Maritime Powers Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs: I present a legislative statement on the Maritime Powers Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Maritime Powers Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 11 November 2021.

The bill creates a comprehensive regime for the exercise of law enforcement powers in the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand territory, including our exclusive economic zone. It responds to an increasingly dynamic and complex maritime security environment and ensures that we can keep our maritime environment secure against threats, including drug trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and human trafficking. It includes a number of important safeguard measures to ensure that the law enforcement powers it confers are exercised in a fair, reasonable, and proportionate way that is consistent with our human rights obligations.

Keeping our maritime environment secure is a critical component of our national security and prosperity. Aotearoa is an island nation with an extensive maritime domain and historical connections to our ocean. We have more than 15,000 kilometres of coastline and one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world. Our search and rescue region extends from Antarctica to the equator and halfway to South America. We are a trading nation with a significant, growing marine economy and a domestic market increasingly reliant on the connectivity the sea provides the global supply and value chains through shipping routes.

Sea transport is the most common mode of transport used to import and export goods to and from New Zealand. We also have deep and sustained national interests in the Pacific and Southern Oceans. We may once have regarded our geographic isolation as providing protection from maritime security threats, but we must remember that, once upon a time, our tīpuna and ancestors navigated across the oceans searching for our new lands and found the islands we now call home. Increased activities by transnational organised crime networks, which smuggle people and goods, including illicit drugs and arms, by sea, has the potential to threaten our community’s health and wellbeing. Wildlife trafficking is one of the largest illicit economies in the world. Aotearoa has experienced considerable trafficking of our taonga native reptiles. While New Zealand does not have the same experience of human trafficking by sea as some countries, it is a serious and persistent risk that we need to respond to, especially given the significant global rise in human trafficking and the increasingly connected world we live in.

There is a critical need for Aotearoa to be able to respond to all of these threats, which impact New Zealand’s safety, security, economy, and environment. The Maritime Powers Bill is designed to meet that need and ensure that we are able to protect New Zealand through enforcement of our criminal law in international waters, the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand territory. Currently, New Zealand does not have adequate statutory powers to enforce our criminal law in international waters. Although we have the right to exercise maritime powers under international law, there are gaps in our domestic arrangements which create uncertainty for New Zealand in exercising those rights. The bill closes these gaps and establishes a transparent and comprehensive regime of law enforcement powers in international waters for serious criminal offences where New Zealand already has jurisdiction.

The bill does not create any substantive new criminal offences. By way of example, if a murder or serious assault occurred on a New Zealand ship beyond our territorial sea, the bill would enable New Zealand enforcement officers to stop the ship, board it, search it, arrest and detain subjects, assist the other passengers, secure evidence, return suspects on board to New Zealand for prosecution, and return the vessel to New Zealand so that it can be searched for evidence—everything we would expect to happen if such a crime was committed on land, but under our current law, it is not clear that Aotearoa would be able to respond to such a situation, potentially allowing for further offending to occur, evidence to be destroyed, and the offender to flee.

Other situations where the powers in the bill would be able to be used include offences where New Zealand has extraterritorial jurisdiction, like drugs trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and human trafficking, in order to enable an effective response to wildlife offences on board New Zealand or foreign ships. The bill specifically includes Department of Conservation rangers and endangered species officers as enforcement officers, in addition to police constables, customs officers, and members of the armed forces.

Finally, the powers would also be available for serious offences that are committed in New Zealand where the suspected offender or evidence of criminal offending is located on a New Zealand or foreign ship in international waters. So, for example, where a person committed a serious offence in New Zealand and fled the country by ship, the maritime powers enacted by the bill are those that New Zealand already has under international law, in particular the powers derived from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United Nations drugs trafficking convention, and the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocols. The bill is consistent with New Zealand’s rights and obligations under those conventions and under international law more generally, including New Zealand’s international human rights obligations. The key purpose of the bill is to clearly implement these international law powers in our domestic law.

The bill contains a number of important safeguard measures to ensure that the powers it confers are fair, proportionate, and reasonable. For example, the bill provides a clear evidential threshold, with the powers in the bill only available where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence has been, is being, or will be committed on board the vessel, or where there are reasonable grounds to believe there is evidence on board a ship of serious criminal offending. This is consistent with the evidential threshold under existing New Zealand law, in particular the Search and Surveillance Act. The maritime powers in the bill are only able to be used for serious criminal offending at sea, which are those punishable by imprisonment for life or by two or more years’ imprisonment.

All of the powers in the bill are consistent with existing powers under New Zealand law, particularly the Search and Surveillance Act and Customs and Excise Act. The bill is consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and has been reviewed by the Attorney-General. The bill requires enforcement officers to report on the use of any maritime powers to the Commissioner of Police or chief executive to the relevant agency and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade. With a few exceptions, the powers in the bill cannot be used in respect of foreign ships or in foreign waters without the consent of the flag State, consistent with New Zealand’s international law obligations.

In summary, the legislation will enable Aotearoa to effectively respond to the increasingly complex maritime security environment that we face in a way that is fair, proportionate, reasonable, and consistent with our human rights obligations. It will support New Zealand in securing our extensive maritime domain, which will advance our security and shared prosperity. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break, and the House will resume at 7 o’clock.

Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Good evening, everyone. We’re still discussing the Maritime Powers Bill. The next call is a National Party call.

Thank you. That slowness was not because I wasn’t sure which party I was part of. I’m just getting the protocols right. There’s now going to be questions about that. Hey, look, the National Party at this point is actually happy to support this Maritime Powers Bill, but it does come also with some serious reservations; so I’ll try to quickly outline that.

Look, the overall intention of this bill is very, very positive. Ultimately, and particularly for people at home, what it’s trying to do is extend New Zealand’s legal jurisdiction into international waters—not to usurp what is a longstanding run of conventions around the law of the sea but to ensure that, when necessary, New Zealand domestic laws will apply to events which happen on the high seas or the international waters. So, obviously, in New Zealand waters, any criminal or other action which occurs falls under our jurisdiction. But, at the moment, for argument’s sake, the New Zealand Police on international waters—they could, strictly, seize somebody. They could, strictly, go out and—well, not strictly; they could, in theory, go and do their activities. But actually, those activities would have very little to no—in fact, they’d have no standing in New Zealand law.

So the overall intention of this bill is very, very positive. It will make things a lot clearer. I know that we’ve had various changes to maritime laws through other bits of legislation. To pull this together into one will be particularly helpful. As I’ve mentioned, it’s going to apply to the likes of police. It’s also meant to apply to customs, members of our armed forces, conservation rangers—so that’s the Department of Conservation—and also those who are endangered species officers. I might just come back to that briefly.

Look, two observations. This has a lot to do with various elements of criminal law. The Minister, in the opening speech, obviously touched on the notion of drugs, direct criminal offences against other humans, but one thing he did touch on was around human trafficking. I would encourage the Government—they can’t directly do it through this bill, but it is to address the human trafficking side of things. Members of the Government may be aware of the report—granted, from another country, from the US State Department—that came out late last week, actually dropping New Zealand’s human trafficking status from tier 1 to tier 2. It’s the first time it’s happened, and a little bit shameful, first and foremost on New Zealand. So acknowledging the Minister who spoke earlier around this bill, attempting to assist with human trafficking—or to stop it, to be clear—that’s excellent. We certainly have a lot of work to do. Dropping from tier 1 to tier 2 in the eyes of the United States and others is embarrassing, to say the least.

Look, the caveat from the National Party is ultimately the extent of these powers in the maritime space. Giving powers to warranted people such as the police, those who serve in Her Majesty’s armed forces—we’re all well and good with that. Customs officials as well—that’s understandable. We are less supportive of giving, effectively, warranted powers, arresting powers, to endangered species officers and to conservation officers. We at this point feel that that’s quite a stretch—and that’s no disrespect to those particular people—but, actually, it’s giving them enormous powers, which they don’t currently have. I mean, to put it in really simplistic terms, most of us will understand—hopefully not through practical experience—being arrested by a police officer. I think fewer of us would be particularly thrilled to be arrested by an endangered species officer or a conservation officer. It’s just not the way it’s done. We’d be a little bit surprised. So the National Party, without trying to be too flippant, is just a bit concerned about the scope of these powers.

So we are happy, if you will, to support it to select committee. It’ll be a fine select committee, I think—he says humbly. It’ll be a fine select committee. I’m particularly confident in the chair of that committee. I’m not sure if I’ve strictly brought the Speaker into the debate, but you never know. But no, quite seriously, the committee will do a good job, and I think it’s going to be actually quite a thorough job needed, particularly to understand the scope of the powers and who they apply to. So with that caveat, the National Party is happy to support this at first reading.

Anyone who saw the documentary Patrick Gower: On P will know that much of the methamphetamine in New Zealand comes across our coastal borders. I actually remember one of the cases that was referred to in that documentary at Ninety Mile Beach, where the boats got grounded, and I think people went aboard and offered cash to the locals, and the locals got suspicious, and there were 448 kilograms of P found in the back of the campervan, worth a street value of about $500 million. It was such a botched attempt to import methamphetamine that it’s almost funny—a comedy of errors, if you like—although it’s not funny, because of the terrible impacts that are so serious around our methamphetamine problem in New Zealand, and, in fact, one of those convicted in that documentary spoke about the fact that he was part of an international drug importation ring. He was very careful in how he spoke and he did say that he hadn’t had a hit on him. I bring this up because, for me, the powers in this Act will help to counter that terrible problem of methamphetamine coming in through the coastal borders.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and customs are doing excellent work in New Zealand with Pacific Island nations to stop that happening. In fact, we had an Estimates hearing just in the last couple of weeks with the customs Minister, Meka Whaitiri, who talked about the collaboration with Fiji and other nations to stop methamphetamine coming across the coastal borders. But there are still limits to what can happen, and that’s because the powers that we have in New Zealand to be able to make the search and seizure and so on don’t align (a) with the criminal law, and, secondly, with our rights and obligations at international law, and these were two things that we prioritised in our election manifesto; so we need to get on with it.

There is often an international dimension to crime which is limited to what is within our own jurisdiction. We’re limited in terms of maritime security threat, we’re limited in terms of criminal offending, and New Zealand is, in some cases, unable to act or disrupt criminal activity before it reaches our shores. I’m well aware of this because, a couple of years ago, I did a documentary called I Am Innocent, which involved a drug mule who was taking drugs to Argentina. We did some interviews with some legal experts who made the very clear point that it’s easier to catch the mules, who are the so-called bottom feeders, than it is to get the kingpins, and it’s an issue that is happening globally, in terms of the international nature of crime, the technologies that are rapidly changing. So goods and funds are going across borders, between countries, sometimes virtually or digitally, and it’s really hard for the law to catch up.

This doesn’t just apply to drugs; it applies to other offences. We’ve heard about human trafficking, and I’m really proud, actually, that the Labour Government in 2019 gave a Budget boost to prevent human trafficking. I’ve worked in countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam, where human trafficking is quite visible, and we need to get ahead of this before it becomes a problem here. In fact, there’s already some evidence to suggest it’s a problem in the Solomon Islands and in Fiji. So I’m glad it’s on our radar.

As the Minister said in his opening remarks, we have a good problem. We have a large coastline—15,000 kilometres of beautiful beaches. We have another good problem in that we have one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones, but we also have a growing marine economy. We’ve got a domestic market that’s increasingly reliant on marine connectivity and supply chains—we’ve certainly seen that during COVID—and we’ve got the increased importance of shipping for importing and exporting and, of course, our natural interests in the Pacific and Southern Oceans. So, in relation to this changing world, we do need changing laws. They align with what was set out in the 2018 Strategic Defence Policy Statement, which said—and I quote—“Maritime security is fundamental to [New Zealand’s] national security.”, and that is around climate change, transnational crime, resource competition and the geopolitics of that, and, of course, irregular migration, which has been alluded to this evening.

So I’m really pleased that we are bringing this into the House. Our maritime laws need updating. We need to protect our coastline. We need to align with international law and with human rights. This brings us a strategic approach, and I’m personally invested in the prevention of methamphetamine and human trafficking. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. A great pleasure to be able to speak to the Maritime Powers Bill. Others have already set out some of the reasons that it’s really important for the New Zealand Parliament to take a keen interest in this domain, and I want to pick up on a theme, actually, that Ingrid Leary, who’s just resumed her seat, was touching upon in terms of the large coastal area that we have as a nation. I would go so far as to say that, in fact, New Zealand is a large nation, but it just so happens that a lot of that territory is water rather than land. Certainly, when you think about our sovereign interests as well as those needed to protect our more general interests—the protection of human rights and so forth that she and Simon O’Connor have spoken about—it’s very important that we are active and engaged in what’s needed to control this domain and this environment, and, of course, that’s the intent of the bill: to be able to give powers to officers of the New Zealand State to do exactly that.

My colleague Simon O’Connor has mentioned that National does support this bill at least to select committee. At that point, of course, we’ll be examining different issues that may arise, whether technical or even—just in my own case, certainly—to try and get a really good understanding of exactly what’s at stake.

There’s inherently a tension, I suppose, when one tries to extend the national jurisdiction to international waters, with “international”, of course, meaning between nations in a sort of metaphorical sense, but literally between nations, literally between territorial waters—lines on a map, if not in that actual ocean, of course—out at sea and, therefore, areas which perhaps are something of a grey area legally. To provide some clarity in that space, which is the intent of the bill, is a very worthy objective, but it will, of course, be important to understand exactly what that means in different scenarios where the ships are flagged with, perhaps, the insignia of another sovereign nation—and, to be clear, the bill does provide the procedures that will be followed in such a case—or perhaps unflagged, and so on. So a certain amount of detail has already been provided, and that’s valuable as far as it goes, but it will be interesting at select committee for those who are lucky enough to be on that select committee and to be able to interrogate the detail to just try to thrash out some of those issues.

One of the key themes, of course, that we’ll need to look at is the scope of the bill in terms of the types of officers who are given these powers. It’s been discussed already in terms of members of the armed forces, customs officers, and so on, as well as endangered species officers and conservation officers. There might be a pretty good argument on the face of it for inclusion of powers to a pretty broad range of enforcement officers, but, of course, we also need to consider whether we are sending them into an environment for which they are well trained and able to provide that kind of work. I don’t suggest, by the way, that that would be the case necessarily, but, again, I think it’s something that would be worth discussing and clarifying at select committee.

One of the pieces of background to the bill is that we don’t really have a good feel for the extent to which such crimes and offences are being undertaken at the moment—beyond the horizon, so to speak—and, of course, that’s the usual tension when we are giving powers to find out the extent of a problem as well as to solve the problem. We don’t really know necessarily what’s happening out there, because we have not given our officers the ability to find out such things, to search and seize, and so on. And, similarly, we get the tension, at the individual vessel level, of not knowing whether a vessel or its crew has committed some kind of offence until a search is undertaken. Of course, we don’t want to have in New Zealand’s name searches carried out that are unnecessary; so I see that the threshold will be that there will need to be reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence has been committed or will be committed. So that sounds reasonable, again, as far as it goes, but we’ll look forward to working through that detail as the bill makes its way through the House.

I would just raise one further issue, if I may, before resuming my seat, and that’s just the sensitivity around laws that give to itself powers, to one sovereign nation, in an area where freedom of navigation is considered a crucial value, and, of course, it will be officers of the New Zealand State—the New Zealand Government—who will be carrying out such searches and so on, even if, from the New Zealand perspective, it is for entirely benign purposes. So we’ll just need to think about how that all plays out in terms of international law and how our relations are with other State and non-State actors. But, with that caveat, to use the elegant phrase, as always, of Simon O’Connor, I do reiterate, as he said, that National supports the bill, at least for now. We look forward to moving forward to the rest of the debate, accordingly.

A pleasure to follow that elegant contribution from the previous speaker, Chris Penk. I rise alongside members on both sides of the House, obviously, who are supporting this Maritime Powers Bill. It’s easy to support it, because, of course, this bill is aimed at preventing serious criminal offending at sea. As we heard from the Hon Aupito Sio when he kicked off this debate with his first reading speech, that’s an important aspect of our national security because increased criminal activities have the potential to threaten our community’s wellbeing. We heard from my colleague Ingrid Leary about the dangers of methamphetamine coming in through our coastal borders. Human trafficking has been touched on already, and I know that two more of the talented class of 2020 will be speaking on this, no doubt: Vanushi Walters and Ibrahim Omer. I’m looking forward to hearing your contribution on human trafficking.

Now, this bill allows New Zealand to respond to criminal activities in the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand’s territory. One of the previous speakers has mentioned already our 15,000 kilometres of coastline and our being one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world, and so it is really important that we do everything to protect that particular domain. It’s a complex security environment; so it’s important that New Zealand is able to respond to these criminal activities that threaten our security. Whether that is about smuggling methamphetamine or other illicit drugs, arms, humans, or, in fact, wildlife, including our taonga native reptiles, it’s important that we do everything we can to make sure that we protect against that happening.

The previous speaker mentioned some particular words in this bill when it comes to reasonable grounds to believe, which, as he rightly pointed out, seems a reasonable thing to have. So that is the threshold that an offence has to reach for evidence on board a ship in international waters.

Our Labour Party manifesto points out that New Zealand has a proud tradition of an independent foreign policy, with focus on promoting multilateralism, human rights, and the international rule of law. What this bill does is build further on that principle, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do want to stand and acknowledge, as others have done, that New Zealand, in particular the defence forces, has the responsibility of monitoring what is a fifth of the world’s oceans. That’s huge. It’s a huge responsibility. I do, on behalf of the Green Party, want to acknowledge and commend that. That happens to be the biggest deployment; the biggest focus of our defence forces is environmental monitoring of a fifth of the world’s oceans. We’re very proud and happy to have contributed last term to a Government that did actually pull our defence force combat operations out of where they were to focus on that monitoring.

Having said that, I do want to acknowledge, also, that international rule of law must always be the deciding factor when we’re talking about law enforcement. This isn’t a foreign policy bill; this is about international criminal enforcement. Just as domestic law enforcement has to focus on upholding the rule of law and rights mechanisms that balance out what we hate—which is violence and crime and others have mentioned, you know, the things we’re trying to stop through this bill, which is human trafficking, the introduction and smuggling of class A drugs into our borders and other heinous social ills—I want to also notice that preventing those harms can never be at the cost of upholding the rule of law and our safeguards for due process.

So I want to notice that this bill introduces the exact same wording and standards of the Search and Surveillance Act that the National Party introduced in their second-to-last term in office and that we all opposed on this other side of the House. I want to notice also that we’ve been proven right, because, through our criminal justice system, the mechanism of allowing the discretionary search and seizure powers that that bill introduced and this bill furthers have been proven to be applied rampantly with prejudice and in contexts that have created chaos in our criminal justice system. So this bill furthers that same standard, that same discretion, that same—dare I say it—lawlessness when it comes to search and seizure powers. It extends those powers beyond the police force—that have a very specific type of training in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—to our defence forces, who don’t, and to our customs officials, who don’t.

So, in the law, we have a saying that says, “Bad cases make bad law”, which means that the precedent system often produces bad legal standards where we are faced with the highest level of prejudice, and often sympathy, when it comes to us facing some of the most serious crimes. We produce terrible precedents in the criminal justice system because we just want to shut that one thing down. But, actually, we’re looking at a whole system. We’re looking at the rule of law in the fifth of the world’s oceans. We do have a high responsibility for monitoring those oceans, but we also have a very, very high common interest across the globe for upholding the rule of law when we do that. This bill lowers that standard, as did the Search and Surveillance Act that was introduced by that last National Party Government. We know that; we have the evidence.

So, actually, when we come to looking at drug trafficking and human trafficking and what has been called “irregular migration”—and maybe I’ll pause here and just think about that: people are actually allowed to approach our borders by sea and seek to migrate here; there’s nothing irregular about that. But say we’re talking about human trafficking, let’s call it that rather than irregular migration, shall we? We still have to uphold a human rights - based order. We still have to apply the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as being supreme to our desire to stopping crime. We have to do that because that is the only way to stop that slippery slope that we could go down where we do actually throw out our own standards, our own safeguards, our own rules-based order in our desire to sort of look like we’re tough on crime.

So it is sad for us as the Green Party that this Government is going to further what has been proven in our criminal justice system to have eroded the rule of law, to have increased prejudice and lawlessness and search and seizure through this new bill. So we can’t support it. And I stand with regret not to support this bill, because I do want to notice that at least one part of it, when it comes to the smuggling of endangered animals, is something that is very close to our hearts and we do want to stand for nature when it comes to that protection. But we can’t do it in a way that erodes what’s actually really, really important to us as New Zealanders and our value system and what we normally bring to the international rules-based system. This bill doesn’t do that, and so I can’t commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the first reading of the Maritime Powers Bill. The purpose of this bill is to put in place clear powers for the enforcement of New Zealand’s law in international waters or foreign waters. I think it needs to be quite clear what this bill is actually hoping to achieve. It’s not about expanding our laws and creating new criminal offences. It’s about ensuring that we can have the power to enforce the current laws that we have in those international waters through detection, searching, and detaining.

This bill, when you are looking through it, provides a range of mechanisms to help with enforcement of New Zealand’s laws in international waters, and it’s things like requiring a ship to stop, boarding a ship, searching a ship for a person that’s suspected to have committed an offence in New Zealand, detaining a ship, and arresting a person. I think those are all very adequate enforcement options when you’re dealing with crime that’s committed in New Zealand and then needing to be stopped in international waters.

I think it’s also quite important to note the advice that we received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) as background to this bill. It said that we don’t have adequate marine powers. This limits our ability to respond to security threats and criminal activity. So there’s clearly an error where we’re not allowed the enforcement mechanism that we need to protect New Zealanders and enforce the rule of law within our own country and in those international waters. So this law would ensure that we can enforce our own criminal law when it comes to shipping.

In particular, this is of importance when it comes to transnational crime in the cases of drug smuggling, migrant smuggling, firearms trafficking, and wildlife smuggling. We are an island nation and our criminal jurisdiction extends outside of New Zealand into our own waters, and that is already recognised in the law. I mean, if you look, for example, at the Fisheries Act, the Maritime Crimes Act, and the Customs and Excise Act, we already have bespoke areas of law where we accept that our criminal law needs to go into those international areas, into waters.

But it provides a problem where if you have, for example, a ship that has come to New Zealand, brought illicit substances, illicit drugs, into our country, and then leaves out of our waters into international water, there is a problem where you can detain that ship for drug smuggling but what happens with the problem where you might end up with illicit firearms found on that same ship? You don’t, under these current laws, have the ability to detain and find those illicit firearms, because our law is so bespoke for those particular areas. So what this law seeks to achieve is to ensure that we have a range of provisions for what may be search and surveillance in international waters, and it would simplify so we don’t end up in situations where people cannot enforce New Zealand criminal law.

MFAT looked into specific regimes to bring some of those criminal elements into line, creating specific regimes for wildlife, firearms, and migrant smuggling. But I think we can all acknowledge the importance that the law needs to be clear and simple to follow. And I think what this law hopes to achieve is to ensure that there is one law for all of these provisions, rather than bespoke for specific areas like the Fisheries Act and the Maritime Crimes Act. Having everything in one would drastically simplify the process and make it a lot easier. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Maritime Powers Bill on behalf of the Government. This bill as introduced aims to prevent serious criminal offending at sea, including transnational offending and organised crime. It would allow New Zealand to respond to criminal activities in the oceans and seas beyond its territory, including our exclusive economic zones.

We are a trading nation—quite obvious—and with a significant growing maritime economy and a domestic market that is increasingly reliant on connectivity and sea. Sea provides global supply and value chains through shipping routes. Therefore, keeping our maritime environment secure is critical and the main component of our national security and also prosperity.

The above facts make the maritime security environment very complex and dynamic for New Zealand, and we must face it by establishing a comprehensive regime for the exercise of law enforcement powers in the oceans and sea. This means that our critical jurisdiction often extends outside of New Zealand to make sure that we can detect, disrupt, and prosecute criminal activities. It is also our law enforcement agencies—such as the police, the New Zealand Defence Force, customs, and the Department of Conservation. So that these agencies can be able to do their job, the law enforcement agencies must be provided with clear powers to enforce New Zealand’s criminal law in international waters and uphold New Zealand’s rights and obligations under international law.

Now, given agencies like this, it can be a worry—I think we’ve heard it from some of our colleagues, and, therefore, we must have a high threshold for the agencies to stop, to check, and to detain boats and suspicious individuals. That is very important and fundamental. To exercise powers in this bill, an enforcement officer must satisfy legal tests, including reasonable grounds to suspect and reasonable grounds to believe, which align with well-established criminal procedure standards in New Zealand law—in particular, the Search and Surveillance Act 2012.

If left unsecured and unprotected, our maritime territory could cause a serious threat to our national security. Some of the risks that we could potentially be facing are—I mentioned it in my introduction—transnational organised crime in networks such as my good friends Ingrid and Marja already mentioned, illicit drugs, migrant smuggling, and human trafficking. This is a very significant threat; the International Labour Organization estimates it reached about $150 billion per year.

Now, I’ve heard Golriz expressing some concerns. I agree to some extent, but I also disagree because human trafficking is not just about human rights but also it goes both ways, because what the criminals and human traffickers are doing is using unsafe, broken ships and overloading them, and that is costing a lot of lives. Just two days ago, a Tunisian coastguard found about 60 people drowned on the coast of Tunisia, and the Mediterranean Sea takes thousands of lives every year—this is well documented by the United Nations and other rights groups; so that is not what we want to see.

Firearms trafficking is another emerging risk, as well. Obviously, something that’s dear to all of us, wildlife smuggling is a serious threat to our biodiversity, as well. There are many examples where States either fail to act to protect their maritime security or are simply too weak to do so, and either way the results could be catastrophic. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party in this first reading debate on the Maritime Powers Bill. As has already been indicated by a couple of my colleagues earlier in the debate, the National Party will support this bill, at least to select committee, so that it can undergo the benefit of select committee scrutiny, receive submissions, and have the benefit of a parliamentary process. But, in doing so, there are a number of issues that we, on this side of the House, have with this bill and matters that we will want to tease out at select committee and that we will want to hear from submitters on, and they relate particularly to issues surrounding civil liberties.

Now, there are several basic, fundamental principles that the National Party adheres to, and has done for more than 80 years now, and one of those is to recognise and enshrine the inalienable rights of human beings. We also always rise to protect the sanctity of our unwritten constitution, and we celebrate the history of the democracy that is our liberal democracy. When we see legislation coming from a socialist Labour left party that is advancing the powers of the State and giving to a range of interested people powers of search, seizure, and detention, we want to know why and for what justification. No one on this side is arguing that we should not be policing carefully, thoroughly, and diligently our vast marine exclusive economic zone. We are blessed to have one of the largest marine footprints on the globe, and it would be a whole lot easier if this Government actually passed the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary legislation that’s been sitting on the Order Paper now for nearly four years. It’s had a select committee process; it just needs a second reading and a third reading, and we would be away. But no, this is a Government that pays lip service to marine protection and to a sanctuary that could be the fourth-largest marine sanctuary on the planet.

So we are worried about some of the civil liberties issues, and extending powers of the State, when they are extended, should be done carefully, with full consideration. This is a bill that would give powers of arrest, search, and seizure, and powers to detain, to people as diverse as conservation and endangered species officers. Now, I’m just concerned and wonder whether they are the appropriate people to be enforcing our vast marine area. Yes, we should extend those powers to warranted and sworn officers, who have gone through thorough and detailed training. And so I would have thought—and this would be an interesting point to hear at select committee—that we, as a sovereign nation, would have been better to actually ensure that marine protection services were better resourced, better manned, and had the ability to do what is being asked now of conservation and endangered species officers.

So we’ll be looking, at select committee, to see whether there is sufficient justification for this. And it’s bizarre: it’s a long time since I studied law at the University of Auckland, but the people that taught constitutional law—and I’m thinking of Tim McBride, for instance—would be just apoplectic at the thought that a Labour Government would be introducing laws of this sort that extended the powers of the State to what appear to be unwarranted, untrained officers, and to give them such wide-ranging powers. It used to be the socialist Labour left that were the ones who were the apparent bastions of civil liberties and human rights and the protections that the State should not extend into people’s lives. So, yes, by all means, protect and police and make sure that our marine space is guarded, but do it with people who are appropriate, who have been properly trained and properly resourced. So we’ll be looking at those sorts of issues closely at select committee, and we will support it through to select committee.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. In light of the last member’s opening remarks, I encourage him to just reflect for a moment on question time today and the question that he put on the floor and potentially the inclusion of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the National Party constitution.

But, tonight, we are discussing the Maritime Powers Bill. I would like to make a contribution, because parts of it are of interest to what has been a journey for my whānau over the past 15 to 20 years, and what we’ve seen is the impact of methamphetamine and class A drugs across Aotearoa New Zealand and amongst our communities. This evening we’ve heard in multiple speeches the challenges and the echo of those concerns. In that, this bill is so relevant, because, obviously, while we have some good outcomes at the moment—and I refer to Operation Worthington, where our New Zealand Police managed to seize 44 kilos of methamphetamine—there is a way in this country that particular drugs are being smuggled in. And no doubt that they’re coming from multiple channels, and we need to address many, many of them, but we do need to strengthen the laws that enable both New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Defence Force and the Department of Conservation to strengthen security practices out on our waters.

And so what this bill does is it responds to the increasingly dynamic and complex maritime security environment and ensures that we can keep our maritime environment secure against threats. This does include drug trafficking, as I’ve spoken about; wildlife trafficking; and, of course, human trafficking. But the bill will give power to the police, the New Zealand Defence Force, Customs, and the Department of Conservation, and it will provide powers to respond to a range of criminal offending in our international waters. These will include offences that take place on board a New Zealand flagged vessel in international waters, it will include the offences that take place on board a foreign flagged vessel or stateless vessel in international waters for which New Zealand has extraterritorial jurisdiction, and it will include situations where an alleged offender or evidence of criminal offending is located on a New Zealand, foreign, or stateless vessel in international waters.

The parts in this bill are: Part 1 provides the context and the legislative exceptions, Part 2 outlines the powers and grounds for exercising powers, and Part 3 outlines the offences themselves. Now, it does sit within Labour’s plan. It is within our manifesto that says that New Zealand has a proud tradition of an independent foreign policy with a focus on promoting multilateralism, human rights, and the international rule of law, and this bill builds on that.

Lastly, I just want to acknowledge that this is also part of the briefing to the incoming Minister of this Government and keeping the maritime environment secure is a crucial component of New Zealand’s national security. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but this is taking steps towards strengthening our security systems to address our challenges around the access and smuggling in of drugs into Aotearoa New Zealand and the impact that it does have on our communities. So I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to rise to take a short call in relation to the Maritime Powers Bill, which I support.

In 2018, Greenpeace released a report about human trafficking, slavery, and abuse on board international fishing fleets. Now, the report actually concerned international waters outside of Taiwan, but the authors were Kiwis. They were New Zealand investigators who highlighted some of what I would call the shadows in terms of the laws that operate on land versus the laws that operate on the sea. And New Zealand is no exception in terms of enforcement provisions that sit in those shadows. What this bill does is it allows the flow of enforcement powers that are applied on land in New Zealand out to those powers applied in the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand territory, including our exclusive economic zone. In short, it keeps our environment secure against threats, including drug trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and human trafficking.

I want to specifically touch on the impact of the new proposed powers where it’s suspected that serious offences such as trafficking or human rights abuses, serious human rights abuses, are happening. As many in the Chamber will know, we already have human trafficking as an offence under the Crimes Act, in section 98D. We’ve ratified the Palermo protocol on trafficking. We participate in regional anti-trafficking efforts. But we’ve made these commitments with a lack of comprehensive enforcement powers at sea, which really restricts the ability of our enforcement officers to be able to act.

And I think it’s important to note that these aren’t just hypothetical scenarios we’re protecting against; some of my colleagues have spoken about the human trafficking that we see in terms of data and numbers. But there are also significant human rights violations that happen on the sea as well. In 1997, there was the first proceeding alleging abuse on a foreign charter vessel brought in New Zealand courts, where 10 Indonesian crew of the Korean flagged Sky 75 vessel fled at the port and then made claims with the New Zealand Police about human rights violations. We saw it again in 2010 when the Oyang 70 sank, killing six crew members. The surviving crew members then revealed that they had been subject to serious human rights abuse. In 2011, we saw it again when crew members of the Shin Ji and Oyang 75 alleged that they’d been subject to physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, and suffered inhumane conditions. So we know that this is happening, but in those cases we know it was happening because those crew members reported it at port. There weren’t the search powers at sea.

We did have a partial response from this House with the passing of the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2014, which gave New Zealand courts full jurisdiction over crew members and foreign vessels. But, again, we did not have the extension of those enforcement powers to sea. So, in short, we do have much of the substantive legislative architecture in place that’s intended to protect people from these horrific human rights abuses, but we do need to extend these enforcement provisions. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Great to take a call on this bill, the Maritime Powers Bill, in its first reading here tonight.

Now, as has been identified by most previous speakers, we are seeing an increasing number of challenges in our international waters, particularly around drug trafficking. That’s something that I’m, I guess, partially impressed with—the innovation, the complexity, the varieties of manner in which these people who are acting illegally choose to try and get their products into our country. So we need to ensure that we are adapting and evolving with that and providing our enforcement officers with the most appropriate tools possible to minimise the likelihood of those particular products accessing our shores eventually. Aside from that, though, and as spokesperson for oceans and fisheries, I have a very strong interest in the marine protection space as well. And I’d just like to expand a little on some of the comments that the Hon Scott Simpson made in his fine contribution to this debate as well.

Marine protection is an area that we are seeing increasing pressure on as well, as international operators, in some instances acting unlawfully, seek particular types of marine species for significant profit in the market so they can move those into. So protection of that is absolutely critical for us. One of the ways that we have traditionally protected our marine areas is through marine reserves, for example, and the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, in particular, is one opportunity that so far has not been captured by this Government. As Mr Simpson mentioned, it is sitting there on the Order Paper; it’s ready to go. So, whilst this legislation is good in that it brings in some additional powers and helps with some of those protections, actually some of the more simple things that we could do, some of the lower-hanging fruit for this Government, would actually be to enact the likes of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary.

Interestingly, the nearly four years under this Government is the longest period since 1990 in which no new marine reserves have been established in New Zealand.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Really!

None whatsoever since—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Not a single one!

That’s the longest period. And I think that’s pretty disappointing for most New Zealanders. So this is a good step, absolutely, and we do support it. The Kermadecs, though, would have been a massive opportunity for the Government to show that they do actually care about our environment, but, sadly, they have let New Zealand down in that regard.

So this particular bill, as I mentioned, we do support through to select committee at least. It is good to see this bill going to select committee, because there are many recently that have not, as the Government has chosen to simply ram them through under urgency with a “Government knows best” approach. Already, actually, we’ve heard on this bill they are truncating the committee process. So I guess at least we’re lucky to be having one. But one day, perhaps, they’ll give us the full select committee process and enable the public of New Zealand to actually consult or be consulted or have their say on a piece of legislation in its entirety.

Having said that, we will be very much looking forward to that discussion as it progresses through, because we do have some concerns around the reach of these powers, particularly in relation to the endangered species officers and the Department of Conservation rangers. I have absolute admiration for the work both those groups do, but providing powers of arrest, for example, is a significant expansion of what they would normally do in their daily operations. So there are real concerns around their competence in terms of those particular aspects of what this legislation would enable, and that is quite different to the competence you would expect to see from our police force or our New Zealand Defence Force or Customs, who are all trained more in those particular areas, so we would have much more confidence that they can act appropriately in that manner. But I look forward to hearing the select committee discussions on this to consider whether or not that extension of powers is appropriate, because we have seen actually, again, from this Government over the last few years a willingness to extend powers well beyond what is probably necessary.

This happened in terms of the NAIT legislation, the National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme, where warrantless powers were given to officers to just enter farms and houses, farm properties, to consider whether compliance was happening. That was really a gross overreach. Also through the COVID lockdown—again, warrantless powers to enter premises if there is suspicion of too many people gathering for a family birthday party, for example. Really, the Government needs to be very careful about granting these sorts of powers, and analysing it thoroughly at select committee is absolutely crucial. So it is disappointing that they are truncating another select committee process. But we are at this stage supportive of the bill to first reading and will be scrutinising it closely through select committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be speaking in the final slot for the Maritime Powers Bill. Look, I want to acknowledge the work of those in law enforcement agencies who have really been clamouring for something like this to take place for some time now. I know that the Government has a maritime security strategy, which underscores the importance of such a robust authorising mechanism to deliver the appropriate security for our coastlines.

I want to just acknowledge too that, representing a seat in New Zealand that has a coastline and two islands, I am aware constantly of what might be out there, so to speak. But what I do know is in terms of protecting our taonga, people—and the fact that this party, which turns 105 tomorrow, has a proud tradition of independent foreign policy. So therefore I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Maritime Powers Bill be considered by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Bill referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Instruction to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee