Robertson Grant: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9663. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I rise to oppose this bill the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. I think the speech we have just heard from Simon Bridges gives us some insight into what the problem is here. He spoke for what 3 or 4 minutes about legislation that he himself tells us is significant and important and covering a significant and important agency and he cannot even be bothered filling up his time to talk about that.This is as David Shearer has said a band-aid solution. There are significant issues at play here for our security for our human rights and for privacy and this Government thinks that it can sweep all of the problems—the debacle that has taken place over Kim Dotcom and the Government Communications Security Bureau’s behaviour—under the carpet with this piece of legislation. That is simply not good enough.We do need a full inquiry. We need that inquiry because this is not about just the Government Communications Security Bureau; this is about all of the intelligence agencies that work in New Zealand. We know that the SIS legislation had been drafted. We know that there were to be changes to the way that the SIS operates. Since the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003 was passed the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand has come into existence the Police’s organised crime agency. We know that the Directorate of Defence Intelligence and Security now apparently wants the Government Communications Security Bureau working with it as well. There is an interconnected group of intelligence agencies and for the Prime Minister to come down to this House and put in place a piece of legislation that sticks a band-aid over a problem that he does not want New Zealanders to focus on in the Government Communications Security Bureau and say that this is the answer to everything is simply wrong and unacceptable.It is not just the Labour Party that is saying this. I want to quote from John Armstrong’s column in theNew Zealand Herald from Thursday 11 April. This is what he said: “A full inquiry is needed because formally allowing the GCSB some room to function in a domestic context is potentially a huge foot in the door in that arena whatever conditions or provisos are put on such change.” He calls it “No8 fencing wire sort of stuff” and that is not good enough when we are talking about an agency with the intrusive powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau.Doing this enlarging the functions in this way—and it is simply not credible for Judith Collins and Simon Bridges to tell us that there is no enlarging of the function here; there quite clearly is. Whether or not that is justified given the changes in terms of cyber-security given the different agencies that now operate in New Zealand we simply do not know today. That is why we need that formal inquiry.But it is quite clear when we look into the detail of the language in this bill that the assistance that the Government Communications Security Bureau is now going to be able to provide agencies is “in their lawful functions”. It has not got anything necessarily to do with national security; it just says “in their lawful functions”. What does that mean? What greater powers does that give? Are we moving here away from information assurance into some other kind of area? What priorities are going to be put on the Government Communications Security Bureau? We cannot answer any of these questions because we simply do not have enough information about the way that these agencies interact with each other.But the scale of the change here justifies far more than a band-aid solution. This goes beyond clarifying the law. It goes into how this agency operates. It is very important that people understand what the distinction is between the Government Communications Security Bureau and—let us take one of the other agencies—the SIS. That distinction is that the bureau operates as part of an international network. The assurance I think that many New Zealanders would want is if the bureau is going to be given powers to work with other agencies what assurance New Zealanders have that that information is not being passed overseas. The very nature of the expertise that the bureau is bringing to the table is its connection with international agencies.So here we have a fundamental change to the premise of the difference between in this case the Government Communications Security Bureau and the SIS. That is not a minor clarification; that is a fundamental change in the way the agency works. Justputting a bill before Parliament and saying “This is just to clarify what we’re already doing.” is not good enough when it comes to addressing the differences and the distinctions between those two agencies. As David Shearer has said there may well at the end of an inquiry be a need to change this legislation to take account of new technology and to take account of new threats but it is not good enough to bring this in and not have the discussion about that as part of a wider and fuller inquiry.When I obtained the documents from the court about the Kim Dotcom case one of the things that struck me about the documents that came from the Government Communications Security Bureau as part of those court documents was the classifications on top of each page of those documents. Having worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade I am used to the various titles and names but there were some that I did not recognise and on further investigation they were classifications that indicated that this material was going to be shared with international agencies. We have been told publicly by various people with the bureau that this material would not be shared but that information—those designations on those documents—indicates that it is routine for Government Communications Security Bureau information to be shared internationally. What assurances do New Zealanders have that under this legislation if the bureau is working with those other agencies that information will not be shared overseas?It seems to me that the fundamental purpose of the Government in bringing this legislation to the House is to sweep under the carpet John Key’s role in the Kim Dotcom affair because for all of Rebecca Kitteridge’s report into what was going wrong at the Government Communications Security Bureau the one thing she was not allowed to investigate was the Kim Dotcom case. The one thing that actually started all of this off the Kim Dotcom case she could not investigate. That is because the Prime Minister does not want New Zealanders to know about his role in that affair. We have managed over months and months to drag out information from the Prime Minister and we now know that as early as July last year he was aware of unlawful spying and he did nothing. He did nothing about that. In May the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security raised concerns about this and the Government Communications Security Bureau we are asked to believe did nothing about that until it talked to the Prime Minister in July. What we do know is that in February 2012 the bureau knew that its spying on Kim Dotcom had been unlawful.Where was the Prime Minister in all of it? There is a lot of talk in this legislation about oversight and the importance of oversight. We have seen the most lax oversight of this agency by John Key the Minister responsible for the GCSB and that is why he does not want us to look into that. We cannot have a proper conversation about changes to the Government Communications Security Bureau Act without knowing exactly what went on in the Kim Dotcom case. David Shearer has already mentioned the fact that Australia has had such an inquiry and one of the outcomes of that inquiry was greater parliamentary oversight. I strongly believe that we do need that.There are some things in this bill that are useful around the oversight. The expansion of the Inspector-General’s office to have a Deputy Inspector-General—that is a good thing. We need to look at the clauses around how that person is appointed but I think widening the pool beyond a retired judge is a good thing as well. But what about that parliamentary oversight? In our democracy we need to have confidence in institutions and agencies such as the Government Communications Security Bureau. Public confidence in our intelligence agencies is at rock bottom and putting up band-aid legislation simply is not going to satisfy that.I am going to appeal now to the parties in this House that could stop this legislation and give us the full inquiry that we need. I want to quote something that Peter Dunnesaid in October last year because I believe that he is actually right in what he said. He said when talking about the intelligence agencies “I … believe very strongly that when exercising their responsibilities the agencies of the state must at all times act within the law they are pledged to uphold. In a free state it cannot logically be otherwise.” He finished by saying: “Free societies operate on the basis of mutual consent. We respect the authority of the state because we believe it to be exercised in our best interests. When confidence in our institutions is diminished by their own actions the cohesion of our society is eroded. That erosion and where it might lead is what has me feeling uncomfortable right now.” That is what Peter Dunne said last year.This legislation cannot get rid of the discomfort that he feels because all it is doing is putting a band-aid over the problems that he himself identified. I am calling on Mr Dunne and others to oppose this legislation because New Zealanders deserve a full inquiry into our intelligence agencies to restore confidence in them and to create around them the legal and oversight framework that can balance together issues of national security freedoms and privacy. That is the only responsible course to take. This bill does not take that course.