Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) (remote): Thank you Madam Speaker. And thank you for being chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee that heard this by the way. We don't often get legislation come through the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee so I think it's obvious the excitement that we all had going forward.This bill is one that seeks to address some important issues or to address some important problems that we see happen on the high seas. I think most New Zealanders would actually be surprised but should know that New Zealand is responsible for monitoring a fifth of the world's oceans. So it makes sense that we would want to have the right tools to identify serious criminal activity and to give them to our people who are responsible for that monitoring to address them appropriately.So we monitor a fifth of the world's oceans for environmental degradation for disaster relief and criminal activities like what this bill seeks to address. The types of activities—and everyone has referred to them—are serious: it's people trafficking it's human slavery and—for the Green party obviously very importantly—the trafficking of rare species. Illegal trafficking of either New Zealand's taonga species or other rare and endangered species into New Zealand for profit. We know that drug trafficking in an uncontrolled way is happening increasingly and that's a huge problem for our small island nation as well as for the island nations in our Pacific community.But it's not enough in terms of lawmaking to identify a problem and to seek to stop it—that is the criminal justice system by the way. There's an agreement by society more or less that things like murder violent offending and property crimes are bad. But the way that we address them—in applying the rule of law in applying a sanctions regime in applying a search and surveillance regime that abides by our other values and upholds the rule of law—is a different thing altogether. That's where this bill fails.So yes we did hear from hear from the Law Society. We heard from naval law experts. We heard from experts who supported the spirit of this bill but did raise serious issues with the way it sought to address them in terms of the search powers. So this bill replicates the search and surveillance powers of the Search and Surveillance Act. That was a law that came in under the previous National Government. We've now had years and years of looking at the way that the warrantless search powers in that law have in practice been used to degrade our right to be free from arbitrary search and seizure. They've been replicated in the Misuse of Drugs Act and in the Arms Act. Similarly the courts have found that it has meant that without judicial oversight without an obligation to seek a warrant low and behold there is more chance that the basic New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights—rights to be free from unlawful search and seizure and unreasonable search and seizure—will be degraded.Now this bill actually goes further than that in that it doesn't allow in any circumstances for there to be judicial oversight of searches. So whilst the police have to exercise the power to search without a warrant in cases where there isn't time to seek one this bill specifically excludes even that possibility. This was pointed out to us repeatedly by the Law Society and by a naval legal expert that came long and said there are actually a lot of types of circumstances on the high seas where you can know that you're going to want to search a vessel and it is always best practice to be able to say there will be accountability and oversight and rule of law when that is about to happen. This bill excludes that.So yes the ministry that put it together says that it abides by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. But we know that in practice these types of search powers do lessen the likelihood of compliance with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights and in this case even beyond that. We don't have a case for even applying judicial oversight or abiding by rights if there is time and capacity to do so. As the Hon Gerry Brownlee has pointed out it even extends the powers to groups of people who are not normally using search and surveillance powers. So again the risk is multiplied.I think as lawmakers we have a responsibility here to identify serious problems and endeavour to address them. But to have a knee-jerk reaction that weakens the rule of law weakens our New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in practice is not good lawmaking. So for those reasons the Green Party will not be supporting this bill. Thank you.