Goff Phil: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
Goff Phil: Search and Surveillance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:678;Page:946] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 I would like to add my voice to those of my learned legal colleagues who have spoken on this bill the Search and Surveillance Bill and to pick up Lianne Dalziel’s point that it would be a very good thing if this House could pass legislation of this nature which finds a fine balance between the need to give powers to the State to carry out its task of crime fighting and the need to protect fundamental individual liberties. If we could find common ground on this and pass this legislation by an overwhelming majority I think that would be good for the country. 
Clause 4A sets out the purpose of the bill and it sets out the need to balance those two factors. I would remind Simon Bridges that of course this legislation was introduced under a Labour Government. It was introduced for a very good cause and it was not done in haste. I think the Law Commission started looking at this issue in 2001 and finally reported in 2007. There was nothing rushed about that process and I think it did a good job. We recognise the need for comprehensive reform and we recognise that you cannot have 69 different Acts some of them up to 50 years old and out of date and have a cohesive and coherent law on the very important areas of search and surveillance. 
It is because we wanted a cohesive and coherent approach that it is really important that the Serious Fraud Office should not be left as an outlier in this area. The amendment in the name of I think my colleague David Parker is that we should apply the same controls on the Serious Fraud Office as this bill now applies to the police. It is impossible to make the argument that there should be a differentiation. Are the Government members really saying that the serious crimes being investigated by the police are less serious and less complex than those that the Serious Fraud Office is working on? I do not think you can sustain that argument. 
Hon David Parker 
: And the media should be protected in those cases. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: The other issue I am going to come to in a moment which my colleague remarks on is the question of media freedom. All of us in this Committee probably have at some time in our career good cause to resent the media—I probably ahead of many in recent times. But I have to say notwithstanding that that I recognise the need absolutely to protect the role of the fourth estate. It concerns me hugely when a reputable international agency downgrades New Zealand in terms of its record of media freedom from eighth in the world to 13th in the world as it did late last year. That is a bad reflection on what is happening with media freedom in this country and we need to address that. 
There are a whole range of things that have been done—and the Government has to bear a lot of the responsibility for this—as to why we have been downgraded. One is the teapot affair. To have as we learnt from the police today in a select committee three senior officers spending months investigating a public conversation done as a media hype in the election is crazy. But to have newsrooms subject to search to get information on that is something that damages our reputation internationally. 
It is damaging too that the Serious Fraud Office under its current powers was able to exercise those powers against the  
National Business Review 
 in terms of its own investigation of South Canterbury Finance. I do not think that any member of this Committee should feel at ease with the fact that New Zealand is now being seen by international experts as a country that does not value and protect media freedom. So what we are suggesting in the amendment is both to ensure that we can restore our reputation in that respect that the newsrooms of this country—