Collins Judith: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
Collins Judith: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:963] 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I just want to answer a few of the questions that have been raised. The first one I need to deal with straightaway is the contribution from the member from the Green Party who as I recall stated that the Supplementary Order Paper was removing the general prohibition for internal searches. Actually that could not be further from the truth. 
I refer the member to page 15 of Supplementary Order Paper 12 in my name which makes it very clear that it does not in fact do that; it in fact ensures that now a general prohibition on internal searches applies to all enforcement officers not just police constables. So it actually extends it. This is the sort of nonsense that I think we have heard from the Green Party tonight and I do not normally say that sort of thing but frankly it is the sort of scaremongering that one would expect. 
I am however appalled by New Zealand First the new “soft on crime” party after that contribution. I say that for a reason. I note that the new member Mr O’Rourke said that they are new members and they have not been through the select committee process. I took that into account when I offered that party a full briefing on the bill. I said they could come along to my office and hear from the officials anything they wanted to know. Did they take that up? No. I guess they were too busy. 
However Mr Chauvel was very happy to come and talk to me about the proposed changes and we brought some of those changes through and we discussed them. They are not everything that Labour wanted but I will say this for Mr Chauvel: at least he came and talked. At least we could talk about what we could do and I think that is a very responsible thing to do. 
That however does not deal with the fact that we will still not agree with everything that he talks about. This evening Mr Chauvel suggested that we might want to change the level of seriousness of offence for which an examination order for instance could be applied for. One of the issues was around maybe making it a 10-year penalty for it to apply. But the advice that I have is that if we had anything over the 5-year maximum it would actually exclude in the business context possession of property with intent to engage in money laundering. It would exclude injuring with intent to injure. It would exclude being armed with a weapon with intent to commit aggravated robbery. 
If we took out the 7-year exclusion for non-business situations that would also take out engaging in money laundering dishonestly taking or using a document obtaining benefit or causing loss by deception accessing a computer system to dishonestly obtain a benefit or cause a loss. That would actually by reducing the threshold undermine the primary rationale for having the powers in the first place. 
But I do take his point about whether we can have a schedule and add particular things to it. There is a reason not to go down that route and the reason is this: this Parliament spends day in day out changing laws. We make amendments to Acts like the Crimes Act. We constantly do so. If we were to amend any of the laws relating to these offences we would need to make sure we carried it through to the next Act because otherwise suddenly these powers would fail. 
That has happened in the past where we have had Parliaments with the very best will in the world going through the select committee and something falls through the gap. I think really when we look at these levels of sentences available they are all for serious offences. So that is why we are not going to support that. But I would say of Mr Chauvel that at least he talked to me about it at least he put it down for me and at least he did not turn up on the night and say that that party like New Zealand First is soft on crime—because by goodness they are now.