Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

This Government is committed to restoring law and order and strengthening democracy and freedoms. I’m very proud to present this bill to the House today because it supports both of these important goals. Many of the Government’s initiatives to date have focused on addressing challenges that we face domestically, such as tackling gangs and reducing youth offending. This bill is different because it responds to challenges we face in the international context. In particular, it addresses the growing issue of foreign interference. This term encompasses a broad range of activities but, in essence, describes when a foreign State undertakes or supports activities that target New Zealand that go beyond appropriate forms of State-to-State engagement and are intended to undermine our sovereignty, national security, and way of life.

It is necessary, first, to say that it is normal and acceptable for States to interact and work to influence one another; this encourages cooperation and can have mutually beneficial outcomes. International relations activities, transparent lobbying, and other forms of open and cooperative engagement with the New Zealand Government and members of the public are welcome. However, the Government is aware that some foreign States are engaging in activities in New Zealand that go beyond this and are relying on conduct that is deceptive, covert, or coercive. These acts often involve the use of new and widely used forms of technology and are intended to inappropriately manipulate our democracy, economy, academic institutions, and media. They are also being used to place undue pressure on individuals and our communities in order to control or stifle the exercise of rights and freedoms in New Zealand.

Our intelligence and security agencies report that foreign interference targeting our democratic institution largely takes the form of attempts to deceptively influence policy makers and undermine the independence of our domestic and foreign policy decisions. The agencies report that our refugee, migrant, ethnic, and religious communities are frequently targeted. Community members are harassed and monitored, and attempts have been made to prevent them from developing or expressing views that foreign States consider subversive. Reflecting on these examples, we must be mindful that the important work we are doing here today, and in the future, might also attract efforts to undermine and hinder progress of this bill—this should not deter us. In short, foreign interference is a threat to our sovereignty and security, undermines our interests, and causes harm to our communities.

The bill I introduced today amends the Crimes Act 1961 to strengthen New Zealand’s criminal-justice response to foreign interference and espionage. The bill does this in two key ways: first, it introduces two new criminal offences that specifically respond to foreign interference. Second, it makes changes to a small number of existing offences to ensure that they are fit for purpose in the modern context and adequately cover activities that aim to prejudice New Zealand’s security or defence. The central feature of this bill is a new offence that criminalises the act of foreign interference. The offence will apply to individuals working on behalf of a foreign power. This is defined in the offence and includes, but is not limited to, foreign States and officials, State entities, and governing political parties.

To commit the offence, a person’s conduct must include all of the following elements: it must be undertaken for, or on behalf of, a foreign power; and be covert, deceptive, corruptive, or coercive; and, thirdly, be meant to compromise protected New Zealand interests. This ensures the offence does not criminalise appropriate foreign influence occurring through diplomatic or political channels. Foreign States or State agents that advocate for their country’s interests in an open and transparent manner may continue to do so unimpeded. The offence will also not apply to people who do not know, and have no reasonable way of determining, that they are being used by a foreign State to undertake foreign interference against New Zealand.

The second new offence in the bill further criminalises existing imprisonable offences where they are committed to benefit a foreign power in specified ways. This can result in an uplift in the overall penalty imposed for criminal acts meant to undermine New Zealand’s sovereignty. This offence recognises that some activities used to undertake or support foreign interference are already offences in New Zealand. This includes, for example, intimidation, blackmail, and corruption. The significance of these criminal acts, and the harms they cause, increases when they are committed in New Zealand to support a foreign power. This will now be accounted for in our criminal law. The targeted design of the new offences, along with the additional safeguard of requiring the Attorney-General’s consent to a prosecution, helps to ensure that lawful and appropriate conduct does not inadvertently attract criminal activity.

Turning to the changes to the existing offences, the bill amends provisions related to espionage and wrongful communication, retention, or copying of information. New Zealand’s espionage offence makes it illegal to intentionally transfer information or objects overseas to prejudice New Zealand’s security or defence. This is one of the most egregious acts a person can take against New Zealand and is comparable to treason and other serious crimes against public order. The offence is an important feature of our criminal law, and it applies to acts done anywhere in the world by people who owe allegiance to the Sovereign in right of New Zealand. However, the “owing allegiance” term used in the offence is not defined—this creates uncertainty as to who can commit it. To address this, the bill inserts a definition of the “owing allegiance” term into the Crimes Act to provide greater prosecution certainty and make it clear who can be held accountable for acts of espionage committed both inside and outside of New Zealand. New offences are also being created to address criminal-liability gaps that arise from the use of the term. This way, everyone who owes allegiance can be held liable as a party if they assist others to commit acts that amount to espionage against New Zealand.

The bill also strengthens accountability for unauthorised disclosures of Government information that is likely to prejudice New Zealand’s security or defence. This includes by expanding the scope of entities covered by the current wrongful communication of information offences to address notable gaps, such as information held by local government and Offices of Parliament not previously captured; secondly, making it explicit that sharing military tactics, techniques, and procedures is an offence—this provides certainty for when this type of sensitive information can be lawfully disclosed—and ensuring that information that was formerly Government information remains in scope of relevant offences as it can still prejudice New Zealand’s interests if disclosed without authorisation.

These changes strengthen our criminal-justice response to foreign interference and espionage by providing a means to better hold people to account for committing harmful acts against New Zealand. However, legislation alone cannot prevent this malign activity. It’s important to recognise that this bill is part of a wider Government response to foreign interference, which includes Government agencies working together and with local government, business, academia, and communities to build resilience to foreign-interference threats.

In addition to supporting successful prosecutions of interference activity, these criminal sanctions have wider benefits, including protecting individuals, academics, and businesses from efforts to interfere with their activities or manipulate them to unwillingly support foreign interference. It also will deter people from undertaking harmful and unsafe interference-related conduct. It will assist agencies by enabling cross-agency cooperation and access to a broader suite of tools and incentivising foreign States to positively shift behaviours in response to legal changes. I’m proud to bring this bill to the House today because of what it means for New Zealand as the country as a whole. We’re delivering on our promise to make New Zealand safer and more secure and a place where everyone can enjoy the guaranteed rights and freedoms afforded to them under our laws. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker, and thank you for that. I think it is really important when we come to matters such as foreign interference that we, wherever possible, reach a position which is agreed across all parties and endures. However, any of these issues raise genuine concerns about freedom of information, freedom of speech, privacy, and related concerns. This bill is no different there. The Labour Party will be supporting this bill to select committee. Of course, this bill comes before the House at a busy time, shall we say, with a lot of other things going on around us, and it’s important that we’re not distracted by those from this important issue, which will have a more lasting impact on our statute book than some of the other bills before this House.

First of all, foreign interference is clearly real and, as is noted in the various papers, including the regulatory impact statement, changing significantly, and we do need absolutely to keep up with that. There are instances, noted in the regulatory impact statement, of political figures being influenced by foreign powers. I do think we need to make a very clear distinction between foreign influence and foreign interference and the legitimacy and illegitimacy that distinguishes those. Foreign powers of all kinds can quite legitimately seek to influence New Zealanders, the New Zealand Government, and New Zealand politicians, and they do it every day, but that should be done in a transparent manner and one which is free of any taint of corruption or wrongdoing. To do it in a covert manner is, of course, deeply problematic.

There are a number of things we’ll need to look at, and I won’t mention them all, but the criminalisation of reckless conduct—that is, to say, conduct which lacks a degree of care or is highly careless but not intentional—is difficult. We need to be very, very careful that people who are publishing a newspaper or running a Facebook page, or whatever it might be, who were pretty careless when they were checking out who was funding them or the motives of the person giving them some editorial direction—we need to be very careful before we make that an offence which is criminal and imprisonable by 14 years. I think we need to test that degree of intention required very, very carefully indeed.

Crimes of information, which is what this is about, largely, are particularly problematic because detecting them requires considerable intrusion and search. One of the things that is used by our intelligence agencies and others is warrantless search powers, and this Government has got a certain affection for warrantless search powers, it appears, and I’m a bit concerned that they’re not going to turn their mind to the very question of whether this is essential. Is it absolutely necessary to have this warrantless search power, given the nature of the crime and the way in which it can be detected?

The Privacy Commissioner has expressed concerns around this, and we think those are very legitimate concerns. Having said that, I know, from my own experience of immigrant communities coming to me, that foreign powers do exert influence in New Zealand over local communities. We need to get on top of that, so we’ll approach this in a cooperative manner, but we want to give this a really good working over, and I certainly hope that it gets a good degree of attention at select committee. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to take a call on the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill, and just noting the incredible importance of having an independent foreign policy, one that recognises where we are: we are here in the South Pacific, we are here in the Pacific, we are a member of a nation of Pacific nations. Making sure that we have that regional focus is incredibly, incredibly important.

This bill creates a number of offences, and I guess, just to get to the crux of it, the Greens won’t be supporting this bill. There is a certain amount of clarity which is deeply missing from this bill. There’s the broadening of the offences. The bill does not tighten definitions of security; rather, it introduces offences that are broad in scope, which we have a problem with—offences that are unacceptably broad in scope, including the widening of the definition of “deceptive”, “reckless”, “coercive”, and “New Zealand interest”. I’ll come back to the New Zealand interest part in just a second, but I think it’s important to note that we have had foreign interference in this country as well, and that is a problem, and that is an issue, but we do roll out the red carpet for some.

I note that the Government Communications Security Bureau, or GCSB, between 2013 and 2020—seven years—had a spy agency parked up at that bureau, which points to the fact that we actually have had foreign influence within our sphere. Some foreign influence, it seems, is OK, while others is not. It is our role within Five Eyes which is problematic, noting that one of those eyes is a Trumpian-sized eye, which has more influence over the other four smaller eyes. If we remember the last time President Trump was in the presidency, it was erratic and volatile, so what will the next three to four years be if we continue to move in that direction? Will this bill be holding the US to account; the UK to account? I ask that because, in one of the broad sections, there is a bit about what is in, or not in, the New Zealand interest. Well, what does that mean? What does it mean for something to be within the New Zealand interest, because we actually already have that in some of our legislation? In order to launch satellites into space, it needs to be made sure that they are not contrary to the New Zealand interest.

I put a whole lot of parliamentary written questions up to find out exactly what that was. For example, parliamentary question No. 64705 to the Minister asked, “Is the Minister aware that the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command has a missile defense battery with radar in Israel and if so, will this prohibit further launches from New Zealand and if not, why not?” I also put up another one, written question No. 66157, around BlackSky: “Is the Minister aware that BlackSky who has a contract to supply high temporal frequency images and analysis to the Israeli Defence ministry and if so, will this prohibit further launches from New Zealand and if not, why not?” The answer I got to that particular one was: “Yes, I am aware. National interest”—so things that are in the New Zealand interest—“for payload permit applications under the Outer Space and High-altitude Activities Act 2017 is reviewed on a case-by-case basis.”

Here’s the thing: there is an assessment process where things might be deemed at risk of being contrary to the New Zealand interest, but the kicker is that none of those assessment analyses has actually ever happened. The question I have for the Government speakers is: when they talk about the New Zealand interest, what exactly do they mean? What exactly do they mean? I ask that question because they’ve got AUKUS knocking on our door—knocking on our door—for New Zealand to join. I ask whether it is in the best interests of Aotearoa New Zealand to join AUKUS—I would suggest not, particularly in the political climate that we have in the US, with the uncertainty that they are facing with another presidency under Trump.

If we’re going to talk about foreign interference, and I can see even though the names of those countries are not mentioned in this bill, we have to be even-handed—relationship diplomacy is something that we do well—so that we can continue to do well. That is what our role is in the Pacific and around the globe. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today, I stand before you guys on behalf of ACT in support of the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill, a vital piece of legislation aimed at strengthening our legal framework to protect New Zealand’s sovereignty and national interest from the growing threat of foreign interference.

Firstly, just to touch base on the previous speaker Teanau Tuiono’s notes around AUKUS, they’re not knocking on our door. We’ve not even been invited to join at this point, so I think that rhetoric is kind of somewhat harmful and just adds to that sort of hype—just to keep that in mind.

We’re in an era where global competition and geopolitical tensions are increasingly influencing our international relations. The need for New Zealand to safeguard its democracy, security, and values has never been more urgent. We are facing new challenges—covert, deceptive and often invisible activities carried out by foreign powers that seek to manipulate, disrupt, or even harm the core functions of our society. Whether through cyber-attacks, covert influence campaigns, or attempts to distort our political processes, these activities are direct threats to our national interests. The Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill represents a critical response to these threats, building on our existing legal framework to ensure that our criminal law can adequately address foreign interference in all its forms. It updates the Crimes Act 1961 with three key objectives that will enhance our ability to detect, deter, and punish foreign actors attempting to undermine New Zealand’s security, democracy, and way of life.

First, the bill introduces new offences specifically targeting foreign interference. These new offences will criminalise the actions taken on behalf of a foreign power to intentionally or recklessly harm New Zealand’s national interests. This includes activities that compromise our national security, interfere with our elections, or undermine the human rights of New Zealanders. These offences cover a wide range of harmful behaviours ranging from espionage to sabotage, to attempts to influence decision making or distort public opinion. The penalties for such actions are severe: up to 14 years in prison for intentional conduct, and up to 10 years for reckless behaviour. These new offences send a strong and clear message that foreign interference, whether directed at our Government, businesses, media, or communities, will not be tolerated.

Why is this bill so important? We live in a world where foreign interference is an escalating concern; New Zealand is not isolated at all from global threats. The activities of foreign powers have increasingly targeted our interests. The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service has highlighted the significant risks posed by foreign interference in our politics, economy, and society. Communities, academia, businesses, and even our public servants are not immune from these foreign pressures. This bill is not just about criminalising harmful conduct; it is about sending a strong message that New Zealand stands firm in protecting its sovereignty. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Ms McClure, I wonder, after sort of a year here, we’re ready to start not reading our speeches, beginning to end, but I’ll leave that up to you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in favour of the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill. This is an important and practical piece of legislation. I commend the Minister for bringing it to the House and I acknowledge the hard work of the Justice Committee that will be lying ahead of them.

This is an important piece of legislation because we are needing to ensure we maintain resilience. As Minister of Customs and the Minister responsible for combating transnational organised crime, we have a daily reminder of the amount of interference and the high need of protection that we have. This is about protecting New Zealand’s national interests and ensuring that we have resilience and we deal with the risk of interference so that we can be seen as a nation that is strong and we protect our sovereign identity. Therefore, New Zealand First commends the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, along with my colleagues, welcome this bill into the House as thoroughly explained and outlined by the Minister the Hon Paul Goldsmith in his opening speech, and also in the legislative statement. I also acknowledge some of the concerns raised by Duncan Webb, who sits on the Justice Committee. As the chair of the Justice Committee, I’m sure we will give those concerns thorough consideration for bill No. 26. I fear that within the next hour and a half my facts and figures are going to become out of date. So, with that, I’ll commend the bill to the House, and I look forward to seeing it at the Justice Committee forthwith.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As the Hon Dr Duncan Webb has already said, the Labour Party will be supporting this to select committee, and, indeed, I note that a quick search of the internet confirmed my memory that this work actually commenced under the last Labour Government, and the intention to introduce this legislation—at that stage, not drafted—was announced by the Rt Hon Chris Hipkins in 2023. On this side of the House, we do acknowledge that there is an issue to be addressed. I also endorse Duncan Webb’s comments that, if possible around these issues, it’s good if we can reach a cross-party accord at least with a substantial majority of the votes in the House.

There are a couple of issues for me. I agree with Duncan Webb that the select committee is going to need to look at this issue as to what level of knowledge is required. If the legislative statement uses the same wording as was used by the Minister of Justice in his opening remarks when he said that it does not apply to people who do not know and have no reasonable way of determining that they’re being used by a foreign power, whereas the wording in the legislation is slightly different and uses the words “the person knows, or ought to know”, which is a different wording, and if recklessness is intended to be the standard here, rather than a lower standard, then maybe the select committee can look as to whether those words in new section 78AAA(3)(b) that are being inserted by clause 10 of the bill—as to whether that is the appropriate articulation of recklessness. I think, on that issue, we actually ought to err on the side of civil liberties here, and if there isn’t recklessness, I’m not sure that we should imply intent.

The other two issues I would like to raise are in respect of people to whom this will apply in New Zealand. It’s, essentially, anyone in New Zealand unless they enjoy immunity as a diplomat under articles 31 or 37 of the Vienna convention, as given effect to by relevant law in New Zealand, or their family, which is what’s covered in the next paragraph. Essentially, if you’re diplomatic staff, then even if you were doing these things, you would not be caught by this legislation, and my understanding is that for there to be a remedy for those sorts of people, what the Government does is withdraw diplomatic immunity, and that person then, essentially, has to leave the country. But there is no remedy against people who are working in embassies. There’s another exception if you’re “an enemy alien” who isn’t a citizen. That, by my reading, is, essentially, someone who comes from a country with whom we are at war, and then there’s another exception for children.

In respect of the issue that’s not addressed—oh, sorry, the warrantless searches. If I’ve got two minutes, I’m going to make two more points. Warrantless search powers are contained in section 25 of the Search and Surveillance Acts 2012. The circumstances are limited to a small number of offences, and then there has to be a suspicion that on “reasonable grounds … an offence … is being or will be committed” and there’s a case of great urgency which requires immediate attention and there’s a belief that there is evidence in place—that’s the test. It’s suggested that this particular offence be added to the range of offences that are captured by warrantless searches. The select committee needs to give attention to that and listen to submitters as to whether that’s appropriate. I’m not saying it’s not, but that’s an issue that the select committee will pay attention to.

The final thing is I’m very interested, as we’re going to get submissions, as to what is missing from this bill—and that is that most foreign interference now is actually through AI-generated bots that are using social media channels to influence people and to influence opinions through social media. There’s a lot of media around about this; it’s an increasing problem. This bill is completely silent on the issue. One of the underlying problems in that area of law is that internet service providers, including social media companies, have no liability for third-party content—none. They’ve got no duty of care to prevent it, even if they perhaps could reasonably be expected to be deploying AI these days to work against these AI-generated bots that have been used by foreign powers to unduly influence New Zealand.

I’m interested as to whether we get submissions at the select committee on that issue, because it seems to me that is actually the issue: how can we create appropriate duties for social media, not to kill the internet but to create legal duties that they need to act responsibly?

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I too rise in support of this first reading of the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill. Essentially, what this bill seeks to do is fortify our criminal law here in New Zealand so as to respond with better purpose to the real security threats of foreign interference. We want to build resilience to foreign security threats here in New Zealand, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise to take a call on the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill. This is a call in support, but not unconditional support. I think we all like to think about the idea of strengthening criminal law to better protect New Zealand from foreign interference. It sounds like a very good aim and goal. We know that there are currently gaps and limitations that are being exploited and that the exploitation of these gaps can cause harm to New Zealand and to New Zealanders. It can threaten our national security; it can threaten our sovereignty, our economy, our democracy; it can threaten the safety of all New Zealanders.

There are some other benefits with strengthening the criminal law, as suggested in this amendment. One of those is the cross-agency cooperation and the access to the broader suite of tools that that will bring with it. I reflect on a contribution from an earlier member who spoke specifically about the potential impacts of AI and how having greater cross-agency cooperation and having that broader suite of tools available is going to put more resource and more capability into detecting and addressing the kinds of challenges that AI could present.

The other thing that’s a benefit within this bill is the potential to protect targets from interference—so, vulnerable or unwitting parties who will be targeted or who will provide support without realising that they’re providing support. I think that’s an interesting notion to reflect on, today of all days: the notion of a vulnerable party providing support to something that unwittingly it ends up supporting, allegedly. Also, one of the other good things, one of the other benefits, is to incentivise foreign States to only rely on appropriate forms of influence—so, diplomatic advocacy, transparent lobbying, open and cooperative engagement. Those seem like good and positive benefits to come from this.

I alluded at the beginning to there being some concerns as well. Whilst this is a call in support of this bill, I think it’s worth noting and reflecting on the contributions from a number of members around caution around the scope of warrantless searches—noting also the concern from the Privacy Commissioner around some of the content of the bill; also noting that we have recently seen quite large trims to the budgets for both the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau; so needing to be assured that we have the resourcing there for those agencies and entities to be able to do the work that we expect of them and that we need them to be able to do.

Finally, I’ll just finish by saying the number of concerns that have been raised by members—the things that need to be looked into, that need to be examined further and deeper—is exactly what the select committee process is for. This is really a request to ensure that the governing parties give the full and proper select committee process to this bill to ensure that all of those concerns are addressed and met. Given that we have other bills going to select committee that we know those parties are not intending to support, it would seem odd for this not to get at least the same level of time, scrutiny, and resource, being a bill that the Government is in favour of, as a bill that the Government isn’t in favour of is getting—so a full and deep select committee process to ensure that this bill comes back to the House in really good shape to be able to do what we want it to do, which is, as I said at the beginning, to strengthen our criminal law to better protect New Zealand from foreign interference. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. As the impact player at the end of this first reading on behalf of the National Party, I certainly commend the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill. It will be the 26th bill that the Justice Committee will hear over the coming weeks and months. We invite those submissions. We look forward to the discussion. I commend the bill.

The question is, That the Crimes (Countering Foreign Interference) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.