Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

The bill makes targeted changes to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) Act 1990 so that the Serious Fraud Office can operate more effectively in the digital age. Since the Act was passed 36 years ago, technology has dramatically changed; information is stored in the cloud and remote digital servers rather than on paper in office cabinets. While other legislation has been updated, the SFO Act has not kept pace. The bill updates the SFO’s search warrant framework so that it is more aligned with the Search and Surveillance Act 2012. These targeted amendments will ensure the SFO can move effectively, obtain evidence of fraud that is stored digitally and remotely on online servers, by specifying that the SFO can search a thing as well as a place.

The bill also makes the application process for a warrant more efficient by enabling the SFO director to apply for a search warrant orally in certain circumstances, and then an application for a search warrant can be considered by an issuing officer, court registrars, and authorised justices of the peace rather than only a judge. Again, this change mirrors the requirements in the Search and Surveillance Act.

The bill will also enable the SFO to access necessary services like electricity when conducting a search, and to exclude someone from a search site if there are reasonable grounds to suspect the person might compromise a search. The bill also updates the legal tests in the SFO Act for the courts to determine the admissibility of evidence that may not have been obtained according to the rules. The bill changes the tests to reflect the more recent and widely applied test from the Evidence Act 2006. This provides for a more balanced test, allowing the court to consider a range of factors when determining whether evidence can be included in a prosecution.

I’d like to acknowledge and thank the Justice Committee for its thoughtful consideration of this bill. The committee made several recommendations to strengthen the safeguards in the bill by aligning some of the requirements with provisions in the Search and Surveillance Act. These relate to remote access searches, oral warrants, and the return and disposal of things and documents. The committee also recommended changes to better accommodate digital and remote searches. These are often very time-consuming and require more than one entry into a device. The committee recommended allowing an issuing officer to provide for extended timeframes for executing search warrants, and multiple entries under a warrant, if appropriate. This is in line with the Search and Surveillance Act. Finally, the committee recommended a minor change to the wording around the use of force to update and modernise the language in the bill.

Without legislative change, there is a serious risk the SFO may not be able to hold criminals to account and prevent further victims of the most serious and complex forms of fraud. Ultimately, this bill provides the SFO with the modern investigative tools it needs to protect New Zealand from serious fraud and corruption and the harm it causes. Behind the figures of the millions of dollars stolen through this insidious crime are everyday New Zealanders—workers and retirees—who have lost their savings, and businesses that have suffered significant financial losses.

The Government believes it must act to ensure the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has the tools it needs to both hold serious fraudsters to account and to protect New Zealanders from them. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wish to draw the House’s attention to the date of the original Act here—it’s the Serious Fraud Office Act 1990. I would invite all members of the House to cast their minds back to 1990, except I know that’s impossible for Mr Rutherford over there. It was the year I got married, so 36 years ago, and the world was a different place. I think I sent my first email in 1993 and the World Wide Web—the internet—was only becoming a thing around about 1997, 1998, 1999, that sort of date.

The world has changed significantly since the Serious Fraud Office Act was first put into place, hence the need for this bill to update how the Serious Fraud Office may operate. It’s giving the Serious Fraud Office permissions to operate in particular ways, particularly around digital searches. That’s a very necessary thing, and the Labour Party continues to support this bill. As someone who wasn’t on the select committee, I do note that the bill went through the select committee unanimously. That doesn’t always happen, but this does seem to be a bill that, so far, most people in this House support.

I do want to just raise one issue, though—well, not so much an issue; it’s an injunction to all the parties in this House in terms of the sorts of searches that are being enabled by this new legislation; the new powers that the Serious Fraud Office has. It is incumbent on this House and Opposition parties, in particular, to make sure that the Parliament is held to account—so, speaking to my National Party colleagues over there: it will be your role after the election this year of holding this House to account.

But it is actually all of our jobs in this House to keep an eye on the various enforcement agencies that this nation has. We do need to monitor what the police are doing, what the Serious Fraud Office is doing, what any of the regulatory agencies are doing. That is all of our jobs, and it’s a very important one. By and large, those agencies operate very, very well indeed, and the people in them are committed to doing the best they can, but sometimes things do go wrong.

Given these new powers, we will need to keep an eye on what the Serious Fraud Office is doing and as we pass this bill through the House, I invited members of this House to take up that role seriously. We commend this bill to the House.

It gives me pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the Serious Fraud Office Amendment Bill. I was lucky enough to be part of the Justice Committee, which considered this bill. I want to thank the 19 submitters who make submissions in relation to the bill. A number of changes obviously came out as a result of those submissions and the select committee’s consideration.

In my short litigation career, I was defence counsel in a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) case. In that time, all the documents were actually paper-based, and I think we’ve come a long way, as the updates in this bill show. Records are now more electronically stored and so this bill does update things to make sure that the SFO has the power for the modern world. It also—and I think this is really important—more closely aligns the powers of the SFO with the existing Search and Surveillance Act. I think having enforcement agencies with the same powers is very important.

So, yes, as has already been said, this bill has been unanimously supported out of the select committee and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill as well. It’s a good bill, a sign of the times—where we’re going and what we need to do.

In select committee, we received 19 submissions. I’m grateful to all of those that did submit, including Mr Max Marshall, who submits on a lot of our justice bills and always reminds us that justice delayed is justice denied. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill provides additional tools for law enforcement; it is a further piece in the puzzle of restoring law and order, which is a priority under this Government. I commend this bill to the House.