Intelligence and Security (Review) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister for National Security and Intelligence: I present to the House a legislative statement on the Intelligence and Security (Review) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Intelligence and Security (Review) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The bill has been reported back from the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee with the recommendation that it be passed without amendment. As members of the House will know, this was a very brief and succinct bill. All it did was change the date in the bill that required the review of the legislation as well as the security and intelligence agencies. It received two submissions in the truncated process that the select committee applied for consideration of the bill, and both were, by and large, supportive of the change.

The reason, as we know, is the change was prompted by the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Mosques, as part of a package of recommendations that the royal commission made. It has called for a number of things about a better debate about counter-terrorism and a better debate about our security stance, our security posture, and security settings but it also called for examination of the powers that our security and intelligence agencies have, and it therefore suggested that the review otherwise scheduled to have taken place next year should be brought forward.

On issues like this, when it comes to substantive review, I think that across this House all members grapple with the balance that has to be struck between the powers that we expect our security and intelligence agencies to have to do their job of gathering intelligence to keep New Zealanders safe and what might otherwise constitute undue intrusion on the privacy and the liberties of citizens. The royal commission examined the way the intelligence agencies operated and it heard from the agencies and a report was commissioned by one of the agencies, and it raised questions about whether what is in the Intelligence and Security Act at the moment goes far enough to enable the agencies to do the job. That is a legitimate point of debate at any time in our history, but it is timely now to bring forward the review that would otherwise have taken place next year so that we can have that examination with the benefit of the findings of the royal commission. So we will now do that.

It’s a very short and a very straightforward bill, as members in the House will know. It will allow us to get on with considering whether the legislation still meets the objectives that we expect of it, and it allows our intelligence and security agencies to operate in the way we would expect in the 21st century.

I think that for members of the public who will be looking on, it should be made very clear that the review process, as you would expect, will be an open process. There will be a call for submissions and contributions from members of the public and from specified stakeholders, so that opportunity will be made available, and once we’ve clarified terms of reference for that, those, obviously, will be publicised and will be the basis of the review.

In the end, we do this in recognition of and out of respect for the shuhada—the victims—of the terrorist attack and their families, the wider Christchurch community, and the wider Muslim community across New Zealand. In the end, we do this because this is what we needed to do for the safety and security of all New Zealanders. I commend the bill to the House.

The Minister Responsible for the GCSB has very well outlined the intention of the bill. Just to reiterate, the essential part of the bill shifts a review date that was scheduled in the bill when it was passed back in 2017—it brings it back from 2023 back to any time from 1 July of 2021. That’s an appropriate response to the royal commission considerations of all of the events that led up to that dreadful day in Christchurch where so many people lost their lives at the hands of an extremist terrorist.

There will always be criticisms of different agencies. This is not set up to give life to any of that, rather to review the appropriateness of the legislation that those agencies work under in a changed world that we all experienced from that particular day. So there is no need, I think, to spend a lot of time speaking about this. The Minister has made it clear that it’s a public process, that we want New Zealanders to feel that they can participate in this bill, which I do hope will give any adequate powers required by the agencies who are there to protect us in a world where there are so many people now who have ill will towards the quality of life and the freedoms that we enjoy in this country.

So on behalf of the National Opposition, we will be supporting this process and look forward to the passage of the bill and the comments that might come from the public and from others who are interested in the way in which we structure things from this point.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Intelligence and Security (Review) Amendment Bill, as has been mentioned before, just makes quite a specific amendment to the Intelligence and Security Act 2017. Section 235 of the Act requires periodic reviews of the legislation. It provides that the first of these reviews starts after 28 September 2022. As other speakers have said, this bill allows us to move the review forward, to bring it forward and allow it to take place sooner. The reason we want to do that, of course, is because of the horrific mosque attacks that took place on March 15th and the resulting report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch Masjidain on 15 March 2019.

I just want to point to the four specific recommendations in that report that were to strengthen our intelligence and security legislation, which, of course, is why we don’t want to wait till September 2022 for this review to be able to take place. The four recommendations of the royal commission were, firstly, to review all legislation related to the counter-terrorism effort; second, to require publication of and public submissions on the National Security and Intelligence Priorities and an annual threatscape report; third, to strengthen the role of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee; and fourth, to add a reporting requirement for direct access agreements that allow an intelligence and security agency to directly access certain databases.

I just want to underscore a point that Minister Little made earlier this year when he and I led a nationwide series of hui engaging with Muslim communities across Aotearoa and our wider ethnic and faith communities. Many raised the fact that they wanted to have a say in this particular piece of work, and I just want to underscore the point that the families of the 51 shuhada will have an opportunity to input into this review once the terms of reference have been determined, and likely others, as well.

I also wanted to take just a very short while to also point to the fact, of course, that our intelligence and security agencies work to protect and enhance the security and wellbeing of New Zealand and New Zealanders, and have to strike a very fine balance, as Minister Little mentioned in his contribution. Part of that, of course, is the counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism focus that our agencies have, and I just want to mention very quickly to the House and to anyone watching the fact that we had our first annual counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism hui, He Whenua Taurikura, which happened just last week in Christchurch. It was attended by over 300 individuals from civil society, academia, and Government. This was also a direct result of one of the recommendations of the royal commission. We brought all these people together—one of the most diverse audiences that I’ve seen ever, coming together to talk issues around national security, but also social cohesion, so that we get to a place where we strengthen our communities and society to prevent these attacks from happening in future, as well. I just wanted to point to that, given that it responds directly to recommendation 16 of the royal commission hui and generated a huge amount of discussion. It was the first step that we’ve taken as a Government to respond to that particular recommendation.

This is a bill that will allow us to get to that review that we need to hold much sooner than we otherwise would have been able to. So I take this opportunity to commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Greens agree with the small technical nature of this bill in that it falls in line with appropriate decision-making—that is, it’s about centring the community that has been most deeply impacted. So at this time, I’d like to, you know, continue to acknowledge our Muslim whānau down there in Christchurch as well—and fully acknowledging that this small technical bill does do that by pushing the review date even earlier. So the Intelligence and Security Act sets aside the objectives, the functions, the powers, and the oversight arrangements of the intelligence and security agencies, allowing them to act as necessary to protect New Zealand and New Zealand’s interests. The Act actually requires that an independent review of the Act takes place as soon as practicable after September 2022, which is five years after the Act commenced and then every five to seven years after that.

However, as we know with what happened in Christchurch and the deep impact on our communities down there, it is entirely appropriate that we move this review date and bring it forward so that the intelligence and security review amendment—and this is what the Intelligence and Security (Review) Amendment Bill does: it makes that very minor technical change to allow the independent statutory review of the Act to be brought forward. And on that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

💬 Nicole McKee: Madam Speaker. Sorry, I’m not sure of the order.

We have gone a little bit out of order. I call Nicole McKee.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand to take this call on the Intelligence and Security (Review) Amendment Bill. It’s going to be quite a short call because, really, it’s only about changing the review date of the Act itself, bringing it forward.

There’s a number of measures that were taken from the royal commission of inquiry report into the 15 March 2019 shootings that occurred down in Christchurch. I think that it is prudent that we are able to move through a systematic review of some of those Acts that were needing it, as per the royal commission’s findings. There were measures that were brought about after an extensive inquiry, and that inquiry involved over 1,000 people making submissions. Many of those people were also interviewed. I myself was a part of that interview process as well. Some people that we are aware of were interviewed multiple times, and I think that’s a good opportunity for people to get their voices heard. The result of this is that there were 800 pages of findings and those findings gave us 44 recommendations. Of course, one of those recommendations was to look at our terrorism Act, and also look at the Intelligence and Security Act, so hence we’ve got this review, in order to be able to bring that forward.

I think it’s really quite important that we maybe even have a look at whether or not we set, in future, review dates that are movable. Review dates that don’t allow us to have to come into the House to waste time when we all know that it’s something that we could just push through if we had that ability. Reviewing is one of the things that we do need to be able to do in the intelligence and security space. The reason for that is because people want answers. They want to know a whole range of things that they’re not able to actually know about because so much of what was in the royal commission of inquiry report has been supressed. So when we’re looking for some answers, being able to hold an early review is going to be quite essential. People want the answers, and all of us want the answers as to how certain aspects of that attack managed to occur, but, more importantly, how we can improve it so they don’t occur again in the future.

So spending so much time on this bill itself is actually not needed, but spending time on the review itself will be. I’m also quite pleased to hear the Minister talk about making sure that the review process will be a full one and not a rushed one like we’ve seen go through with other aspects of the findings. A full select committee time will be needed, especially if we want to make sure that all of those people that have been affected have the opportunity to be heard. Maybe, just maybe, we might be able to come out with some answers that everybody across this House can agree upon that will actually make a real difference to how our security and our intelligence is maintained throughout New Zealand. And maybe, just maybe, we can all agree on that. In that respect, we do support this bill. Thank you.

It’s a pleasure to speak again on the Intelligence and Security (Review) Amendment Bill. I have already spoken and so I don’t wish to repeat the points that I made or that have been made in this House today regarding the technical nature of the bill. I would like to emphasise, though, that even though it is a technical bill, which moves forward the date of the review from 22 September next year to 1 July this year, that will have a really big impact on many communities—those communities in New Zealand who feel vulnerable as a result of the actions that happened, those heinous actions, in the mosque attacks, or, in fact, other actions that have made some of our Māori population feel insecure as well. I don’t wish to repeat too much about the story from my electorate—the fact that the terrorist from the mosque attacks lived there. What I will say is that my constituents are feeling really good in the knowledge that we are bringing the dates forward and that we are in action and delivering on our promises in relation to the royal commission.

I would like to talk a little bit, though, about the broader context, about the world that we live in, and the light that the royal commission report has shown in terms of some of these structural biases, the unconscious bias that we have in relation to the way we conduct our intelligence surveillance—and I think the timing is quite poetic, given that, if it hadn’t been for today’s lockdown events, we would have had an apology in relation to the Polynesian Panthers on the weekend, because, in fact, that was a form of using information, State information, to do surveillance on certain people living here in Aotearoa, a form that now we find unacceptable. So this review—the opportunity to review how we use State information, how we gather it, is really important and I do hope that it gives us the opportunity to have a look at some of the structural bias that we have. So the Christchurch mosque attacks, and indeed the case of my friend, many years ago, Trudi, who was a dancer—I mentioned her in my previous speech in this House on this statute. She was a Tūhoe dancer. She was dragged through the court system at a very young age and named a terrorist when raids were done in relation to the so-called Tūhoe terrorists.

These cases show that we have made the world very small with a dominant culture lens, and it is time to go back to the drawing board and rethink things like free speech, surveillance, privacy, security, who we are as a nation, and whether the restrictions that we have in place today and the freedoms that we have reflect what is fit for purpose in this world compared to the changes that have happened over those times. And, of course, one of the big changes is the social media platforms which allow unfettered speech. We’ve had the advancement of weapons, including automated drones. We have the digital footprints and handprints that we leave everywhere every day that enable the State to track our movements. So we really do need to go back to the drawing board and rethink how we see these competing rights and privileges and how we get the balance right. So the review of the intelligence legislation does allow us to do just that. It asks questions like: how do we gather information? Who do we gather information on? It will enable us to get a 360-degree picture of the world that we live in and shine a light on the assumptions that our legislation makes. Of course, this technical bill is just the tip of the iceberg of some very difficult conversations and very robust conversations that we will need to have in this House later as we continue to implement the 44 recommendations from the royal commission.

So this was my opportunity really just to flag that—that we’re looking forward to having those robust debates, that it is time that we do that as a nation, that we reflect on who we are as a nation. And by bringing this Act into play and being able to get on with that work is not only making people in New Zealand feel more secure, it is opening the door for us to really rethink who we are and creating a better balance in our society around security and freedom. Thank you.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

In accordance with a determination of the Business Committee this bill is set down for third reading forthwith.

Third Reading