Standing Orders — Sessional

I move, That the following rules relating to the Intelligence and Security Committee be adopted as a sessional order:

INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY COMMITTEE

1 Definitions

For the purposes of these rules,—

Intelligence and Security Committee means the Intelligence and Security Committee that is continued by the Intelligence and Security Act 2017

intelligence and security agency means—

(a) the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service:

(b) the Government Communications Security Bureau.

2 Conduct of committee’s proceedings

Subject to the Intelligence and Security Act 2017, the proceedings of the Intelligence and Security Committee are conducted in accordance with the rules and practice of the House.

3 Attendance

Standing Order 38 applies and is to be read as if the Intelligence and Security Committee were a select committee.

4 Referral of bill or other matter to committee

(1) The House may refer to the Intelligence and Security Committee any bill or other matter relating to an intelligence and security agency.

(2) Standing Orders 295 to 304, 306, 308, 326(3), and 337(1) apply and are to be read as if the Intelligence and Security Committee were a select committee.

(3) The Clerk may allocate to the Intelligence and Security Committee a paper presented under Standing Order 269 concerning the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.

5 Referral of petition to committee

Despite Standing Order 379, every petition relating to an intelligence and security agency stands referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee for consideration and report.

6 Estimates and Supplementary Estimates for intelligence and security agencies

(1) Despite Standing Orders 345(2) and 350(1), the Finance and Expenditure Committee must refer to the Intelligence and Security Committee the Votes or appropriations contained in the Estimates and Supplementary Estimates for each intelligence and security agency.

(2) Standing Orders 338(1), 346, 348, 350(2), and 351(3)(b) apply and are to be read as if the Intelligence and Security Committee were a select committee.

7 Annual reviews of intelligence and security agencies

(1) Despite Standing Order 353, the Finance and Expenditure Committee must allocate to the Intelligence and Security Committee the annual review of each intelligence and security agency.

(2) Standing Orders 354(2), 356(1)(b) and (3), and 357 apply and are to be read as if the Intelligence and Security Committee were a select committee.

8 Examination of policy, administration, and expenditure of intelligence and security agency

In addition to its consideration of Estimates, Supplementary Estimates and annual reviews, the Intelligence and Security Committee may, at any time, examine the policy, administration, and expenditure of an intelligence and security agency, and may report to the House on such an examination.

9 Reports of Intelligence and Security Committee

(1) In addition to its reports on business considered under Rules 4 to 8, the Intelligence and Security Committee—

(a) presents an annual report to the House on the activities of the committee:

(b) may report at any time on a matter relating to intelligence and security that it wishes to draw to the attention of the House.

(2) Subject to the Intelligence and Security Act 2017, Standing Orders 247 to 256 apply to reports of the Intelligence and Security Committee and are to be read as if they were reports of a select committee.

10 Confidential proceedings of Intelligence and Security Committee

Standing Orders 115, 390(4), and 396(3), which relate to references to committee proceedings in debate, questions and replies, apply to proceedings of the Intelligence and Security Committee as if it were a select committee.

11 Restriction of select committee briefings and inquiries relating to intelligence and security matters

Despite Standing Order 191, no select committee may receive a briefing on, or initiate an inquiry into, matters related to an intelligence and security agency, unless the House approves that briefing or inquiry.

12 Copies of records of Intelligence and Security Committee

(1) Subject to paragraph (2), the Intelligence and Security Committee must provide to the House a copy of all records held by the committee in relation to the performance of its functions under section 193(1)(a) to (d) of the Intelligence and Security Act 2017.

(2) A copy of a record provided under paragraph (1) must be provided only after protected information is removed in accordance with the Intelligence and Security Act 2017.

(3) A copy of a record provided under this rule is maintained in the custody of the Clerk as a record belonging to the House. Standing Orders 11 and 12 apply and are to be read accordingly.

Very briefly, by way of introduction, the Intelligence and Security Committee is created by the Intelligence and Security Act of 2017. It sits alongside other select committees that the House itself creates, but at the start of every new Parliament we put in place this set of rules that enables the Intelligence and Security Committee to do the sorts of things that select committees do, including scrutiny of bills, hearing of petitions, Estimates, and carrying out the annual reviews. This motion is identical to the one that was put in place at the beginning of the last Parliament, with one notable exception: that it regards members attending one of these meetings, the Intelligence and Security Committee meetings, as being present for parliamentary purposes even if the meeting is being held offsite. One of the things that we have to acknowledge about this particular committee is it will, on occasion, meet in a secure location, and those members who are attending those meetings also need to be deemed to be present for parliamentary purposes. Other than that, these are the same rules that applied in the last term of the Parliament.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I welcome this motion, especially on this day where we have heard back with the report of the royal commission on the Christchurch terror attack, with specific recommendations and findings that relate to failures made by our security agencies, where we’ve seen that their focus has often been misplaced, where we found that rather than the national threat that we faced on March 15 last year, which was far-right white supremacy terror, their focus was, in fact, on the Muslim community. The royal commission found that to have been based not on evidence but something else.

I note also, in my own background, that I spent part of my childhood in Iran where spying was done often. Everyone knew someone whose phone was tapped. No one felt secure to speak on any kind of phone or street corner. We knew that tyranny was rife and politicised. But in New Zealand, though, we have this proud history of a democratic Parliament that oversees policing. We have a judicial system that oversees the work of the police force in terms of search and surveillance. Even here mass surveillance outside of the law and what the public expect has happened. We’ve had a Prime Minister who promised to resign if mass surveillance was happening. We found that it was happening, and that resignation did not come.

We in the Green Party have had members of our caucus, sitting MPs, find that they were being spied upon by our spy agencies to track their political engagement with protesters. That was Keith Locke, who stood firm against unlawful spying. So we know—we know—that the GCSB and the SIS conduct surveillance. We know that it’s outside of what most New Zealanders understand to be search and surveillance that relates to the criminal law. Because the police do that, and it’s overseen by judicial officers, by judges, by JPs, within a legislative framework that ensures transparency and accountability.

This is something else. It can be politicised. It happens often in secret. It’s amorphous and often unknowable. So accountability is crucial. This motion is about ensuring that accountability through a parliamentary body, which we absolutely support, and we hope will be not only sitting in name, not only something that’s a check box as part of our democratic system, as sometimes these systems become, but a fulsome forum to add proper democratic accountability. Because policing, and especially spying, that results in, essentially, quite serious results for both citizens and foreign agents—and we know our agencies of just last year admitted to spying on foreign embassies, which is outside of international law. Policing of that kind without oversight, without democratic institutions having input and holding those agencies to account is nothing more than tyranny.

So we do welcome this motion, and we hope that it does result in what the New Zealand public expects of us in this House, which is that we hold power to account. Thank you.

I wasn’t going to make any comment on this but I feel I need to, because yet again I find myself at loggerheads with some of what Golriz Ghahraman has just offered to the House. There’s nothing wrong with that. She enjoys debate; I know that. But you’ve got to keep it to a reasonable space. The reality is we have had that report today about the terrorist shooting in Christchurch, a terrible event, and, yes, there were criticisms in there about what the agencies were doing, but equally the agencies were doing what they thought was best at the time to protect New Zealanders, and that was against what was an international threat to world order from the Islamic State.

I think to somehow say that there has been a failing when you had, effectively, a lone wolf operator, and then also turn around in the same breath and say “But we do not want the tyranny of people dobbing each other in if they see behaviour that’s not entirely consistent with what they might like to have in society.” seems to be—and that is the thread of what we heard in the House this afternoon from the Green Party—just a little bit confused.

This is a good motion. The committee concerned is chaired by the Prime Minister. It is generally populated with Ministers and senior MPs who have an understanding of what New Zealand’s best interests are. I reject the suggestion that it is secretive. There will be some aspects, like all committees, that are heard in private, and that is for the security of all New Zealanders. This is a good motion. No one should be fearful of it. We support it.

Motion agreed to.