Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill.

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

I move, That the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

This is one of these unfortunately necessary pieces of legislation, as we see the nature of terrorism change both, unfortunately, here at home and offshore. Weeks ago, the United States, unfortunately, commemorated 20 years since the attacks on the Twin Towers and other notable sites in 2001. Back then, terrorism in its guise, then, was very much the spectre of large organised terrorism groups, as we saw back in September of 2001 in America. The nature of terrorist attacks is changing internationally, and has, obviously, unfortunately, reared its ugly head here in New Zealand. I do want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the victims of the more recent attack on 3 September in LynnMall, and wish, from this Parliament, them all the best and to that community too; also to the family of the victims and those injured in the mosque attacks of Christchurch two or three years ago. Both of those events were horrible and tragic events that, unfortunately, let us know that New Zealand is not immune to hateful intentions from those who want to disrupt our peaceful and diverse way of life.

This piece of legislation recommits that the Government is committed to mitigating the risk of future attacks, as was mentioned in the committee stage yesterday. It’s impossible to guarantee further attacks happening, but the new measures within this piece of legislation mean that the authorities will have more powers in order to prevent the planning and the undertaking of further attacks.

I do want to pre-empt something that, I think, will come in terms of criticism from a couple of other parties in Parliament, around the thoroughness of the consideration of this piece of legislation. In doing so, I want to acknowledge the work of all members of the Justice Committee, led by Ginny Andersen. Despite the point that some parties got to try and find a point of difference around this piece of legislation, I understand that the members of this Justice Committee worked extremely well and thoroughly, and gave this piece of legislation a thorough going-over at select committee.

I do want to acknowledge the Hon Simon Bridges, who is in the House and I’m sure will be making a contribution soon, and thank him for his contribution in the second reading, where he reinforced that this piece of legislation did have a thorough going-over at select committee, that submitters who had concerns about some aspects of this select committee process, or the bill in general, did have a fair hearing, and the select committee reported back, I believe, on 5 September, after the lion’s share of the consideration and work on this piece of legislation had been done. We also made a commitment that weekend to ensure that this legislation would pass as soon as possible, before the month of September was out, because we do believe making sure that giving the authorities the power to prevent and stop attacks happening was important when the piece of legislation was going through the House. So any suggestion that this did not get a fair hearing, and a considerate hearing, at the select committee is entirely inaccurate.

There were some concerns about consultation from the likes of Māori stakeholders through the select committee process. I would reiterate the message that I have given in other readings: that the nature of counter-terrorism legislation and the ability to pre-consult on these issues is a tricky balance. If you do that too widely, you can open up gaps in the proposed new regime, and we saw fit that the select committee was the appropriate place to undertake the consultation, although there were concerns raised there.

The most substantive change that we are making in this legislation is the introduction of a planning and preparation offence. As was mentioned in the House yesterday, a High Court decision of last year, where a High Court judge essentially said, “The case before me, while maybe concerning, I cannot bring or make a judgment on in terms of planning and preparation, because there is a gap in the legislation, where it might be an offence to carry out an attack, but the statutes of this country do not include an offence in terms of the planning and preparation.” This particular offence was one that was recommended very highly by the royal commission of inquiry into the mosque attacks. It brings us into line with similar countries which we compare ourselves too—the likes of Australia and the United Kingdom—to make sure that we do have offences where the authorities can bring about a case to show that there is the three pillars of a terrorist attack, in terms of motivation and intent and purpose, and where a number of elements have come together with that planning and preparation, that now, once this bill is passed, the authorities will have the ability to bring charges in that respect.

There were also concerns raised by a number of organisations and political parties in terms of the seriousness of the crimes, and also the potential for the misuse of this legislation by the authorities, given some of the past experiences of some groups here in New Zealand. There are protections within this legislation to ensure that lawful protest will not meet the threshold of a terrorist attack or terrorist intent, if those three pillars are not met, and then there’s the added protection of making sure that the police or the Crown has to get approval of the Attorney-General in order for a prosecution for one of these offences to be brought to the inside of a courtroom.

The other substantive change is around the introduction of control orders for people who are found guilty, and imprisoned of a terrorist offence here in New Zealand. That is a big change off the back of the changes that were made by the Hon Andrew Little back in 2019, but do go to ensuring that, again, the authorities have the power to monitor in some way, shape, or form those who have been convicted of terrorist offences here in New Zealand if they do believe that they still pose a national security threat here in New Zealand. That, again, is an unfortunate reminder of the fact that terrorist threats do exist domestically, and making sure that we give authorities the power to do that is again one of the substantive changes within this piece of legislation.

Again, just to conclude, I’m thanking the Justice Committee for its work. Also thank you to the officials from the Ministry of Justice for the way that they supported the select committee, which has been noted by a number of members on the Justice Committee. Also acknowledging, again, the victims and the families of victims in the two more recent incidents that have happened in the last two or three years. Again, this piece of legislation is being put in place to give the authorities more powers to prevent those kinds of attacks happening. We hope that they use those wisely, but that they are effective at preventing those attacks happening again.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. New Zealand’s a country that has been incredibly blessed, in that it hasn’t for decades—decades—suffered from extreme, warped ideologies that have led to terrorism. But what is true is: in very recent times, the last couple of years, we have been—euphemistic, really, to say—unfortunate, very unfortunate. We’ve seen heinous attacks by an extremist in Christchurch, and, just in recent weeks, an awful terrorist attack, again fuelled by extreme, warped ideology, at LynnMall Countdown in West Auckland. And it’s a very sad thing, something I think most New Zealanders would say is foreign to us—and yet it’s not. We’ve seen it, as I say, in recent times. And when I think of that most recent attack, I’m just, personally, very thankful to all those who were involved in helping—of course, the police themselves, but those that were brave and helped bring the man under heel, as it were. I think of those who were wounded in his stabbing spree, and just repeat what I know all members of this House would think and say—that is that terrorism, fuelled by that sort of extremism, has no place in New Zealand society or, indeed, globally. It has no place.

With the terrorist in this case that I’ve been talking about, most recently, he was under supervision from authorities—I say “authorities” because I’m sure it was more than simply police; it was other security authorities as well—it would have been truly significant, many millions of dollars’ cost to New Zealanders. He wheedled his way through many a court case, actually, in the courts of New Zealand. I think the Chief Justice put out a synopsis or summary of those cases, and, again, the costs would have been many millions of dollars, I’ve got no doubt, from this man.

As the justice Minister, Kris Faafoi, has said—and I acknowledge all he said; I don’t agree with everything he did say—one of those cases, perhaps the most significant in a precedent sense, by Justice Downs, was sent to the Attorney-General, possibly the justice Minister and others in Government, to outline a gap in the law. That gap was really around the planning and preparation of terrorist acts. This bill deals with that gap, and I think Andrew Little said at the second reading, it’s not as a result of that case law; it’s already something that the executive was minded to deal with. But, nevertheless, it does deal with that gap. I asked the Minister at the committee of the whole House stage and he confirmed he believes it deals with it comprehensively.

It also deals with certain recommendations from the royal commission on the Christchurch terror attacks. It deals with certain international obligations, through UN conventions and the like, and there are many, many things, technically, the law does—I want to say many, many; it may be several. I listed some of them in earlier contributions, so I’m not going to technically go through those various worthy elements of this bill.

Suffice to say, a couple of things: we support this law. It’s the right thing to do, in terms of the changes and improvements it makes. Probably—and I don’t simply say this in hindsight, with what has happened in recent times—the most significant element of it is the creation of precursor offences to terrorism acts, and the planning and preparation offense in particular. We spent some time on that in select committee, to address the gap that I’ve already discussed.

I just want to finish, not politically with a small “p” but, I suppose, a big “P”, I should say, but with some small “p” political comments. The first is one the Minister has emphasised, and emphasised that I emphasised, and that is that this wasn’t a rushed law. It’s entirely incorrect as some members of the House say that somehow we rushed this up, sped this up. We didn’t. It went through a thorough select committee process. We heard all submissions. We were in deliberations on this bill, in fact, eerily, really, at and around the time of the recent terror attacks.

I won’t say I can’t understand the opposition to this bill. We heard submissions from civil liberties groups, and I deeply respect their views that we should cherish and guard our freedoms and our liberties. Liberties for the worst, if you like, are the price for a civilised society. So, in hindsight, I don’t dis-understand the opposition to this bill, but I do say, from the parties to my left that do oppose this bill, there is an opportunism to it. I don’t think it should be around a rushed process or some such. They’ve got principled objections—well, that is one thing. But, actually, it seems to me, technically, in terms of process—and we can’t say that about a lot of the bills. The other bills that have been through this Parliament tonight are a shambles of a process. But this one has had a good process.

National takes terrorism very seriously. We perceive ourselves as a party of security and law and order, and that’s why we have recently made the Hon Mark Mitchell, MP for Whangaparāoa, spokesperson in this area—someone with deep expertise and experience, in arenas like Afghanistan and Iraq and other places; with a real knowledge about these issues. He would have, I know, desperately liked to have been here today to talk about this bill. He has a first-hand knowledge of these issues in a way I don’t and, I suspect, really, any other member in this Parliament does either. But that creation of his role is a sense with which we as a responsible large party want to do the right thing, the responsible thing, around security and law and order. And I acknowledge, actually, we’re not the only party in Parliament that does that in Government. The Labour Party has brought this bill to the House.

So I don’t need to keep going. Sadly, terrorism now is a feature of New Zealand. I hope it isn’t again, but it has been in the last couple of years. This bill fills gaps, it improves our legal regime, to make future events less likely, and that’s got to be a good thing. National, as the responsible party on these issues, wholeheartedly, as it has at all stages of this bill, supports it.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’ll take a brief call on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill. As chair of the committee, it has been a thorough process and it has been a difficult task in confronting some of the hard issues—particularly given the fact that New Zealand had a recent terrorist attack, just on 3 September, which was right at the final stages of when this bill was going through consideration and deliberation.

So, at that point, I would like to acknowledge those victims in Auckland—LynnMall—and their whānau. I’d also like to acknowledge those victims in New Zealand from the March 15th attacks in Christchurch, which was really the generating reason for this legislation to be drafted.

This legislation, really, came, in part, by responding to the report of the royal commission of the inquiry into the 15th March terrorist attacks, and, in particular, it implements recommendation 18, which is giving a priority to considering precursor or preparatory offences. That is exactly what this legislation does: it enables those people who work to keep New Zealand safe to put into place protections when someone has been identified as a risk.

I’d like to note that the bill also provides an extension for control orders. It is interesting to note that no counter-terrorism measure is ever going to be guaranteed to prevent a terrorist attack. There is no cast-iron guarantee that these tools will, in fact, work, but it does enable New Zealand to respond and be ready in a much greater way than we have been in the past, and particularly given that the past two terror attacks that I’ve referred to are both from lone actors—while in the past, our terrorism legislation has been geared to wider groups.

So overseas experience indicates that things like control orders can be a really successful way of preventing some types of behaviour, particularly of radicalising groups and individuals. Those independent reviews in other countries—the UK and Australia—show that they have been a useful tool for managing that.

This bill, really, strengthens our counter-terrorism laws to better prevent and respond, and these changes will also enable police to intervene earlier—and, if it saves lives and makes New Zealanders safer, I believe that’s a good thing.

I’d like to close by acknowledging the police, who have worked incredibly well over the period of both of those terrorist incidents in New Zealand, but I would also like to acknowledge the officials. When they appeared before our committee—there is a thorough departmental report that I encourage all members with an interest in this area to read; over 160 pages that really goes into the detail of what the risks and the benefits of introducing this type of legislation is—every question that the members from both Opposition and Government asked those officials, they had a full answer to be able to put our minds at rest as to the steps this legislation was taking and whether it would lead New Zealand down the right path.

I am happy, as the chair of the committee, that consensus was generally reached amongst those members, and thanks to that, largely, is due to the hard work of those officials, to be able to satisfy the request for further information and make sure we were taking a step in the right direction. So, without further delay, I wish to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as the member of Parliament for Southland to speak on this bill, the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill. The purpose of the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill is to strengthen New Zealand’s counter-terrorism laws to address contemporary terrorist threats, which come in all sorts of different shapes and guises, as we’ve seen, unfortunately, with the March 2019 attack in Christchurch, and I express my sorrow and thoughts for the victims and family of that attack. Then we’ve had the recent 3 September 2021 attack in LynnMall, Auckland, and, again, my thoughts and my heart goes out to the victims and their families of that attack. Both of these were lone wolf attacks and show how very challenging these are to counteract, and that is not unusual around the world.

This bill aims to improve the clarity of the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 and provides law enforcement agencies with clear legal authority to prevent and disrupt terrorism-related activity. The National Party has confidence that the right balance between liberty and security has been struck in this bill, as it has been on foot since 2008, when the work first started, with officials being directed to explore possible improvements to counter-terrorism legislation. It has gone through the Justice Committee and has been thoroughly considered. So this bill has been brought forward, but it has been carefully considered and the right balance, we believe, has been struck.

I would note that there are some new offences that have been created by this bill and new offences must be carefully considered to ensure that the right balance is struck. These new offences would criminalise travelling to, from, or via New Zealand with the intention to carry out a terrorist attack, to plan or prepare for a terrorist attack, and to have weapons training or combat training for a terrorist purpose. It also amends the definition of “terrorist act” by changing some of the purpose and intention elements.

It’s important to have a look at the new definition of “a terrorist act”. It contains three elements. The first element is an intention to cause serious outcomes, such as death or bodily injury. The second element is for a purpose of advancing an ideological, political, or religious cause. The third element is an intention to cause fear in a population, or coerce or force a Government or international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act.

It’s important that there are those three elements, because there has been some concern raised—and the Green Party has rightly raised the concerns expressed by some folks—that activism could be caught by this legislation. The select committee heard from Paul Elwell-Sutton, the council of trade liberties, that he recommended “activism” be excluded from the definition of “terrorist act”. The officials did not consider this to be appropriate s for conduct of any kind to be captured by the terrorist act definition, all three elements of the definition must be met. This includes the intent to cause one of the serious harms, such as injury or death. It is difficult to countenance any activism which would intend to cause harm or death which would be legitimate, and, certainly, I don’t think it could be classified as legitimate if its intention was to cause injury or death. Therefore, legitimate activism will not be captured by this legislation.

Clause 6 also has an amendment from what was originally intended to be “induce terror in a civilian population”, which existed previously, was to be changed to “to induce fear in a population.” And although I’m not a member of the select committee, I did happen to sit on it when this question was being raised, and I did ask some questions. I did have a personal concern that that would dilute it too far. I’m pleased to see that it has been amended: “induce terror in a civilian population” would now be “to intimidate a population”, which is a higher threshold and I think it is the right one.

“Carrying out includes preparations, credible threats, and attempts” is in new section 5A, in clause 6. And it requires some actual knowledge. So there has been quite careful consideration to how this bill has been drafted.

If I look at clause 10, “Section 8 amended (Financing of terrorism)”, I note that the purpose of this clause is to comply with New Zealand’s international obligations under the United Nations Security Council resolutions. And, in line with that, the bill inserts “material support” into the scope of what cannot be provided to a designated terrorist entity and also criminalises support that has been provided recklessly. I note that there has been some concern raised that there would be legitimate aid organisations—that people would seek to support places or people and children, for example, in a war-torn environment—and they could be captured by this; however, there is a carve-out which addresses this, and that is in subsection (5), which says “Material support excludes humanitarian support to satisfy basic needs”. And it goes further to note: “[if that] is provided (a) in good faith for genuine humanitarian reasons; and (b) impartially or neutrally as between people who have those needs.” So there is a carve-out that explicitly protects those people who wish to provide support to those in war-torn environments that’s for a purpose of assisting people for humanitarian purposes and not to support, or be reckless as to support for, terrorist organisations or aims.

I’ll just have a look at new section 13AA, which is: “Providing or receiving weapons training or combat training for terrorist purposes”. I note that there has been some concern that this could capture people who receive training for reasons of self-defence. However, I note that the person, to commit an offence, would have to do so if they provide or receive weapons training or combat training and knew that the training was provided or received for a purpose which would include to carry out one or more terrorist acts, whether any or all of them are actually carried out or not, and/or to enhance the ability of any entity to carry out, or to participate in the carrying out, of one or more terrorist acts, whether any or all of them are actually carried out. So that would clearly exclude someone receiving training for the purpose of self-defence. Someone receiving training for self-defence would not also be doing so to carry out a terrorist act.

I note that another concern that has been raised is proposed warrantless powers, which the police or other relevant agencies need to detect concerning behaviour, so that they can act effectively to prevent a terrorist act being carried out. Given the fluid and unpredictable nature by which planning may move to more advanced conduct to commit a terrorist act, warrantless powers are necessary to identify the relevant behaviour and to intervene quickly to prevent such activity escalating. Police need powers to take appropriate action to intervene to preclude the attack and, without warrantless powers, that may not be possible until too late. The way this has been framed is appropriate. The exercise of the warrantless powers in question requires reasonable grounds to believe that evidence relating to the planning or preparation offence is in the place of or on the person to be searched. In relation to searches of place, there must be reasonable grounds to believe that, if entry is delayed, the evidential material will be destroyed, concealed, altered, or damaged. Reasonable grounds to believe requires a high degree of certainty from the officer exercising the power. It does not permit fishing expeditions in the hope that relevant evidence will be obtained or a mere hunch that, unless entry is secured, the evidence may be destroyed, concealed, altered, or damaged. Again, the right balance has been struck here.

With that, I’ll just wind up my comments by noting that the National Party takes the security of New Zealanders very seriously, and it’s a pleasure to note that the Hon Mark Mitchell, who would have loved to be here tonight to speak on this, given his deep experience in this field, is now the spokesperson for counter-terrorism and will do a fine job of that. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

I rise to take a short call on this matter, where it was my privilege to sit on the Justice Committee and to consider this bill, the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill.

I want, first, to acknowledge the victims of the Christchurch attack and, more recently, the LynnMall attack. I, secondly, want to thank, as the chair Ginny Andersen did, the officials who worked so hard to ensure that we had the right information before us. But I want to focus, in my few words, on the submitters, because there were serious issues raised. This is a very serious piece of legislation. I want to join, actually, with Mr Bridges in assuring those submitters that we did not truncate the process of consideration for this bill. It was deeply considered and their words were heard, with the help of those officials. There were intense and robust discussions. We questioned ourselves, but, ultimately, we believe that this bill is important for the protection of New Zealand and the prevention of further attacks. And I wholeheartedly and conscientiously commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Here we are on the night shift.

Nō reira e mihi ana ki a tātou katoa ki te Whare. Heoi me mihi au ki te whānau ki New Lynn, ki a Tāmaki ki te uru. Kei reira te ngākau e rangona ana ngā kōrero. Kei reira te ngākau o te katoa o tēnei whare, otirā ki ō tātou nei whānau Ihirama ki Ōtautahi.

[Greetings to everyone in the House. I must acknowledge the families in New Lynn and in West Auckland. My heart is there hearing the stories. The hearts of everyone in this House are there, as well as with our Muslim families in Christchurch.]

I’m just reiterating the mihis and the greetings and the solidarity that this House has shown to the families in New Lynn who bore the brunt of the horrific attack just recently, and I also remember our Muslim whānau who suffered a terrorist attack just a couple of years ago as well.

I would also like to thank the Auckland MPs who are keeping us safe by staying at home, and, actually, Golriz Ghahraman—I’m substituting in for her to speak on this bill. So it was when we were having the committee of the whole House, I had a lot of questions to ask and a lot of questions to try to really get my head around in the short time I’ve been with this bill, to understand the process of the select committee.

I think it’s really important for us to remember to centre Christchurch and to centre those lives that were impacted and to have a reminder of what the royal commission report said—that the counter-terrorism services disproportionately targeted Muslim communities rather than the threats by far-right terrorism faced by that community, and it’s important for us to hold on to that.

I want to acknowledge all of the concerns of all the various parties that participated in the Justice Committee. I heard the intention. I heard the commitment, and, also, we fully support a justice system that values social responsibility, appropriate decision making, and non-violent conflict resolution. These things need to be paramount, but the thing is: timeliness needs to be important as well so that we get the balance right.

So, for us, the balance has not been struck. We have, generally, three concerns, and we talked through some of that in the committee of the whole House last night. Firstly, the legislation, although improved, may still capture direct-action activists and protests. Secondly, the new planning or preparation offence has been characterised by some experts as thought crime, difficult to define in practice or defend against in a legal proceedings. And, thirdly, the terrorism control order is being expanded to people convicted in New Zealand, when the whole premise of this regime was to be about the difficulty in gathering evidence to prosecute foreign fighters returning home.

All of this can be sorted out but we need time in order to do that, and also a reminder that we’ve got the SIS and the GCSB. We pass legislation so that they will show up earlier, so that we could quiz them as to what went wrong in Christchurch. Why were they watching Muslim whānau, when they should have been watching white supremacists? Why did they allocate their resources in such a way? These are really, really important questions, and we think that would have given us a wider view and a more deeper context to really consider this legislation.

Yesterday, the Minister did talk about the “new legs”, I think he called it, within this legislation, and those three legs within the legislation are legs of motivation, intent, and purpose. But I come from communities that want to know what those legs will do and whether it’s three legs or four legs or eight legs or a whole octopus of legs, what we want to know is whether those legs are actually going to stomp on us. One of the things that we haven’t really discussed tonight is implicit bias, which I think is the PC way of saying “institutional racism”, which is rampant throughout the agencies. Every other week, there is a headline that says that brown people are disproportionately impacted, that there is racial prejudice within the agencies. Unless we get a fuller scope of actually what that looks like, how can we, then, fully commit to making sure that we scrutinise bills correctly and promptly?

This reminds me of a whakataukī, which goes, he kōkona whare e kitea, he kōkona ngākau e kore e kitea—the corners of a house can be seen but not so the corners of the heart. He kōkona whare e kitea, he kōkona ngākau e kore e kitea.

The State has a long history of watching our communities, watching activists who stand up for social justice and the environment, and watching minorities. They watch us a lot, and yet, with all that surveillance, I feel that they still do not really see us. I think about what happened in terms of 2007, with the raids that were directed against Tūhoe in terms of the lessons learnt by the agencies; they clearly didn’t learn them. In 2019, we saw that, because they were looking in the wrong direction. That was acknowledged by many submitters, and, as a reminder, the 2002 Terrorism Suppression Act was passed in response to the US war on terror. So we imported what was happening overseas to what was happening here.

Just as a reminder, people, in 2007, in that action against Tūhoe, there were 300 police who raided houses all over Aotearoa New Zealand and arrested people on warrants issued under the Terrorism Suppression Act. Lives were turned upside down as the police searched for evidence of terrorism. The village of Ruātoki was locked down and houses were also raided in Wellington, Auckland, and Palmerston North.

In court, the evidence eventually crumbled. None of the 18 people who were eventually arrested faced charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act, after the Solicitor-General ruled that the evidence was insufficient. Again, that whakataukī, “He kōkona whare e kitea, he kōkona ngākau e kore e kitea.”

They raided houses in Auckland and Wellington, they locked down Ruātoki, and also in Palmerston North. I know that because my house was one of the houses that was raided in Palmerston North. When they come for us, they come for us at dawn. Sometimes they knock on the door; sometimes they just barge on through.

On that day, I had actually just returned from Australia, where Aboriginal communities had been organising against the northern intervention—the military intervention into their communities. I’ve got a longstanding relationship with a friend of mine who’s from the Borroloola community, and I’ve spent some time up in Garawa country. So as we were over there, as Māori supporting Aboriginal communities against military intervention on their land, it was happening in Ruātoki.

So I came home, and the very next day, I got the knock on the door. I opened up the door, the police were there—a lot of them—and they had what looked to me to be like a phone book’s length of a search warrant. So what happened in that particular moment was—because I had my third child, who was a couple of months old—that the first thing that came to my mind was “I think these people might actually give me a hiding in front of my kids.” That’s what I actually thought.

So they went through all of my stuff, and it turns out that law degree I got from Auckland University turned out to be really, really useful. But, in the aftermath of that, it had a very chilling effect on my community. It had a very chilling effect right across Aotearoa New Zealand.

One of the people that was also raided in Palmerston North, she came to my house and said, “Hey, look, my dad wants to talk to you.” I’d never met these people before, and one of the orderlies who worked at the hospital, I knew him, and I went up to talk to this man, and the only reason why he was in hospital was because he had collapsed as they had arrested him. He had collapsed in the prison cell.

So what I’m saying here is that these things need to take time, and I don’t think the time has been taken here. We need to walk with communities. We need to walk with those communities that will be impacted. As a reminder, once again: there is racial prejudice within our police force and within our agencies. They disproportionately target communities like mine. They disproportionately target communities like our Muslim whānau. They disproportionately target environmentalists and social justice activists. We need to properly investigate and to really pull that apart before we give them more tools.

Before we give them new opportunities, new rules, and new tools to use, we have to make sure that they’re using the ones that they’ve already got properly, and we have not had that proper conversation. We need to have that conversation, as well, especially when the SIS and the GCSB show up, so we can find out what they weren’t doing and where they were spending all their time.

Me mutu au i konei ki runga i tēnei o ngā whakataukī e rangona nei ngā taringa ki Te Urewera. “Ka warea te ware, ka area te rangatira. Hongihongi te whewheia, hongihongi te manehurangi, kei āu te Rangatiratanga.” Tēnā koe e te Pīka.

[I must finish here with a proverb that hails from the Urewera. “Ignorance is the oppressor, vigilance is the liberator. Know the enemy, know the destiny, determine our own destiny.”]

Members, the House is suspended, and I will resume the Chair at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning for the extended sitting. Pō mārie.

Sitting suspended from 9.56 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)