Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Chair. Look I take issue with what the Minister is trying to explain away there. I think the Minister really needs to take to his feet again and actually explain to this committee given we're doing this under urgency why a National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) officer should have greater powers than a police officer. The police are our principal law enforcement body. I have been looking at the Search and Surveillance Act this morning and the police are very very limited in what they can do without a warrant. They can enter a property if they have reason to suspect someone is unlawfully at large in that property. They can enter a property and take action if they have got reason to believe that there could be injury to people or destruction of property. But they don't have the right to enter a property without a warrant just to sniff around. Now the NAIT officials get that but the Minister has not explained to this committee why NAIT officers should have greater powers than a police officer does because there's simply no justification for it.The other thing which is new—absolutely new—is this: given the Minister wants to give these greater powers to NAIT officials why is it that he feels there should be no check or balance or reporting on their exercising of warrantless seizure or warrantless search?Hon Gerry Brownlee: Who has to?BRETT HUDSON: Well thank you Mr Brownlee. As a new member in this House in 2014 the very first select committee I had the privilege to sit on under urgency was the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee considering a bill under urgency to give greater surveillance powers to the State surveillance agents: the GCSB and the SIS. That was a fraught bill. Members of the then Opposition fought quite strongly against extending powers to the State security apparatus—fought strongly against it. So provisions were included in that bill that if those security agencies who are there to protect the lives of New Zealanders—that for them is an issue of national security and the potential for terrorist activity in New Zealand to damage property and to take the life of New Zealand citizens and indeed visitors to this country is hugely serious. The provisions in that bill require that if there is warrantless surveillance the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security must undertake an assessment and report back if that warrantless power was exercised appropriately under that bill. So where Minister are the provisions in this so-called technical change? Where are your provisions you're proposing so that New Zealanders can know that Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) officials and NAIT officials exercised appropriately that warrantless huge power you want to give them that the conditions and circumstances were right and that they exercised that power to an extent that was appropriate for those circumstances but they went no further than they needed to and that the New Zealand public can therefore have confidence?Particularly I want you Minister to justify for New Zealanders and to this committee why if we require that sort of assessment and report for matters of national security and the potential loss of life we do not require that sort of oversight and reporting for something that is truly important—and we accept that—but certainly cannot be compared against an act of terrorism that could take wholesale numbers of lives of our citizens and visitors to this country. So I am very keen—very keen—for the Minister to find a way to persuade members in this committee. I am keen for him firstly to inform us and secondly to persuade us of the rationale to give such sweeping rights of access and seizure to MPI officials when we very carefully—and that Minister was a member of that Opposition—considered for our intelligence apparatus how we would limit those powers for them to make sure that New Zealanders could have confidence that the surveillance activities on them and in their country would always be used and observed with the sorts of protections for New Zealanders' rights and privacy that they demand and expect.So Minister take to your feet and tell us all why NAIT officials should have greater powers than our security intelligence services.