Locke Keith: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Criminal Justice Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10564] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 Those who have read the commentary from the Justice and Electoral Committee will see that the Green Party was particularly concerned about the confidentiality orders whereby information would be provided to the Parole Board on a confidential basis. We then have under Part 2 in clause 83B subsection (4) of section 13AB: “To avoid doubt anything that may not be disclosed or published under a confidentiality order may not be disclosed—(a) to the offender; or (b) to the offender’s counsel or other representative of the offender.” It is very hard to get any justice in such a situation and to stop people from giving false information if even the lawyer of the person is not able to know the information. That would only encourage people to give prejudiced biased false etc. information to the Parole Board so I think it is a very dangerous way to go. 
It was the National member Mr Finlayson who recently drew a parallel with the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 saying that the Act has a whole section about classified information not being given to the person or group accused of being terrorist. It is very hard to defend oneself in judicial proceedings against accusations if one is not aware of the information available. There is some provision in the Terrorism Suppression Act for possibly—it is not obligatory—a summary of the classified evidence to be provided to the lawyers for the accused. 
One of the things that worries members of the Green Party is that hiding from people and their lawyers information that is part of accusations made against those people that could be very detrimental to their future has now crept from the Terrorism Suppression Act into our criminal legislation. We see it in the Ahmed Zaoui hearing proceeding in Auckland. There are two stages to the hearing around his security risk certificate. The first stage is public source material and unfortunately there is secrecy around that in that the media are not allowed to cover those proceedings even though they concern material completely in the public domain. I have written to the Commonwealth Press Union about that and I hope the media will make great play of their being excluded from a hearing that has publicly available material as the only content of it. 
The second stage—which will start later—of the hearing in relation to Mr Zaoui’s security risk certificate concerns the classified information which will be completely withheld from Mr Zaoui and his counsel. The special advocates appointed by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Stuart Grieve and Chris Morris will be prevented from even talking to Mr Zaoui’s counsel after receiving that classified information and assessing it. They somehow have to act on Mr Zaoui’s behalf at some distance without communicating with Mr Zaoui and his lawyers even though they were appointed by the inspector-general. 
Members can see the complications that are being introduced into our legal system in its various aspects: the Terrorism Suppression Act the security risk certificate procedure and now the Criminal Justice Reform Bill. We do not want to go too far down this track because it gives the State in effect greater powers to determine the future of a person without judicial constraint. In this case it is not just the State we are talking about; people who might be prejudiced against a particular prisoner or whomever can operate in secrecy and get away with providing information that is not tested.