Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I present a legislative statement on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation 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 Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

This is an important piece of legislation that covers a number of quite challenging areas. The bill as is put to the House will create a more workable and coherent approach to the use of national security information in both court and administrative proceedings. The bill stems from a Law Commission set of recommendations from its 2015 review and implements the majority of those recommendations, which relate to how national security information is treated by the courts, and also in administrative decision-making.

The question that lay at the heart of the Law Commission’s review at that time was this one: what should happen when information is relevant to legal proceedings, but in disclosing it, we might have a deleterious effect on national security interests. This is a very challenging issue, and it has arisen from time to time in our legal history, and there needs to be a way of addressing that. What the Law Commission found is that we have a number of gaps and inconsistencies in our current framework in how we deal with these issues.

The current law doesn’t provide enough assurance that national security information can be adequately protected if it does transpire that it needs to be used in court proceedings. That potentially creates security risks for New Zealand. On the other hand, the current law can also disadvantage affected people who might not know the reason for the decision that has been made against them. This is something of a quandary. The Law Commission recommended legislation to clear up inconsistency in the law and to give all of the parties involved a clear process that protects national security information, while at the same time maintaining fairness and natural justice. The bill that’s before the House aims to achieve both of those objectives.

The bill covers civil proceedings, including judicial review of administrative decisions, and also criminal proceedings. A key feature of the bill is that the court should be able to order a closed procedure when dealing with national security information in civil cases. It will—and I think this is important—be up to the court to decide how to manage national security information and whether the risks of disclosing that information are sufficiently serious to justify withholding it, so there is a serious attempt to achieve comity here and to allow the courts to have appropriate jurisdiction over managing these tensions. In cases where it’s in the interests of justice to exclude that information from proceedings, it will then be held completely, but in cases where the information should still be taken into account, the court would then have the ability to be able to use closed procedure. The closed procedure would take place in a secure court facility, with only security-cleared personnel and the judge present. The court would be closed to the public, to the media, and to other non-Crown parties.

Another key feature of the bill is the use of special advocates in closed procedures. Now, special advocates are security-cleared lawyers who act for people who are not allowed to see the national security information in question in their case, because the court has determined that disclosure of that information would have a security risk.

Safeguards in the bill will mitigate the absence of this for the affected person. The special advocate and the judge would have fuller access to the information, and the judge would be able to direct that a summary of the information is prepared for the affected person and their lawyer so that they’re able to understand the key issues and to provide meaningful responses. The special advocate would have input into the summary, and the judge would have the final say on the summary contents. So, again, we see a reference to the important role of the court and the judge in managing these proceedings. Closed hearings and special advocates are already used by the courts. The bill will create clearer rules to be followed in all cases where closed court procedures and special advocates are used.

The bill does not provide for the use of closed procedures in substantive criminal trials. The bill retains a fundamental position that a defendant would always be present during a criminal trial. However, the bill does provide a new pre-trial process to enable national security information to be used but protected at a criminal trial. The court would decide in that closed court pre-trial hearing whether admitting national security information in a protected form—for example, in a summary document, as previously discussed—is consistent with the defendant’s right to a fair trial. So again, there’s a clear process here to try and balance up the complex rights and responsibilities that are at play.

This process would be limited to serious offences where there is a high public interest in a conviction. The bill does depart from the Law Commission’s recommendations in one important respect. There are specific issues around disclosing particularly sensitive security information that the bill must address. In rare cases, extra certainty is needed to protect our security, and that’s both international and domestic security, and foreign partner relationships. The bill provides for a ministerial certification option to protect particularly sensitive national security information. This process will require a certificate to be presented by the court, signed by both the Attorney-General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Once a court receives such a certificate, it can either exclude the information or conduct a closed court procedure. No other options are available—that is, the case can’t be heard in an open court.

To ensure that these cases only transpire in very rare cases, the Crown would be required to consider the non-certificate track first. So it’s a fall-back only if the non-certificate track is deemed not to be appropriate, given the nature of the information.

The bill replaces existing tailored schemes where national security information is used in decision making, like the Passports Act, the Terrorism Suppression Act, and the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act, among others. This means that there will now be a consistent set of protections and procedures so that affected individuals have fundamental rights—for example, to a special advocate, a summary of the information, and to remove requirements for a court to make a decision on information that the affected person doesn’t have access to.

Immigration decisions sit within a unique context involving a high number of decisions regarding non - New Zealanders that often have to be made relatively quickly, in collaboration, sometimes, with foreign partners. Other jurisdictions also have separate arrangements for dealing with immigration issues of this kind—for example, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. I’m satisfied that the current immigration scheme contains sufficient protections for affected individuals. The Law Commission did consider the Immigration Act regime to be the most robust and protective of the affected person’s rights out of the existing schemes.

In conclusion, the issues covered by this bill touch on some very important constitutional and rights matters, such as the fundamental rights of people to open justice and a fair trial, the respective roles of the judiciary and the executive, protecting national security, and the principles of open Government and democratic accountability. I’m confident that the Government, in putting together this bill, has struck the right balance between those considerations, acknowledging considerable complexities. I look forward to the Justice Committee’s consideration of the bill. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I also wish to thank the Minister for setting out the detail of the bill in so far as is possible with an initial contribution. Of course the legislative statement is, I think, a helpful innovation that this House has adopted relatively recently for setting out detail in a matter such as this where there is considerable implications for national security, but also the rights of individuals. The detail is hugely important. It will be appropriate to consider at select committee, and so for now we necessarily take, at the first reading, a reasonably broad-brush approach.

For National, I can confirm that we will support the bill, at least at the first reading, and I don’t say that in a way to imply that we wouldn’t support it going forward, but the caveat there is that there is a considerable amount of detail. It’s a weighty bill, both literally for those watching on Parliament TV, they can see it’s literally a weighty bill, but also more metaphorically in terms of the seriousness of the matter. So, certainly happy to state up front that we support the intent of the bill, and in so far as we’ve had an opportunity to consider the detail, it appears to us pretty well constructed.

I’d like to actually acknowledge a point that the Minister made around the fact that we are here in Parliament, the legislative branch at the urging of the executive, the Government of the day, making rules for the judicial branch, the courts. So the Minister rightly referenced the need for comity. So that’s a mutual respect and understanding and separation between those branches of Government. In more colloquial terms and in less pointy-headed fashion, I suppose, I could observe that we are not telling the judges how to do their job—it is their job and it’s appropriate for us not to seek to interfere, obviously, with the operation of any individual court case, nor unduly constrain the way that they conduct trials—but at the same time, it is appropriate for us to provide some guidelines for the protection of citizens’ rights and, of course, national security as well.

Part of the theme of what the Government is seeking to do here is around consistency and clarity. So to the extent that we are taking an overall view of the judicial system and saying to courts that they must each adopt a certain set of procedures because then there’s consistency across those, I think it’s appropriate for us to tune our mind to that and to provide some direction and, dare I say it, leadership in that space.

I’ve mentioned that tension between the branches of Government, and I don’t use the word tension in any ugly sense; I think it’s healthy that we consider the way that they interact, but there’s also a tension in terms of the rights of individual citizens and, of course, the power of the State. You can approach that from a civil liberties or human rights perspective, and that’s totally appropriate. You could also consider the power imbalance between the respective parties—and again, that’s a perfectly appropriate analysis—or one could think about the fact of a citizen in a State having a relationship, not only in a general criminal law setting but also here in a national security context, and just trying to understand how we can balance those as best we can so that we don’t sell New Zealand short in terms of defence of the Realm internally and externally, but also, we do not wish to be impinging on the fair trial rights of people accused of involvement in some pretty unsavoury activities.

So the whole bill and everything in this area is necessarily geared towards trying to weigh up those different competing demands, and of course, we’ll do the best that we can in this House along those lines. I look forward to the Justice Committee taking that role very seriously—and no doubt they will—and I acknowledge that the chair of the Justice Committee is in the House and she might well make a contribution in this debate, and certainly, she and her colleagues of various parties in that committee will take that task seriously, along with the advisers, I have no doubt.

In relation to the national security imperatives, I think it’s worth taking a step back as well, and acknowledging that our friends and allies, those with whom we secure such sensitive information, will be interested in our stance on these matters. We would not wish to preclude our ability to cooperate internationally by being too loose within our domestic procedures, because that wouldn’t be in our national interests either; not only—and this is the point I’m really trying to make here—from the point of view of each individual case and each individual matter and each individual piece of intelligence but also that relationship more generally is important for New Zealand to maintain, whether it’s Five Eyes or other arrangements, in terms of information sharing that we have already in place.

How the bill seeks to achieve its various objectives is really in the category of three different settings or jurisdictions. The Minister’s explained these in some detail already, leaning on the legislative statement as well—as the Minister clearly did, as he’s entitled to. I’d note that there’s civil proceedings, there are criminal proceedings, and there are administrative decisions, which themselves could end up in a court context. But these are different spaces, and for those not well versed with the law, it’s probably worth noting that these are quite different settings. Certainly, in the criminal context, we already have a dynamic where the State is taking an interest. It’s the State who prosecutes a citizen, rather than a fellow citizen, so there’s an extra level of State versus individual interest dynamic at play with those ones.

If I can actually start with the civil proceedings, though, first of all, what we’ve got here is the standard closed court procedure that the Minister’s referred to, and the standardisation is part of that general rationalisation, that seeking of consistency across these kind of proceedings. In the way that case law, but also court procedures, develop over time, of course it’s been somewhat ad hoc until this point, and that has been a reaction in each individual case. For various matters that are often high profile and matters of considerable public interest, as well as being interesting to the public, the procedures have developed over time, and it’s appropriate to come up with some standard procedures, and one of those would be the closed court procedure. So this is where we have special procedure orders able to be made.

The suggestion from the Government is that a special advocate, who has a security clearance, would be representing the interests of the individual. This is obviously a compromise whereby, ordinarily, the starting point would be that a person would be able to choose their own legal representation, but to have a lawyer who isn’t able to receive the national security information, whether it’s that top secret level or perhaps lower, is problematic in this case. On the one hand, we want people to be aware of charges that are against them and give them the ability to defend themselves, but we don’t want our security agencies and police and others who are in a position to have to provide this information to be doing so in a way that would jeopardise others or the system more generally.

So the role of the special advocate is a really crucial one, and we’d be leaning heavily and relying heavily on the professional ethics of such people, and I don’t doubt that they would seek to discharge those duties very carefully. I suppose we can take some comfort from the fact that every lawyer already has an obligation not only to their client but also to the court, as an officer of the court, and to the rule of law more generally. So while, on the face of it, it might seem as though a lawyer will be placed in a difficult position by knowing information about their client that they can’t necessarily disclose to their client that they know—if I’ve understood the legislation correctly—at the same time, we already do have in place a higher duty even to one’s own client that a lawyer has, and that might not be obvious to those not in the profession or not versed in these matters. But while it is a compromise, and even perhaps arguably an uneasy compromise, it is one, I think, that reflects the desire of all parliamentarians, I would hope, to balance these competing rights.

I do have a question that’s probably more along the technical lines, and it will no doubt be answered in due course through the select committee and perhaps submissions: whether a person has not only the right to have a special advocate but perhaps the responsibility. I don’t know, and the answer might well be in the legislation already—whether a person can choose to self-represent—whereas, obviously, we’re taking off the table the ability of a person to have a non - security-cleared lawyer. So that’s detail that I think would be worth discussing, and I look forward to that in future stages of the debate.

So just to wrap up as my time comes to an end, I’ve mostly focused on that particular bit, but that is actually across the civil and criminal realms in terms of administrative decisions, standardising provisions that allow for judicial review of and appeals against those administrative decisions, and, again, just relying on general principles, it’s fair to allow someone to have the right of appeal, particularly on a point of law, as opposed to a factual matter. So it’s good to see that there is at least some provision made for that. We’ll look forward to that detail further down the track.

So on that note, I wish the Justice Committee all the best in its consideration, and confirm that National, at this, the first reading, does support the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill.

The Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill implements the majority of the Law Commission’s recommendations from back in 2015. It particularly took a look at how national security information is treated, both in the courts and also in administrative decision-making. The question at the heart of the Law Commission’s inquiry was what should happen when information is relevant to legal proceedings, but also, by disclosing that, it might prejudice our national security?

The Law Commission found there are a number of inconsistences in the law. First of all, it found that the current law does not provide enough assurance that national security information can adequately be protected in the way it needs to be in order to be used in court. Secondly, the current law can also disadvantage affected people who may not know the reason for a decision against them. The Law Commission’s recommendations are implemented in this bill, and this bill achieves their objectives. It’s a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

Hang on. [Removes mask] I’ll get through the first minute getting this off. Apologies, Madam Speaker. I’ve just got to get my hearing aid back in place so I can hear you when you go to sit me down. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

It’s a very interesting place to find myself, speaking on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill, and it’s probably the first justice bill I’ve spoken on in the House for quite some number of years. In fact, I think the person in the chair may well have been the chairman of the Law and Order Committee last time I spoke on a justice bill in this House.

So the bill results from recommendations made by the Law Commission, or a 2015 report. That, in itself, I guess, just shows how long it takes for issues of importance to get to the point of legislation in this House, under normal circumstances. Before saying a few words about the bill, I just want to reflect on the enigma that the Government is when only a minute or two ago we were debating a bill that takes away protections from a few young children—lifesaving protections—and here we are, a few minutes later, debating a bill that puts in place protections for, well, reasons of national security, but for very interesting reasons. The Minister I heard say that this is an important and complicated piece of legislation. The enigma of this is that for nine years in Opposition, this current Government spent the whole of their time opposing every security bill that came into the House. Here they are, taking the high ground, I suppose, and doing what you could only describe as a three-quarter backflip off a springboard and putting a piece of legislation in place that puts in place those types of protections. So you’ve got to wonder at the reason or logic behind some of their opposition to previous bills.

We of course won’t oppose this bill, because we understand the importance of—

💬 Hon Member: Oh, good on ya.

No, same. We understand the importance of, I guess, providing security and giving assurance to our international partners, amongst other things, and international countries that whatever information is produced in the course of court proceedings that might create some security challenges for us or security challenges for our allies or for other people in the world, or, in fact, for individuals is protected in a manner that’s logical, sensible, and as transparent as can be.

I think the interesting issue about this bill is that most of the provisions that it puts in place can be found in the law now. But the problem is they are all over the place, and, as the previous speaker from this side of the House, Chris Penk, described, they are kind of ad hoc and need to be pulled together in a manner that would be different in every case. This piece of legislation intends to put in place practices that are easier to follow and that creates certainty for the courts going forward.

I find it interesting because inevitably we get into matters of opinion. Even in legal proceedings, it’s very difficult to document in legislation something as certain as a process that we will follow on every occasion because every occasion is so different, and this bill introduces a new trial admissibility hearing, or a pre-trial admissibility hearing, where the court determines what process it should take and how the national security information should be protected. That, of course, will inevitably become a matter of opinion because it’s very difficult to document that in law. So, like so many other things that we have coming through this House, it’s going to be interesting to see how the select committee deals with these issues and how they put some certainty, or as much certainly as they can, around the processes that lead to this stuff, because, as my learned legal friend Chris Penk also described earlier on, these matters are very technical and there are also issues that, frankly, the legal fraternity need to deal with and deal with in a manner that this Parliament can’t deal with. So we need to put the law in place that allows the courts to operate in a manner that then protects the information they want to protect, protects New Zealand, and protects our allies where necessary.

So it is for me a complex piece of legislation. It’ll be interesting to see, and I’ll take a great deal of interest in, how the Justice Committee reports this back to Parliament. But, in the meantime, the National Party certainly supports these pieces of legislation because we understand very well the importance of national security; of protecting our borders, our information, and our people; and also protecting our allies and the information they may need to provide at times to assist us in whatever types of court cases or civil cases we are undertaking in this area.

So it is a complex area, and, with those few words, I commend the bill to the House and look forward to the report of the Justice Committee when it comes back. Thank you.

Merry Christmas, Madam Speaker. As Minister Wood said earlier in speaking to this bill, it responds to Part 2 of a Law Commission report in 2015, and it’s a bill that requires us to balance obligations of a fair legal process with protecting our national security.

The doctrine of public interest immunity isn’t a new one. It’s existed for a long time at common law, and it can be part of a well-functioning democracy. At the genesis of the doctrine, no doubt, many years ago the predominant view was that the assertion of public interest immunity was conclusive. However, the modern view is that courts should retain some role in assessing whether the assertion is correctly made. So there are a number of considerations in terms of the appropriateness of court processes and their scope, but also, as colleagues have mentioned, human rights concerns as well. I look forward, as a Justice Committee member, to examining these considerations, and I commend this bill to the House.

It’s great to hear around the House the word “balance”—the need to balance the rights of individuals and the right for all of us to be safe here in Aotearoa New Zealand. The background of this bill is that it regulates how national security information is used as evidence in court. These rules will come into effect when the Government needs to prosecute someone for alleged criminal wrongdoing based on highly secure national security information (NSI) that the Government cannot share within the public sphere. For example, the Government may receive information through the Five Eyes alliance, which they are sworn to protect, and at the same time they want to act on the information provided to prosecute a terrorist allegedly planning an attack.

Some jurisdictions have completely closed court proceedings, where they prosecute someone in relative secrecy and without telling the defendant the evidence that they have against them, in order to protect the national security information. This would breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, which affirms that every person has the right for courts, tribunals, and Government decision-makers to observe the principles of natural justice. These principles involve procedural fairness so that the Crown has no unfair advantage. They include the right to full information and the reasons for decisions being present at hearings, having legal representation, and being able to challenge evidence. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act also sets out minimum standards of criminal procedure, including the right to know the prosecution’s case, to be present at the trial, and to present an effective defence.

Aotearoa has a very ad hoc approach as there has only been a small number of cases where national security information has had to be used. One of these cases is the case of Ahmed Zaoui, an asylum seeker who was imprisoned for two years, including 10 months in solitary confinement after the SIS deemed him a security threat, all the while refusing to say why. The Refugee Status Appeals Authority eventually found the State did not have any evidence against him that he had directed or participated in any act of violence or terrorism. An admission from Sir Michael Cullen, the Deputy Prime Minister during the saga in 2016, said, “I think at the time we in government were too willing to accept what we were told instead of probing behind the true nature of the source of the information and therefore its inherent unreliability.”

This bill is based on a good, comprehensive Law Commission report from 2015, and I note it’s taken a while to get here. It tries to strike a balance between protecting national security information but without completely stomping on the rights of everybody. What it will do, in summary, is create a framework to better define national security information and govern how it is used in any court proceedings. It will replace frameworks under the Passports Act, the, Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act, and the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act. The Immigration Act will retain a separate regime and this is tailored to the immigration tribunal. This is, of course, better than the status quo, because it gives the courts a narrow but better-defined role in determining what evidence is NSI and if and how it can be used, and this will help courts more legitimately understand when a Government may be using illegitimate information.

The following changes are proposed for criminal procedure. There will be a pre-trial closed court session where the judge will review NSI. The court will consider what is necessary to protect the information, and a security-cleared special advocate will be present at the pre-trial to represent the non-Crown party. There is a new pre-trial admissibility hearing for the court to determine how national security information should be protected at trial in criminal proceedings. There will be judicial discretion to allow use of national security information in a modified form, and there will be confirmation that a closed court procedure excluding the defendant is not available at the main trial and criminal proceedings.

The following proposals are proposed for civil proceedings. There will be a new legislative regime to cover the disclosure and management of security information in civil proceedings, and a process for the Crown to make a security information application in relation to a proceeding, asking for the court to make orders protecting confidentiality and security information. The Attorney-General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs are to jointly issue an NSI certificate that certifies that the information is national security information. There is—in my understanding—no ability for the court to override this. However, this decision would be judicially reviewable.

The court will have the authority to decide whether information subject to a certificate is to be excluded from the proceedings or provided to a special advocate. A closed court procedure would be available in all civil cases, and there will be a discretion for the court to dispose of or otherwise deal with a civil proceeding that cannot be fairly determined by all of the options available to the court to manage the security information.

There’s a lot there, and I will reflect on just a few points. The Law Commission recommended that the court should be the final decision maker as to whether something is national security information rather than this being decided by the Attorney-General and the Minister of Foreign Affairs through a certificate. This is something that the Greens agree on. In terms of the impact on tangata whenua it says that it is unlikely that these proposals will be used to limit expressions of tino rangatiratanga or to override the Crown’s obligation to actively protect Māori interests and rights, but that historical events indicate this remains a possibility in the future.

We only have to look back relatively recently to the Urewera raids, which is the most prominent of the court actions to date under the Terrorism Suppression Act. The raids there related to the assertion of tino rangatiratanga and involved the use of search and surveillance warrants through the information involved at the time. It was not national security information. I think it is really mindful to recognise and remember, and I hope that we do take this energy into the select committee process as well—that historically the Crown has been highly reactive to perceived threats against its sovereignty. We only have to look back to the history of the New Zealand Land Wars, the history of Parihaka, and the raid and subsequent arrest of Rua Kēnana at Maungapōhatu. It always tends, historically, to be skewed against tangata whenua, so I would encourage the select committee, when they do this very important balancing act of the right to protect individuals and the right to protect our communities, to make sure that that is a prominent in their minds when making that determination. On that summary, I support the bill.

Thank you, Madam Chair. With this being my last speech for the year, I’d like to wish the House a very merry Christmas, as well as the Chair and the clerks, and I also notice that we’ve got Willow-Jean Prime’s little pēpē in the Whare today. I’d just like to wish you a very merry Christmas too, dear.

I’m standing to speak on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill. The ACT Party will be supporting this bill. The reason why is because we don’t like personal liberties being lost, and we think that this bill actually goes a way to addressing that. Currently, our national security information is handled in such a way that it’s quite ambiguous, it’s uncertain, and, of course, it has also been inconsistent. New Zealand needs the capability to be able to receive information from overseas jurisdictions and respond to that information appropriately.

So this bill seeks to create a clear and consistent approach to the use of security information. The effects of that is that it will actually go about clarifying respective roles and interests of the judiciary, the executive, as well as those affected individuals, and we note that there are several costs and potential unintended consequences, but we also recognise that the regulatory impact statement and the departmental disclosure statement presented measures to help mitigate some of those risks. We look forward in the select committee process to be able to go through and see if we can tidy that up. There are some problems that we’ve found, and hence the need for this bill. The current frameworks have been developed in an ad hoc manner, and this approach has lacked clarity and a consistent protection for individuals as well as for New Zealand’s national security. There is no assurance right now that the national security information can be adequately protected if it is used in court procedures.

So the changes that this bill presents are that when we are in a situation where current proceedings may disadvantage non-Crown parties, they’re unable to challenge the outcomes because they don’t have the full information and won’t get the full information. So that looks to be changed. And there will be provided for those non-Crown parties a security-cleared specialist advocate that will be paid for by the Government, by the Ministry of Justice. So our natural justice concerns can be alleviated there.

There’s also a number of changes that will occur within our criminal, our civil, and our administration procedures so that the rights of the individual align within the system. It standardises the provisions allowing for judicial reviews, and appeals against any administrative decisions.

There’s a series of pros and cons with this bill. Some of the pros, of course, are that our national security interests will be protected while access to information can be acquired by the parties. It may shorten the court time process, which, of course, we really need at the moment, because there’s such a huge backlog, especially in the criminal arena. New Zealand society should become agile to respond to national security threats while assuring our international partners that their intelligence will be protected.

Of course, some of the cons with this bill are that the cost will be met by existing baselines within the Ministry of Justice, baselines that already need a significant amount of money put into them just to achieve their current targets let alone adding new pressures to that system. The strengthening of the protection of the national security information may erode some parts of the principles of open justice, and this is where the debate within select committee will be valuable. And, of course, there will be additional resources that will be needed, for example, to get those security-cleared specialist advocates involved within the system.

So when we look at the pros and the cons of this bill, we can expect that there will be cons when we’re looking at a national security interest in that context. But they have been identified, and they can be mitigated, because it is essential that we do standardise the procedures to protect our national security interests and allow those affected to actually know why.

ACT looks forward to fleshing out the identified issues through the select committee process, and to make sure that this bill is better for our national security interests but also for the people of New Zealand. I wish you all a merry Christmas, and ACT supports this bill.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare, and meri Kirihimete. Delighted to rise and take a quick call on this. It’s an age - old saying that hard cases make bad law. Making decisions on sensitive areas without having a careful consideration of the policies and principles behind it is dangerous. That is why it’s so important that we are doing this work, and I am delighted to be part of the Justice Committee who will oversee it.

It is important that we do this on the basis of the extremely thorough Law Commission report that we have already heard referred to. To be looking forward to undertaking this balancing act and this investigation with the likes of Vanushi Walters, who can stand up and talk about public interest immunity, just talks to the scrutiny that we will have. I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

I call Simon O’Connor—a five-minute call.

Oh, only five minutes? Isn’t it Christmas? No, the Christmas will be that actually I won’t speak for too long. I think there’s a relative comity in the House around this bill.

Look, fundamentally, protecting our national security is a fundamental need of the State, of the Crown. But, on the other side—and I think, actually, other speakers have touched on it too—of course, the right to a proper and fair trial underpins a healthy democracy, and therein lies the tension. But, reading through this bill, I think it is, at this point, striking the right balance. There are issues of national security. The information that is shared doesn’t always have to be in public. And I think, for those listening in who say, “Well, why shouldn’t we know?” it’s not always just the information that the intelligence services have; it’s how that intelligence has been gathered, which in turn can compromise future operations.

I think others may have touched on it too, but we work not just as a single country but we work with our allies—so we’re thinking the likes of the UK, America, Australia, and others. We rely quite heavily on their national security and intelligence operations, and we have an agreement with them not to compromise their work and their intelligence, and we don’t want to do that in and through our courts. So I think this is going to bring about a careful balance, but importantly, and I think, as the other speakers have indicated, we will want to really tease this out in select committee to make sure that we get this right. We’ve come back to this House far too many times with amendment bills by this Government.

But, anyway, to finish, I suspect, having had a trifecta of speeches this morning, this will be my last in the House this year—just in case people were getting excited! But, through you, Madam Speaker, can I wish everyone in the House merry Christmas and a happy New Year, and I look forward to re-joining you all after hopefully a relaxing break in 2022.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take this call and, in doing so, extend a warm and Merry Christmas to everyone across the House. I hope that you enjoy a happy holiday. I certainly hope to see some of you in Hawke’s Bay.

Now, back to the bill. The Law Commission found a number of inconsistencies and gaps in the current law. I note from this that the current law does not provide enough assurance that national security information can be adequately protected if it needs to be used in court proceedings. This creates a security risk for New Zealand. The current law can also disadvantage affected people who may not know the reason for a decision against them. The bill achieves some of these objectives, and others as well, and I look forward to recommending this to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. I just want to echo the sentiments of season’s greetings to everybody in the House this afternoon and to Nicole McKee, who acknowledged Heeni, the pēpē of the House, who’s here with me today.

Now, I do just want to take a very brief call on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill. I am almost one of the last speakers, so it has been well traversed why we have this bill before the House today. It is as a result of the Law Commission’s 2015 review. We are adopting the majority of those recommendations and what is proposed in this bill includes some of those recommendations.

But I do just want to pick up on the contribution from the Green Party, from Teanau Tuiono. He mentioned a number of significant matters for Māori, and so, therefore, I do really look forward to the select committee process where we will be able to look at those more thoroughly and in depth.

I am a member of the Justice Committee. I look forward to Ginny Andersen ushering this through and being part of that process. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to stand and take a call on the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill in the first reading. Can I just support the comments of Willow-Jean Prime—and it looks like her beautiful daughter has joined us in the House today, as well—and just say merry Christmas to everyone. I hope that all of you, all my colleagues across the House, enjoy a happy and safe Christmas, but let’s remember that the people that are actually tasked with our national security are still out there working to make sure that they keep us safe.

So, with this bill, I think that always when it comes to national security we should do everything that we can to always take a bipartisan approach, and ensure that we put the best possible and the strongest legislation in place to ensure that we not only meet the needs of our country in terms of our national security but we also consider and acknowledge those important Five Eyes partnerships that we have so that they continue to have confidence in us and the way that we treat information. The new legislative regime will cover the disclosure and management of security information in both civil proceedings and the criminal court.

For me personally—and we can certainly look into this at that select committee—it is just exactly how the special advocate is going to work, because, of course, it’s important that justice is always seen to be done. So we have to have a high level of confidence in terms of how that special advocacy is going to work inside the court system.

It’s a very good bill. I look forward to receiving it as a new member on the Justice Committee and examining it and improving it through the select committee process, and I’m very happy to recommend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I, just like everyone in this House, support this bill, and I would just like to shamelessly take the opportunity to wish everybody a safe and relaxing Christmas. It’s not often that the public gets to see this House working together, but I take every opportunity to point out that it happens more than people realise. It’s always on the last day of the sitting year when people show their true colours and actually demonstrate that we do get on. So, to everyone here and everyone watching, all the very best.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Security Information in Proceedings Legislation Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.