Goff Phil: Counter-Terrorism Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Goff Phil: Counter-Terrorism Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9360] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade) 
: 
 This part is important for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that it enables us in New Zealand to ratify the last two of 12 international conventions against terrorism. It is important that we do that; it brings us into line with international requirements. We will probably be one of the first countries in the region that has ratified all 12 conventions and that is something we should be proud of. I think Mr Locke would generally support that. If he did not I would want to know why. Clearly we do not want people to be trafficking in unmarked plastic explosives or radioactive materials. One of the major threats to us would be the linking of terrorist groups with precursor materials or actual materials used in weapons of mass destruction. There have to be offences in relation to that. These provisions achieve that end and I hope that they get widespread support. 
The other major change is that the bill gives the Customs Service the power to detain terrorist property. The key thing—and the gap that existed—was the ability of terrorists to literally carry a suitcase full of cash across the border. People who follow terrorist activities or the activities of drug traffickers—and often they are one and the same thing—know that that is the preferred way of shifting assets. We want to get our hands on those assets before the event of a terrorist attack and not allow them to be used for a terrorist attack. That also fulfils one of the requirements under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373 in terms of the funding of terrorism. 
I am against the amendments that have been moved by Mr Locke. He is relitigating a decision already made by the House with regard to the definition of a terrorist act in the Terrorism Suppression Act. The other point that I find quite incredible is his questioning of the sufficiency of the United Nations’ information in relation to the designation of terrorist entities. I say to Mr Locke that he cannot be a part-time multilateralist. Either he is in favour of and stands behind the multilateral organisations or he does not. He cannot criticise others for being unilateralist when it suits them and then be unilateralist himself. Those designations are made only after proper work is done by an international body representing 192 countries and the decisions are often without controversy. Why the member would want to remove that provision from the bill is quite beyond me unless he does not believe in designating terrorist activities and being able to take effective action against them. Equally others of his deletions would stop us being able to seize the assets of a terrorist group that was carrying money across the border. We have to seize the assets if there is reasonable cause to suspect that that is the case and then we have the safeguards to apply afterwards. We cannot do it the other way round because that would not work. 
The impression the member leaves the Committee with deliberately or otherwise is that he deliberately wants to sabotage efforts that would enable us to stop terrorist activities. It is no good to say that we have not had terrorist activities in New Zealand yet so therefore we do not need these provisions. We need these provisions to ensure that we do not have future terrorist activities here to ensure that New Zealand is not the weak link in the chain that can be exploited by terrorist activities and to meet our international obligations. I thoroughly reject the amendments that the member has put forward. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 First off I would like to clear up a point that others have raised about whether the Green Party supports the bits in this part relating to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material and the Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives for the Purpose of Detection. We do support them as I made clear in my first and second reading speeches. If members look at the minority report from the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee that I authored they will see that it states: “The Green member supports those amendments to the Terrorism Suppression Act bringing New Zealand into compliance with the Nuclear Materials Convention and the Plastic Explosives Convention.” The problem I face of course with regard to how to vote on this bill—which is a problem a lot of members face—is that while this part contains that very good provision there are also some very bad provisions. So the Green Party on balance will not be voting for this part. But of course we welcome the fact that we will be adhering to that convention; this is just a normal problem that confronts members in the Committee stage of a bill. 
I want to complete what I was in the middle of explaining about eliminating the provision that enables United Nations Security Council information to be treated as sufficient evidence for the designation of a terrorist entity. The issue is not that we should refuse to accept United Nations Security Council information and say that it is all bad and all wrong because clearly a lot of it is not like that. But when we as a country receive that material as a result of a Security Council decision we should then put our own legal scrutiny on it and ask whether it is right. Sometimes it is wrong. In fact we have had to amend our legislation and we are in the process of doing so—it is in this bill here—because stuff designating terrorists that has come through from the Security Council has been found to be wrong. If the UN then sent out another thing saying it was sorry but it had got things wrong with regard to certain organisations under the Terrorism Suppression Act we had no way of amending our own designations to take account of the fact that the United Nations Security Council had made a mistake. 
We have to interrogate that information ourselves and put our own eyes on it because the process itself is done in New York. In fact the Minister can correct me and explain the court process whereby terrorist bodies are designated and whether they have any rights at all to come before the UN. I ask the Minister whether it is a process where there is a serious legal challenge of the evidence at the Security Council level. I do not necessarily think there is such a challenge. We do have to have the right as supporters of the UN to be able to interrogate any decision. One of the problems with the United Nations as the Minister well knows is that the Security Council can sometimes make wrong decisions because of its unequal structure and the power particularly of the United States but in general of the five permanent members. One can be a very consistent multilateralist without necessarily accepting the decisions of that organisation any more than we just accept and do not criticise the decisions of any political body—for example of this Parliament. We have to abide by the laws of this Parliament but we can still criticise its decisions. 
I go on to my final amendment in this series. It relates to the question of customs officers and the Minister has referred to that. My particular concern is that the New Zealand Customs Service which is not a skilled political agency of the State—that is not its task—is allowed under this provision to detain property not only from bodies that are designated as terrorist bodies but also from entities that are eligible for designation. A customs officer may say he or she thinks some property is from an organisation that may at some time in the future be designated as a terrorist organisation so he or she will snaffle it now. The Minister says that the Government is guarding against all possibilities or words to that effect. But the reality is that if Mr Franks comes into the country the customs officer may say he or she thinks Mr Franks may be designated a terrorist next week because the officer has heard some rumours about him and therefore he or she will seize Mr Franks’ bag. Mr Franks may at that point be the head of a big company. The minute that word gets out that his suitcase has been seized—by the Customs Service not by a political body—on the grounds that he may in future be designated a terrorist his perhaps multimillion-dollar company is banged dead because he is a suspected terrorist.