Gosche Mark: Aviation Security Legislation Bill — First Reading 
Gosche Mark: Aviation Security Legislation Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:638;Page:8109] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I look forward to the Aviation Security Legislation Bill coming to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. I am pleased to hear from the previous speaker the Hon Maurice Williamson that the National Party will be supporting it. 
I would imagine that every party in the House will look at this bill and ask the question why—as most New Zealanders will. It is important to explain as the Minister for Transport Safety did in his speech why we have to take steps in legislation that hopefully will never have to be implemented. It is largely because of the international scene in which we operate. Although New Zealand is perceived by most people to be a very safe place to live in a very safe place to visit and a very safe place in which to fly it is necessary to take account of the laws that apply internationally particularly if we want to be able to fly to other parts of the world that are less safe. As people line up at the security checks at Auckland International Airport or at other international airports throughout New Zealand they may wonder why they are have to do so as they did when we first implemented screening. The reason is largely so that the planes they get on can land somewhere. That is the difficulty of the environment internationally we now operate in. 
The legislation talks about enabling foreign inflight security officers to enter and depart New Zealand and enabling New Zealand to deploy inflight security officers should the Government decide to do so in the future. But it is important to note that provisos sit alongside that. In fact if we ever reach that stage such a step will require full Cabinet approval. I think that is a very good thing because in the past I have heard in this House and in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee from airline pilots organisations in New Zealand that pilots are very reticent about this step—and rightly so. They get into those planes every day as we go to work here and they want to go home at the end of the day just like we do. They are very wary of the idea of having security people in the air with them because of the potential difficulties that that could entail—and nobody needs to have those spelt out to them. I am sure the select committee will hear such views take them into account and consider what is probably the most significant change in New Zealand legislation and aviation security for a very very long time. 
As the Hon Maurice Williamson pointed out the other matters need to be in law and need to be clarified. The Minister has pointed out that there is some lack of clarity around the carriage of certain items that at the moment we could very easily describe as dangerous goods such as firearms and traditional weapons. But we are getting into other areas where people might carry something else that on a sports field would be considered quite normal but on an aeroplane could be used as a weapon. These things need to be more clearly defined in law. 
We all sit here with some trepidation in terms of passing such legislation asking ourselves why we need to and why it is necessary in a safe little country like New Zealand so far away from the rest of the world. We have to answer that question very simply by explaining to the New Zealand public that many parts of the world now will just not allow aeroplanes to touch down—whether they are aeroplanes flown by Air New Zealand or by airlines that have passed through New Zealand and are going on to another part of the world carrying visitors and tourists. 
It is a plain simple and awful fact that we have to abide by these international standards. We need legislation that copes with the international standards if we are to be part of the global economy. Of course tourism in New Zealand is a massive earner of income. It is a huge employer of people and we have to ensure that tourists are able to fly to New Zealand as they do now and not get held up by the fact that in our own laws we have not sufficiently guarded against danger and have not sufficiently satisfied our trading partners in other parts of the world that allow our planes or planes transiting through New Zealand to land. 
I look forward to what I think will be an interesting round of public submissions on this bill. It raises some very interesting and important matters of civil rights— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Are you going to write to any terrorist organisations seeking their views on the matter? 
Hon MARK GOSCHE 
: I would not be sure about who will make those submissions but we will probably have the security guards checking them as they come through the door as we do already. Seriously I know that a lot of people will be looking at this legislation very carefully wanting to be sure that New Zealand has to pass this law. I think that will be an important aspect for the select committee to consider and I am looking forward to being part of that process as the chair of that committee.