Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill

on behalf of the Minister for National Security and Intelligence: I move, That the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported by Tuesday, 2 December 2014, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, 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.

This omnibus bill responds to the rapid evolution of the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters and other violent extremists in the West. These are not New Zealand’s problems alone, but New Zealand is not immune from them. As the Prime Minister outlined in his speech at Victoria University a few weeks ago, agencies have a watch list of between 30 and 40 people of concern in the foreign fighter context, with another 30 to 40 requiring further investigation. Our independently assessed domestic threat level was recently increased from “very low” to “low”—a terrorist attack is possible but not likely. Other Governments in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere have now sought to amend their legislation in this area. All Governments are very mindful of that once-dreadful boast of the IRA that terrorists only have to be lucky once.

We too are seeking to amend our legislation in this area, not only to bring it in line with what is happening in similar countries but also in line with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178, which urges member States to restrict the movement of foreign terrorist fighters and ensure that their legislation is up to scratch. The Government agreed to a targeted review covering four narrow and targeted areas: first, the capacity, the capabilities, and statutory powers of the New Zealand SIS to investigate and monitor suspected and returning foreign terrorist fighters and other violent extremists; second, the Government’s statutory powers to restrict and disrupt the ability of suspected foreign terrorist fighters to travel to conflict zones; and, third, whether or not specific criminal offences should be introduced to address these areas. The review did not recommend any changes to criminal offences at this time. What we are left with is a narrowly focused set of changes that will ensure that the SIS has the tools it requires to address the foreign terrorist fighter threat to our land.

Before I turn to the main provisions of the bill, I want to say something about the legislative context. At the end of the debate I will move that the bill be reported to the House by Tuesday, 2 December. This allows, obviously, a much shorter time in a select committee than is usual. The reason for this, of course, is the urgent nature of the review and the fact that we must make a number of changes to legislation now. The bill was provided to a number of organisations late last week, including the New Zealand Law Society and the Legislation Advisory Committee. The Government has been particularly concerned to ensure that other parties receive briefings about the review and legislation early, and to whatever extent they have required.

The bill has a sunset clause. There has been some comment about the date of that sunset clause, but we have to acknowledge that there is going to be a comprehensive review of all this legislation, which must begin no later than June 2015. Any changes recommended in that review—and, hopefully, they would be able to be in force by, say, the end of 2016—will supersede what we are debating today. The legislative product of that review will have a full select committee hearing, and I know the select committee will do a very good job on the present legislation in the time it has available.

In the time I have remaining, I want to turn to some of the proposed changes—colleagues of mine who speak after me can go into these areas in greater detail—in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178. The changes proposed fall into two categories: restricting and disrupting travel, and monitoring and investigating foreign terrorist fighters. In the first area, the bill allows the Minister of Internal Affairs to set a cancellation period of up to 3 years on a New Zealand passport, rather than the current 12-month period. This would occur only in a situation where the Minister is satisfied that the person continues to pose a danger to New Zealand or any other country. The bill also allows the temporary suspension of a passport or travel document for no more than 10 working days. In the second area, the bill provides the SIS with the ability, under warrant, to undertake visual surveillance in a private setting or involving trespass on to a private property. It is modelled on the existing powers in the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. It is nothing, really, that the police in special circumstances cannot do already.

I want particularly to refer to clause 9. These provisions deal with intelligence collection and visual surveillance for a period of no more than 48 hours in situations of emergency or urgency. I think these are the provisions that have generated the most comment to date. On one level, what is proposed here is nothing new: a similar regime for surveillance without a warrant in situations of emergency or urgency was contained in the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. I have had a good look at that section, and I have suggested that what is proposed in this bill contains more safeguards. The oversight and protections proposed in this bill are far more extensive than those in the Search and Surveillance Act. So, for example, the regime would be subject to ministerial oversight, and the Minister must be informed within 12 hours. Any information collected must be destroyed if that is what the Minister directs, and the inspector-general must be notified of authorisations, and the annual report has to set all this information out.

Can I give you a hypothetical example of where such a power could be required. Let us say reporting indicated that later today an individual was planning to depart New Zealand to travel to Syria. That individual had previously been unknown to the SIS, but new reporting indicated the individual had boasted to others about going on a jihad. There would be insufficient time to get the traditional warrant together in the 8 hours before the individual left the country and to bring together the Minister and the commissioner for warrants. In this hypothetical case, an emergency authorisation could enable the intercept of communications to take place so that an assessment could be made of the threat, and potentially support the cancellation of the individual’s passport. I—and, where appropriate, the commissioner—may direct the NZ SIS to discontinue that activity under the authorisation and destroy any information.

I acknowledge, however, that any expansion of the powers of the State in this critical area must be very carefully thought through, and a number of people who will make submissions will, I am sure, have genuine concerns. So I approach these provisions with an open mind. I want the select committee to look very closely at them and to consider any additional safeguards that it thinks are useful. I commend the bill to the House. I thank members, particularly members of the Labour Party, for their engagement today, and I emphasise that I am open to discussions with Mr Little or any of his team on any of these matters, because I think that in relation to clause 9 it is critically important that we get it as right as we can. I commend the bill to the House.

I thank the Minister Christopher Finlayson for his adumbration of the legislation and note that the position that we had taken—and certainly I had taken—when this legislation was foreshadowed in the Prime Minister’s speech a few weeks ago and when the bill itself had been publicised over the weekend was to look askance at the provisions that constitute a further erosion of people’s freedoms and liberties, particularly the claim for the need for warrantless surveillance for a period of up to 48 hours; the cancellation of passports for up to 3 years, an extension from the current 1-year period; and the suspension of passports for those who are travelling overseas because they do constitute issues and matters of removal of rights, in respect of which, when this House is dealing with them, we should take considerable care. My position had been that we needed to see a case from the Government about the circumstances in which these sorts of powers might be needed or the circumstances that might justify these powers, particularly the warrantless surveillance. It is fair to say that there is still some nervousness on our side about the provision as it appears in the bill.

I have had a briefing myself from the SIS and I have had explained to me circumstances in which the need for the security agency to be able to respond quickly and efficaciously to a threat or to a set of circumstances is needed because of the speed with which the people operating in this sphere now act. It was explained to me what is needed to obtain a warrant under our security legislation, and it is an involved process. I happen to think that that is a good thing, because the warrants that are applied for allow our security officials to take action under the cloak of secrecy, as they must do and as is the nature of security work, but they constitute a massive erosion of privacy and civil rights. So there should be effective checks and balances and it should be a deliberative and careful process to obtain a warrant in order for State officials to breach privacy and to act against people’s civil rights.

The briefing I had took me through the process it takes to get a warrant. There are very narrow statutory requirements that must be met. There is a vetting of the application. There needs to be an affidavit. There needs to be accompanying information and exhibits, which go with the affidavit. That is all a good thing, but that, of course, takes time. Yet there are people who are operating against our national security interests and, indeed, international security interests, who act much more quickly than that, about whom it is desirable that our security agencies are able to gather information in order to evaluate and, if necessary, counter the threat that they pose, or the risk that they pose. I understand that and I get that. I also think that New Zealanders, generally speaking, want to know that they live in a safe and secure country, they want their security agencies to be effective, and they want them to have the correct powers so that the nation is safe and they are safe in the streets and in their homes. But I also think that it is the New Zealand tradition to make sure that when the powers of the State are being exercised—the powers of State that are compulsive and do erode civil liberties—there are good and proper checks and balances.

On that basis, we say let us have a good close examination of this bill. Let us accept that there are security threats today that we had not foreseen 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, that the security climate and the security environment is a constantly changing beast, and that it has changed in the last 10 years at least. We need to know that the right powers, the right commitment, the right equipment, and the right capability are available to our security officials to do their job and to keep us safe. So we say let us have a close examination of the bill. We will ask some questions. We will ask: do we need the security agencies to have a period of 48 hours when they can undertake surveillance—video surveillance, if necessary—without a warrant, or is it possible for a warrant to be obtained in less than 48 hours? And if there is to be a suggestion, even if there is a much more truncated period of time, that a period of warrantless surveillance might be validated in retrospect, I personally think that that is more problematic than simply having a warrantless period. But let us have a look at those provisions. Let us have a proper examination of them. Let us hear from the experts and, most important, let us hear from New Zealanders and from those who feel they have a special interest in this and who want to have their say.

That is why we will have something to say about the process that the Government has entered into in this legislation—the urgency and the need to get it passed so quickly. The Prime Minister laid out the threats that this bill seeks to address a good 3 or 4 weeks ago. There has been one session of the House since that time, and now we are in the second session, and now the Government brings the legislation in under urgency. So the committee will want to see some assessment of and some appreciation for the need for that urgency as we consider it. The shorter the amount of time we have available to consider legislation and, most important, to hear from our citizens about it, then often the worse the legislation is when it comes to be passed. So we do urge the Government to look carefully at the process and at the time frame that it has given for the passage of this legislation to allow New Zealanders to have a fair chance to make a comment on it. Let us have a good discussion and a good debate on whether the legislation needs to go as far as it does.

I have talked about the 48-hour warrantless period. There is then the period for cancelling passports. If it is to be 3 years, which is an increase from the 1-year period at the moment, are there enough safeguards so that somebody who is wrongly caught up in a set of allegations or an incorrect threat assessment can apply to have the cancellation of their passport reviewed in a time that is much less than 3 years? What we do not want to see is that if somebody is the subject of an incorrect threat assessment, they lose their passport and it is years before they can get it back. There has got to be an effective appeal process or a judicial review process that means that they can get it back in an efficient and effective amount of time.

So with those sorts of provisos, we say let us look at this bill and let us pay close attention to those provisions that do take away the rights and privileges that citizens in New Zealand have and ordinarily expect. You know, we do not want to be drawn into the panicked response that security legislation is often promoted in. We know there are threats, and we know also that the security agencies often have access to information that they cannot disclose without revealing their own tactics and the approaches they need to take, but let us not also get into the process of causing scare, causing fright, as a basis to justify this legislation. Let us have a good and honest examination and a good and honest debate about it.

Finally, there is the other provision that relates to the suspension of passports for people who are abroad, and the removal of their travel documents, of course, puts them in an extraordinarily difficult position. We would just ask that the Government, when it is part of the committee process shepherding the legislation through, make very careful consideration of this because this is a very serious step to take for New Zealand citizens when they are travelling. On that basis let us send this bill to the select committee for a closer examination. Let us hear from New Zealand citizens, let us hear from the experts, and let us see whether we can make this bill a good and balanced piece of security legislation that acknowledges and respects citizens’ rights, and acknowledges and respects the modern security threats that New Zealand faces. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution in this debate on the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill. Can I just begin by acknowledging Andrew Little, the speaker who has just resumed his seat, congratulating him on his elevation to Leader of the Opposition and thanking him, actually, for making a number of quite thoughtful, I think, and well-balanced comments in this debate. This is undoubtedly the most serious of issues. Parliament is at its best when the members of this House recognise the seriousness of the issues being considered and the critical importance of our getting them right, and try to set aside any point-scoring agenda to make sure that we do our job as well as we can to protect the safety of the people of New Zealand. I want to acknowledge the parties in the House that are working very hard with the Government to make that happen.

I do not think anyone in this House would choose to dispute the fact that the most critical obligation of a Government and of this Parliament is to protect its citizens. New Zealand has for a long time been in the very happy situation of being largely removed from the bulk of international conflicts. We are incredibly fortunate to be an island nation tucked away from conflict zones. Although that has meant that we have had a very peaceful and tranquil—to quote the words of the prayer of this House—existence, it can sometimes mean that our citizens become almost complacent about the risks that are very real and very present. We have to take the international threat picture seriously, and I think we have to recognise that the world is an increasingly small place when it comes to matters of global security, whether that be cyber-security or the very real threat of terrorism, and that the benign environment that has been our birthright and that we have been so familiar with for so many years is not one that can be taken for granted.

The reality is that New Zealanders are at risk every day, whether they are at home or, even more so, when they are abroad. Of course, New Zealanders are a well-travelled nation of people. We live our lives and we carry out our businesses all over the world. At any point in time almost all of us will have family members who are travelling the globe. We have to play our part not only to protect our citizens but to ensure we are doing our part in the international sphere. In that regard I do want to particularly note that one of the critical reasons for passing this legislation, and for doing so quickly, is to give full effect to our obligations under Security Council Resolution 2178 by making sure we have the statutory powers available to restrict and disrupt the travel of suspected foreign fighters. So in that regard I certainly—and I am sure many members of this House—would want to stand up and say that we are doing our part for a safer globe.

The changes in this bill, as this House knows, came about from a review of our security services and whether they have the capability and the framework that they need to protect New Zealanders and, as I say, to play our part in the world against this threat of foreign fighters. That report came back and identified some core measures that needed to be addressed quickly to fill the holes, but it equally recognised that given the urgency of this process and, by necessity, the short time frame in which to complete both the review and the drafting of the legislation and this legislative process, it is appropriate that these powers, which are extensive, are limited by a sunset clause—which they are—that they will be subjected to the full review by the Security Intelligence Service that is required by statute to begin next year, and that, of course, while they are in force they are subject to very careful oversight.

The powers, I am sure, will be well canvassed in this debate, and they have been already to an extent. They really largely turn on the power of the Minister of Internal Affairs to consider the grant, suspension, and removal of travel documents, where that is necessary, both in terms of the length of time that he—or she, as the case may be in the future—can suspend travel documents for and the speed with which he can act, should that be required, in urgent situations. We are moving out, obviously, to a maximum of 3 years’ cancellation of passports, but, importantly, with a 12-month review clause in there, and, of course, the individuals concerned will continue to have the ability to seek a judicial review of any decision made in that regard.

The other core area of the changes really do relate to the ability of our Security Intelligence Service to be able to investigate and keep us safe from terrorist activities, and in that regard there is a glaring distinction at the moment between the powers that the New Zealand Police and other investigative bodies have under the Search and Surveillance Act and the fact that the SIS currently does not have those same sorts of powers to carry out visual surveillance in a private place with a warrant. Those of us who have been involved, as I was, in the passing of the Search and Surveillance Bill and who sat through the select committee processes will know the detailed consideration that was put into considering the appropriateness of that surveillance and whether we had the balance right between the rights of private citizens and the important right to protect law and order in this country. I am very comfortable that we landed in a good place. Now is the time to ensure that those same rights that the New Zealand Police has in terms of prosecuting such offences also extends to the SIS.

Can I just make the comment in respect of video surveillance that of course the Commissioner of Security Warrants will need to be satisfied that the conditions for issuing a warrant apply. Then, as a second safeguard, the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service also needs to be satisfied that the conditions for issuing a warrant apply. The last speaker, Mr Little, made reference to the issue of the 48-hour period in which some surveillance can be undertaken without a warrant where there is a real risk of a delay in doing so prejudicing the ability to carry out that investigation. This is a critical issue. I think it is one of the key reasons that we do need to take the time for this bill to be considered and worked through in terms of some of those operational aspects. Equally, at the moment, you will know that the power to carry out that warrantless surveillance for the first 48 hours if that delay would be seriously prejudicial falls under the control of the director of the agency. Again, this is certainly something that I expect members will want to consider very carefully during the time that the bill is at the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee in order to make sure that we do have those safeguards that are absolutely appropriate.

We cannot hide from the fact that there are very real risks if we overdo the process but nor should we get so carried away in providing every freedom to surveillance agencies that we do not properly safeguard the rights of New Zealand citizens. That is certainly the balance that the Government wishes to seek. I am personally very comfortable that although these powers are significant powers, the reality, the seriousness, and the pervasiveness of the threat is one that cannot be ignored. I believe it is the appropriate response of this Government and the House to ensure that we do have interim measures in place pending the sunset clause while a more fulsome review can be undertaken. I am very happy to commend the bill to the House.

It is a sad coincidence that unfortunately this bill is being introduced into the House on the same day that the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has looked into the activities of the SIS and seen that it has so woefully failed. It does actually raise a point that I think is very important. We had the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) last year, which was seen to have some very serious shortcomings, and again we have seen the SIS today. It does raise the issue—which has been brought up before and which has still not yet properly been addressed, I believe—that neither of the problems that occurred in those two agencies were revealed by any internal oversight that was happening. The internal oversight completely and utterly failed. The problems were brought out and made public only by scandals that occurred, which were subsequently looked into and it was found that those agencies were really wanting in terms of the oversight that we have.

We have a system in our intelligence agencies where the Prime Minister is ultimately in charge of both of those organs, the SIS and the GCSB. The Prime Minister also chairs the oversight committee—or the supposed oversight committee—of those two organisations and has the casting vote, so what chance is there of internal oversight really functioning and working when you have such a system as that? I think it is a major problem in our security apparatus. It is unique to New Zealand. It does not happen in any other country that I know of, and certainly in none of our “Five Eyes” partners does that low level of oversight occur.

This bill is one in which we have to get the balance right between the security of our citizens and, at the same time, the protection and the safeguarding of the privacy and human rights of our citizens as well. We know that the world is changing. The spread of Islamic State (IS) has occurred very rapidly, and there are perhaps threats to New Zealand that were not around a few months ago. But we also have to recognise that this is a regional conflict that is being internationalised, in part by ourselves, by the way that the international community is engaging with this regional conflict.

John Key said a couple of weeks ago that IS would rain carnage on the world. Look, make no mistake, this is a nasty, brutish organisation, but it is not about to bring terror and mayhem into our neighbourhoods tomorrow. It uses terror and atrocities as a weapon, but it uses them as a weapon to dominate and control parts—parts—of two countries. It has not been constituted in the same way as al-Qaeda was, for example. However, it is sophisticated, and increasingly it is reaching out to local people, including here in New Zealand, and asking them to take up arms and requesting those people to leave their own countries and to travel over to Syria and Iraq and have them fight on the ground there for it. It preys upon those people within New Zealand who perhaps have a grudge and might be swayed by that propaganda and who might be on the extremes or who are the outliers of what is in New Zealand an extraordinarily peaceful and productive Muslim community.

The question that still has to be asked—and has still to be debated properly, I believe—is what impact the Government’s decision to send troops to Iraq will have on the risk that we are facing here in New Zealand. We have, according to what we have been briefed on by the security agencies, some loopholes or some openings that have left us more vulnerable than what might otherwise give us confidence to believe that we are well covered for. To look at those loopholes and to see what legislative changes are needed is the reason why Labour has said that we will support this legislation’s referral to the select committee, where we can actually hear about that.

We have two concerns—I certainly have two concerns—and the first one revolves around the issue of process. A short review took place directly after the election, followed by the drafting and the pushing through of this legislation before Christmas. That certainly was not the first time that these issues came up. Certainly, some of the shortcomings that the SIS, our security agency, had were known about well before the election, and the review could have taken place much, much earlier. I do not believe that the Government has been particularly vigilant in terms of what it needed to do to get its house in order, rather than rushing it through now, and rushing it through means that the select committee process that we are likely to have is going to be truncated. It is going to be much shortened, and the people giving the expert advice, which we are going to get into as part of that submissions process, are going to have much less time to consider the legislation.

A third area that has been a casualty of rushing it is that we have not engaged properly with the Muslim community. Phil Goff and I met with senior members of the Muslim community last week and had a chat to them. I believe that they are allies in this process. They could help us considerably in getting this legislation through and help us with regard to some of the things that we want to protect ourselves from, but the Muslim community has not been engaged. Therefore, in many ways, it is seen to be the problem, rather than what I believe it is, which is part of the solution.

The sunset clause, as has been discussed just now, is there. It is 2018, which is 4 years out. Conceivably, and in all probability, there will be a different Government in power at that stage. It is a very long way out. We would all hope that the review could be done some time much sooner than that.

So it is important to get the balance right between having the protection that we want to seek and, at the same time, having that protection of our personal freedoms right. Australia, for example, is putting through legislation for exactly the same reason, but it has seen fit to be able to give its Senate select committee a much longer time in which to be able to consider the issues before it. There are some aspects of this bill that have been mentioned up to now that are obviously of concern. We would like to get much more expert advice on these from the people who will appear in front of the select committee. The expansion of the powers of the SIS, particularly around video surveillance, is, in some ways, bringing it up to where the police already are. So, in some respects, that is possibly less controversial, but, again, we would like to hear about that from the experts concerned.

The extension of the time for withholding passports from 1 year to 3 years—again, I would like to see the evidence for why that is necessary, first of all, and, secondly, to make sure that the checks and balances are in place, the review is there, and the ability to appeal is there, so that people are not unnecessarily disadvantaged.

Lastly, the point I want to mention that is perhaps the most important is the 48-hour period when warrantless searches can take place—surveillance can take place without a warrant. I do believe that 48 hours in today’s world is too long. We have telephones, emails—everything that we demand is beyond what we need, and I do believe that we can look at that and certainly modify it considerably.

Lastly, the cancellation of the travel documents of people who are travelling and who are thought to have taken part in terrorist activities—we need some way of getting those people back. We simply cannot leave them stranded on the other side of the world without travel documents. That would not be responsible of New Zealand as a global citizen.

So we need a good process. We need to address those fundamental issues carefully. We need to deliberate carefully. We need to hear from the experts. That requires time—it should not be hurried. It needs time for public opinion and for the public to be able to take a proper look at this as well, and, as we see it at the moment, I regret that that is probably not going to happen.

It is really a privilege to speak on what is a serious bill and a very serious topic that is going around the world at the moment. Parliaments, certainly in the common law world, are grappling with legislation like this. I think it does have the capacity to show parliaments, and this one as well, at their best. We have got to hear, so far, universally thoughtful contributions from members—not necessarily in entire agreement but certainly in agreement on the main issues and risks, and on what it is that this sort of legislation should be trying to achieve. Like my colleague Amy Adams, I would say that this should be, and I think it has the capacity to be so far—certainly with Labour, National, and other parties—a bipartisan issue, where reasonable people can come together and work through the issues constructively to find common ground.

I accept some of the things that David Shearer has said, that there is this, effectively, balancing between the risks and the need for protection and security in New Zealand, vis-à-vis, also, those undeniable and fundamental rights of privacy and freedom, and the freedoms that we as New Zealanders, again, as Amy Adams said, sometimes do take for granted—the rights and freedoms that should be cherished. It is a sort of balance again or an argument again between not being complacent about the very real risks that although in this country are not at the level of risks in some other countries such as the United Kingdom, which very recently raised its threat profile again, are nevertheless risks. It is about not being complacent about those and balancing those against not having an over-the-top, burdensome approach where there is no freedom to do anything because we are tying everything up.

Well, we, of course, are very far from that in this bill. We have a targeted approach to identified risks. In my portfolio of transport, for example, some have called for universal screening at all airports in New Zealand. In my view, although we should not be complacent about the risks around all airports in New Zealand and although, in a sense, we are always reviewing airport security, we would not want to act disproportionately. We would not want to have an untargeted approach where the risk clearly does not justify it and where it is out of proportion to the threats. This bill, I think, is not in that category. As I have said, it is one where we are acting as a country in a targeted fashion against identified risks to keep New Zealanders safe.

I did not agree with David Shearer in his comments around why now. Why does this have to be passed before the end of the year? I say this quite simply to David Shearer, and I reiterate what the Attorney-General has said—as the IRA once said: “We only have to be lucky once.”

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Yeah, but the English are giving their Parliament until May next year on the same legislation.

That is not to say, Mr Goff, that we should be alarmist. That is not to say that we should be anything other than realistic about the threats that are there, but I do think it means that where we have had a review and where we are in a position to act, we should. That is what we are doing, and that is, I think, a strong enough reason to ensure we do work on this expeditiously. There will be time enough, actually, to take on board the legitimate concerns that David Shearer has raised, for example, and to work through those at the select committee.

I know that the Attorney-General is famously a reasonable man, who has, according to a discussion I have just had with him, been listening to some of the critique on the technical parts of the bill. I have no doubt that there is the capacity for movement on some of that to ensure that this is the best law that it can be for New Zealand and New Zealanders.

Of course, this bill does focus on our ability to manage the threats posed by foreign terrorist fighters. The issue of foreign terrorist fighters is fast evolving as a threat to New Zealand as well as other countries. I think we all know now that it is the top priority for our SIS. The objectives of this bill are to counter the threats posed by foreign terrorist fighters by providing statutory powers: firstly, to investigate and monitor suspected and returning foreign terrorist fighters and other violent extremists; and, secondly, to restrict and disrupt the ability of suspected foreign terrorist fighters to travel to conflict zones.

I think there is no question, and I believe that for the most part this Parliament takes national security and the obligations around that very seriously indeed. New Zealand is no longer the benign environment, in terms of threats, that many people think it is. We do have as a Parliament, as well as a Government, an obligation to ensure that New Zealanders are safe here at home and abroad, bearing in mind my comments about doing that in the most targeted, proportionate way that we can. We do not want to see, as a country, New Zealand or New Zealanders as the target or source of any sort of violent extremism. Parliament has to take responsible, proportionate steps in the short term—and it is doing so in this bill—to deal with the immediate threat to our national security.

It is the rapidly changing security environment that really is driving the legislative changes. As I have already said, the bill is tightly focused so as to address the known and the current risks ahead of a more comprehensive review of the core New Zealand intelligence community next year. And, of course, it is that review and putting in place the recommendations that will come from it that mandate the 2018 sunset clause in this bill. If we could have the review concluded and have the changes before then, well, that date could move as well. But we are focused on responsibly addressing the risks that the rapid rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) present to us locally, regionally, and—as we know, not through this bill, necessarily, but through other efforts; humanitarian, military, and so on—abroad as well.

I echo the comments of David Shearer about the rise of ISIL. Here we have a situation where there are concerns that there are New Zealanders who are currently offshore fighting, who are interested in travelling for the purposes of fighting, or who have returned from fighting and are radicalising others and becoming radicalised themselves. That sort of threat, whilst not to be overdone, is real and present and justifies the response in this bill. I know that although the bill will have a relatively brief time before the select committee, all members there will put their diligent and thoughtful minds to this issue and that at the end of the select committee’s consideration we will have a bill that makes New Zealand a more safe country for New Zealanders.

The Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill is another example of the arrogance of this Government, something the Prime Minister swore on election night that he would ensure in his third term he would not display. This is not the first time the Government has raised an issue, softened the public with vague statements of putative concern, paused tantalisingly with the drafting of the legislation, and then rushed the product through under urgency as if the world were suddenly teetering on the brink of disaster. For those bewildered by current New Zealand politics, the key to a broad understanding is Crosby/Textor.

The Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service just advised the House that he was cooperating with what he called the two large beasts of New Zealand politics—National and Labour. He appears to have provided copies of the bill to the New Zealand Law Society and other organisations in the course of last week but not to two Opposition parties—New Zealand First and the Green Party. In doing so he impugns the constitutional system he spoke so eloquently about respecting in the urgent debate that he finished less than an hour ago. He owes New Zealand First and the Green Party an apology. What he thinks or what his party might think of our parties is irrelevant to the integrity of the constitutional system. The Government, having claimed that there are about 40 citizens on the Government’s watch list, some of whom the Minister dismisses as juvenile fantasists, having upgraded the threat of terrorism in the country from very low to low, feels the need to extend the powers of surveillance over potentially all of us—a whole new take on the nanny State.

On a quick read while the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service was introducing the bill, which had just been put on the Table, the bill appears to change a number of provisions governing State surveillance. It includes the following: an increased ability for the SIS to conduct surveillance, including under warrant on private premises, or for 48 hours with no warrant. Secondly, the SIS and police will have direct access to the Customs Service database. Thirdly, passports can be suspended for up to 3 years, I think, if the Minister thinks the targeted person is a danger to New Zealand or other countries. They can be suspended by the Minister for up to 10 days without having a briefing of the situation provided. They can be suspended with no notice being provided for 30 days if the Minister is satisfied that giving notice to the targeted person would put an investigation at risk. They can be suspended when the targeted person is outside the country. On these bases the bill may well be seen as breaching fundamental human rights, and seriously restricting access to justice for targeted people who are overseas. The bill could potentially see an innocent person trapped outside New Zealand and living illegally in another country. Challenging its findings will be difficult given that national security interests are competing—catch-22. No information has been provided on how evidence gathered would be used in courts. Is warrantless surveillance admissible in court if a subsequent warrant is not sought?

The bill is fundamentally a matter of balancing national security interests and individual privacy rights. We are aware of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and what the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service describes as the rapid evolution of the threat. I say to the Prime Minister that the case for national security overriding individual privacy has not been sufficiently made. I invite the Prime Minister to recall the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 3 stipulates that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Article 13 states that “(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement … (2) … and the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his country.” Article 15 says that “Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”—or her nationality. I invite the Prime Minister to recall Ben Franklin’s observation that those who are prepared to give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. I invite him to reflect on a modern theorist, John Rawls, who in his A Theory of Justice argues that “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. … the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.” We shall have more to say on these issues as the bill progresses, in haste, over the next short while.

For this first reading, probably the most appropriate thing to do is to complement the observations of the political theorists with a practical letter from a member of the New Zealand public. The writer, who lives in Hamilton, is not, as he put it, a serial writer. In fact, it is the first letter he has written to Parliament in his entire life, which gives it more authenticity and, indeed, poignancy when you listen to what he has to say: “New Zealand is in my view descending into an irreversible state of surveillance verging on soft totalitarianism. It sounds like an overstatement but I don’t think it is, and I am becoming increasingly astonished by the speed with which it’s happening. New Zealand is relaxed, verging on laissez-faire, on the subject of surveillance. New Zealand, it seems, is equally relaxed about accepting smokescreen politics from the Prime Minister in regard to the reasons for that surveillance. There is unquestionably barbarity of a nature and on a scale the average New Zealander cannot comprehend currently taking place in the Middle East, but that barbarity shouldn’t be used and spun into justification to treat New Zealanders like enemies of the State in their own country while going about their own lawful business. People don’t seem to realise”—he says—“that once their basic rights to privacy are removed by the State, they will never know them again. Indeed, our children and their children will never know privacy and selective anonymity in the way you and I did when we were kids.”

The writer focuses on one issue in particular. “One of the things I find most difficult to fathom”—he says—“is the argument that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Do those who use that line realise they are quoting Hermann Goebbels?” The writer goes on to say: “The way the Government managed so easily to spin opposition to surveillance as an act of criminality or an irrational left-wing conspiracy theory through the media prior to the election was astounding. I have no faith in the Government to protect the people of this country in regard to this matter. There is no doubt in my mind that it will act in the interests of foreign administrations before it will give consideration to the long-held freedoms our forebears enjoyed and defended. Once they are gone, they are gone for good.” He concludes by asking Opposition parties to show due diligence in Parliament to defend the rights of New Zealanders when the topic of surveillance in all its manifestations is raised: “I think this is one of those situations where possibly the public do not understand what is happening due to the specialist technical knowledge required to grasp modern surveillance. By the time a critical mass gets it, their rights will have long-since disappeared.”

Let me assure our compatriot from Hamilton—a true patriot; a patriot to New Zealand’s adherence to universal human rights—that the Green Opposition will show due diligence in this Parliament in critiquing this bill.

New Zealand First will support this bill’s referral to the select committee, but not necessarily any further. There are a number of complex issues to consider, and we will not be a rubber stamp. We want a common-sense solution to the tension between human rights and the need to restrain misguided Kiwis from leaving to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in its quest for genocide and its other extreme atrocities in pursuance of an Islamic State. Concerning Syria and Iraq, within a matter of weeks we have gone from keeping a watching brief, to the commitment of a handful of advisers operating behind the wire, to—we understand—about 40 trainers, along with about 60 SAS members to act as protection for them, in front of the wire. If ISIS did not know of New Zealand before, it most certainly does know us now. We are now an active and direct enemy with all of the national security ramifications that go with that. Our risk profile has certainly been raised.

Turning to the bill itself, why the rush now given that foreign fighters have been going to Syria and Iraq for months, if not years? We have been horrified by “Jihadi John” and similar stories, even from France, for the best part of a year, and we are, of course, concerned about possible Kiwi jihadis too. But this Government has dithered and is now pressing the pedal to the metal without a parliamentary debate on the commitment of New Zealand forces. Such a debate did, of course, happen elsewhere, especially in the United Kingdom, so why was such debate and democracy sidelined here? The Government is rushing through this bill as a stopgap, expecting all parties to rubber-stamp it—some, as in the case of New Zealand First, without any consultation. The bill is, in fact, too late and too little to protect New Zealand’s interests, and we are given the excuse that a more comprehensive review is needed in about 6 months’ time.

New Zealand First does not believe that New Zealand troops should be put into Syria or Iraq for the purpose of supporting any Government under attack by ISIS. We sensibly did not support the Iraqi war, which was the cause of the current situation, and we should not now enter the mess that is the result of that war—a messy, multi-level armed conflict that straddles religious, tribal, and ethnic lines and national boundaries. It will have an uncertain outcome and is likely to go on for many years. In the end, nothing will ultimately be resolved by conflict and the massive loss of life. There is, of course, an exception: New Zealand should always follow United Nations action to protect populations and people against genocide and persecution. But that is not the context for the current decision to deploy troops. The Government is sailing into unknown territory, not really knowing what the objective is.

In relation to this bill, we support the proposed comprehensive review of legislative settings and a broader intelligence review to be completed before June 2015, even though that is far too late, and we support some of the proposals in the bill going to the select committee. We support the proposal of a 3-year cancellation of passports instead of 1 year going to the select committee, where we will hear what others have to say before we make a final decision. On the face of it, however, that period may be justified where the individual concerned is likely to act against New Zealand’s interests and is likely to continue to do so for an extended period of over 1 year. That is entirely consistent with New Zealand’s obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 2178, which encourages States to act to prevent intending foreign terrorist fighters from leaving to join ISIS and to fight with it.

If New Zealand troops are to be put in harm’s way, they need to be supported even if they should not be there. We must not allow some misguided Kiwi adventurers or jihadis to fight against our own troops, but the cancellation of a passport for 3 years is a very serious matter, and we will need to consider that further. We do, however, note that the safeguards are included in the bill by which those concerned may seek a review every year, and they, of course, always have the right to resort to the courts. Although we acknowledge the safeguards in respect of human rights built into this bill, those rights are always subject to the right of the whole community to protect New Zealand’s interests, and a 3-year cancellation may be justified in those circumstances.

Turning to the SIS visual surveillance authority, it is logical that this be the same power as the police have with a warrant. Safeguards and overview are built into the process, but New Zealand First will examine the adequacy of those safeguards and the sufficiency of the overview before we make a final decision on whether to support it. However, 48 hours without a warrant is far too long. New Zealand First would support 24 hours, but not 48. The Government, frankly, would need to get its act together within 24 hours to get a warrant where such a serious invasion of personal privacy is involved, and 48 hours is much too tempting for a service that has shown scant regard for the law in the past. I do not see why it should take 48 hours to get a warrant. Another has said that with cellphones, the internet, and so on these days—well, frankly, even carrier pigeons could carry messages fast enough within 24 hours, let along 48.

New Zealand First is concerned about the sunset clause for expiry in 2018. This parks the matter, conveniently, until after the next election. It must be reviewed before then, and in fact before the 2017 election so that we do not have the same dithering that we have seen this year. The New Zealand public do have a right to have a say, and, ultimately, to have a say with their vote. That should not be removed by the timing of the sunset clause until after 2017 has passed.

As I have said, New Zealand First will support the bill going to the select committee, but as I have also said, we want some changes if we are to support it further. We want to hear the argument in support of the 3-year period for cancellation of a passport, which is very long. We will make a final decision on that later. We are certain, however, that 48 hours for surveillance by the SIS without a warrant is far too long and is not justified. We want to see a change to that in particular. Finally, as I have said, the sunset clause expiring in 2018 is about a year too far away and we definitely want to see that happen before the 2017 election. For the time being, however, New Zealand First will vote in favour of the bill going to the select committee, but we certainly may change our minds after we see what the final bill looks like.

I understand that the next call is a split call. David Seymour—5 minutes.

I rise in support of this bill, in its first reading. It would be tempting to stand up and say that those who would sacrifice any freedom for security deserve neither, but it would also be churlish because our heritage in a classical liberal country is actually that that is precisely what we have done. We have just managed to circumscribe State power very well and get a good bargain for the freedom we have given up in various times in order to seek State security.

There are three measures, or substantial parts of this bill, that I regard as being changes in degree rather than any particular principle. Extending the period of passport withdrawal to 3 years with annual reviews is one of those measures. A temporary 10-day passport cancellation and extending powers already available to one Government agency, the Police, to the same as the SIS, I also regard as falling into that category.

However, the relationship between the power of the State and the freedom of the individual is one of the most important topics that we will ever debate in this House. When it comes to the idea of 48-hour warrantless surveillance, that is quite different from the other measures we are debating. It is not so much a change in degree as a change in principle. We are told by the proponents of this measure that there are so many safeguards that it will never be a real threat to human liberty. If that is indeed the case, then the logical answer would seem to be to just get a warrant.

Notwithstanding that, I believe that there are urgent needs to be addressed within this bill. With that in mind, I will be voting for this bill to proceed to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee so we can interrogate, examine, and advance the bill into something that will be somewhat easier to support. Thank you.

In the time that is available to me, I want to make four points about this bill. Firstly, I am prepared to vote for it to go to the select committee for wider consideration. Second, the bill has three parts to it that attract my attention. Part 1 of the bill deals with changes to the Passports Act, and as the responsible Minister at the moment, I can say that in my view I think these changes go some way towards addressing what is an unsatisfactory situation at present. At present, a passport can be withdrawn for a period of only 12 months. It can be further cancelled subject to the determination of a High Court judge. That has never happened, and the fact is no one is entirely clear about what the process would be for actually following that through. So the provision to have the 3-year period with the capacity for an annual review by the Minister is, I think, an appropriate one in the circumstances. In most cases, I suspect it will mean that at the end of 12 months, the cancellation will lapse. So I think that is a good and a practical and positive step forward.

Part 2 of the bill makes a number of changes to our intelligence laws. I have real problems with a number of those areas. I think the 48-hour rule, which has been clearly the subject of a lot of debate in the House this afternoon, is Draconian. It does go too far and I do not believe that it is justified, despite the additional safeguards that have been built into the legislation since the first draft of the bill was being circulated. I think that is something the select committee does need to pay a lot of attention to.

Last year this House debated changes to the Government Communications Security Bureau legislation and also some consequential changes for the SIS. One of those changes, which I promoted, was that there be 5-yearly reviews of both those services commencing no later than 30 June 2015. In that context, I find the 2018 sunset clause to be too far. I think what should happen is that the Intelligence and Security Committee should be empowered to review the operation of this legislation by 1 April 2016 alongside its review of the activities of those two services to see whether the provisions in this bill are still necessary at that point. If they are, then it would bring separate legislation before the House. If not, then they would be allowed to lapse. I think that would deal with a lot of concern that people have about the nature of the proposals being advanced and also give some sense that they are interim measures pending the outcome of a wider review. It is one thing to have accountable security services, but if you have that, you have to ensure that you allow that legislation to operate effectively.

My real concern about this bill—although I acknowledge the circumstances that led to its introduction—is that it effectively cuts across a regime of supervision that this House put in place just over a year ago and that has not yet played out its first iteration. So it would be entirely appropriate, in my mind, for the review that commences by 30 June next year to be brought forward a little bit, if timing is a concern, and then for any changes that flow out of that review to be incorporated in a fresh statute, which could be introduced during the term of this Parliament if the issue that we are concerned about is still as prevalent and as prominent as at the moment.

Finally, can I be allowed to quibble on one point. I find the title of this bill overly emotive. This is an amendment to various aspects of security legislation. I think the title is hyperbolic and overly emotive, and I urge the select committee to give some consideration to reworking that as well during its consideration.

The next call, I understand, is a split call. Five minutes—Catherine Delahunty.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Hyperbolic is indeed the word, but this bill is worse than hyperbole. It is extending the powers of an incompetent Government agency that has just had to apologise to the Opposition. It is a bizarre day in the history of the New Zealand Parliament today—a very dark day in terms of accountability and transparency. This bill, to our shame, is going to increase the lack of protection and safety for the very people it claims to protect.

The Green Party is very proud to stand alone in this House having opposed this bill from day one because it is not going to look after civil liberties and human rights and, what is worse, it is not going to make the world a safer place. If the test is whether the world will be safer because of these provisions, the bill has failed. If you actually look at the bill, the title does not even connect to the provisions, which is why so many people concerned about human rights and liberties are questioning the broad powers that are being given to the SIS in this bill that can then be applied to anyone who is a dissenter.

The current furore over the despicable behaviour of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is a great opportunity to extend the powers of an agency that has failed us already. Its ability to conduct coherent and responsible surveillance of our citizens—we have the example of Tūhoe. We need to remember our history. We need to remember that the SIS is apologising today for a reason: it was inappropriate, it bordered on losing its neutrality, and it appeared to be working one part of the State against another. And now we propose to extend its powers so that it does not even need a warrant for 48 hours of surveillance of people’s homes because the Americans have told us to do it?

It is beyond a joke. It is a very serious moment when this starts to happen to the citizens of this country. I am speaking as someone who has had the SIS following me around at the age of 15. If you read the blog of Keith Locke, he has also experienced a lifelong surveillance. We come from families of peace activists. Those are the people who get surveilled. The people who fight for peace peacefully are at as much risk as the juvenile fantasists who want to join the jihad. So why is this bill so broad? Why is there a short, tiny select committee process? Why is there urgency? And why will the provisions go on to 2018? I am as appalled as anyone by the fundamentalism that has been let loose upon the world. Whether it is the United States fundamentalism or whether it is other fundamentalist groups in the Middle East, any form of fundamentalism will not be cured by paranoid surveillance States. What we are doing is creating and radicalising people who will then take unspeakable actions against society. Based on paranoia, fear, and surveillance, we are saying that we are going to live in a low-trust society, and we will push those people into acts that they should never do. We will be part of the problem. The reason that ISIL has gained so much support is the drones that have been dumped upon the people of North Africa and Iraq at the push of a button somewhere in the United States of America. The uranium missiles that have caused the cancers in the children of Iraq—those are the mechanisms by which you radicalise a population.

It is incredibly disappointing to see civil liberties of this whole country attacked in the name of safety. This is not safe. The passport laws, as Keith Locke points out, probably will not work at all because the definition of terrorist is wrong. There are incredible problems with extending surveillance to the agency that I mentioned, which already fails to do its job properly. We do not trust the SIS and we do not trust the Government. I can go back to Ahmed Zaoui. I can go back to this current Government’s behaviour on many issues and say: “We can’t trust you.” I know that today, outside this House, people are grateful to the Green Party, despite the attacks on us, for standing up and being prepared to say that this is Draconian, this is wrong, and this will not make the world a safer place. If we want to end violence we must look at our own behaviour. We will always oppose this kind of legislation. Thank you.

The Māori Party rises today in support of the first reading of the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill. But let me make it quite clear from the outset that our support in subsequent stages is conditional upon our concerns being addressed. We agree that all parties should participate in the debate on how best to deal with the evolving threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters, but let us first take the issue of the war on terror in our own homes. It is only appropriate on this White Ribbon Day that we consider the horrendous impact of violence wreaked upon far too many families and homes in this beautiful land of ours. On average, 14 women are killed every year. We must put a stop to this behaviour by demonstrating leadership. One of our own party stalwarts passed away just days ago as she journeyed to join the White Ribbon ride.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): For your benefit, this is a debate on another subject, and I would ask the member to come back and just focus on that.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I wanted to draw the parallels between violence away and violence at home. The violence at home—we feel that this piece of legislation may have an impact on the injustices that we see upon our own people, Māori, in this country if we approve the surveillance and the warrants being heaped out without due consideration. We already see in this country that Māori are 50 percent more likely to be prosecuted, 50 percent more likely to be sentenced, and 50 percent more likely to have longer sentences for the same crime as non-Māori in this country. We are concerned about that sort of racial profiling in regard to this piece of legislation; hence we wanted to make the correlation between violence in our own country and violence overseas.

First, let us deal with what is happening here. We think that this piece of legislation will have an impact on our people, as I have pointed out. We achieve confidence only if we ask the affected people and involve them in solutions to those issues. We ask how this will occur in such a reduced time for public involvement, with a shortened select committee period. We are greatly concerned about the impact of the bill to make it possible to render a person stateless by cancelling their passport. We want to be clear about the practice of accountabilities and transparencies around these decisions. One of the issues raised by the Human Rights Commission is that a basic premise of any measure to address terrorism is that it should not be discriminatory. The commission’s advice raises the issue of ethnic profiling and stereotyping founded on the grounds of discrimination.

I think we need to pause and recall the horror in 2001. We all have been affected and scarred by that. But what happened was that there was a fear that indigenous populations who refused to be silent about their concerns at home were viewed if not as terrorists then at least as traitors who were weakening the war effort. In a monograph produced by Dr Joanna Kidman, she stated that the issues of national loyalty and cultural allegiance quickly became a question of where people sat on the “axis of evil”—that is, the forces of anti-civilisation. In Australia, academics suspected of moral equivocation about terrorism were named and shamed in Parliament. Legislation in the United States, Britain, and Australia all aim to identify people who are presumed to be dangerous or antisocial or who pose a threat to the American, British, or Australian way of life. The enemy within became interpreted as ethnic minorities and asylum seekers.

Of course, there is a well-known and public linkage that has been made in our own jurisdiction about a supposed association between Māori activism and terrorist activity. We do not want a repeat of Operation Eight. We do not want to fuel a fire of hate speech that too frequently emerges from any concentration of terrorism associated with particular religions, nationalities, or civilisations. We have concerns that a reduction in the controls around warrants and an increase of power in regard to surveillance and the removal of passports may negatively impact on the life of Māori already suffering injustice in this country.

We have strong and heartfelt concerns about the possible implications of this bill, but we also believe it is irresponsible to take a stand without hearing from those New Zealanders who take up the call on human rights on our behalf. We support the first reading to enable that kōrero to happen. Kia ora.

I am very pleased to take a call on this very important bill. I want to acknowledge those members who have made what I think have been very thoughtful interventions overall, although I have to say how disappointed I am at the interventions from the Green Party. If there is any example of why that party should never be on the Treasury benches, it is in this, because the very first role of Government is to protect its people.

I want to acknowledge the very thoughtful Dr Kennedy Graham. In his suggestion that this smacks of arrogance, he does what he often does. He quotes somebody to make his point. In this case it is Benjamin Franklin, whose famous quote is thus: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” He suggests that this is some kind of zero-sum game—that the restriction on liberty is necessary in order to increase safety.

Well, I want to commend another Benjamin to Dr Graham, and he is Benjamin Wittes, who wrote a very thoughtful article completely refuting the popular myth that that is what Ben Franklin was actually saying. He goes on to talk about “purchase” not being a metaphor. In 1755, when Ben Franklin made that quote, he was talking about taxation, not liberty. I encourage Dr Graham to go and read that article, because what Ben Franklin was saying was nothing of the sort of the misunderstanding and the myth—that somehow safety and liberty are two ends of a spectrum, one necessarily having to give way to the other. I do not accept that. It is absolutely necessary for Governments from time to time to provide some form of surveillance with the necessary protections that go around this.

Mr Little—and I acknowledge his promotion to Leader of the Opposition—in his very thoughtful intervention talked about the importance of privacy, but, of course, this is not a matter of principle on privacy. It is a matter of process, and a very important one I would accept, but nevertheless one that I think this Parliament and many free parliaments around the world have acknowledged is an argument that has already been made. We need to work out what we do in what is a very rapidly evolving situation. I think, if anything, the events in Ottawa are examples of where vigilance is absolutely necessary.

I want to touch on a second point that Dr Graham made about the arbitrary deprivation of the right to nationality. The suspension or removal of a passport does not constitute the removal of nationality or the creation of statelessness.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

The Labour Party has come to the decision that we will support this bill at least as far as to the select committee on the basis that there are some things in the bill that we think are sensible and necessary, and also because given that the Government will have the numbers to pass this bill, we thought we would take advantage of the Minister’s offer to cooperate and we would see what we could do to improve the nature of the bill so that it was more broadly acceptable.

I have to say, Minister, that the process has been pretty appalling—not the process of your consultation with some Opposition parties; that is fine. But what is appalling is that this bill introduced tonight will pass through its final stages within a fortnight. As long as I have been in this House I have been opposed to the rushing through of legislation under urgency unless there are very good reasons for it. The key question, Minister, and it is a genuine question that I am going to put to you, is that tomorrow the British Parliament—the United Kingdom Parliament—is introducing very similar legislation to this, dealing with stopping people returning as terrorists, dealing with monitoring air passengers, and preventing travel abroad. Our level of threat is considered low. What does low mean? Low means that it is possible but not likely. The British level of threat is much, much higher than that. I think it is at a high level, if not at an extreme level. But the British House of Commons and the British Government, in their wisdom, are taking this bill through their normal processes, and they hope to have it as part of their law in May 2015.

My question is a genuine question, Minister: why is this so absolutely urgent that it needs to go through before Christmas given that we have a low threat level, when the British are passing similar, though somewhat more Draconian, legislation, which is going through a full select committee process and will take 6 months to do what you are doing in 2 weeks? I think that is a reasonable question to ask.

I want to say about this bill that whenever you deal with security intelligence legislation, it is a case of balance. It is a case of balancing our responsibility as a Parliament to protect the safety and well-being of our people. I accept that as a responsibility, and that is why we are giving full consideration to this legislation. But the other rights that we have to protect are the rights of ordinary and innocent New Zealanders not to be subject to unnecessary invasion of privacy and not to have their fundamental rights, such as the right to travel, withdrawn. So all legislation of a security intelligence nature needs to balance these rights. I had to balance those rights when I put through the Terrorism Suppression Act in 2002, and that was in the wake of 9/11 and all of the trauma that came with that.

I do not doubt that we need to watch closely what the organisation called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is doing. I denounce that organisation unreservedly as being a brutal organisation that commits crimes against humanity and commits war crimes. We do have under Security Council Resolution 2178 an international responsibility to do what we can to prevent New Zealanders going to contribute to an organisation that is committing crimes against humanity. I have no problem with that. I believe that we are obliged to do that.

But there are aspects of this legislation that I worry about. One aspect of the legislation is that we can withdraw passports when people are overseas. I am told that having a passport is not the equivalent of being a citizen, but the English plan, I think, is stupid. The English plan is to take away the passport and not to allow people to return. That is incredibly irresponsible. I know that is not the plan of this Government, but, Minister, what I would point out to you is that I cannot see anything in this legislation that legislates for the guarantee that we have been given by your officials that people who have their passports removed while they were overseas would have the absolute right to have travel documents to return to the country of their citizenship. We may be able to repair that in the select committee, but it is a concern. What they have discovered in academic research on this is if you were to leave a person without a country to go to, then what are they going to do. They are going to go back to their terrorist mates and continue to do the awful things that we do not want them to do.

I want to say to the Minister that protecting our people against terrorism might be helped by this legislation, but mainly it is helped by two factors. One is that we do have good relationships between people and communities in this country. I have the largest Muslim community in New Zealand in my electorate. I know them to be hard-working, law-abiding, and decent people. What I do not want to see is legislation, either in its form or in the way that it is implemented, marginalising and alienating that group. I have dealt with a lot of immigration cases in my time, and I know that as soon as we start getting cases where people are denied the right to travel to a wedding or to a funeral because we might have some suspicion about them, we are going to target some people whom we should not be targeting. What I would like to find out in the select committee process, short as it is, is how we prevent that happening. I know right now that the New Zealand Government has the full cooperation of the leadership of the Muslim community. What I do not want to do is to lead them or other people in the community who are not leaders to believe that they should withdraw that cooperation. I have met with the Muslim leaders, as has David Shearer—we met them together—and I want to make sure that they have a fair chance to have their voice heard so that they are part of the process and not seen to simply be a target of the process. Harmonious community relationships in New Zealand are vital to preventing support for any terrorist action.

The second thing that is absolutely critical is not simply this legislation but it is New Zealand’s reputation for being relatively independent and principled in foreign affairs. This legislation has to be seen alongside a decision to commit troops to Iraq. My worry is we will pass this legislation but, actually, by doing the wrong thing in the wrong way we could well remove one of the major protections that actually keep this country as a safe place to live in.

I also want to get the threat posed by terrorists in some proportion. It is really important to do that. Right now I believe that most New Zealanders are more at threat from methamphetamine-crazed addicts like Antonie Dixon, who actually took a samurai sword and started slashing people about. The threat in my office is not that I am worried that an Islamic terrorist will come up the stairs, but we deal constantly with people who have serious mental disorders. They are threatening. Some of them have been imprisoned. So before we start going overboard with this foreign fighters terrorist threat, let us make sure that we see the threat in proportion.

The other thing that I really need to say is that I welcomed the Minister’s speech at introduction and I welcomed his speech in the urgent debate, but I contrast his speech with that of Bill English, Steven Joyce, and Jonathan Coleman. What worries me is that we get a very reasonable speech from the Minister saying that security issues should be above politicking, on top of a debate in which leading National Ministers did not have the decency to apologise for politicising the issue of the Security Intelligence Service leaking material to Whale Oil to try to get an issue up based on inaccurate, mistaken, and misleading information about me. That was repeated by those Ministers over the last 3 years. Not one of them has apologised now that an official report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has found that I maintained my credibility and integrity and that it was the director of the Security Intelligence Service who did not.

So, Minister, by all means we will offer you cooperation, but it cannot be on the basis of a fear that I have that if this National Party does not own up to its faults in politicising the Security Intelligence Service, and what Phil de Joux and Jason Ede in John Key’s office did, how can I be confident that you are not going to politicise the Security Intelligence Service in the future? I would like to believe what the Attorney-General is telling us, and I will try to believe that, but it is not reflected in the speeches that have been given by some of his senior colleagues in the House in the urgent debate this afternoon.

I would just like to say that we on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee are looking forward to receiving this bill. I know that I am committed to working with my colleagues across the House intensely over the coming days to make sure that people have access to the committee, and that they have the ability to make a submission and raise any concerns and get into the detail around the bill.

In relation to the title of the bill, there were some concerns raised tonight, I noted, about the title that we have used on this bill—the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill. I think that it is actually a very good title, I think it is very accurate, and I think we have to be very clear about what we are trying to achieve. We are trying to counter the growing threat that we have inside New Zealand of radicalised terrorist fighters and that is what the bill is about. In relation to what Mr Goff was saying in terms of the legislation that is going to be passed in the UK, they are probably a bit more advanced in terms of where their legislation is right now—

💬 Hon Phil Goff: No, they’re introducing it tomorrow.

Yes, I understand that, but in terms of what they have now, Phil, they are probably a bit more advanced in the mere fact that they have had to face some terrible terror attacks on their own soil, of course—the serviceman who was attacked with machetes in the street and hacked to death. They have had their public transport attacked with horrible loss of life and injuries. So it is pretty real to them and of course they are going to take all the measures that they can to make sure that they can maintain national security.

The one thing that I can tell you about these groups like Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Qaeda is that they have an ability to change their tactics and move very, very quickly. They can adapt very quickly, and actually I think that it is a really good positive signal that we can show as a Government here in New Zealand that we can react quickly as well, and that we can act quickly. That is exactly what we are doing. I honestly feel that when it comes to national security—and I hope that we end up in a really good place in this, with consensus across the House—it should be something that we should be able to drive consensus through in this House to make sure that we are providing the best possible legislation available to protect our communities.

I do not want to overstate it. I agree with Mr Shearer and with Minister Bridges that we do not want to be alarmist. The great thing about New Zealand is that we have one of the best police services in the world. Every night we go to bed and they are out there doing their job and we get up in the morning and we go about our business and we go about our lives. All we are doing here is we are making sure that our intelligence services have got the same ability to be able to go out there and act and allow us to go to bed at night and get up in the morning and go about our everyday life.

There is another point that I wanted to make and it is quite important. I was at a function a couple of weeks ago and I was actually there with the Hon Phil Goff. We were farewelling the New Zealand women’s kabaddi team. Kabaddi is a sport that maybe a lot of you have not actually heard about. I do not know how to describe it. It is probably a bit like bullrush. It is highly technical.

💬 Hon Phil Goff: Bit tougher.

Yes, it is probably a bit tougher as well and actually our women’s team has got a real chance of winning the world championships this year. But one thing that was highlighted there was that the master of ceremonies got up—he was a Sikh Indian—and he said: “The one thing that I can ask is please help us to make sure that we aren’t lumped in with these terrorists and that we don’t start to live in a society that starts to vilify and attack us.”

I want to highlight a point that the Prime Minister made in his speech, which was a very, very good one. He said: “I want to stress that none of these people are representative of the New Zealand Muslim community as a whole. The Muslim community is a peaceful one, which makes a valuable contribution to New Zealand. I know the vast majority of Muslim New Zealanders are as distressed by the actions of ISIL and its violent extremist message as anyone else. As a Government we are doing what we can to prevent New Zealanders going off to fight for ISIL and brutally killing innocent civilians in Iraq and Syria.”

The last thing I would like to do—I am aware that I have got a short call—is remind the House of exactly what ISIL is all about. It is about the indiscriminate killing and massacring of religious groups, of tribal groups. It is about the capturing, the torturing, the trading in women. It is about wholesale rape. It is about taking people hostage who are trying to do something good, those in NGOs delivering aid. It is about detaining them, putting them in an orange suit, binding their hands, taking them out in the desert, and chopping their heads off—one of the worst possible deaths that anyone could imagine.

Actually, we do not want Kiwis going over there and joining the fight and I think we have to take some action to make sure that we do all that we can to prevent that from happening. Sure, there are going to be some who are radicalised. There are some who are going to be hard, determined, and want to go out and be hard, determined terrorist fighters. But there are actually probably some on the fringes as well who look at the YouTube clips and watch a Hollywood movie that romanticises and glorifies what these people are doing.

But I can tell you right now that there is nothing romantic, there is no glory, in joining a group that systematically rapes, kills, and creates absolute havoc everywhere that they go. I can tell you right now that when you decide to go and fight with them and you get hit with an improvised explosive device, or you get involved in a contact and you have taken a wound to the stomach and there is a bit of intestine hanging out or there is part of a limb missing, there is no New Zealand health system that you have access to—right? You will be lying on the back of a ute and you will probably be left there for a good day or day and a half before anyone even tries to assist you or do anything to you. There is nothing romantic about travelling to the Middle East to join a group like ISIL and if we can do something as a country to be able to stop those people from leaving our shores, then actually it is incumbent upon us to do that.

So I am looking forward to receiving this bill at the committee. I make a commitment—I know, along with the rest of the committee members—to work as hard as we can over the coming days to make sure that people get access and can make submissions. Thank you.

on behalf of the Minister for National Security and Intelligence: I move, That the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill be reported to the House by Tuesday, 2 December 2014, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, 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 Orders 191 and 194(1)(b) and (c).

As the Deputy Leader of the House said when moving the urgency motion this afternoon, the Government is proposing a shortened select committee process here due to the urgency of the proposals. The legislation, as we have heard in the first reading, contains measures that can add to the safety and the security of New Zealand in the short term. It is the Government’s intention that legislation be passed before the House rises for Christmas, so that we are in a stronger position to deal with the threats we are seeing. Furthermore, and this is very important, a more comprehensive review of all relevant legislative settings will occur in a broader intelligence review that is required under law to begin by the middle of next year, and it is envisaged a very full select committee process will take place at that time.

In the present circumstances what the Government wanted was for this bill to get as much select committee scrutiny as possible within the time available. I realise, obviously, that the time is short, but we have taken some steps to try to address that. For example, as I said in my first reading speech, a number of organisations, including the New Zealand Law Society, have received advance copies of the bill to assist with their submissions and I know that the Legislation Advisory Committee has been looking at it as well. [Interruption] I beg your pardon?

💬 Tracey Martin: How about the other two political parties—how about them?

Well, I think that instead of plaintive cries by that New Zealand First member, I can assure the House that there will be an opportunity for submissions to be given by the sorts of people whom this House would expect to give submissions. I have already mentioned the New Zealand Law Society and the Legislation Advisory Committee and I know that, for example, as I said, the Legislation Advisory Committee has been looking at the issue. I am confident, given the very constrained nature of the bill, which is shortly heading to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, that we will get good submissions.

The issues, as they have appeared in the first reading debate we have just had, appear to be very focused and defined, and I believe we can cut to the chase very quickly. That is why we are seeking a shortened timetable. I am confident that the select committee, comprising the sorts of people who are on that committee, is going to do a very good job over the coming week.

I move, That the words “Tuesday, 2 December 2014” be deleted and replaced with “Tuesday, 10 February 2015”. The effect of the amendment I have moved would be to extend the report-back time frame from this current year through to the end of the summer adjournment of Parliament to allow the select committee adequate time to give this bill due consideration. I hope that the other parties in Parliament who have expressed similar concerns about the bill will also be supporting this amendment.

The Labour Party, although we are supporting this legislation and will not impede the progress of the legislation, does want to ensure that it is given adequate consideration. We have made a number of efforts to work with the Government to extend the time frame for submissions, and we do appreciate the work that the Government has done with us on that. But the reality is that referring the bill to a select committee tonight and requiring it to be reported back in less than a week—by this time next week, in fact—does not give the committee adequate time to give the bill due consideration, and therefore we are moving the amendment.

I want to canvass here that in our goodwill efforts to try to extend the time frame, we did canvass whether there was a way to extend the time frame beyond next Tuesday whilst still meeting the Government’s objective of having the bill passed before Christmas. I am told that one of the parliamentary procedures that we come up against is the rule that a bill that is reported back from a select committee must sit on the Table for 3 days before it can be considered again by the House, even if the House were to consider it again in urgency. It is an interesting aspect of parliamentary procedure that a bill can be passed from first reading through all stages in a single day under urgency, but it cannot be referred under urgency to a select committee for consideration then brought back to the House and considered immediately under urgency for the remaining stages. It still has to sit on the Table for 3 days. That is one of the factors that is constraining the select committee from having that extra time next week to give the bill adequate consideration, and, on balance, it is one of the reasons we are moving this amendment.

We want to ensure that the select committee has adequate time to hear from all of the groups who have an interest, but also to consider what sensible amendments might be made. Members on this side of the House have spoken particularly, for example, about the 48-hour warrantless surveillance period that this bill provides for. One of the things that I certainly hope the committee will be able to do is look at some of the alternatives to that—whether it is that the period be shortened from 48 hours to other alternatives including retrospective warrants, which is something that the House might not normally consider.

There are a number of options that the committee could investigate that I think would provide some elegant solutions to the concerns members have raised. I do not think the committee is going to be able to do that if, effectively, the only time it has to meet is Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week, and then on Monday. That is 4 days that the committee will have to consider the bill, and I do not think that in that period of time it will be able to do it justice. Therefore, we are proposing to extend the report back date to Tuesday, 10 February, which would allow the Government to progress that in the first week back, should that be what it wants to do.

We are not, as I have said, trying to obstruct the passage of this legislation unnecessarily. We accept that there is a need for some of the passages of this bill to be progressed. However, we do not believe that, effectively, 4 working days is a sufficient period of time for the committee to consider it.

I note, for example, that the Australian Parliament is passing similar legislation at the moment, and is allowing both of its Houses of Parliament to give it adequate, proper, and comprehensive select committee hearings. That is something that we are, effectively, going to be denying if this resolution from the Government is passed. I also note that the English Parliament will, I am advised, be introducing legislation tomorrow that it has indicated it will not be voting on again until May. It is giving it that amount of deliberation and that amount of consideration. So if there is a degree of urgency around this, I think it is incumbent upon the Government, as an obligation, to spell out more comprehensively exactly why this needs to be passed before Christmas.

One of the things that Parliament did in its changes to the Standing Orders in 2011 was require that where a shortened select committee report back is required—and this is one of the shortest that you could possibly imagine; less than a week—the Minister must specify, with some particularity, why that shortened period is required. Simply standing up and saying: “We think it is required because we want to get it passed before Christmas.”, is not enough. If Chris Finlayson genuinely believes that there was some good reason for this bill to be passed prior to the Christmas adjournment, it was incumbent upon him to stand up in the House and spell that out, and he simply did not do that.

We know that this issue has been kicking around for a good couple of years. The Government was considering these issues several years ago, and they were put on the back-burner because of the Government Communications Security Bureau debacle, because the Government decided that it needed to get that legislation through first. Of course, we know that it needed to get that legislation through first because it got caught in that web of deceit where the Government’s smear machine got caught in the Government Communications Security Bureau scandal. It got caught by that, so it wanted to deal with that issue first. But Government incompetence is not a good enough reason for forcing a bill through in the space of a week, which is what this Government is trying to do. It is trying to push it through, not because there is any more urgency on this than there was several months ago but because its incompetence has meant that it did not deal with it when it intended to, which was a long time ago.

We have been very clear that we will work with the Government on these issues because they are serious issues and New Zealanders have a right to know that they are being dealt with very, very sensibly by Parliament. David Shearer and Phil Goff have made very good contributions—as has our new leader, Andrew Little—to this debate, spelling out the reservations we have about this legislation but also making it clear that we are not simply taking a blanket position to oppose. We do believe that the issues are serious and that they deserve a proper hearing. How can they get a proper hearing in 4 working days? That is simply insufficient. It will not allow the committee time to do its job properly.

If there was a way that this bill could go to the select committee and actually get proper deliberation and be reported back in time for it to be adequately considered by the House, then we would certainly be looking to work with the Government on that. We have supported the bill at its first reading because we believe that these issues are worthy of debate, but we will not be voting in favour of this truncated report-back motion because we want the bill to be given adequate consideration. Having said that, we are not supporting simply extending the time frame indefinitely, or for 6 full months, as would be the case under the default settings. That is why we have proposed a report-back date in the first sitting week of the House, which begins on Tuesday, 10 February. It does allow the committee to give the bill adequate consideration. It means that Parliament would be able to then reconsider the legislation at its earliest available opportunity, which is the first week that Parliament is back after the summer adjournment, and I think that that is a very sensible time frame. We are not being, I think, unnecessarily obstructive.

I want to acknowledge the comments that Mark Mitchell made on the need for a consensus on national security issues. That is something that we in the Labour Party support. We do believe that there should be a consensus on national security issues. That is very difficult to achieve when we have a Government that is willing to use the apparatus of the State in the form of national security agencies to run a vile smear campaign against people who disagree with it, which is what we have seen clear evidence of in the House this week and in the public this week. It is simply not good enough.

The public need to have confidence that these issues are being dealt with seriously. Part of the confidence that they can have in that process is through having a select committee process where all of the issues are adequately canvassed and where the public of New Zealand have the opportunity to make submissions. The public of New Zealand, many of whom will be hearing about this for the first time today when it is debated in Parliament, are being told that they literally have a period of about 48 hours to get their views in to the select committee before the bill will be deliberated on and reported back. That is not good enough. That is not going to give the public of New Zealand confidence that these issues are being dealt with adequately and that their human rights are being adequately protected by the legislation.

So, as I have been very clear about from the outset, we are not going to be unnecessarily obstructing the progress of this legislation, but we are going to be making it very clear that we want it to be adequately deliberated upon. We want the people who are affected by it to have an adequate opportunity to have their say through a democratic process. This Government is not delivering that. That is why we will be moving this amendment and, in the event that the Government votes against the amendment, we will be voting against the truncated select committee report-back time frame.

The Green Party opposes the truncated select committee process for every reason. One is that it is a ridiculous idea. It is an abuse of democracy and it is a tokenistic approach to what people in this House are claiming is an incredibly serious issue. They are so concerned about civil liberties, but we are going to have 3 days to talk about it? Get real. This is not OK with us, this is not acceptable, and it is not a real exploration of the issues. Just because the Law Society and some other bunch of very valuable people—the New Zealand Legislation Advisory Committee—got a heads-up, what about everyone else? What about the non-elite? What about the people—the non-lawyers—who are actually going to be affected by this bill? When are they going to get to have a say? They are going to find out that they have got 3 days. There is absolutely no way that we could support this truncated position, and there is no terrible urgency if the House is serious about doing this properly, which we should be.

We have listened to the debate on the substantive issues in the bill, and a lot of very serious, important issues around a consensus on national security have been raised, so what are we going to do with it? We are going to talk about it for 2 days, then we are going to rubber-stamp it, and we are going to ram it through by Christmas. Very, very unimpressive, even if we supported the bill, which we completely do not. It is a very, very unimpressive way to approach serious issues of human rights, civil liberties, and national security. It is not surprising because the Government does this sort of thing quite a lot, but it is not good enough, either.

We will support Labour’s amendment, but we would like to go further than that. We think there should be a proper, full process that takes its due time, not necessarily just reporting back in February. It should actually give a proper process for a decent select committee hearing so that all of the range of people who have views on this issue, such as the experts on civil liberties, who are often people who have experienced that loss, the communities that are going to be affected, and the people who are potentially stigmatised by this legislation—all of those people actually get heard. We agree that there should be a national consensus on national security issues, but it is not going to be achieved by this kind of railroading abuse of process. It is a tiny, tiny, little tick-box attempt at democracy.

We all know that the select committee process is not perfect, but what we also know is that the select committee process does actually teach MPs things. We learn, which is a good thing, rather than having us just talking to each other. Actually, what we learn from the select committee process is that some of the things that we have drafted are wrong and stupid and that they have unforeseen consequences for people whom we do not normally think about. So it is a really good idea for the widest possible group of people to have input into any law that potentially reduces our human and civil rights.

We will not be voting for this bill, because we cannot imagine that it is ever going to look like something we could support, but we would be a lot happier if the select committee process actually was a proper select committee process.

💬 Ian McKelvie: You won’t be happy whatever happens.

When the member of the House tells me to get real, it does not get any more real than this. Today in the House the SIS was heard to apologise. There is a smear campaign being run out of the Prime Minister’s office. We are supposed to be happy about the state of democracy in this country and extend powers to those in the SIS, who have been a bunch of incompetents so far in my 61 years of life. We deserve a whole lot better than that, we need a whole lot better than that, and we will not support this kind of axing of the core democratic things that this Parliament is supposed to be about.

So the Green Party is going to oppose this motion. We will support Labour’s amendment because it is better than not extending the period at all, but it is not adequate and we are pretty ashamed to even have to hear about this. It is just not good enough. Thank you.

I have seldom been more flabbergasted by such a ridiculous proposal as this one. In fact, I think that the collective New Zealand “flabber” should have never been more “gasted” than by this idiotic proposal. This is absolutely, totally unacceptable as a process. It is utterly undemocratic and unseemly for any bill to be dealt with in such haste, especially a bill that contains such important issues as this one does. Fundamentally, we are being asked to sign off on a 1-week submission period for this bill that has those particularly serious issues to be decided in it. In my speech earlier today I set out a number of the concerns that New Zealand First has over the contents of the bill. It is totally and completely unacceptable to try to deal with those issues in such a short time frame, and it is a gross affront to democracy and good parliamentary practice.

New Zealand First will, therefore, support Labour’s amendment to extend the period to 10 February 2015, which, I might say, is itself an extremely short period for due consideration because, of course, you have got to take into account the Christmas and New Year period, in which very little or nothing would get done, so the constructive time for consideration would even then be very short. People need time to digest the bill, to understand what it is about, to consider what their submissions will be and all of the issues, and then to forward those submissions and, if necessary, to seek to speak on them.

As I said earlier today there are some very serious issues to be dealt with. New Zealand First, even now, is not fully decided upon what its attitude will be to some of them. Most particularly, we are very concerned about the proposal for the 3-year cancellation of passports. We do understand why that is being proposed, and the arguments for it are valid. On the other hand, the cancellation of passports for 3 years is a very long period to be deprived of a basic human right. We would like to hear what others have to say. There will be many people, I am sure, who will wish to make submissions and who will no doubt bring out, as always happens, some very good points in the submissions process. We want to hear those. We want to consider those before we make a final decision.

The second issue is the 48 hours for visual surveillance without a warrant. That needs to be very seriously considered. New Zealand First is more definite about that. We do not see why 48 hours are necessary and why 24 hours would not be more than adequate in this day and age. We want to hear the arguments about that. If we do not hear the arguments, there is no possible way that we could support 48 hours.

Thirdly and lastly, the sunset date of 2018 is, again, far too far away—at least a year too far away. We want that date to be 2017, before the 2017 election, so that people would then have a genuine opportunity to consider it before the election and, if necessary, to take that into account in their voting process.

New Zealand First was one of the parties ignored when the Government spoke to others—including not just other parties but other entities altogether—about this bill. We were not consulted at all but now we are expected to turn up here in Parliament and just rubber-stamp this stuff. That is not good enough for us. We do not intend to lie down and accept that kind of arrogance. It is a ludicrously short period. We as a political party would find it difficult to fully grapple with the serious issues concerned—

💬 Ian McKelvie: That doesn’t surprise us.

—and to make a good contribution as a result of such a short period for consideration. If that member opposite, Ian McKelvie, thinks he can do better, he had better upgrade his performance, because so far he has not done anything better in the last 3 years in this Parliament. It is about time he upgraded his performance because if he does not, he will find himself doing nothing for another 3 years. That is about as good as his performance has ever been or ever could be.

New Zealand First will not accept such a short period, and no amount of shouting by that member will make any difference to that. We do not want to be unconstructive about this. We accept that it is a serious issue and we accept that it is urgent, but we do not accept the kind of arrogance that says that we should have a period of consideration this short. That is not acceptable and we will not be voting for it.

We do want to try to reach consensus. If you read my speech from earlier in the day, you will see that we made a number of suggestions about how we would be able to support the bill if some changes were made. We want to have the opportunity to fully argue those. What we are seeing here tonight is just the National steamroller at work—more Government arrogance, and what we are obviously going to be seeing for the next 3 years. Despite the Prime Minister’s statements on election night that that would not happen, we obviously are going to see a very arrogant National Government simply doing what it wants to do without any consideration of the views of anybody else—not just other political parties but anyone else in this country with a view contrary to the Government’s. New Zealand First will oppose this motion. We will support Labour’s amendment. If this process goes through, it can result only in a No vote from us, simply because we would not have had the opportunity to properly put forward our views, and that would not be what our choice would be. We would prefer, on an issue like this, to try to find consensus, but that Government does not seem interested. Well, so be it.

It is a shame that an issue like this has descended into the hyperbole and the naked politicking that we have seen in the last few speeches. It is true that this is an unusual step that the House is looking to take—to reduce the report-back period down to a week—but this extraordinary step is being taken because this is an extraordinary issue that our country and the world is facing.

There is going to be an opportunity for New Zealanders to have a say on this bill. I have confidence in the chairmanship of Mark Mitchell to ensure that New Zealanders will get a fair hearing on this bill. I also have confidence in the Opposition members who sit on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee: Mr Goff, Mr Shearer, and Dr Graham. They are capable members and they are able to listen to New Zealanders and make constructive assessments as to the merits of this bill.

The very reason why a shortened report-back period is being considered here by this House is that we are facing a situation in the world that we do not face very often. It is not a case of us being able to wait months and months. The normal report-back period is 6 months. We simply cannot do our part in the world if we are to wait that long. It is a case where waiting even weeks could be too long. The Government is very clear: we need to take decisive action. We are expected by our electors to take decisive action, and that is exactly what is happening here. The time that the select committee will be sitting over the next week will be a good opportunity for New Zealanders to have a say, but we do not take this action very lightly. We do this because this is such an important issue.

I find it interesting that Mr Hipkins first talked about trying to get this done before the House rises for the Christmas break, and then he went on to say that despite the fact that the Labour Party supports trying to get it done before the Christmas break, it now wants to see the bill not be reported back until February. We see words like “arrogance” used by New Zealand First, which is pretty sad given that it is very important that we take to New Zealanders a bipartisan approach on such important issues.

These are extraordinary issues. These are important matters that this bill is dealing with, and I think New Zealanders deserve to know in a timely manner what the position of this Parliament is when it comes to these issues, and we can achieve that properly through the select committee process over the next week. It can be done. It will be done properly. There are good quality members sitting on either side of the House who sit on that select committee.

💬 Denis O’Rourke: How can it be done properly in 1 week?

Mr O’Rourke is not a member of that committee, of course. We will do a good job on this bill, and I have confidence in the select committee to get it done properly for New Zealanders so that we can do our bit in the world on this very important issue.

This issue is obviously an important issue, where we want to try to get the balance right between our need to protect New Zealanders and at the same time protect our human rights. We have agreed that the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill, at its first reading, be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, but we have asked for that select committee process and the referral back to Parliament to be set down for 10 February next year rather than next week. Let us just think about that. I mean, it is now Tuesday. Tomorrow we will likely meet as the select committee to discuss how we are going to be doing that. We are likely to have just 2 days to hear submissions from some of the organisations that Chris Finlayson talked about—the New Zealand Law Society, the Human Rights Commission, the Privacy Commissioner, and many of those other organisations and others that want to speak. They are going to have 2 days for that. We are going to have to consider, deliberate, and come back to this Parliament by Monday next week. Well, look, if we are really serious about the fact that this is an important issue, and it is, then, for heaven’s sake, let us give and accord this issue the importance that it deserves by allowing the time that it needs in order to be able to make good quality decision-making around that. Just those organisations themselves have had a very limited time to look through the 47-page bill.

When Labour received the bill late last week, I spoke to the Prime Minister’s office and said: “Well, actually, what you should be doing is releasing this bill to every party and to those organisations in particular that you are going to want to hear from, because they will inform your decision-making around making this bill, which did not come out until Sunday, a better piece of legislation.” These organisations and the other parties here in Parliament received it on Sunday, and they have, effectively, 3 days to digest it and to make a decision. That is simply not adequate for a piece of legislation that is as important as this. Let us get it right. We do want to make sure that we get the legislation right and we do want to make sure that it is a bipartisan effort. I think the best way we can do this is through the amendment that Chris Hipkins put forward just a few minutes ago, which was to push back the report-back date to Parliament to 10 February.

I want to say that, apart from those organisations, I would particularly like to hear from the Muslim community. I would like the Muslim community in New Zealand to be given the opportunity to come before the select committee. This is certainly targeted at members of the Muslim community. The senior members whom I have spoken to—Phil Goff and I met with them deliberately on this issue last week; we had dinner together with a number of the senior members of that community—are themselves very anxious to make sure that with this legislation the safeguards are put in place so that if there is any person who might step over the line, they are apprehended. At the same time, they can do a lot to ease the fears of others in the Muslim community that they are being picked on. They need time and they need the ability to come before the select committee and provide their input. I believe that we will, as a result of that input, both from those organisations we talked about and that community, have a much better result than we would have if we did not do that at all.

There are some thorny issues in this piece of legislation. It is not simple. We have got the issue of passports, which we spoke about before in the first reading. The issue of the 48 hours of warrantless surveillance is an issue that I think many of us feel very uncomfortable about. We have had some feedback from the Government that it is willing to think about options around that. We welcome that. I think it is a good move that we are able to engage honestly on trying to find the best way forward, but that takes time. It does not get done in an afternoon. It does not get done after 10 minutes of hearing some body like the Law Society. We are going to need time to be able to deliberate properly. Of course, we can meet through the weekend, but that still means it is very rushed.

A number of members tonight have spoken about and compared the way that we have done this with other countries in the world. We have got Australia, which has got two select committees hearing its foreign terrorist fighter legislation as we speak. They are not trying to put it through in the same haste as we are. The Brits have slightly different legislation, but in the UK they are introducing the bill tomorrow, I think, and they will not expect to have a report back until May. That is an adequate length of time that will enable them to give the bill the consideration that it needs to have. We understand the importance of the bill. We are not asking for the bill to take 6 months, but we are asking for it to take longer than 2 days, because 2 days is, effectively, what we are going to have when we put this bill up.

I think the onus is really on the Government. If the Government wants to put this through in this time period, I think it has to make the case to us. It has to say that this is very important because of a security situation right in front of us right now or because of an event that is coming up. What is it that requires us to have this legislation going through so quickly? So far all we have heard is that we need to have it through before Christmas, before the House rises for the year. Well, that is interesting, but that is not really an adequate rationale for putting through a piece of legislation that has so much impact on not only our security but also our human rights, our privacy, and everything else as well. We want to hear the case. I think the Government owes it to this Parliament and to the people of New Zealand to present the case. Why do we need to have this bill going through the select committee by the end of this week so that we can refer it back to Parliament next week? We have not heard that yet. We have not heard that and I do not think that is reasonable.

We are willing to work with the Government. We have said that. We are willing to come alongside. We will do what needs to be done in order to ensure this legislation gets across the line in an adequate and proper way. What we do want to know is why it is that this Government wants to push this bill through in the haste that it does at the moment. For that reason, we are supporting and we want to put forward the amendment to reintroduce the legislation back to Parliament on 10 February.

I call the Hon Phil Goff.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. That did take quite a while—actually, almost as long as what the Government is giving the public of New Zealand to consider this legislation. I think the onus is very clearly on the Government to justify why legislation introduced today has 4 working days for the public to put together submissions and be heard on it, before it is reported back next Tuesday. I have been in this House a long time and I cannot think of any legislation of this nature that has been rammed through with such unseemly haste. If the Government were to make the case to us that there were real and imminent threats and that without this legislation New Zealanders would be at much greater risk, I would listen to that case. But I have not heard that case put tonight. It has not been put tonight.

Our threat level is low. That is the Government’s official threat level—low. What does low mean? Low means that a terrorist threat is possible but it is not likely. The Australian threat level is much higher, yet the Australian Government has still been prepared to put its parallel legislation through a full select committee process in both Houses of Parliament—the Senate and the House of Representatives. In the United Kingdom, the threat level is either high or extreme. It is much higher than New Zealand’s. The risks are much higher. Has the Conservative Government in the United Kingdom suggested that it rush through legislation in 2 days? No, it said that it is putting it on a fast track. Do you know what a fast track means? That it hopes to have it back in the House of Commons by May of next year—May of next year. So our two Westminster democracies that we would compare ourselves with have chosen to deal with similar legislation in a quite different way.

Normally when we introduce a bill to the House, we give people 4 to 6 weeks to put together considered submissions. We hear submissions over 2 to 4 weeks. We then wait for a departmental report, and that might take a couple more weeks, and then we have a couple of weeks for consideration and deliberation. On a fast track, we might do that in 14 weeks; on a normal track, we would take 6 months. This Government wants to do it in a week—1 week. I am asking, sincerely, for the Government to put up any speaker who can tell us why the threat is so urgent in New Zealand that we have to disregard normal democratic process and have 4 working days to hear submissions.

David Shearer and I have worked closely with the Government. I am sorry that the Government has not worked closely with New Zealand First and the Green Party. David Shearer and I suggested last week that the bill could have been introduced last week so that it was on the Table for everybody to read. The Government chose not to take our advice on that. It did take our advice that it should go out last week to a number of important organisations like the Council for Civil Liberties, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, the New Zealand Law Society, the Human Rights Commission, the Privacy Commissioner, and the New Zealand Federation of Islamic Associations. I am glad the Government picked that suggestion up, but there are hundreds and hundreds of people out there who will be worried about this legislation and will want a chance to have their voice heard. What is a democracy about? It is about giving ordinary New Zealanders the chance to have a say on the legislation that rules their lives. Are they being given this chance? Most New Zealanders will be excluded from having their say by this Government’s decision.

Chris Hipkins’ amendment is a very sensible, reasonable one. If the Government is really worried, let us come back early from our holidays. Is the Government prepared to do that? I do not think so. What is wrong with 10 February as a date by which the select committee reports back on this legislation? Why do we need time? Because the issues we are considering in this legislation are fundamentally important issues. Yes, we have a responsibility in this House to protect and safeguard New Zealanders. We also have a responsibility to protect and safeguard their rights. We are introducing to the SIS for the first time the right to have surveillance without a warrant for 48 hours. I am worried about that. Why does it take 48 hours? That seems totally unreasonable to me. Will we be able to consider that properly in 4 working days?

We are introducing legislation that will take passports off people while they are overseas. Maybe in some cases it is necessary, but I want to know the implications of that. Have we got a watertight guarantee that we are not going to leave people stranded on the other side of the world, unable to come home? I am told that the intention will be to give them travel documents. But that is not in the bill. How do we know that it is going to happen? We are going to give visual surveillance powers to the SIS. It may well be justified, but let us consider it carefully, because this is another intrusion into the lives of people. I am not worried about the terrorist; I am worried about ordinary innocent people finding that they have had an invasion of their privacy and a loss of rights that might not be proper. When we deny passports to people, there are some cases where we ought to do that. But I want to know that the Government has thought this through thoroughly and that we do not take passports off the family that happens to be Islamic and from Pakistan or Iraq or Syria—I have all of those communities in my electorate. I want to know that when they have got a wedding or a funeral to attend, there is not going to be an arbitrary removal of their passport. What are the safeguards? Have we covered ourselves off properly on this?

Let us look at the way this legislation has been handled. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been around all year. Why did we leave it until now, 3 weeks before we rise for Christmas, to bring in the legislation? Why did the Government not act earlier? The officials were given 4 weeks to do a review. Normally, officials would do a review like this over a year. So they may have made mistakes. I looked at the departmental disclosure statement. How many members of the Government ranks have read this and have spoken on it? Any? No, you have not. What does it say? External consultation. Has there been any external consultation on the policy to be given effect by this bill? It says: “Consultation occurred within Government.” That is nice—within Government. It says: “External consultation was not undertaken given the nature of the subject matter addressed by the bill”—I do not know why that would be the case—“and the limited time available to conduct the review and develop legislation.” So we rush the officials to prepare a report in 4 weeks. We do no external consultation. We give ordinary New Zealanders a period of time that they cannot possibly meet to make submissions, and we are dealing with basic constitutional issues here that we desperately need to get right, because if we do not get them right it will be counter-productive to the objective of the legislation.

This is an appalling abuse of process. There will be 4 working days for New Zealanders—actually, they do not have 4 working days to make a submission; they have got 2 working days. If they are lucky, they are listening to the debate tonight and they can say: “Hell, we’d better do something quickly.” Most of them will not even know that there is a bill here before the date for closing submissions comes upon them. How can that be good? How many times have we seen in this House the Government putting legislation through in haste and getting it wrong? There is a reason why we have a select committee process. It is so that people can have an input, so that people can have confidence about the legislation that we are passing, and so that we can bring people onside with what we are doing so that they understand that what we are trying to do is in the wider interests of New Zealand, and that we are listening to them so we get it right. There are huge risks in doing this. I put it to you that there are very few risks in allowing this legislation to be heard at the select committee and reported back by 10 February next year. It would still be fast-tracked, but at least it would give people the reasonable opportunity to make submissions on this bill to help make sure we get it right.

This is an abuse of process. This has not been justified. I am waiting and waiting for the Government side to come out with an argument as to why it is doing this. I am listening in good faith, and I am hearing nothing—nothing—that justifies rushing this legislation through. I will be sympathetic to elements of this legislation, but I am not at all sympathetic to the way the Government is trying to ram this through the House, because I believe that we will get fundamental things wrong, and we will act in haste and repent at leisure on legislation that does not have the effect we want it to have—to protect New Zealanders, their safety, and their rights.