Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill

I move, That the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill be now read a third time.

I’m very pleased at the passage of this bill through the House, the examination that it received at the committee stage, and it is now in very good form, the House having approved also a Supplementary Order Paper in my name that made some added improvements to the bill. Obviously, the examination that the bill received in the select committee did not lead to a majority decision on suitable changes, but we were able to get those changes through that part of the House.

I’m thankful for members who participated in the debates, who have given it close scrutiny and close examination, and I think this bill is now in good shape to perform a very important function, which is—knowing the changing situation in Syria and the other parts of the Middle East, knowing that there was a very small number of New Zealanders who travelled to that zone for reasons ideological, philosophical, or religious reasons to do things that we find antisocial and antithetical here—that we need to have the means in place and give the Commissioner of Police the tools to deal with those people who come back and pose a risk to our communities.

We know that the Terrorism Suppression Act from the late 2000s—2007-08—is a piece of legislation that had huge gaps in it. It was problematic; the police said that at the time, the Solicitor-General said that at the time, and this Government has taken up the task of totally reviewing that piece of legislation. In the course of that review, it’s become apparent that we need to have mechanisms such as these control orders to alleviate the risk that people who have participated in events abroad, in conflict zones, would pose to New Zealanders. I might add that it was in 2014 that a UN resolution required member States to have the means in place to deal with returning foreign terrorist fighters. That hadn’t happened by the end of 2017, and it was for this Government to embark upon that task.

The review of the Terrorism Suppression Act will continue, and there will be a comprehensive range of proposals brought back to this House in due course—I expect, sometime next year—but we needed to have the means in place to deal with this now. Once Cabinet had approved the policy on that, we had a suggestion from the National Party that they would approve it in principle but that they wanted to see the detail; that’s entirely reasonable. When the bill was drafted and approved, a copy was sent to the National Party. I received a message in writing that the National Party would support the bill. There were no conditions attached.

Subsequently, the National Party issued a statement saying that they required some changes or they wouldn’t support it. That got into an exchange that I think is most unfortunate. Members opposite, in the course of the debates in the House, characterised the bill as weak. That is wrong. This provides extraordinary powers that do not apply, would not apply, to any other citizen, but we need that because of the risk posed, and I just think it’s unfortunate that on matters of national security, some think that it’s OK to get into rhetoric and puffing our their chest and saying all sorts of weird and wonderful things. That is not appropriate, it is not good for New Zealand, and I’m disappointed that that happened.

In any event, we now have the bill in this form. The committee of the whole House approved Supplementary Order Paper 415. It does a number of things—not unusual, but bearing in mind these orders are orders of a court, a High Court judge; a judge needs to weigh the information before him or her to impose the orders. They will want to know that any risk posed is a real risk, and so that word has been used as a consequence of the Supplementary Order Paper. The bill will be reviewed after two years. That is hardly problematic, because the entire piece of legislation that it amends is under review now anyway, and so that is an appropriate thing to have. Then there is a provision also that allows those subject to any order to get access to legal aid to review it.

This is a civil process, a civil order, for people who have not been convicted of a crime. They might have been assessed as posing a risk and as having done something abroad that is antithetical to our values and therefore they pose a risk, but they haven’t been convicted of anything, and those who genuinely subscribe to the principles of the rule of law will know that if it is not a criminal process and there is not a criminal sanction and it is just a civil process, then we have to encroach very carefully on rights and freedoms. Because, of course, the other thing is that it is possible for these processes to get it wrong. So it is right that we have appropriate safeguards. It is right that we seek to draw a correct balance. We have done that in this case.

This is a piece of legislation that will afford safety and security to New Zealanders for that very, very small number of people who might be subject to one of these orders, and, of course, we will continue the review process and continue to support the wonderful work that our police do and, indeed, the agencies who support them to keep our communities safe. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m a bit sad to see the Minister isn’t going to remain in the House, but anyway I just wanted to outline the actual process that has brought us to the House today for the third reading of a bill, the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill, that is weak.

Throughout the whole process of this bill, we have seen the sponsoring Minister, Andrew Little, himself get up and make two contributions—one for five minutes and then again, today, another one for five minutes, when for both speeches he had a 10-minute allocation. He didn’t even use half his time to speak to the bill. We went through a committee of the whole House—not one member opposite stood to take a call. The Minister in the chair, the Hon Andrew Little, responded three times to issues that I raised through the committee of the whole House. He wouldn’t respond to one of those issues to give us a clear answer and to the people at home that were actually watching the debate.

Let me take you through the process of what actually did happen with this bill. The Minister asked me about four months ago to go to his office for a meeting, and he briefed me with his officials and said that we’ve got an imminent threat of Kiwis returning to New Zealand who have been involved in, sponsored, or supported some type of terrorist activity. I said to him, and I indicated to him very clearly in that meeting, that we would support him—we would support the Government. There was no problem at all; we understood that when it comes to matters of national security, it should be bipartisan. The two major parties in this Parliament should work responsibly together to make sure that we have the strongest possible legislation in place to ensure that we actually can protect our citizens. That’s a fundamental role of any Government: to protect the safety of their citizens.

I said to him very clearly, “We understand that one of your coalition partners will not support you.” The Green Party, in the history of this Parliament over the last 20 years, have never supported any legislation that’s been brought into this House to deal with terrorism—ever. So he said that they needed us; it was clear that the Government needed us to support them on this bill. The only thing that I did ask was, “Please, when you take your proposals through Cabinet, please ensure that our security agencies, the police, have got the ability to be able to detain someone at the border.” If someone arrives unannounced—because, in a perfect world, we would have a notification from our coalition partners or the countries that these people are leaving from. Hopefully, the system would work and we’d have a prior notification in which we’d have the time to respond and to get a control order—in this place, an interim control order—in place. That’s the perfect world. We don’t live in a perfect world.

So if we did have someone arrive at our border unannounced and we had information that indicated that they had been involved or could have been involved in some sort of terrorist activity, we needed to be able to protect our people by giving the police the ability to be able to detain that person, and we proposed in our amendment “for 72 hours” in which time an interim control order could be applied for and put in place by the High Court. The police themselves—and let me make this very, very clear: the police themselves—in the select committee process reiterated several times that the amendment that we were putting up to give them the ability to detain a returning terrorist for 72 hours was a tool that they welcomed. They explained to us and said that it is highly unlikely at Auckland International Airport, even if you were to use the Customs department to detain someone—and they can only do it legally for up to four hours and, actually, even they were nervous about whether or not they had the legal right to do that under their legislation. But, even if they did and they detained that person for up to four hours, they have to release them. The police said that in Auckland, it would be virtually impossible to get a surveillance team in place to be able to pick them up as they left the airport. That’s why they asked for—that’s why they needed—our amendment to give them 72 hours to detain that person to ensure that we could get a control order in place. This bill fails at the first test.

The Minister should not be standing in this House and telling New Zealand that this bill provides the protection that they deserve. It does not, and I find it very interesting and I’d welcome the Minister to debate me on this issue—sit down in whatever forum and we’ll discuss it and we’ll debate it—because he certainly wouldn’t engage with me through the committee of the whole House. He made a backhanded insult saying that there was no intellectual rigour to the issues that I was raising, and yet he stood up and he flimflammed. He wouldn’t address it. To this day, he has not addressed this issue. He has not talked to it. He hasn’t spoken about the fact that he said he wanted to give the agencies the tools that they needed. Our most important agency, the police—the ones that are responsible for this—have told him the tools that they need that they’d welcome. He’s completely ignored them. I’d ask a member of the other side to stand up and respond to that and explain why we’ve ignored it.

Now, this is the worst thing about the whole thing: that we did put up seven amendments. I did go and meet with the Minister again, with our leader, the Hon Simon Bridges, and we took our seven amendments and we wanted to negotiate. We wanted to actually—we had our fixed ideas around what we could move on and what we couldn’t in terms of making this a stronger bill. The Minister completely rejected that. It was very obvious to us in the meeting that there was no will to negotiate at all.

I had Phil Goff in my office two days ago. We were talking and he reminded me about the fact that when I chaired the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee we had to rush through legislation—the countering foreign fighters bill—for virtually the same reason. I want to acknowledge the Hon Phil Goff, a past Labour Minister of Defence, and David Shearer, a past leader of the Labour Party, because they worked very closely with myself and with Wayne Eagleson, and with the Hon Chris Finlayson, and they actually had amendments that they wanted to have made to the bill. We worked together, we collaborated together, and we made amendments to the bill, we made changes to the bill, right? That’s how it should work. That’s how the process is undertaken.

So what’s this Minister done? This Minister has decided, “No, I won’t work with the National Party. I won’t”—

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Talk about good faith—that’s a bit rich.

Sorry, take a call. If you want to say something, take a call, because I’m telling you now, Priyanca—what is it?

💬 Hon Members: Radhakrishnan.

Radhakrishnan—Priyanca Radhakrishnan, if you want to stand and make a comment then take a call. I guarantee you won’t—I guarantee she won’t.

So this is what the Minister did. The Minister wouldn’t negotiate with us. He wouldn’t work with the National Party to strengthen the bill—to make sure the bill would actually put the protections in place. He went to the Green Party. He negotiated with the Green Party. And do you know what? Golriz Ghahraman—I have to tip my hat to her—she was saying today that she got everything they wanted.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: It was easy, she said.

It was easy. She said it was easy. The Minister—the Labour Minister of Justice rolled over and he gave every concession and every amendment and every change that the Green Party wanted, bearing in mind that the Green Party don’t support bills like this. The focus shifted—I can tell you now—from protecting our people in New Zealand to protecting the rights of a returning terrorist. That’s where it shifted. Do you want to know the real crime of the whole thing—and this is a disgrace—is that the New Zealand First Party and the defence Minister, Ron Mark, who was handling this for their party, have rolled over like the Labour justice Minister, and they have agreed to amendments that brought the focus to human rights and protections of a terrorist—

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Oh, how terrible!

Oh, how terrible? It’s funny, is it? You think it’s funny. So the human rights of a returning terrorist or someone involved in terrorism is more important than the safety of our law-abiding citizens in New Zealand—that’s what you’re saying. People will judge you on that—people will judge you on that, trust me.

So we’ve got a Labour—

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Be careful.

Be careful of what exactly?

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: That some people have less human rights than others—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me. Now, look—sorry, sorry, sorry.

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: He asked me.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, you will have your turn. You keep on. You’ve got another 27 seconds, and let’s just calm down with the interjections. Thank you.

We’ve got a Labour justice Minister that has completely capitulated to the Green Party. Instead of working with us to strengthen the bill and negotiate around our amendments, he’s gone to the Green Party and has agreed to all of theirs. That is a travesty. That is a travesty because the Government of this country have treated the safety of New Zealanders as a trivia—

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Madam Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order?

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Oh, no—his time’s ended.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Right, well, I decide that, not you.

💬 Priyanca Radhakrishnan: That’s right. I was just taking the call, that’s all.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time has finished.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Have you got hurt feelings as well?

I do have hurt feelings as well, but not as much, obviously, as the previous speaker, Mark Mitchell, who has just resumed his seat, who has spent 10 minutes—

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Having a whinge.

Yeah, 10 minutes having a whinge because of bruised egos, actually. I just want to make a point, because Mark Mitchell, you told me to take a call—I was going to anyway—but I just want to respond to your point about good faith. You spent—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, just be careful when we get into this “you, you, you”.

Sorry. I’d like to respond to his point around good faith, because I think it’s a little bit rich coming from him, given that that was the party that provided support in writing to this bill and then withdrew it. I don’t consider that good faith, Mr Mark Mitchell.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: They flimflammed.

So they “flimflammed”, Mr McAnulty says. Look, so you could wax lyrical all you want about the fact that there’s a particular way to work and so on and so forth—perhaps they should model it.

Now, on to the bill. The point that I want to make about the bill is that it’s a bill that aims to balance a few different things. That’s what members opposite don’t seem to get. We sat through that at select committee as well, where all the Opposition wanted to do was to make it more punitive and harsher, because for some reason they think that equates to safety—it does not. What equates to safety is actually changing the behaviour that led to the lack of safety in the first place.

What this bill does—what this bill is designed to do—is respond to a risk that’s posed by a very small number of people who will potentially return to New Zealand from a conflict zone, people who went there because of ideological, philosophical, or religious convictions that are actually contrary to the values that many of us hold in this country. That is the risk that we’re trying to mitigate with this bill.

Now, what we need to do and what this bill aims to do is to ensure that we actually strike a balance between the management regime that we have for those people who are coming back to New Zealand to make sure that they don’t pose a risk to the rest of our society and to the rest of New Zealand, but also bearing in mind that these are people who haven’t been through the conventional criminal justice system and the conviction process and therefore cannot be treated as criminals. That’s what members opposite don’t seem to understand.

At select committee there were discussions around the fact that we need detention without arrest. That is something we would never support, because that’s going down a very, very dangerous path. The age of detention—reducing that to 14 years of age when we know that Oranga Tamariki has the ability and the capability to deal with that much better than we could through this.

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: We’ve got a weaker bill than Australia, the UK, and Canada. Thank you very much, Labour!

So despite the constant interjections, which, frankly, I can’t make heads or tails of, from the Opposition—just like the speech—what I would like to say is that this is a good bill. It addresses a real risk that many countries are currently facing. I want to commend the Minister for his work on getting it to where it’s at. I also want to acknowledge colleagues who are on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. We might not have agreed but we had some really good, robust debates about this. I think everyone felt incredibly passionate about it and wanted to see it better. We just, ultimately, disagreed on what “better” looks like.

It’s a good bill. It addresses a real risk, a real problem, and I want to commend it to the House. Thank you.

We are not supporting this bill and we do not believe that any of the claims that are made about it can give New Zealanders any confidence that their security is enhanced by the existence of this bill. The speaker who just resumed her seat, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, is right in describing what it is that we’re attempting to do via having this bill here in the first place. The problem is it doesn’t do the things that it says it does in the initial statements of the bill.

So I’d like to go through a couple of things. Firstly, if someone is to be picked up at the border and potentially subject to a control order, they will be a known criminal terrorist. Our intelligence interactions internationally will have helped our agencies identify that person, or our own agencies will have been able to identify that person, particularly if they are a returning former New Zealand passport holder. So when they are picked up at the border, they can be held for four hours only, and the application is made to the High Court. Then, once the control order is issued, it’s served upon them.

Now, what will be in a control order? That’s found as a list of examples, but apparently not exhaustive—they don’t have to be these things; they can be a lot less—in clause 16 of the bill. Interestingly though, in all of this—there are all of the provisions that are there about what can be in a control order—there is a caveat right at the front of the bill, where it says that in determining any requirements imposed, the court must also consider how requirements, if imposed, will or may affect a person’s personal circumstances.

Well, forgive me, but I thought the reason they were being apprehended at the border was because we were worried that their personal circumstances might pose a threat to the security of New Zealanders. So why is it that we have a requirement in a bill that’s supposed to protect New Zealanders for a court to consider the personal circumstances and the imposts that the various control orders might have on the known criminal terrorist? It doesn’t make sense.

So let’s take one of the provisions here. Clause 16(h) states the person could be prohibited or restricted “from holding accounts, possessing certain financial instruments, or using specified financial services:”. Now, that would seem reasonable. We don’t want one of these people coming into the country and then amassing the money from offshore donations or whatever in order to buy the equipment they need to carry out their terrorist intent if they’ve still got it. We don’t want that happening. So that’s understandable—except that, go back to clause 11(3)(a) in the bill, right up front, that says that in determining any requirements imposed, the court must also, beyond personal circumstances, “consider … (for example, financial position, health, and privacy);”.

Well, we don’t have a cash economy to a great extent in New Zealand these days. People do rely on bank accounts. I would suggest that given the references in here to the court also being mindful of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act obligations, it would not use that clause and impose the restriction on a person being able to have a bank account. Once someone has a bank account, anyone who has done any degree of internet banking will know that there are infinite possibilities from the number that you have as your base account. So that’s a load of nonsense.

Then there is another one in here. Clause 16(j) says, “require the relevant person to reside at a specified address agreed between the relevant person and the Police (or as otherwise specified by the court) and to remain at that address between specified times each day, or on specified days”. Now, that sounds interesting. The known criminal terrorist sits down with the police and, presumably, an officer of the court, and they negotiate where the person is going to live and all the things that go with it, except that further into the bill, clause 17 says, “No requirement of the kind stated in [section] 16(j)”—that’s the one I just quoted—“can require the relevant person to remain at a specified address for more than 12 hours in any 24-hour period.” So the police can only surveil someone for 12 out of any 24 hours. So what do we do? The police stay up all night watching the person sleep. It’s a complete load of rubbish. It means that surveillance is practically, for all intents and purposes, impossible.

The worst of it is that if that person decides they’re not going comply with that, we go into the provisions under clause 31, where there are breaches of the requirements, and it says how they can breach that. But what it makes it clear is that it’s a misdemeanour type thing—a fine of no more than $2,000 or, potentially, one year in prison. Well, if someone doesn’t, you know—a couple of hours away from their 12-hour surveillance or whatever, no court’s going to go hard on them for that. So that’s another one of those very loose and rubbishy sorts of requirements.

Then there is, in clause 16(p), “require that the relevant person, if they have given and not withdrawn their informed consent to do so, engage with specified rehabilitative services”. So someone comes in—they’ve been radicalised; they are known to be a criminal terrorist, because they wouldn’t be in this situation if they weren’t identified so—and has the court say to them it would be a good idea to go through a deradicalisation programme. Do they have to do it? Not according to this bill, because it’s written here, in clause 19(1), that no relevant person may be made to remain subject to the requirements of the kind that I’ve just spoken of in clause 16(p) of the bill unless the relevant person, firstly, has been advised about what the treatment will be—well, that’s fair enough—and is competent to make an informed decision. Well, that would be good. That would be a positive thing. “Yes, I do want to be deradicalised.” would be a great thing.

But then it says in clause 19(1)(c), “gives, and has not withdrawn, informed consent to [engage]”. In other words, it’s optional. It’s totally optional—if you feel like it. Then it goes on to say, just to make it absolutely clear, in clause 19(2), “Informed consent of that kind can be given, withheld, or withdrawn by words or conduct.” So you just don’t turn up. No problem whatsoever. Then it goes even further to make that clear. Clause 19(3) states, “No … conduct, or form of words, is required to give, withhold, or withdraw informed consent of that kind.”

What one of all of these potential restrictions on known criminal terrorists is anything other than voluntary? This is an extremely weak bill. It provides for known criminal terrorists to be treated better than New Zealand criminals—we don’t want them to be treated particularly well—who are on remand, for example. I can’t understand how anyone in this House thinks that they can genuinely tell New Zealanders this bill is the bee’s knees—that this will stop people at the border coming in who have criminal intent to commit terrorist activity. It won’t. It simply means that we can know who they are and then if we want to do something about them, they have to give their informed consent and volunteer to be part of that programme.

How’s that reasonable? I’d ask how many Government members have actually read the bill. I doubt any of them have read it. I don’t even think the people on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee read it, with all due respect. I do pay a tribute to Golriz Ghahraman because she told the committee this morning that the Greens did negotiate all this. It is their idea. Yes—nodding her head wonderfully—and then I said, “Gosh, you must be a good negotiator.” She said, “No, it was easy. It was easy.” Well, I wonder how many people would have experienced those sorts of negotiations with Andrew Little in the past? Not many, I would suspect.

So congratulations to the Greens. The Government with their input has delivered an incredibly weak bill. When it comes to the whole issue of human rights and New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues, what about the vast majority of the New Zealand population who don’t want to be bothered by these people? Well, they don’t get their rights considered. It’s all in the favour of a person who, I state again, is a known criminal terrorist. I say that reading it against the conditions that are put in the bill for how those people are identified. So on the one hand, the bill identifies who we’re talking about, and then on the other says, “Well, if they agree, we’ll do something about it.” It’s hopeless, it’s pathetic, and it’s very sad that it’s going to pass today.

It befalls me to speak for New Zealand First on this bill. I am not sure that there is a great deal more that can be added to the conversation on this other than to say that New Zealand First—

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: You’re a laughing stock, Ron.

Well, Mr Mitchell says I’m a laughing stock, and I guess I do have a right to respond to that. I’d say that, you know, sadly, if people had a look at that member’s track record as a Minister of Defence, people would say the same about his work rate—

💬 Hon Mark Mitchell: Well, they’re happy to say that, but I’m telling you, on this bill, you’re a laughing stock.

—and about his achievements and what he never got through anywhere. I think the greatest thing that anyone can do for the security of this nation, Mr Mitchell, is actually equip the men and our women of our defence force with that which they need to do their job, and I’m about doing that. That’s all I have to say.

I share the disappointment on this side of the House. At this point, it looks like the bill will proceed. I would certainly encourage the New Zealand First Party to reconsider. They have always put themselves forward as the party of law and order and strengthened security, and the Minister who has just resumed his seat, the Minister of Defence, has spoken rightly on that in the past, and again I would encourage them to stand up to those principles and vote against this bill. It’s not a good piece of legislation. What it intends to do will not be achieved.

Look, I’ve wondered when it comes to issues of national security whether you’ve sort of just got to accept that adage that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In other words, you go, “Look, OK, this is not good. In fact, this is a very bad bill, but in the interests of security, with the little bit of improvement it will bring, should I vote for it? Should National vote for it?” But the more I reflected on it, this is actually going to make things worse. If this bill passes the Parliament, it’s going to put us into a false sense of security that, actually, we’re able to handle returning terrorists to New Zealand, and I believe we won’t be achieving that. We’ll think after today, if this does pass its third reading, that it’s done and dusted, it’s all tickety-boo—that when these lunatics come back, we’ll just be able to put these control orders around them and it will all be fine—but there’s a number of gaps and problems.

I pointed it out in the committee stage of the whole House—which, again, as others have mentioned, was disappointingly quick, primarily because this side of the House, the Opposition, spoke, we took that element of national security seriously, we debated, we raised questions, we waited for the Minister’s response, but we by and large waited in vain, including from members of the Government, to try and argue or justify their position. But I mentioned in that debate that the gaps that are presenting themselves may, if you will, be low probability, but they come with high risk. So, yes, it is a low probability, I would suggest, of someone returning to this country unknown to our intelligence services, or unknown that they are returning. That is a low probability; it probably won’t happen. But if it does, it brings enormous risk—enormous risk. I think the nature of who these people are has been downplayed by the Government side far too often. These zealots, these fundamentalists—if you will—these terrorists are not someone that you can sit down over a cup of tea and just have a little discussion with and express to them the wonderful values of progressivism and how they’ve just got it all wrong. As I said yesterday, they’ll look at you, they’ll smile, they’ll probably slit your throat and then have another cup of tea—we’re dealing with terrorists.

I think one of the fundamental problems we’ve ended up with here is that in their desire to get the bill through, the Government had to turn to the Green Party. I want to put it on the record again: the Green Party has long advocated for the abolition and demolition of our security services. Just let that sink in for a moment. They have argued consistently for the abolition of our security services, and they are the ones who are providing the votes to get this through. They have done it by effectively turning what should be a national security issue on its head, and that is that the national security and the defence of the Realm come second to the human rights of these criminals, these terrorists returning from overseas.

So what are some of the problems? Well, first and foremost, this bill is weaker than many of our counterparts, including in the Commonwealth realms. So if we look at Canada, Australia, the UK, our equivalent legislation is much, much weaker. I’ve pointed out before in the House, the age—these control orders only apply if you’re 18 years or over. Members in this House know very well that there are people who are actively engaged, or have been actively engaged, in terrorist activities who are younger than 18. These control orders will not apply to them. We know that these control orders can only last six years—six years, as if somehow, magically, we’re going to be able to turn every returning terrorist away from something that has completely defined their lives in six years. No other jurisdiction has that limit. I put forward a Supplementary Order Paper to say, look, let’s just allow renewal if required. It’s not as if someone comes back and they’re going to have a control order on them for life. They should be able to renew that control order if required, and I have given a very practical and recent example where a supposedly de-radicalised jihadist in the UK, sadly, after six years, went out and killed two innocent British people only two weeks ago. He was a terrorist, he was known, he went through all the programmes, and after six years he went out and killed two innocent people. I do worry that we’re allowing that gap or opportunity here.

There are basically—well, excuse the parlance, but bugger all consequences for breaching the control orders: $2,000 fine—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Max.

Or perhaps maximum, sorry—Gerry Brownlee rightly reminds me that’s the maximum. I’ve yet to see of late a judge—with no disrespect to the comity between the Parliament and the courts—push the full extent of what Parliament puts forward. But if, for example, a terrorist doesn’t turn up at the right time to meet their supervisor or doesn’t come home exactly at the right time—they haven’t breached anything criminal so we can’t catch them on that—the maximum fine is $2,000 or, potentially, a year in prison. Again, this is not your little thief who steals a bike; this is a person who is a well-known terrorist to our security services.

Then there’s the whole notion of informed consent, as if this was some sort of medical transaction. Again, it just makes a lot of the conditions put forward ludicrous. I’m not going to repeat it at length because I think the Hon Gerry Brownlee well articulated it, but just about all the conditions that can be put forward on to the terrorists have to be with their informed consent. So to flip it around on its head, terrorists can say, “No, I don’t really agree to that, sorry. Look, thanks for asking that I should stay at this address, and yeah, I know you want to slap on some sort of financial restrictions, but I don’t really agree with that, sorry.” So we’ve got it all the wrong way round.

I am disappointed at where this legislation has ended up. It had been my hope, somewhat in vain, that through the select committee process—as incredibly truncated as it was—we might be able to, through some civilised conversation, come to a much tougher bill. We have failed to do that. I personally think that the suggestions that the Opposition have put forward are practical. They’re not overly—no, in fact, not even overly; they’re not political at all. As I say: changing the age, ensuring that control orders can be renewed. I think this would make sense to the ordinary New Zealander. In fact, that’s what they would want—that’s what they would want. But we haven’t ended there, and as I said at the start, the real problem with this bill is if the Parliament thinks in passing it that this is now a done deal, that it’s all tickety-boo, tidy, and we’re going to have no problems, then I think we will find, and it will be unfortunate, through action or actions, that we’ve been remiss in our duty—or the Government, actually; it’s not us. The Government has been remiss in its duty, they’ve pulled the wool over their own eyes, and that sort of ignorance is very, very problematic.

I just call on, again, Government members to really consider what they’re doing here, which is fundamentally putting forward a flawed, very weak piece of legislation. If they are going to pass it, I encourage them within an hour to put forward an amendment bill and tighten this up, because, actually, the problems in this bill must be and need to be addressed. It’s, again, a weak bill, and I cannot commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We—all of us—would like to live in a world without violence and without hatred. That is terrorism. The Green Party has stood for non-violence and has stood for equality from the inception of our movement. Non-violence is one of our four charter principles, so we take seriously the responsibility to protect marginalised groups and us all against the threat of terror. This law, it has to be noticed, comes to this House in the context of New Zealand’s worst act of terror in living memory, which happened on 15 March at the mosques in Christchurch. It comes to us in the context of the now eight-year bloody war being waged in Syria. It comes after decades of terrorism on the rise that includes the likes of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but it also now increasingly includes the rise of white nationalist terrorism. We know that that has included, in terms of Syria—and that’s what the focus of the context of this bill has been—New Zealanders travelling over to commit acts of terror and untold harm against communities over there who have asked us, together with the United Nations, to bring our own so-called “foreign terrorist fighters” to justice, because they don’t have the resource, and, frankly, they don’t feel safe. So we do have a responsibility.

But this bill also comes to this House in the context of decades-long harmful, prejudice-filled rhetoric of the war on terror that has justified illegal wars in the Middle East and that has justified violence and degradation of refugee communities, of Middle Easterners, and of the Muslim community living in their own homelands and abroad. We know all too well the threat of that harm. We’ve seen it from Guantanamo Bay to Trump’s so-called Muslim ban, and then in Christchurch this year, so the Green Party takes seriously the responsibility to get this right. New Zealanders have put this House on notice that they will not stand for the kind of knee-jerk lawmaking or the kind of political rhetoric that places us at more risk, because it’s based on fearmongering, not fairness.

So, in that context, this bill proposes to introduce control orders that will apply to those over 18 years old, and these are civil orders. So we’re not talking about anybody that has been proven beyond reasonable doubt to be a terrorist—nothing like that, and I remind the Opposition of that—because that’s why we need to be so careful. These orders would include surveillance, monitoring. They will include, in certain cases, limited access to firearms and limited access to electronic devices and online spaces that may place us at harm in those particular cases. It will also include, with consent—and that’s the only part that is requiring of consent—mental health care and rehabilitation programmes.

These all include rights issues and breaches of rights that if we don’t get right could have unintended harmful consequences, and it is no secret that the Green Party opposed this bill in its original Government form when it was introduced. We were loud about that and we welcomed public debate. Our opposition was primarily based on the definition of terror included in the original bill that we saw as potentially risking political activists and dissidents coming back from overseas, and the lack of due process—in particular, around the use of secret classified information. I do want to, again, remind the Opposition that due process is where we determine whether someone is actually a risk to us, because we don’t want to catch people who aren’t. We want that process to be safe.

So that was the basis of our original opposition, and then, very quickly, it was made clear to us that that Government bill was not, in fact, what was at stake. The National Party, in a callous and irresponsible move, held the Government to ransom, introducing new Draconian measures that would include catching children under order—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I’m sure you heard the unparliamentary allegation that was made there. The National Party held no one to ransom. That’s completely rubbish. If we had held them to ransom, then, quite clearly, we wouldn’t be here discussing this bill now, with a load of tripe that we’re getting from the Green Party.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’m not sure that that’s the most helpful way of ending a point of order. The member has taken offence at the phrase that Golriz Ghahraman used, and I’d ask her to withdraw and apologise.

Madam Speaker, it was meant as a figure of speech—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I’ve asked you to withdraw and apologise.

—but I do withdraw and apologise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Thank you.

Their provisions, upon which their support was conditional—after having said that they would support the Government’s bill—included holding children under order, included imposing indefinite orders, and included detention without due process. They would hold children under order for life. That was what was at stake, and it was made clear to us that it would not be the Government bill that would go ahead if we did not improve it; it was that bill. But, even then, we didn’t blindly support the Government bill that we didn’t want; in fact, we held tight to every single one of our bottom lines, and we got them. Then, we didn’t stop fighting through the select committee process, and we got a suite of new changes.

The Green Party, for the first time in our long history, was at the decision-making table on anti-terror law, and the changes we got were described by the Human Rights Commission’s senior lawyer, John Hancock, as substantially improving the human rights compliance of this bill. That was the first lot of changes.

Our first bottom line was changing the definition of terror to exclude anything that’s coming from an overseas jurisdiction that might go beyond our own terrorism definition—that might catch feminists, rainbow activists, and environmentalists, and we know that we have caught those people under dodgy anti-terror laws before—and so that the definition wouldn’t be imposed based on any convictions or deportations from jurisdictions that don’t have our fair trial standards, and I’m reminded of the Ahmed Zaoui case. Ahmed Zaoui was convicted in absentia. He didn’t even know he was being tried and he wasn’t there, and we—our security agencies—relied on those convictions. That wouldn’t happen under this bill.

We know that our own security agencies are not without prejudice. We know that they looked more closely at the Muslim community and at Māori activists, in the past, rather than at white supremacists, so we knew that was important.

Our second bottom line—and this was something that was very close to my heart, as a baby Amnesty International intern at the time of the Zaoui case—is that secret, classified information will not be used in a blanket form whenever security agencies want to introduce it to hold anyone under control orders under this bill. So if secret information is to be introduced, a court has to first be satisfied that there is an actual security risk to a person or an actual national security risk in that case in relation to that information being disclosed to that particular person. That was not in place under the Zaoui case, and it would have set him free. But even then, under the process we’ve introduced—even then—there will always be a defence lawyer who can see the information and can advocate for the person affected. That is the highest standard of due process anywhere in New Zealand law. It was recommended by our Law Commission, and it is the best practice recognised in international law.

Then, in the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee—and I do want to stop and I want to thank everyone who came to select committee. It was such a truncated process. It was so difficult to get those submissions in, and you still did it: the Law Society and the Chief Justice wrote to us, individuals came, Amnesty International wrote to us, the Human Rights Commission, the Privacy Commissioner. All of the constructive changes that were suggested to us, I fought for, and—as Gerry Brownlee has so kindly acknowledged, and others in the Opposition—we got so many of them passed.

I do want to focus, because two of the most important changes we got through in select committee were that in all cases, appropriate allocation of legal aid will be made for those who control orders may apply to. Also, a huge win—especially given the truncated select committee process—is that we will have mandatory, independent review of this law in two years’ time, including a review of whether or not the law itself is at all necessary.

So we are very pleased that we stopped the National Party Draconian changes. We are very pleased that we’ve protected children from having their rights breached. We are very happy to have protected New Zealand from going down the route of Guantanamo Bay—of arresting people for the crime of having travelled to places like the Middle East. Lawmaking is not a game by which politicians can make themselves look tough on crime or terror.

So, again, I want to thank everyone who came, who was loud, who submitted, who talked about human rights, who talked about justice, and who held us to account, because the improvements that we got to this bill—although we must always be careful when we’re talking about civil orders in this context—have made it better. They have made it fairer and they have upheld the rule of law in New Zealand, so we can be proud, at least, of that. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d just like to comment in starting out on my contribution that when emotive words like “Guantanamo” and “children” are used in a debate such as this, it is quite emotion-stirring. But I think the word “children” as used by the member Golriz Ghahraman seems to apply to my children or anyone’s children in this House, but not to radicalised youth, which is what we are talking about in this terrorism suppression bill.

The object of both sides—of everyone in this House—is to protect New Zealanders, and that is the starting point of all of this debate. Whatever has happened in the past in the negotiations or the process, the National Party only seeks to make a bill—this bill, once it is passed, and it will pass—stronger. There are points that, without doubt, a reasonable mind would agree that there are portions that need to be strengthened, particularly, again, starting with the age of terrorists.

Radicalised youth are all over the world, and it is common knowledge. We’re not talking about children; we are talking about radicalised youth. They may be younger than 18 years old, hence the proposal of National to include children aged 14 to 18. But in that context, again, it is quite possible that once a youth or a person is radicalised, the possibility of rehabilitation is indeed unlikely or very small, hence the proposal of National for control orders to be renewed over time. Recognising that young people may be subject to control orders, National also proposed that if there are guardians of the young person, they be immediately notified, and that the control order only be allowed to last for six months, and be renewed, if necessary, and justified through the process.

National also wanted control orders to be able to be renewed beyond the six-year limit—of course, reviewed every two years and justified as necessary—and if a control order is to expire, National proposed that the registrar of the High Court ensures that the Police Commissioner is notified at least two months before the expiry of an expiring control order. This, obviously, is just aimed at allowing for the control order to be renewed by application—again, requiring justification each time, so it can be unjustified and stopped at any point in that renewal process. Again, it has to be justified as necessary. But what we have been asking for, only, is the opportunity for these to be extended by under six years, as evidenced by recent occurrences around the world where people have been under a control order or under detention for over six years and have come out and have caused harm.

Detention on arrival: yes, the bill presumes that the person who arrives who has been engaged in activities related to terrorism will have been identified and known. However, it is quite impossible—and it’s actually reasonable to assume that no one country in the world will be able to identify every single person who has been out there and is returning and may cause harm. So the four-hour detention period for when a person may have presented as appearing to be a threat—a longer period than that should be allowed so that control orders can be applied for again, as necessary, and, again, subject to justification that these be issued and that that person be put into that process of surveillance and it be ensured that he will not cause harm. Again, all of these proposed amendments by National have been voted down.

For me as a member of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, and having sat through the submissions, I just believe in going through the process—that these are proposed amendments that can only strengthen the bill, and not for any other reason. For this reason, I can stand and say that the National Party cannot support the bill because of these points that have not been able to be strengthened. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The next call is a split call. I call Kieran McAnulty.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. What we have just heard sums it up. The previous National Party speaker, Paulo Garcia, essentially said that their proposed amendments would have strengthened the bill, and because they couldn’t get them across the line, they’re not going to vote for it. How bad is that? They could have voted for this bill, the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill, and expressed how they wanted to improve it, just like they did with the zero carbon bill—that wasn’t what they wanted, but they still voted for it because they wanted to send a message.

Now, what we heard just now is that if the amendments got across the line, they would have voted for it. But because they didn’t, they didn’t vote for it. Where I come from, that’s called packing a sad. I think if members of the public wish to go and listen to Mark Mitchell’s speech right at the start that outlined the National Party’s position, they would see 10 minutes of whingeing and 10 minutes of packing a sad.

I am very happy to stand and speak in favour of this bill. It is a rational and moderate approach to this that finds that balance, and I commend the Minister for leading this through the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I speak, as others have done on this side, on the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill. I’m cognisant of the clear need that has been established for legislation of some kind to meet a threat from overseas—by definition, that’s what we are looking at in this proposed legislation. In particular, I note its purpose: among other things, to protect the public from terrorism. Of course this is a worthwhile aim, the security of the Realm being among the highest good that any Government—or Parliament, too, for that matter—can concern itself with. So on that much, at least, there is no disagreement.

However, as to whether the bill will meet its intended purpose in the committee of the whole House stage, there was much detailed discussion about the extent to which we could fairly say that that was the case, sufficient to outweigh the consequence that we would potentially engender a false sense of security—to say, “Well, we’ve got a piece of legislation that will do the things that we want to do. Therefore, we need to consider the matter no further.”

A number of these were traversed pretty well at the committee of the whole House stage. I’ll just touch briefly on three that sort of caught my eye as being particularly key. One is the time frame of retention at the border. Just four hours is allowed under the legislation as it was introduced and remains now at this point. Four hours is not very long. Probably BJ Watling will score a century against Australia in the test match later today within that period of time, for example, and Kane Williamson will score a double hundred. But actually, more significantly, in terms of the legislation, that’s just about the time it takes to get from Auckland Airport to the High Court and back. So to be able to think about a process where we need to have the paperwork prepared and the necessary actions taken within that time frame, at the risk of losing the person into society, perhaps not to be found again until such time as something terrible has happened—that’s a real risk that the Parliament should not be contemplating taking.

The next point was in relation to the age of the relevant person. I made a case at the committee of the whole House stage that if a person is old enough to engage in terrorism-related activities, as defined, including that they pose a credible threat, then they’re old enough to be considered as needing to be protected—or, rather, New Zealanders need to be protected against such activities by the bill. I further suggested that it could be that a person’s age could be taken into account, so if they were younger than 18, then they could be treated in a way that’s appropriate to their age, but not to be excluded from the ambit of the bill entirely. As with other proposals that were made on this side of the House in the committee of the whole House stage, that was not accepted or taken up.

A brief note on the process versus the substance: we felt on this side of the House that the process being rather rushed at select committee has probably been a contributor to the fact that the substance of the bill, the final result, is such that we don’t think it can be supported.

I’ll just add a further note, just in response to some of the discussion, the debate, that’s gone back and forth across the House this afternoon in relation to the word “children”. It’s a very emotive concept, of course, that of the child. It implies a certain innocence as well as, of course, being a matter, in strict legal terms, of one’s birth certificate. I think the innocence that’s implied by the notion of a child is to be understood in the context of a person who, if the bill were to apply to them, would need to have been proven or at least be a credible threat of being proven to pose a danger to New Zealanders. So I think if we consider the starting point of the bill being to protect New Zealanders against terrorism, then I think that that’s something we should consider in a pretty holistic—and that is to say a pretty broad—way, as opposed to merely saying that because someone is perhaps only 17 years and 364 days old, they are not a worthy subject of the bill.

With that, I conclude, except just to note, as others have done so, that we feel that this legislation falls short of its intended mark, and so we cannot support its passage at this stage, at this, the third and final reading.

Thanks, Madam Speaker. Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill, third reading—succinct and to the point. The Government has acted where the Opposition has failed to. I acknowledge the Minister of Justice for acting and the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee and members of the coalition for working well on this legislation, which does what it says it will do to protect the public from terrorism, to prevent engagement in terrorism-related activities, and to support the relevant person’s reintegration into New Zealand and/or rehabilitation.

Terrorism is a threat that we take seriously, but we will not remove human rights, for if we do that, we descend into chaos. I commend this bill to the House.

I think that assertion by the Hon Clare Curran in her speech, which I think was about 35 seconds, on a security measure, highlighted the totally arrogant and unacceptable nature of the Government’s approach to this bill, because to suggest that the Labour Party has been taking the matter seriously and has acted where the National Party has failed to do so ignores history and flies in the face of the situation that we are dealing with in this particular measure.

There is a long history in this country of bipartisan work on security matters. [Interruption] And here they go; the chorus from the other side has started again. Here they go again. Nobody in the National Party is in the least bit inclined to leave New Zealanders exposed. The whole point of our opposition to this bill is that there is such a great hole in it—that is precisely what the Government is doing. I think it is deeply disappointing that the current Government has decided not to negotiate in good faith with the Opposition, because our security legislation should be enduring. Our security legislation should reflect the overwhelming will of the Parliament, representing the concerns of the vast majority of New Zealanders.

I want to acknowledge that there are many fine people who have been through this House in years gone by who have worked diligently and respectfully with their opposite numbers in order to achieve that. While I can accept the fact that the Minister of Justice has in this case tried to respond to a specific threat—and that’s as he should do—he has, however, in the end, compromised to the point where he has undermined his own bill, and that’s the real problem.

When I spoke in the House last night in the committee stage, I confessed that I was pretty angry, and it was partly because I followed immediately a very angry contribution from the Minister, who at that stage was in the chair. He made comments that I thought were both outrageous—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: That’s normal—that’s normal.

It is fairly normal, Mr Guy—you’re quite right—but this is a serious matter. I felt that he had made comments that were both outrageous and fatuous, and I wanted to correct the record, because my colleagues have made clear that it’s not possible for me to come up with a whole lot of fresh material as the last Opposition speaker in the third reading of a debate. If members of the Parliament and the public who are listening aren’t aware of the reasons for National’s opposition by now, then I would be very surprised.

But the point that I was making, and I hope that I can make again today in a more concerned tone rather than an angry one, is that National was keen to put forward some recommendations that we didn’t think were controversial. We certainly didn’t think that traditional Labour-National cooperation on this matter would have found those suggestions—

Tim van de Molen: Prudent suggestions.

—difficult to accommodate. As Mr van de Molen is saying, they were prudent, and we did hope that the Government would sit down with us and say, OK, let’s look at the things, because Parliament is often required to compromise, and in particular on challenging issues, we work well where we can sit down, try to understand each other’s point of view, and work from there. That’s what the Minister didn’t do—that is what the Minister didn’t do.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: They’ve stuffed it up.

And here he is making an offensive remark instead of acknowledging that his responsibility as the Minister in charge of this bill was to negotiate in good faith. Yes, he might well have said that there are certain things that the—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Takes two to tango—takes two to tango.

—Opposition—he’s shouting over the top of me. He’s had his speech. He’s had his speech, but he shouts over the top of me. He should have been prepared to say there are certain things that we probably will not be able to reach agreement on, but there are other things where we’ll accommodate the Opposition. He didn’t accommodate any of them. That’s the key thing here. There is nothing significant that the National Party put forward that he was willing to accommodate, and I am very disturbed by the Minister’s approach. I’m very disturbed that his colleagues have supported him, because, as I say, it is important that this legislation should be enduring, and in particular it is important that this legislation should be fit for purpose.

We know that there are New Zealanders based overseas who have been radicalised, who have been in very disturbing situations. Several of my colleagues have mentioned a number of different instances, and there will be others in the future. We don’t know what they are now. We can’t imagine who they are or where they are. We simply know that it is in the nature of modern security threats that there are people from like-minded countries with which we have close relationships, and other countries with which we don’t have such a strong relationship, where they have people who mean to do ill to other people. Every terrorist, regardless of the motivation behind their terrorism, is a threat to humanity and is a group that we should be looking to do everything we can to contain. In particular, if they threaten New Zealanders on our shores, we have a responsibility, not just as the Government of the day but as parliamentarians, to do everything we can to protect our citizens.

That’s what the National Party has always stood for. That’s why I said last night that the National Party has the proudest record of any party in this Parliament in this area.

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Rubbish.

It is not rubbish, Mr Little. Mr Little knows that this is true. I was sitting behind the Prime Minister, where the senior Government whip is now, when I was in that seat as I listened to a debate on this very type of issue, and to suggest that our Government did nothing flies in the face of that particular debate, which that member should remember better than any other—he should remember it better than any other.

The defence of the Realm is the core responsibility of the New Zealand Government and, by extension, the Parliament. In the current regime, the sort of security threats that we’ve seen in recent times, terrorism has often been the core focus of our military—and I want to say it’s good to see the Minister of Defence in the House. How proud I am of New Zealand’s military.

We are extraordinarily well served, both at home and abroad, by all the brave men and women who serve in the New Zealand military force, and they face very real challenges and they deserve our absolute backing, our gratitude, and the resources to do the job. This bill doesn’t give them all the resources they need to do the job. This bill puts at risk some of those very people who they are so dedicated to try to defend and protect.

Our proposed changes that we put forward would have improved this bill, and that’s what we went to negotiate with the Government over. We tried again during the committee stage to put forward further proposals; the Government said, as they have done in recent times, “We know best. We’re not interested in dealing with the Opposition.” Well, that’s not the good faith that I would expect of any party in this Parliament on an issue of such importance. They ultimately said, “OK, we’ll go to the Greens.”, and the Greens, then, were able to negotiate all sorts of things that weakened this bill, and that, I think, is deeply disturbing. I understand the Greens’ point of view but I fundamentally disagree with it, and I think that Parliament should have disagreed with it as well.

So I close by echoing the words of my colleagues who have spoken before. This bill isn’t fit for purpose. This bill will not achieve its objective. It is deeply disappointing that we can’t support the measure, but we can’t support it because of those fundamental failings. We will, at some stage in the future, as a Parliament, have to fix it. It won’t be this Parliament, obviously, but a future Parliament will be charged with having to fix it, and that is disappointing, and I can only pray that as a nation we will not pay a very heavy price in the meantime before we’re able to rectify it.

I can only admire that previous speaker’s ability to feign indignation and to feign sincerity, because I know, as anyone sitting over there knows, this is good legislation. This is legislation that has to go through. It’s not the first time New Zealanders have gone and fought overseas. The Spanish Civil War—many New Zealanders went there, but the difference is that when they came back they didn’t bring a philosophy back that was dangerous to this country. The modern fighter who goes to fight in the places we’re talking about—the Middle East—brings back a philosophy that is dangerous to this country. It needs to be dealt with. They need to be monitored. We need the ability to deal with them. This Government has put together legislation which will enable us to deal with it, and I have no hesitation in recommending this very good legislation, this very effective legislation, this well-thought-out legislation—and, most importantly, this legislation will allow us to address the changing, evolving world of law and order, the changing, evolving world of terrorism. So I have no hesitation in recommending this to the House.