Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm a bit sad to see the Minister isn't going to remain in the House but anyway I just wanted to outline the actual process that has brought us to the House today for the third reading of a bill the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill that is weak.Throughout the whole process of this bill we have seen the sponsoring Minister Andrew Little himself get up and make two contributions—one for five minutes and then again today another one for five minutes when for both speeches he had a 10-minute allocation. He didn't even use half his time to speak to the bill. We went through a committee of the whole House—not one member opposite stood to take a call. The Minister in the chair the Hon Andrew Little responded three times to issues that I raised through the committee of the whole House. He wouldn't respond to one of those issues to give us a clear answer and to the people at home that were actually watching the debate.Let me take you through the process of what actually did happen with this bill. The Minister asked me about four months ago to go to his office for a meeting and he briefed me with his officials and said that we've got an imminent threat of Kiwis returning to New Zealand who have been involved in sponsored or supported some type of terrorist activity. I said to him and I indicated to him very clearly in that meeting that we would support him—we would support the Government. There was no problem at all; we understood that when it comes to matters of national security it should be bipartisan. The two major parties in this Parliament should work responsibly together to make sure that we have the strongest possible legislation in place to ensure that we actually can protect our citizens. That's a fundamental role of any Government: to protect the safety of their citizens.I said to him very clearly We understand that one of your coalition partners will not support you." The Green Party in the history of this Parliament over the last 20 years have never supported any legislation that's been brought into this House to deal with terrorism—ever. So he said that they needed us; it was clear that the Government needed us to support them on this bill. The only thing that I did ask was "Please when you take your proposals through Cabinet please ensure that our security agencies the police have got the ability to be able to detain someone at the border." If someone arrives unannounced—because in a perfect world we would have a notification from our coalition partners or the countries that these people are leaving from. Hopefully the system would work and we'd have a prior notification in which we'd have the time to respond and to get a control order—in this place an interim control order—in place. That's the perfect world. We don't live in a perfect world.So if we did have someone arrive at our border unannounced and we had information that indicated that they had been involved or could have been involved in some sort of terrorist activity we needed to be able to protect our people by giving the police the ability to be able to detain that person and we proposed in our amendment "for 72 hours" in which time an interim control order could be applied for and put in place by the High Court. The police themselves—and let me make this very very clear: the police themselves—in the select committee process reiterated several times that the amendment that we were putting up to give them the ability to detain a returning terrorist for 72 hours was a tool that they welcomed. They explained to us and said that it is highly unlikely at Auckland International Airport even if you were to use the Customs department to detain someone—and they can only do it legally for up to four hours and actually even they were nervous about whether or not they had the legal right to do that under their legislation. But even if they did and they detained that person for up to four hours they have to release them. The police said that in Auckland it would be virtually impossible to get a surveillance team in place to be able to pick them up as they left the airport. That's why they asked for—that's why they needed—our amendment to give them 72 hours to detain that person to ensure that we could get a control order in place. This bill fails at the first test.The Minister should not be standing in this House and telling New Zealand that this bill provides the protection that they deserve. It does not and I find it very interesting and I'd welcome the Minister to debate me on this issue—sit down in whatever forum and we'll discuss it and we'll debate it—because he certainly wouldn't engage with me through the committee of the whole House. He made a backhanded insult saying that there was no intellectual rigour to the issues that I was raising and yet he stood up and he flimflammed. He wouldn't address it. To this day he has not addressed this issue. He has not talked to it. He hasn't spoken about the fact that he said he wanted to give the agencies the tools that they needed. Our most important agency the police—the ones that are responsible for this—have told him the tools that they need that they'd welcome. He's completely ignored them. I'd ask a member of the other side to stand up and respond to that and explain why we've ignored it.Now this is the worst thing about the whole thing: that we did put up seven amendments. I did go and meet with the Minister again with our leader the Hon Simon Bridges and we took our seven amendments and we wanted to negotiate. We wanted to actually—we had our fixed ideas around what we could move on and what we couldn't in terms of making this a stronger bill. The Minister completely rejected that. It was very obvious to us in the meeting that there was no will to negotiate at all.I had Phil Goff in my office two days ago. We were talking and he reminded me about the fact that when I chaired the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee we had to rush through legislation—the countering foreign fighters bill—for virtually the same reason. I want to acknowledge the Hon Phil Goff a past Labour Minister of Defence and David Shearer a past leader of the Labour Party because they worked very closely with myself and with Wayne Eagleson and with the Hon Chris Finlayson and they actually had amendments that they wanted to have made to the bill. We worked together we collaborated together and we made amendments to the bill we made changes to the bill right? That's how it should work. That's how the process is undertaken.So what's this Minister done? This Minister has decided "No I won't work with the National Party. I won't"—Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Talk about good faith—that's a bit rich.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry take a call. If you want to say something take a call because I'm telling you now Priyanca—what is it?Hon Members: Radhakrishnan.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Radhakrishnan—Priyanca Radhakrishnan if you want to stand and make a comment then take a call. I guarantee you won't—I guarantee she won't.So this is what the Minister did. The Minister wouldn't negotiate with us. He wouldn't work with the National Party to strengthen the bill—to make sure the bill would actually put the protections in place. He went to the Green Party. He negotiated with the Green Party. And do you know what? Golriz Ghahraman—I have to tip my hat to her—she was saying today that she got everything they wanted.Hon Gerry Brownlee: It was easy she said.Hon MARK MITCHELL: It was easy. She said it was easy. The Minister—the Labour Minister of Justice rolled over and he gave every concession and every amendment and every change that the Green Party wanted bearing in mind that the Green Party don't support bills like this. The focus shifted—I can tell you now—from protecting our people in New Zealand to protecting the rights of a returning terrorist. That's where it shifted. Do you want to know the real crime of the whole thing—and this is a disgrace—is that the New Zealand First Party and the defence Minister Ron Mark who was handling this for their party have rolled over like the Labour justice Minister and they have agreed to amendments that brought the focus to human rights and protections of a terrorist—Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Oh how terrible!Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh how terrible? It's funny is it? You think it's funny. So the human rights of a returning terrorist or someone involved in terrorism is more important than the safety of our law-abiding citizens in New Zealand—that's what you're saying. People will judge you on that—people will judge you on that trust me.So we've got a Labour—Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Be careful.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Be careful of what exactly?Priyanca Radhakrishnan: That some people have less human rights than others—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me. Now look—sorry sorry sorry.Priyanca Radhakrishnan: He asked me.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah you will have your turn. You keep on. You've got another 27 seconds and let's just calm down with the interjections. Thank you.Hon MARK MITCHELL: We've got a Labour justice Minister that has completely capitulated to the Green Party. Instead of working with us to strengthen the bill and negotiate around our amendments he's gone to the Green Party and has agreed to all of theirs. That is a travesty. That is a travesty because the Government of this country have treated the safety of New Zealanders as a trivia—Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Madam Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order?Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Oh no—his time's ended.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Right well I decide that not you.Priyanca Radhakrishnan: That's right. I was just taking the call that's all.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you Madam Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time has finished."