Finlayson Christopher: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFinlayson Christopher: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 09 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1227. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service): It may be helpful if I just make some preliminary comments on a couple of key aspects of the bill. What the bill does is make targeted amendments to enhance powers to monitor and investigate and to restrict and disrupt the travel of foreign terrorist fighters and other violent extremists.The first set of amendments deals with amendments to the Passports Act. The amendments are subject to a sunset clause so that clause expires on 1 April 2017. That was amended by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee from 1 April 2018. The purposes of the changes to the Passports Act are to improve its operation and take into account the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178 which asks States to restrict the movements of foreign terrorist fighters including their onward travel if outside their home country.Let us take a look at what is proposed. First one goes under the current Passports Act to section 8A. Travel documents can be cancelled if a person is a danger to the security of this country because they intend to engage in or facilitate a terrorist act. At the same time when one is looking at that one needs to bear in mind section 5 of the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 which defines what a “terrorist act” is. So it allows the cancellation of a passport of a suspected foreign terrorist fighter and as I said section 5 of the Terrorism Suppression Act sets out what a terrorist act is.What we seek to achieve under the amended proposal is to clarify and make it explicit that a passport or travel document can be cancelled on the grounds that a person is a danger to a country other than New Zealand because they intend to engage in or facilitate a terrorist act. I say this immediately—I thought I had said it in my second reading speech—and I emphasise to Mr Goff who asked some questions of me that those of his constituents who want to go and defend or provide help to their families in the circumstances he outlined would not engage the cancellation proposals here provided of course that they are not engaging in terrorist acts. From the way he described it they certainly would not come under that category. What we are not seeking to do is what the Australian legislation does—that is declare an entire region of the Earth off limits to our citizens. But it comes back time and time again to that definition of a “terrorist act”. I hope that clarifies it for the honourable member.The second thing relates to the duration of a cancellation or refusal to issue. Under the current legislation—I refer to section 8A(2) of the Passports Act—passports can be cancelled or refused for a period of 12 months. In this bill there is a default cancellation or refusal period of 12 months but it authorises the Minister of Internal Affairs to specify a period of up to 36 months if the Minister is satisfied that the person would continue to pose a danger to New Zealand or any other country. I will not go through the safeguards on the exercise of this power including rights of appeal to the High Court judicial review and so on.I do not intend unless honourable members have questions for me to go through the particular changes to the Customs and Excise Act and the Immigration Act. What I do want to do is say something about the proposed amendments to the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Act 1969 set out in Subpart 2 of Part 2. The first deals with visual surveillance. Under the 1969 legislation the SIS cannot obtain a warrant to conduct visual surveillance. The police have this power and that was provided in the Search and Surveillance Act 2012.The proposals will mean that the SIS will be able to obtain a warrant to conduct visual surveillance subject to the same conditions and safeguards as intelligence warrants. The warrants will be available only for the detection investigation or prevention of any actual potential or suspected terrorist act or facilitation of a terrorist act. I emphasise those phrases because the limitation was inserted by the select committee and frankly I think it is a very good limitation. The strengthened office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security will provide external oversight of the warrants and the bill requires the Director of Security to provide a copy of the warrant to the inspector-general as soon as practicable after it is issued.The second set of amendments deals with surveillance in situations of emergency. Under the current legislation the SIS cannot act without a warrant in situations of emergency or urgency though the police have the power to conduct surveillance for up to 48 hours without a warrant in such cases. Under these proposals the director will be able to authorise surveillance activities to be undertaken in situations of emergency for a period of up to 24 hours. As is clear that was reduced from 48 hours by the select committee and we are perfectly happy with that. After that a warrant must be obtained to continue surveillance.I thought the select committee inserted a number of very sensible safeguards including that the director must be satisfied that the threshold for issuing a warrant is met. Authorisations can be granted only for specific purposes. Supplementary Order Paper 39 makes it clear that only the director can issue the authorisation. The director must notify the Minister the inspector-general and the Commissioner of Security Warrants immediately. The Minister and commissioner can order the New Zealand SIS to discontinue any activity under the authorisation. Importantly no further application may be made for an authorisation in respect of the same subject matter. If no warrant application is made to the director then the director must provide a report to the Minister and the commissioner setting out reasons why it was not done.These I think are very sensible constraints that have been added by the select committee. The Government as was very clear was very happy to support them. When the general review of the legislation is conducted next year there is going to be ample time to take a good look at them and see whether they are working or whether further amendments are required. They are the only points I wanted to raise with the Committee at this stage. I have jumped over customs and excise and immigration but I thought they were the clauses that warranted detailed consideration.