Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill

I feel risky now, taking a call, but I will take one on the title and commencement, now that I’ve found them there. Look, fundamentally, that this is coming after Royal assent makes absolutely perfect sense. I suppose it’s just a quick affirmation, for want of a better phrase, that there are no delays. I think enough culpability can be put around the Parliament for when this should or should not have been done. This Government’s been here for two years; the argument, of course, goes that we were here for nine. The recent actions, though, as we say, that particularly have come out of Syria and particularly the Turkish invasion, which led to the opening of the prisons and so forth—so just affirming that the commencement date is appropriate.

I suppose I do take a little bit of question with the title. I think the intention is that it’s a Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill, and I won’t necessarily have some great examples of what it should be called, but the umbrage that this side has is that we are worried that, actually, the control orders are not sufficient enough. I think we’ve attempted to illustrate on this side of the Chamber that the controls, if you will, at the will or whim of the court—that there’s contradictory clauses here, that, actually, something can be put forward, that there’s all these controls around, say, bank accounts and financial arrangements but that you move on to the next clause and they say, well, actually, you’ve got to take in the financial wellbeing of the terrorist—it’s created contradictions. The place of informed consent and so forth also changes the nature of how well this will control.

So one of my fundamental and earlier points, which is then illustrated in the title, is that this is not actually going to bring about that which it says it wishes to do, and so calling this a “Control Orders”—yep, there’s an element of control. There are orders, to a degree, but it’s funny and paradoxical, if not sad, that the orders themselves can be somewhat contradicted by the terrorists and that, ultimately—is this going to suppress terrorism? I suppose that the fear, the concern, in a more rational sense, on this side of the Chamber is this will not actually suppress terrorism. The intention is right, some of the structures are right, but the fundamental issues remain that this is wide, wide open as a bill—doesn’t matter if people are under 18, whether we have sufficient intelligence that can be, rightly or not, shared within the courts, that the control orders do not last for a long time. So we have a concern that the title is in some ways misleading or could be seen as misleading. It’s not going to suppress terrorism, certainly not overseas. We fear that it may not suppress it sufficiently here in New Zealand, and the control orders we see as relatively weak.

But, again, with that short contribution here on clause 1 and 2, just to indicate we would like to see a title change which is far more indicative of what we feel on this side of the House is a weak bill, and the commencement itself—it makes sense that it’s so quick, but, ultimately, and if I might finish on these, it’s what I’ve hit many, many times in my contributions tonight. The problems we see, in my opinion, are low probability, but probable they are, and their risks are immensely high. So perhaps the title is ultimately that this is an ignoring, if you will: the “Terrorism Suppression (Low-probability, High-risk Ignoring Control Orders) Bill”. But, anyway, I’ll finish there with my short contribution.

I think the previous speaker, Simon O’Connor, makes a good point. The title does not describe this bill. It should be the “Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders—If the Criminal Terrorist Agrees) Bill”, because so much in here is a complete compromise on the statements that are made in the bill by the conditions that are also in the bill for the criminal terrorist to have a view about whether or not those control orders should apply to them. Even the Schedule in the bill that sets out the process for how the bill works is said, right at the start of the bill, to be a diagrammatic of decision-making control set out which, of course, is intended only as a guide. So there’s nothing in here that’s fixed—nothing in here that is permanent. This is very much a sort of optional arrangement.

It is an incredibly weak bill. The title is misleading, and it should be altered to reflect the perilous position that the country still remains in should any of these people manage to slip through the borders with one of these weak control orders put upon them, where, of course, they’re not even going to be monitored; they’re just going to be wondering around the place. The title should reflect the fact that the benefit of the doubt largely goes to someone who, in the first place, has been identified as being formerly involved in criminal terrorist activity. Actually, the only part of the bill that’s right is how that’s described.