Curran Clare: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7947. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well it is a great pity that the members on the National Party side of the House could not do their homework and read the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act to actually understand how the process works for directives and then have a look at how the UK model for a technical advisory board works in practice. It is a pity that they did not put up speakers who actually knew what they were talking about. Most of what they said was nonsense and ignorant and they should really have done their homework.The Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Amendment Bill is a modest bill. I think Metiria Turei described it as a modest bill. It certainly is and I do not resile from that. It certainly does not seek to address all of the issues that Labour had and continues to have with the actual Act. A technical advisory board is a mechanism and it is a practical sensible modest mechanism that has been and is being used successfully in the UK to enable its legislation to work more effectively. It is sensible and is supported widely by the communications industry.One of the main points to make tonight which is rather curious is that it is Labour here that is sticking up for the private sector it is Labour that is sticking up for the communications industry and it is Labour that is trying to make our surveillance laws work more effectively and with the least cost impost on commercial activity in our own country while ensuring that the functions for security law can be carried out effectively.The National Party members claim that this Act is working well. They say there are no problems that this would create a new level of bureaucracy and that—irony upon irony—the select committee process worked well. Well to deal with that one first the select committee process was largely a farce. The National-dominated select committee voted to block the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) from coming and giving evidence so therefore we could not ask the GCSB questions about its technical competence in making recommendations and decisions about decisions that networks make about procurement about changes to the network—about all of those decisions that it now has very wide-ranging powers in. We were not able to ask the GCSB those questions so the select committee in that sense was an absolute farce.Labour members on the select committee asked the telecommunications companies to come back with an idea of the cost implications of setting up this new regime. They did and they were extensive. Just to set up the mechanisms to put in place the ability for the GCSB to come in it was more than $20 million—and that was just to establish these mechanisms. As to whether or not there have been any issues since the Act—well it is security law. We are not exactly going to get reporting in the House on how many times the GCSB has created delays and cost implications but I do know that there have been delays and cost implications.What this bill which is a simple modest practical and reasonable piece of legislation that can go through reasonably easily would do would be to set up a mechanism that provides oversight—much needed oversight—that is based on a United Kingdom model and that works well now with the UK security law. It was asked for specifically by all of our communications industry. It was backed by other submitters. The only opposer of it is this Government which ultimately used this legislation as a power grab to ensure that a Minister would have the ultimate power to make decisions about our telecommunications networks.