Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): This time Madam Speaker. Thank very much for the opportunity to speak tonight. The Government is strengthening counter-terrorism laws to make it harder for people who are known threats to undertake terrorist acts. This bill is an important part of the wider work programme that the Government has undertaken to make sure our laws are fit for purpose. That is why I was very enthusiastic and tried to jump the speaking order and I do apologise for that. I have spoken in this House about the Government's changes to our counter-terrorism framework many times and have outlined for the House my views on striking the balance correctly between the rights of individuals and the need for community safety. I think that this bill does that and so I'm not going to spend a long time on that tonight. What I do want to focus on is just a clarification. Now many speakers in this House in this debate have spoken about the changes that the select committee made about young offenders and I want to just clarify what the iterative changes were at the select committee level before we close off this debate at second reading because it is important that the House is aware of the changes that were proposed and the advice that the Justice Committee took on that. So if we look to the first departmental report which has been released along with these documents we find that the Justice Committee considered the ministry's advice that it had identified that the current definition of imprisonment" in replacement section 35G(1) inserted by clause 8—which the earlier speaker Joseph Mooney spoke about—covered adults held on remand awaiting trial or sentence and young people and adults serving a sentence of imprisonment no matter where they are held. But it did not cover young people held on remand pending trial or sentence or other young people held in an Oranga Tamariki youth justice residence. The reason I read that part of the departmental report is because it gave the committee an opportunity to discuss amongst ourselves and with our advisers what the nature of a control order was in this context—what sort of behaviour we were trying to control and what sort of behaviour would need to be demonstrated by somebody who was subject to one of these orders—and then whether a young person in the situation where they were detained at a youth justice residence or a youth justice facility would be able to demonstrate through their behaviour whether they would meet the criteria for that. So to give you a little bit of context in this a youth justice residence might be an Oranga Tamariki facility like Whakatakapokai in the Manurewa electorate where young people are under Oranga Tamariki care. There may not be another place for them to go. They may be facing charges; they may have been sentenced. There's a range of reasons why they will be in a facility like that. A youth justice and a corrections facility is like Korowai Manaaki which is also in the Manurewa electorate which is by all intents and purposes a prison for young offenders. They have quite different standards of how young people are held in those facilities and young people within those facilities are able to do quite different things. The committee had to consider whether a young person who is held in an Oranga Tamariki residence had the sort of freedoms where a decision maker like the Prime Minister would be able to gauge whether they were a significant risk to the community and whether they needed to have a control order in place to monitor their behaviour. So at first where the ministry was providing advice that there was a discrepancy there the committee was able to test with officials whether that was a change that we needed to make given that in Oranga Tamariki facilities young people are able to do more; they're able to communicate with their families they're able to have different sorts of visits. In the end the Justice Committee tested that quite strongly and we were able to come to a position which was then supported by the officials where they were able to come back to us and say actually there are freedoms that exist for young people in those kinds of facilities so the Prime Minister would be able to gauge whether they were someone who needed a control order in place. It gave the committee a good reason to also test what kinds of conditions would be imposed by these control orders. We have taken good advice on other examples particularly in the UK where control orders have been challenged and where excessive control orders have not stood up in the courts and the committee arrived at what is a sensible balance with sensible controls in place to ensure that these meet our expectations of the rights and freedoms that individuals would expect—but where the community can have confidence that they are safe because of this legislation. That's why I commend this bill to the House."