Hayes John: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Hayes John: Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:12964] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I warmly support the comments of my colleague Winston Peters in his address to the House this afternoon and on behalf of the National Party I rise to support the third reading of this legislation the Terrorism Suppression Amendment Bill. 
It has been interesting as we have gone through this debate that two parties have been highly critical of the events of recent weeks. It is quite clear that as I said in the House the other day all of us—all 121 members of Parliament—must support the police the process and the judiciary in this country because if we do not have faith in those then we have absolutely no faith in anything. I particularly side with Winston Peters’ comments and I thank him for those. 
This debate has the National Party’s support because we have been calling for some time for amendments to be made to this country’s counter-terrorism machinery to make it more workable. We watched colleagues in Australia deal with this issue more than 2 years ago and we have watched colleagues in Canada doing the same thing. The issues we are dealing with are quite separate from the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 because in simple terms we are trying to bring ourselves into line with commitments that New Zealand representatives have made to the United Nations resolution process and it is astonishing that it has taken us so long to get this legislation in place. I think the bill itself does not—as the Minister has told the House—extend in any substantive way the powers of the State to act against the threat of terrorism. Those powers are contained in the 2002 legislation and have nothing to do with the legislation that we are now debating and I hope will pass into law in the next day or two. 
The bill streamlines the machinery by which designations of terrorist entities are made and renewed. The current provisions are in many respects unworkable and also impractical. They provide a lengthy process for the designation of terrorist entities under UN Resolution 1267 whereas it is obvious that we should merely follow the lead that has been taken by the Security Council. As I have said earlier in this debate the Security Council is the one part of the United Nations that works effectively. 
With regard to the designations of New Zealand’s own initiatives under UN Resolution 1373 the current procedures treat the renewal of designations as matters that are capable of being dealt with through a judicial process according to the normal standard of proof in the courts. But the reality is that the process of making and renewing designations of terrorist entities must be a matter for the exercise of subjective judgment based on intelligence information. Having been involved in that area and certainly in interpreting intelligence throughout a good bit of my life I can say that those documents would not stand up in a court of law but what we are doing is filling ourselves in on a background and building our knowledge and understanding of events in order to make essentially subjective judgments. 
That material cannot leak into the public domain in any circumstances because if it did we would not get future access to that kind of material. The National Party accepts that the appropriate person the appropriate authority to make and renew designations under UN Resolution 1373 should be the Prime Minister of whatever party. The process in our community is to acknowledge the Prime Minister as the ultimate arbiter in this context. In New Zealand the Prime Minister is the Minister in charge of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and is the elected official who is most fully and regularly briefed on security matters. 
We have some concerns about the way the process has worked under the original Act since it was passed in 2002. Clearly we are not alone in this because David Collins the Solicitor-General—and I quote from a press statement that I have just seen—was severely critical of the inadequacies of the legislation. He was referring to the 2002 base legislation. He said that it was “unnecessarily complex incoherent and as a result almost impossible to apply to the domestic circumstances” of the particular case. In an ideal world I would say that the smart thing to do is to put this legislation on ice while we go back and study the Solicitor-General’s report then sort this matter out properly because clearly people have concerns about the 2002 legislation. 
But we in this House have not had a chance to do that and the reality is that we are up against a deadline. We have to pass this legislation before 1 December because if we do not we will be the only country out of about 196 countries that has signed up to this legislation through the United Nations but has not put it into effect. As such we would be perceived to be the weak link in the chain and particularly a very weak link by our closer friends if not allies. 
Let me say that the select committee process went quite well. We had very good submissions from people who brought all manner of views to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. Submitters said that they were really concerned about the bill because they think it will infringe upon civil liberties human rights and those sorts of things. But at the end of the day we have to maintain ourselves as a cohesive society that is working in a fair way and with processes that have integrity. 
 I am a person who supports the need for strong and effective counter-terrorism legislation. I have lived in places like the Middle East in Iran and in other countries—even Papua New Guinea where there has been a lot of what is effectively terrorist activity over a long period—and I think we have to maintain cohesion in this society by giving the executive and public servants the tools to do a really thorough job in this area to protect the interests of the majority of the community. 
I think we also have to have faith in our select committee process. The committee has worked very hard to scrutinise the submissions made to it and the reports of its advisers. In particular I thank ex-colleagues in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade for doing a very good job in advising the committee. If we did not get this right there would be consequences and I think those consequences could be very very serious for our community. But members may recall that in the committee’s report back to the House the National Party took the unusual step of submitting a minority report to the House. It was an unusual step to take in the context that we were really supporting the bill but we did so for strong and good reasons. The original Act was passed in 2002 in the wake of the terrorist action in the United States. New Zealand met all its obligations under Resolution 1267 and duly designated as terrorist entities all 450 entities individuals or groups so designated by the Security Council but in relation to UN Resolution 1373 which is the resolution that relates to non-Taliban or non - al-Qaeda terrorist entities and individuals our track record simply did not stand up to scrutiny. We are putting that right in this process today. 
As I said Australia and Canada did this some years ago. Given our proximity to Australia—our closest neighbour and friend with virtually a common border between our two countries—we had a responsibility to our trans-Tasman neighbours to have done this a long time ago. The Australian Government has already classified groups like the Tamil Tigers the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade Hamas Hezbollah and other such agencies as terrorist entities in Australia. Clearly the Government of Australia would have done that only if it was seriously concerned about those people. Our community needs to be asking why our Government did not get on to this at a much earlier date. But New Zealand is now on the path to putting this right and the New Zealand National Party is totally supportive of the Government’s actions in this regard. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker.