can argue and debate, but what we cannot do is attempt to foist our ideas, policies, and ideology on to others at the point of a gun, or aim a bomb at innocent civilians simply to induce terror to achieve a result. Yet the Greens would have us say that such an action is OK. Maybe there is some consistency in the Greens, because Keith Locke supported the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which was a brutal, brutal attack on a people. That was a terrorist attack by a State on another country. In the Greens’ lopsided political philosophy, everything America does is wrong, everything the West does is wrong, and everything anyone else does to sow terror and dissent against Western nations is right. I think that is the core of the Greens’ opposition to this bill. Mr Locke talked about witch-hunts on communists in the 1950s. I do not think there should be witch-hunts on people because of their views. Here we have Mr Keith Locke—

💬 Ron Mark: Was Mr Locke arrested?

No, he is an elected member of Parliament, for goodness’ sake!

💬 Dail Jones: He’s a communist.

Of course he is a communist. He was not arrested. He has the same rights as any other citizen to stand up and say what he thinks. Well, how would he feel if terror were used against his ideas? He would have to oppose it, surely. Where is the consistency in this? We have to stand up as a free nation, as a democratic nation, for the rights of the Keith Lockes to stand for Parliament and for the rights of the Keith Lockes to hold their views, however whacky we may find them. We have to oppose those people who would use force and terror to impose their views on the rest of us. That is what we have to do.

We have to not just oppose the man whose finger is on the trigger; we have to go after the men behind him—the funders, the organisers, and the financiers. I know that Keith Locke, and a lot of people of his ideological ilk, think they will never be able to convince enough people in a free society to agree with them. So the recourse of all communists everywhere has been the gun, the mass terror, and the very things this bill is designed to overcome.

I ask the Greens to think about this. They say they stand for peace. Well, I ask Mr Keith Locke: what do we do to those groups, to those people, who are opposed to peace, who want to sow fear and violence against a population? We know they exist. We have seen it. But what do we do? To ensure peace, we actually have to go after the bad guys.

I move, That the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill (No 2) be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for consideration, that the committee present its final report on or before 31 May 2005, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time during a sitting of the House, except during questions for oral answers, during an evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 191, and 194(1)(b) and (c).