Robertson Grant: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9698. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): Once again we have the sight of National members supporting a bill through this House that makes significant change to the activities of the Government Communications Security Bureau and to the activities of telecommunication providers and telecommunication users and we get 1 minute - long fatuous contributions like that from Jacqui Dean. It is a disgrace to be in this House tonight and watch the National Government once again ride roughshod over democracy just as it has done time and again over the last 5 years. This Government’s commitment to democracy is wafer-thin.I want to speak now briefly about the question of the lack of a publicly available regulatory impact statement for this bill the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. I want to read from the Treasury website what it says about regulatory impact statements: “To help ensure that the regulatory process is open and transparent Regulatory Impact Statements (RISs) prepared to support the consideration of regulatory proposals are published at the time the relevant bill is introduced to Parliament or the regulation is gazetted or at the time of Ministerial release.” We are standing here in this Parliament tonight without a publicly available regulatory impact statement on a piece of legislation that imposes significant additional regulatory burden—Hon David Parker: Or a Bill of Rights vet.GRANT ROBERTSON: —on telecommunications matters. In addition to that as my colleague David Parker says for the second piece of legislation in a row tonight there is no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet—no section 7 report under that bill for these two pieces of legislation. These are pieces of legislation that cut to the heart of New Zealanders’ fundamental rights and freedoms: the rights to go about their business without the State intervening in it.We have had the discussion already tonight that there will be occasions when we expect our intelligence agencies to undertake activities. We do need to defend our national security but we do that in balance with the right to privacy with the right to freedom of expression and with the right to freedom of organisation. We balance those things together and tonight this Government rams through two pieces of legislation without releasing a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet and in the case of this bill without putting up a regulatory impact statement.That is wrong. It is against the principles of this House. As a member of Parliament I expect to be able to read a regulatory impact statement and understand what Government officials believe the impact of this legislation will be on those who are affected by it and I am unable to do that tonight. Not one member of the National Government should be voting for this legislation tonight in the absence of that material.I am quite confused about this because what the explanatory note to the bill tells us is that the regulatory impact statement was completed on 12 March. Well where is it Minister? Where is it? The Minister for Communications and Information Technology keeps her head down now because the Government is not prepared to give New Zealanders proper information to debate this bill. This bill has been introduced today to this House and we are debating its first reading tonight. This is a disgraceful display from a National Government that is riding roughshod over democracy.When we move to the substance of the bill my colleague Clare Curran has outlined some of the concerns that are in the public arena. It is very important that we set the context of this. The context of this is a time when public confidence in the Government Communications Security Bureau is the lowest it has ever been. A survey told us that 40 percent of New Zealanders have no confidence in the bureau and yet here we have a piece of legislation pushed through under urgency for its first reading that will extend the powers of the bureau significantly.I repeat again for this House that this is the time for a fundamental review of our intelligence agencies. Yes there are new threats to New Zealand security out there. Let us make sure we get in place the organisation and the legislation that will protect New Zealanders’ security and protect New Zealanders’ rights. How can we know that we are doing that without that proper fundamental review? Once again this legislation is being put through Parliament in this way because the National Government wants to sweep under the carpet the debacle that has taken place with the Government Communications Security Bureau around the Kim Dotcom affair and what has followed on from that. That is not the way to make legislation; that is not the way to take on an issue that is of such significance for New Zealanders.The big difference between this legislation and the 2004 legislation that it seeks to replace is the introduction of the concept of security—it is in the title of the bill—and the idea of national security. The absence of a proper definition of that the absence of any shared understanding of what we are actually talking about is the fundamental problem I have in this first reading. What we now see in this legislation is significantly increased powers for Ministers. Ministers are deciding what “national security” means here—in fact not Ministers but one single Minister. That is a massive extension of the power of what Ministers can do.Members of Parliament will recall that one of the interesting moments in the Dotcom saga was the ministerial certificate signed by Bill English in John Key’s absence to suppress evidence in the court. Well what this bill does is set up a whole process for being able to put evidence to a court that only the court will see and defendants will not see. And who will be making that decision? But one single Minister. It massively extends the power of an individual Minister.More than that the Labour Party over the years has copped a lot from the National Party about so-called nanny State initiatives. Well what is this? What is this apart from going into private business and setting enormous burdens upon those businesses about what they are able to do and the things that they have to do? It talks about an escalating enforcement regime. This is a piece of legislation again that—we do not have a regulatory impact statement to get the officials’ background on this but on the face of it—will increase costs significantly for people in the telecommunications industry. And for what? The Government has simply not made the case for why this is necessary. Perhaps in the select committee process we will start to get some greater idea from this Government about what the case is that it is making here. But at this stage we have not seen that. All we have seen is a bill that increases the powers of Ministers that puts further burden on businesses—and we all know that it will be the users of those businesses who will wear the costs in the end.This bill in its shoddy process that it has come through to us actually does a number of things that I believe people in the telecommunications industry will be deeply concerned about. What it actually says is that the Government Communications Security Bureau now has a role in the design and development of data and voice communication networks in New Zealand. It actually gives the bureau a role in that—a vetting role a role where it could actually stop the development of a network if it believes it somehow breaches this undefined national security. Have a think about that. That is a Government agency having the ability to say to an NGO or to a private business that it is sorry but its network is not acceptable to the bureau. That is the kind of intervention that this bill is proposing.Clare Curran: What’s that going to do to investment?GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right—what will that do in terms of people who want to invest in telecommunication networks in New Zealand? The Government has simply not made the case. There are numerous unanswered questions within this piece of legislation—a piece of legislation introduced today under urgency.We need good strong measures to protect New Zealand’s national security. If we are going to get measures that are durable that requires a cross-parliamentary understanding. We support having good strong intelligence agencies but what we cannot support is legislation that rides roughshod over democracy that fails to make the case for why it is necessary and that appears on the face of it to give the Government extraordinary powers to intervene in the activities of private businesses. That is the kind of thing someone once told me the National Party was all about—supporting the rights of business people to go about what they do without unfair interference. Well that has all gone because tonight what we see is legislation from a National Government that has no commitment to democracy and is obsessed by its control and the control of individual Ministers. This bill is being opposed by the Labour Party tonight. We have not seen a case made for it by National and the way it has gone about it the process it has used has been a shoddy shoddy process and it is making a sham of our democracy.