Chauvel Charles: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
Chauvel Charles: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:962] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to take another call on Part 2 because what I want to do is just finish briefly the point that I was making earlier and it has just actually been reinforced by Tim Macindoe. The point about the orders regime in this part is as he says that it involves going to the court and applying for an order from a judge that somebody ought to be compelled to do something. A judge is going to have to think very very carefully about issuing a compulsive order because obviously when you think about the consequences of defying a compulsive order in these circumstances they are extreme. 
There are safeguards and there is a judicial procedure and that is the very point that I was trying to make in response to Dr Jackie Blue’s contribution. Those safeguards just do not exist in respect of the Serious Fraud Office regime and I just would like some indication if it is possible that that is understood on the other side of the Chamber because we are not saying the regime proposed by this Search and Surveillance Bill is wrong. We are not saying— 
Denis O’Rourke 
: Yes we are! 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Well some people may be; the Labour Opposition is not. What we are saying—as the Minister of Justice knows because I have said it to her myself—is that there is an insufficiently broad and comprehensive regime here because it is very obvious that one agency remains outside it. It is not good enough frankly to say “Well it’s all OK because the regime’s protective.” It is protective but the Serious Fraud Office is outside it and until it is actually included that is a problem. 
David Parker has amendments that he has spoken to. I think he spoke quite eloquently about the consequences of being compelled to produce a document or to forgo the right to silence. What he has done through proposed amendments to clauses 31 33 37 38 and 40 is simply apply the regime with all the protections that Dr Blue described and that Tim Macindoe was speaking about to the Serious Fraud Office’s exercise of powers. We have simply taken the time to go through the bill and to work out how it is that you would bring the Serious Fraud Office in and it is actually not a complicated exercise. As I said in my earlier contribution the Standing Orders now do not bar it—and that has been throughout the correspondence with Simon Power and with Judith Collins the reason advanced largely for not doing it in this bill. So again I simply ask that Government members turn their mind to the problem that we are going to be left with if we do not use this opportunity. 
I have amendments that address some issues in this part as well. Again they deal with an issue that I have talked to the Minister about and that is whether or not having a 5 and a 7-year threshold in respect of the orders that can be given either in a business or a non-business context is sufficient. I have suggested a couple of solutions. One is that the Minister might have a power where she could specify offences that were sufficiently serious they could go in the schedule to the Act and we could have a look at them at the Regulations Review Committee so there would be parliamentary scrutiny of the proposals rather than having this blunt instrument of basically a numerical test—5 or 7 years it is in otherwise it is not. 
One of the other proposals which was advanced by David Parker in the correspondence then by me and which I put up by way of amendment is to raise the threshold to 10 years. What I want to say is that I have had a look at the Crimes Act in this regard. There is in New Zealand a technique that is used with sentencing. If you have a look at for example perjury—the sort of offence you might want to have included—for very serious perjury in respect of an offence punishable by over 3 years of imprisonment punishment is 14 years. For lesser perjury it is 7 years for mere false oaths it is 5 years for judicial corruption under section 100 it is 14 years but for simply trying to corrupt a registrar or a non-sworn officer with tenure it is 7 years. 
Likewise for Ministers of the Crown it is 14 years and for mere MPs or officials 7 years. So this is the way in which we have crafted our sentencing science if you like. And what I am asking is for the Minister to consider this sort of flexibility.