Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill

Kia ora tātou, nō reira e te Whare, e ngā iwi, e ngā reo, e ngā hau e whā. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. The House is in Committee for further consideration of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. When we last considered the bill we were debating clauses 1 and 2. The honourable member Ian McKelvie had the call, and has 3 minutes 53 seconds remaining, if he so wishes to take the call. I call the honourable member Clare Curran.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I apologise for doing this. You might not have seen the member; he is behind a member. He is standing up. He is there.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): That is not a point of order.

We come to the part of this bill, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill, that gets down to the real nuts and bolts of what the serious problems are with this piece of legislation. We have had a long-running debate in this Committee—well, certainly on this side of the Chamber, right across this side of the Chamber; that side of the Chamber has barely contributed to the debate on this extremely important piece of legislation. But now we get to the part of the bill, the title and commencement clauses, where we really consider what the serious issues are with this piece of legislation.

Labour has two amendments to this part of the bill. One of those amendments concerns the rights of New Zealanders and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting process for legislation, which, Labour contends with regard particularly to this bill, has been very flawed and very cursory. I do ask the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Police, and also the relevant Minister associated with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vetting process to pay particular interest to this part of the discussion on this bill. I want to return us to the Human Rights Commission and what the commission said around both the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation and the “TICS” bill, as it is called in this House, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill, which we are discussing today.

The commission said in its extraordinary report to the Prime Minister that it considered that what was proposed by both the GCSB legislation and this bill was “too wide-reaching. It does not provide adequate oversight, and makes inadequate provision for ensuring appropriate transparency and accountability of those who administer the legislation. It does not provide for a legal regime containing sufficient safeguards against abuse of power and to facilitate a proportional approach.” The commission said that it “recognises that some level of surveillance is inevitable and can be justified in contemporary democratic society.”

Labour would agree with that statement, absolutely. There is no doubt—and there has never been any contention during the debate on this bill—that there is a need for legislation for oversight in surveillance in a democratic society. But it is a question of balance, and it is a question of tipping the balance, which is what this legislation does and what the Human Rights Commission—which that Minister should be taking account of—has warned of in a very serious warning to the Prime Minister and to this Parliament about the implications of that. We should all be taking account of that.

The commission went on to say that there was “nothing to suggest that surveillance in a democratic society such as New Zealand cannot be subject to human rights principles, and consistent with an approach that protects human rights, by limiting rights in a manner which is proportionate and justified, in accordance with law.” This legislation before us today does not do that. InternetNZ’s submission called for this bill to undergo a thorough test against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The New Zealand Law Society in its submission on the GCSB legislation called for the same—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. This is supposed to be a very tight debate on the schedules and title, etc. That speech is certainly straying very wide of that. I appreciate that the Chair is the only judge of relevance, but it does not prevent—does not prevent—anywhere in the Standing Orders any member raising the issue of relevance with the Chair.

Speaking to the point of order, if that member had been listening to the debate, he would have known that I was referring to one of the amendments that Labour has put up on this part of the bill, the title and commencement clauses, that is about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I cannot find it now, but can I just remind members that there was a review of the Standing Orders in, I think, 2008 or 2011. What actually happened was that we said that debate on these particular clauses would be wide ranging. I cannot find it, but I know that it is there.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I will continue where I left off, and perhaps the member could pay more attention.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, I’m going to leave the House.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: There won’t be any loss by the House.

There will not be any loss. As the submissions by InternetNZ, the New Zealand Law Society, and the Human Rights Commission have all said, these bills fail to provide adequate safeguards for people’s privacy and to balance the intrusive power of the State to collect the private information of New Zealanders. We also contend that the issue, particularly with this bill, is the curtailing of the rights of private companies and their ability to protect their information because of the lack of adequate checks and balances. So we reiterate that this bill did not receive more than a cursory vetting—a once-over-lightly—in its examination under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. We do not believe that that was taken seriously.

Secondly, we believe that the bill as amended has been substantially changed, in many cases, in ways that are untested and where the impact of those changes on the rights to privacy of New Zealand citizens and businesses is under question. Therefore, we have put in an amendment, on this part of the bill, being that this bill may only be submitted for Royal assent if a select committee has reconsidered it and reported that the bill is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Rubbish.

If the member over there actually has an issue with this, then I invite him to get to his feet and take a call and tell this Parliament why there should not be another vetting under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and whether or not there has been a thorough vetting of the original bill in the first place. That would be a useful contribution for the Attorney-General to make to this House. We have seen a consistent pattern of rubber-stamping of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and not only on this bill. At the beginning of the previous term of this Parliament, there was an indication by the Attorney-General that he would take that process seriously, which is an extremely important part of our democratic process. For a few bills it seemed that this was the case, but now that has all gone out the window. It is all cursory vetting, rubber-stamping, and, unfortunately, not taking account of what august organisations such as the Human Rights Commission, the New Zealand Law Society, and InternetNZ have said in the Law and Order Committee on this process—and they have certainly said it publicly.

We contend that there should be a rights-based approach whenever there is a piece of legislation that deals with surveillance and curtailing rights. There should be a corresponding rights-based approach. It certainly does appear that there is a gap in our law around the rights of New Zealanders and New Zealand businesses in the digital environment. We think that that is worth taking seriously. The Human Rights Commission certainly believes that it is worth taking seriously. It says: “In the case of the TICS Bill, the rights of concern in relation to the proposed legislation were the right to freedom of expression, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure and the right to natural justice … The analysis”—the cursory analysis—“concluded that all could be justified. The Commission does not agree with this conclusion.”, and neither does the Labour Party agree with that conclusion.

We believe that there should be a rights-based approach, and that there should be—as I have repeated a number of times during the debate on this bill—along with surveillance, a rights-based approach to New Zealand’s privacy. This is absolutely critical to a functioning and healthy democracy. This should include the freedom of expression of thought; freedom of conscience; freedom of religion; freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of association; freedom to determine whom a person shares information with and to terminate involvement with a provider; freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, where everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure, whether of the person, property or correspondence, for example, emails; the right to privacy based on the principles of the Privacy Act, a comprehensive—

As you indicated yourself in your ruling earlier on, Mr Chair, this title and commencement debate is an opportunity for members of the Committee to bring together some of the threads of the discussion. I am deeply disappointed that Mr McKelvie—who had made a great start the other evening, when we were debating this bill, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill—did not share his wisdom with us any further on the question of why he supports—

💬 Ian McKelvie: The speeches are the ones that are not given, Grant.

In this case of Mr McKelvie, that is definitely true, because they often are not given, but he did not share with us why he actually does support this legislation. We have not really heard anything about that from the Government members, about why they actually support this legislation. They have not answered the questions that have been raised on this side of the Chamber—legitimate questions around the extent of the powers granted under this bill, around the additional costs that are being placed on business, and around the potential stifling of innovation that will be caused by this legislation. None of that has merited a response from the National Party’s side of the Chamber.

To entertain Mr Finlayson, I will speak on both the title and the commencement clauses of the bill, and it is interesting—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Entertain away.

I am here for your benefit, Mr Finlayson. It is interesting, when we do look at the title of the bill, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill, that the addition in terms of the legislation that is repealed by this bill is the addition of the word “security”. So we have had legislation called the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act before.

What the Government is doing here is introducing the notion of security. As has been stated several times during this debate, there is a balance to be had between the rights and freedoms of New Zealanders—in this case, to communicate with one another via a variety of technologies—and the security of New Zealand.

Nobody on this side of the Chamber is denying the fact that we need legislation that upholds that balance, but the problem we have is that this bill, alongside the other piece of security legislation that goes with it, the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act, unbalances that equation. The fact is that the fundamental rights and freedoms that New Zealanders expect to have have been undermined, and the introduction here—and the word “security” is there in the title—is designed to make New Zealanders feel that the Government has brought forward legislation that will enhance their lives, and it will ensure that they will be safer. But in reality that is not what this legislation will do, or certainly the case for that has not been made out.

That is what then leads me to the amendment to clause 2 proposed by Clare Curran on Supplementary Order Paper 370. The first subclause of that amendment relates directly to the fact that this is now not only about the ability to intercept communications and why that might be required but that it is now fundamentally part of New Zealand’s security framework—a security framework that is governed and controlled in New Zealand by legislation that we on this side of the Chamber believe to be wrong—and also by agencies that are in turmoil. That is the effect of the amendment to clause 2 that Clare Curran is proposing. The effect is that this bill comes into force only once there has been an independent review of New Zealand’s security agencies and the recommendations from that review have been incorporated into any bill that is put forward for a third reading in this House.

This needs to happen because the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), which plays a critical role in this legislation, is the agency that is responsible for large tracts of the implementation of this legislation. It is an agency whose name has been muddied over the last couple of years and in which New Zealanders have quite simply lost confidence. The independent review that is being called for here will enable New Zealanders to understand the role the GCSB can play in a changing world, and there is no doubt that in a changing world, cyber-security is important. So it is not a denial that that is a role that the GCSB should have, but given the state of play with the GCSB—the fact that it has been discredited and the fact that there has been so much of a lack of clarity around the law that governs its work—this amendment from Clare Curran is undoubtedly justified, because unless we can rebuild New Zealanders’ confidence in the GCSB, its role in implementing this legislation, I believe, cannot be upheld.

💬 Dr David Clark: Who’s the Minister?

The Minister responsible for the GCSB? Yes, well, that would be the Prime Minister, John Key. When he stood in this House during the debate on the GCSB bill and told New Zealanders that we just had to trust him on how aspects of the bill would be implemented—

💬 Dr David Clark: 26 percent do.

—that is right, and 26 percent of New Zealanders, somehow or other, still trust him—and we just had to trust him on the way in which he would issue warrants, that was the moment when New Zealanders must have known that the role the GCSB plays had to be reviewed. It has to be reviewed alongside all other security agencies and it has to be reviewed in light of the wider responsibilities that they are being asked to undertake under this piece of legislation, and that is why Clare Curran has proposed the amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 370.

The other amendment to clause 2 that Clare Curran has proposed is the question around whether or not this bill should be reconsidered under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It would be useful if the Attorney-General might choose to take a call and justify to this Committee whether he believes that the vetting of this bill in terms of our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act has been sufficient, because many other people do not believe that.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Very well done.

The Attorney-General, who is very reluctant to praise himself, says that this was very well done. Well, the reality is that many other agencies do not believe that and, secondly, a lot has happened to this legislation as it has progressed through the select committee. A substantive, but not particularly relevant, Supplementary Order Paper has come forward from the Government. That has not been tested under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. And it is worthy of note that the Human Rights Commission exercised its statutory power to directly report to the Prime Minister on this piece of legislation and its companion legislation, the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Bill. That is a power it has rarely exercised in its existence—less than half a dozen times, I think—so that indicates the level of importance the Human Rights Commission puts on the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. The commission noted in its submission on the bill that it is particularly concerned about the ability—and we discussed this in one of the earlier parts—of those who end up being caught up in the Act to be able to be in court when matters involving them are heard, or at least to be represented in court. The commission is concerned that this breaches the right to natural justice in section 27(1) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

There is a specific concern for the Attorney-General to respond to, as to whether or not this bill has had adequate vetting. The Human Rights Commission believes that the right to natural justice is compromised by the clauses in this bill that do not automatically allow defendants to be present when matters pertaining to them are in front of the court. I am not a lawyer—Mr Finlayson will be glad to hear that, I am sure—but what I know about the law is that you have a right to be present when matters pertaining to you are heard before a court, and you have a right to be represented. That—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Don’t say “you”.

One has a right to be present when matters pertaining to that person are heard before the court, and that is a right to natural justice. That has not been upheld. That means that Supplementary Order Paper 370 in the name of Clare Curran, which says that this bill can be submitted for Royal assent only if it has been reconsidered under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, is totally justified, in my view, because the overall question around surveillance and human rights is one that is very much in the minds of New Zealanders and people around the world.

Just today in France the French Government is calling in United States officials to ask them what has been going on in terms of mass surveillance. The question of surveillance and human rights is one of the most current questions of our time, and on this side of the Chamber we do not say that because we do not believe that the State has the right to undertake these kinds of operations; it is actually because we want to protect the fact that the State may need to do that from time to time and to balance that with the rights of New Zealanders to go about their business.

Under this Government that balance has been lost. Trust in the agencies that undertake that work has been lost. That lies directly at the feet of the Prime Minister, who has evaded answering questions—direct questions—about the role of the GCSB under his watch. The GCSB gets extended powers under this bill, and New Zealanders have a right to know that that has been thoroughly checked against the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that their basic rights and freedoms are being protected. Not once in this debate have members of the Government got on their feet and said to this House: “We believe the balance is right.”, because it is not.

I rise to speak to the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill, looking at the title and the commencement date. When this bill was introduced I criticised the title quite a bit, I note. I thought it ought to really be the “TELCO Spying on Kiwis Bill” or the “TELCO Let’s Get Hacked Bill”. I do not actually move away from that too much, particularly this aspect of hacking.

This bill sets up the mechanism to allow spying agencies, but also others, to gain access to communications and networks in New Zealand. Just today we heard mention of France calling in US officials because of further revelations of what the National Security Agency has done in conjunction with New Zealand and some other countries. The National Security Agency does not do it only on its own; it does it in conjunction with New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), through the “Five Eyes” Waihopai system. So when we look at the timing of this, we also look at the timing of what is actually happening out in the globe regarding this very issue.

I mentioned last week the fact that the Brazilians are setting up a new system that is totally different from a lot of the normal providers, to ensure that they do not get hacked any more by us and the National Security Agency. Mexico is another country in the news today that is saying it has had a gutsful of what is happening with spying from the National Security Agency and those PRISM systems.

This bill is a sham. This bill may allow that access for when we need it for some legitimate surveillance, but it is a sham as well because of the surveillance that is going on besides. I do not think that the media, and certainly a number of the members on the other side in this House, sometimes actually get it. They just do not get that we are setting up to add even more—or maybe they do. Maybe they do not mind that we are setting up to look after American foreign policy and some others of the big mega corporates in the world by allowing the route into New Zealand’s electronic data communications through this system.

Right back when the original version of this bill was formed, we, the Green Party, with Keith Locke, produced stuff with regard to some of the hacking that was happening, coming back through those conduits of spying. We also realised that this bill is not complete in terms of scrutiny—redacting, as they call it, a lovely word that seems to have been introduced in recent times, of the amount of information that has been withheld. How could this be given serious scrutiny, especially on the basis that we have never had a proper, independent investigation into the whole issue of security services in New Zealand? There is so much missing from the regulatory impact statement that it does not allow it. So what do we do? We get information from overseas, from people who have been courageous enough to go out and leak the material that they see that they are so offended by ethically, in realising that this stuff should not be kept secret any more. It needs to be opened to the world to let the world know what is going on. Unfortunately, we are very much a part of that.

When this bill got introduced, the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill, its mate, got introduced as well. I pointed out at the time, in my first reading speech on it, that on that very day we were having the five-nations meeting of Attorneys-General. There was also a meeting of the heads of the different police forces from the “Five Eyes” fraternity—all meeting in New Zealand on that very same day. It was a gift from the Prime Minister, the Minister responsible for the GCSB, who also chose the director of the GCSB. He made that appointment. He flouted, it seems, the systems of appointment to get his man, his schoolmate, in.

We know—it has been proven—that there is spying going on and that it is not something New Zealanders agree with. There was no investigation to see what they wanted, and, overall, New Zealanders disagree with the concept of it. There is the issue of privacy, but there is also the question of what we are doing with our sovereignty. But the Prime Minister has the ultimate power. What the Mexicans, for example, are worried about right at this moment is the fact that the National Security Agency spied on the former President when he was still in Opposition, and on other Opposition members. The agency was looking at their emails and looking at their text messages, and the same systems, the same conduits, that we are setting up here will allow the same thing.

So I wonder what we in the Opposition here should really be thinking of when we have a Prime Minister we are having a little bit of difficulty with in terms of the integrity of his appointments process and getting his mates in, and in terms of giving him the conduits so he can do it even more easily. We have had the internal stuff, we have had the issue around the Henry inquiry, and we have had the illegal spying that was carried on, as well. So we have a major question. We insist that we have a totally independent investigation into these processes. We take cognisance of the Human Rights Commission and the issues around appeals without proper, real representation—the persons themselves not being there. There is a bundle of issues that affect human rights, privacy, and our level of what we are prepared to trade off around the issues of security. These things all need thorough investigation.

We need to extract ourselves from the “Five Eyes” mechanism and have stuff that is actually relevant to our communities here. Any security and surveillance should be relevant in a way that the community agrees with. We need to separate ourselves from the international stuff that brings us into international wars and conflicts that we do not choose as a community. This conduit needs to be looked at far more thoroughly, and it has to be done in a holistic sense with the Human Rights Act, with the GCSB legislation, and with the Search and Surveillance Act, to look at the whole thing completely. So, clearly, we will carry on opposing this. We look forward to the opportunity to initiate a full, independent inquiry and investigation of those services. Thank you.

I move, That the question be now put.

You know, it is interesting that for a bill that has such fundamental implications for the privacy of New Zealanders and the right of private companies to be protected from intrusive powers by the State, the National Government members, even those on the Law and Order Committee, only take a call that the motion be now put. They do not want this legislation, with all its inadequacies, exposed to the public of New Zealand.

I want to talk to clause 2, “Commencement”, of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. This bill is not ready to come into force. It is not ready to be implemented. It has been rushed. It has been subjected to inadequate consultation. It is technically error-ridden—technically error-ridden to the extent that as late as the second reading of this bill the Minister brought in Supplementary Order Paper 366, which is on the Table of this House and says that a major clause should be struck from the bill.

That major clause, clause 39, which is about the Government being able to stop telecommunications companies working in New Zealand if they do not have interception capability, was defended to the death by Jacqui Dean and the other members of the select committee. They supported that clause all the way through, only to have the rug pulled out from under their feet by the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, who finally recognised that yet another central aspect of her bill was technically and in terms of principle inappropriate and unworkable. That is an example of why this bill should not come into force.

I support Supplementary Order Paper 370, moved by my colleague Clare Curran, which makes the point that Royal assent should be given only to a bill that has been subject to a full and independent public inquiry. That point, and the need for a full and independent public inquiry, was recognised in Australian legislation dealing with Australia’s security services. It was recognised by a member of the Prime Minister’s staff, who came to talk to me about this bill. The Australians did it the right way. They did an independent inquiry, they found out what powers were justified, they found out what safeguards were needed to prevent the abuse of those powers, and then they passed the legislation. This Government has not had the conviction or the intestinal fortitude to actually do that.

This bill is a companion piece to the Government Communications Security Bureau Amendment Act. It facilitates technically the implementation of that. But the first thing that you would ask about legislation that gives enormously intrusive powers to a Government is whether there is a justification for those powers. Jacqui Dean, in a rare call, asked why the Labour Party is opposing this bill when we passed the original Act in 2003. It is for the reason that in that original Act, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) was not allowed to spy on New Zealanders—not allowed to spy on New Zealanders. It intercepted foreign intelligence dealing with foreign persons.

Now we have a bill that gives enormously intrusive powers, and it has not been justified. It has not been justified, to the extent that when we on the select committee and members of the Intelligence and Security Committee asked for the police, the Security Intelligence Service, and the GCSB to come before the committee to justify why there should be these powers—we did that with an open mind—the Government refused to allow those agencies to give evidence to the select committee. It refused to allow them to give it in public, in private, or even in secret. We have an outrage in that we have a bill that gives enormously intrusive powers and that will be utilised in secret and without accountability, and no justification was given, or even attempted to be given, to the select committee as to why those powers should exist.

The second concern we have is that if you are going to give those sorts of powers to agencies, you want to be sure that there are adequate safeguards in place to stop those agencies abusing the powers. Why is this in this GCSB legislation before this Parliament? Because of the very fact that the GCSB did abuse its powers, in relation to Kim Dotcom, and the fact that the Kitteridge report found that it potentially did that on 88 different occasions. So we have new legislation, when we have had abuse of powers—

I move, That the question be now put.

I am going to give the honourable member David Clark a call.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: What!

I welcome the support from my colleagues. The Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill seeks to protect individual rights and freedoms. Some of the principles outlined in this bill are ones that we could support on this side of the Chamber, but as soon as we get into the detail we find that it fails to strike the appropriate balance between privacy and security, as far we can tell. It is a permissive, sloppy piece of legislation that will see New Zealanders able to be spied on in their homes, without the checks and balances one would expect of this kind of major legislation going through the House. It is the partner bill to the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) legislation, but it adds the powers that make this bill able to be carried out in a fuller way. The bill does not meet the needs of ordinary New Zealanders. It has not passed the test of legislation that should be in this House. It gives Ministers extraordinary powers, and it should not pass.

It is not clear, in many aspects of the bill, what is actually meant by the bill. The definitions are poor. We are told that “national security” has been added. “Security” has been added to the title of the bill. We find the word “security” there, and yet “national security” is not defined in the bill, other than to say that it relates to economic interest. When it comes to economic interest, we are not told how that is defined, and, indeed, debates on matters of economic interest were not allowed to happen in the Law and Order Committee. So we can see that the intention of the Government is to shut down the debate, to not define the terms, to grant extra powers to the Government to spy on New Zealanders in their homes, and to fail to provide the checks and balances that would bring this in in a way that is acceptable for New Zealanders.

New Zealanders do value their security. Do not get me wrong—New Zealanders do value their security, but they value their privacy also. Ordinary New Zealanders want checks and balances in the system so that they can know that when they conduct their activities online, when they conduct their activities on the telephone, and when they go about their ordinary business relating to their families and relating to their business contacts they are not being spied on unnecessarily and in a way that they cannot respond to nor defend themselves against.

This is a terrible piece of legislation. We find that the Ministers receiving Draconian powers are referred to in clause 13. They are the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service—Mr Key, whom we have found to perhaps be a little untrustworthy in this legislation’s arena—the Minister responsible for the GCSB, and the Minister of Police. Any one of these Ministers, without any real check or balance, can enact this legislation to spy on just about anyone.

We have heard in the broader debate the questions raised about what constitutes a network provision, and who can be spied on and who cannot. That is poorly defined in the legislation. It seems that any school network, any classroom network, can be spied upon at the whim of a Minister, without any recourse to those involved defending themselves or raising legitimate questions before an independent panel.

We have already seen with the GCSB legislation a range of activities take place that were just beyond the pale for ordinary New Zealanders. The spying on Kim Dotcom was legalised by this Government. The appointment process around the head of the GCSB contained a number of anomalies that have not made for comfortable exchanges in this House, and the person overseeing all of these and the many memory lapses is the Prime Minister, John Key, who is responsible for the GCSB and the intelligence services.

We know in this Committee that these powers that we are enacting here ought to come with accountability. This Parliament here has the responsibility of enacting legislation that has appropriate accountabilities in it. We carry that burden. Members on this side of the Chamber have made the argument over and over and over again that this legislation needs to be tidied up so that it can be passed in a way that looks out for the security interests of New Zealanders, without crossing that bridge into being an unnecessary breach of their right to privacy in their own homes.

We cannot support this legislation in its current form. We cannot see that this Government is doing due diligence, nor that it is actually caring about the concerns of ordinary New Zealanders. It is typical of a Government that is increasingly out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders. We saw Government members today in the House trying to say that things were getting better for ordinary New Zealanders, at the same time as they were saying that tax had gone down for the very wealthiest Zealanders, whilst overall the tax take was going down.

I would like to start with, in particular, in Supplementary Order Paper 370, in the name of Clare Curran, the amendment to clause 2 of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. The amendment is relatively simple and has two parts. I am pleased that the Attorney-General is present, although he is uncharacteristically mute at the moment, because there is a new subclause (4), which indicates that the bill may be submitted for Royal assent only if a select committee has considered it and reported that the bill is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. The problem that we have is that there have been massive changes introduced to this bill since the time that it was at the Law and Order Committee, but there has not been a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act consideration of those changes.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Read section 7.

Well, he mutters on. He mutters from his seat. He mumbles—

💬 Clare Curran: Has he read it?

Oh, I am sure that he has read it, and probably in the Greek, but that will not get him on to his hind legs. It will not get him on to his hind legs in order to make a contribution to this.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Read section 7 of the Bill of Rights Act.

The member can prattle on for all he likes about section 10 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but in the end, if there is substantial change, any Attorney-General with a sense of ethics would have a look and get another vet. Did this one do it? No, he did not. No, he did not, because he knows that the rights to privacy of New Zealanders are being taken away under this bill with some sort of argument around security that, frankly, does not hold any water at all.

I want to say to the member on my right, as she generally is, that that particular subclause that she is suggesting is actually not very radical, at all. It is a relatively minor, very reasonable approach, and if there was any sort of ethical sense on the side of the Government, it would say yes.

I now want to go to the subclause that she suggested before that, and that is the insertion of subclause (3), after clause 2(2). It indicates that “This Bill may only be submitted for Royal assent if an independent review of New Zealand’s security agencies has been conducted and the recommendations incorporated into this Bill prior to the third reading of the Bill.”

I do not think I am breaching any confidences, because I think the Prime Minister has referred to this in the past. I was, along with at least one and probably two of my colleagues, one of the members consulted by the Prime Minister’s department around a proposed review of the SIS—in fact, the beginnings of a review of the SIS—from memory, relatively early last year. I think that at the time, the Prime Minister and his department had it more or less right that the SIS was a good place to start, but the interrelationship between the SIS and the other agencies—the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in particular, and the New Zealand Police—would be on the edge of that review and could be taken into account.

What happened then was quite a lot of publicity around Kim Dotcom and what I think is a relatively unhealthy rush to get some very narrow, specific legislation there for the GCSB. But then what happened was that that narrow legislation got widened out to something that is quite unreasonable and unacceptable to many, many members of Parliament. In fact, I would say it is unacceptable to every member of Parliament who has read it and understood it. I just want to say that from the contributions opposite, I am not convinced that there is a member on the other side of the Chamber who has read and understood properly the legislation that we are currently considering.

I move, That the question be now put.

The question now is that the honourable member Clare Curran’s amendment to clause 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 370 be agreed to. I am sorry to advise the honourable member that it is out of order as it does not fall within the definition of a preliminary clause.

I move, That the report be adopted.