Robertson Grant: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Referral to Government Administration Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill — Referral to Government Administration Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 08 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12545. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour):Part 2 of the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill is significantly better than Part 1 which we were just addressing. Part 1 grossly—Hon Phil Goff: Everything is relative.GRANT ROBERTSON: Exactly everything is very relative Mr Goff. Part 1 grossly expanded the powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) without adequate oversight mechanisms and in a way that many New Zealanders are very uncomfortable with. What Part 2 does is make some changes and improvements to the oversight of the GCSB and for that we are grateful.What I want to do in this call and subsequent calls is work through the way in which these changes may be useful but in the view of the Labour Party do not go far enough to provide New Zealanders with the assurance that the role of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security is a valuable and worthy one that they can have confidence in and one that will give a GCSB that New Zealanders can have trust and faith in and know the role is looked after. In principle that is because it remains a reactive role. It remains largely a reactive role and a reactive role that still keeps the role of the Prime Minister—or the Minister responsible for the GCSB who has always been the Prime Minister—right at the centre with control over virtually every aspect of the operation of the GCSB from governance effectively down to management.What I want to do at the outset is say that we support the notion of the creation of the role of the Deputy Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. We think this will be very useful. It was clearly highlighted in the Kim Dotcom case that JusticeNeazor was stretched when it came to trying to deal with the issues. When it then came to the illegal spying on 88 New Zealanders the capabilities of the inspector-general were well and truly stretched. We do support Part 2 in so far as it creates that deputy inspector-general role and also in terms of opening up the way in which complaints can be made and dealt with by the inspector-general which is contained as the Attorney-General has just told us in clause 31 which amends section 11 of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Act. Those are useful changes.But there are severe limitations around how valuable those changes will be and that is what I want to work through now. If we look at the proposed new section 5 in clause29 we see straight away where some of the problems start. Proposed new section 5(2) states: “The Inspector-General and Deputy Inspector-General must be appointed … on the recommendation of the Prime Minister following consultation with the Intelligence and Security Committee.” Once again I just want to recap where we have the Prime Minister and the different roles that the Prime Minister has in relation to the GCSB. We have the Prime Minister appointing the Director of the Government Communications Security Bureau. We have already seen with the appointment of Ian Fletcher how the Prime Minister’s role in that process can be abused when the Prime Minister cuts across a process that is already in place calls his friend up tells his friend to speak to the chief executive of the Prime Minister’s department who is on the appointment panel and only one person gets interviewed for that role which is the Prime Minister’s friend and then that person gets appointed.Hon Annette King: And the head of the Prime Minister’s department.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right the head of the Prime Minister’s department as Annette King reminds me met with that person while that process was under way. That is our concern about that. The Prime Minister is appointing the head of the GCSB the Prime Minister is chairing the oversight committee of the GCSB and here now in clause 29 we have the Prime Minister responsible for appointing the inspector-general and the deputy inspector-general.What we on this side of the Chamber are saying is that when we look at the way in which the inspector-general’s function is set up we need to move with the times. This legislation was created in 1996. If we fast forward to 2013 people’s concerns about the role of security and intelligence agencies and the kind of information that is being collected mean that this watchdog role that we are talking about in Part 2 is more important than ever. We actually do have to recognise that things are different than they were in 1996. The public have a higher expectation of the kind of oversight and watchdog role that will be in place.What I venture to suggest is that what should be here in this part is the role of Parliament in this—the role of Parliament. We do have some change to that as under amended section 11 in clause 31 a member of Parliament can initiate an inquiry. But the whole process of the appointment of the inspector-general is one that I venture to suggest should end up being an Officer of Parliament - type role in the long term. That would be the kind of issue that would be raised in the review that the Labour Party has been proposing. My personal view is that we should be moving that role more towards an Officer of Parliament position. I think that is an important step we could take to restore confidence in the role of inspector-general. That is not what is here.We have some improvement here in the new section 5 in clause 29 which creates a deputy inspector-general role but we on this side of the Chamber believe that this role of inspector-general should be considered for being a role of an Officer of Parliament. We know from the roles that the other Officers of Parliament play—the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment the Auditor-General and the Ombudsmen—that those roles are one step removed from the day-to-day process of the Government. That is what will restore confidence in the GCSB and in the inspector-general’s role—if New Zealanders know that that person is working effectively on behalf of parliamentarians who work on behalf of them. That is the direction the Labour Party would like to see considered here. Unfortunately this clause does not go that far. Although we would like to be able to support all of the changes that are in this bill in the end when the bill does not give the oversight and the watchdog role the power that we believe it needs then we will not be able to support that aspect of the bill.I want to go on to talk a little about the proposed new sections 15A to 15F in new clause 33A around the advisory panel. Again it is a useful step forward that there willnow be a wider group of people looking into the way that the GCSB does its work and supporting the role of the inspector-general but again it is a very low-key role. It is about providing advice. New section 15B(1) states: “The function of the advisory panel is to provide advice to the Inspector-General.” It can do that on its own initiative and that is good but again that does not serve to increase New Zealanders’ confidence in the way in which the advisory panel would work.If we are going to have an advisory panel like this we on this side of the Chamber would like to see it have a stronger role. I actually think that if we got the officer role of the inspector-general correct if we created it as an Officer of Parliament then the role of the advisory panel would not need to be significantly changed from the way it is here in the bill. But in the absence of that change then I think the role of the advisory panel needs to be stronger. I want to pay respect to JusticeNeazor but it was quite clear in the process around Kim Dotcom that when JusticeNeazor did his report into what happened in the Kim Dotcom case there were major inaccuracies in the report that he provided. I do not believe he was in a position to play the watchdog role that New Zealanders would expect.This fundamentally comes back to the way in which the GCSB goes about its work. Although we all understand that an intelligence agency has to act in secret for a large part of what it does the confidence-building measures that sit round that have to therefore be even more robust. If we are going to allow the agency to have the powers that it has even under the current legislation let alone the extended powers then we need the robust oversight and watchdog roles to be there. We simply do not believe that the advisory panel as it is constituted here will do that. I am sure that the people appointed to it will be excellent people. One of them has to be a lawyer. Mr Finlayson in future times looking for a new career may choose to take on that role—Hon Annette King: Very soon.GRANT ROBERTSON: Very soon perhaps after November next year he may choose to take on that role. So there will be people on this panel I am sure who will be learned people—Hon Trevor Mallard: It would probably be good to appoint him.GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes. But if they are not given the teeth to actually have proper oversight of the inspector-general then on this side of the Chamber we simply do not believe that that is a sufficient role.Under the new section 15E as set out in clause 33A of the bill the advisory panel is provided with clerical and secretarial services by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. It would be fair to say that if the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is providing secretarial services—if the Henry inquiry is anything to go by—then this clause should not pass because the role that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet played in the Henry inquiry was to ask directly for the records of journalists and to invoke the Prime Minister’s office in doing that.We have to be careful if we pass this clause into law as we would be giving the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet a role with an advisory panel that is meant to be separate from executive Government. I think it is actually quite important if we are going to set up an advisory panel like this one that it has its own staffing and it has its own ability to play its role. Otherwise the perception in the mind of the public will be reinforced that the Prime Minister who has a large degree of control of these agencies will also be able to control the advisory panel. So my view here is that although there are some useful changes that are being brought in by Part 2 they simply do not go far enough and they will not restore the confidence of New Zealanders in the GCSB or in the inspector-general.