Goff Phil: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee[Sitting date: 09 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1229. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):I want to thank the Minister in charge of the NZ Security Intelligence Service Chris Finlayson for his assurance in the Committee about the two instances that I mentioned—people who might be going to protect their families against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) who might be under siege in Kobani on the Turkish border; and people who are going to fight for the Free Syrian Army for a democratic and free Syria that respects human rights.I have got the Minister’s quote from Q+A. If I could perhaps get the Minister’s attention and get him to listen to this it seems to contradict the assurance that he has just given us in the Committee. This is the quote from Q+A presuming the New Zealand Herald is quoting him accurately.This is from Mr Finlayson: “We do not want any New Zealanders getting caught up in this mess in the Middle East … whether they go off and want to fight for the Kurds or want to fight for ISIL.” The point that I just made to the Minister was that if I were a Kurdish refugee living in New Zealand and I was watching the slaughter of my people in Syria I might just be inclined—if I was of that age—to want to go and support my family there.The fundamental thing that the Minister has the right to object to I think is somebody going to fight for a designated terrorist organisation that is doing acts against humanity and committing war crimes. I understand that. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 2178 says that we should take every step that we can to prevent that happening. I am really worried however if we go beyond that resolution.Resolution 2178 was supposedly the resolution that was one of the reasons for the urgency of this legislation. But I believe that a New Zealander has the fundamental right to travel in other than that very narrow band of circumstances where they are going to aid and abet the commission of war crimes. Yes of course we should stop that. We are obliged to do so internationally we are obliged to do so under our responsibility to protect and we are obliged to do so in all humanity. But the Minister’s comments and the comments that he made in the House during the second reading—and again I wrote down what he said—were this: “The main point is we do not want New Zealanders getting involved.” It might not be sensible for a New Zealander to go and fight in Kobani—they are putting their life at risk—but they might believe fundamentally that that is the right thing to do to protect their people their families and their homes and I do not think that this House has any place stopping somebody from going to engage in a conflict for those reasons.Some years ago I passed legislation in this House that stopped mercenary fighters—that is where you go overseas to kill somebody for money—and I believe that it is equally justifiable under the Passports Act to withhold the ability of a person to travel to do that or to commit crimes against humanity. My father’s generation contained people who proudly went to fight against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War. We are proud of the people who did that and I would not want to see this legislation in the 21st century preventing what a former generation did which was to fight for democracy and for human rights against oppression—as against the legislation here which quite properly would prevent people from fighting for a terrorist organisation committing crimes against humanity.The legislation obviously takes its definition from the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. I regret that there was an amendment to that around 2007 I think which means that all sorts of things could be defined as terrorism. You could define going to fight against apartheid and for Nelson Mandela as terrorism. Is that really what we would want to have in our legislation—that we could interpret it as being to prevent that sort of thing happening? So I do seek a clearer definition from the Minister as to when these amendments to the Passports Act might be invoked and when they would not be invoked because clearly officials gave me the assurance that they would not be invoked in the two cases that I mentioned to the Minister not so long ago.I want to just make a couple of other quick points about the passports legislation. I understand that there may be a reason to need to temporarily suspend a passport for 10 days as is done in clause 7(1) such as where you think a person may be going to fight for a designated terrorist organisation and you want to stop that person. I have no particular problem with that clause.I welcome clarification from the Minister on another point and that is a point that many submitters came to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee about. They said: “You are clarifying the right to take away a passport from a person who is already overseas. This will render people stateless and this will prevent them from coming home. And the best way to help a terrorist organisation is to not allow a person who might have been led into contributing to ISIS to come home and escape from that.” I think the explanation given was a good explanation: this does not render people stateless it does not affect their citizenship and the Minister must—the word in the legislation is “must”—provide a journey-specific emergency travel document for them to get home. I have no problem with those two aspects of the changes to the Passports Act.The problem that my colleagues in the Opposition parties and I had was the concept that we needed to withdraw a passport for 3 years. This was something that the New Zealand Law Society in its submission led by Sir Geoffrey Palmer also had a problem with. The point is this: under the current Passports Act you can already deny a person a passport for a year and then you can renew the denial further. When I asked officials the question as to whether anybody who has been denied a passport—and it is a very small number of people—is now pressing for judicial review or taking court action that might lead them to be able to regain their passport and go over overseas the answer was no. Three years is a long period of time. I would have thought that legislation introduced under urgency and rushed through the House to deal with a specific problem would be limited to dealing with that problem.The one point the Labour Party put to the Government that was not accepted was the issue of whether you actually needed to change that 3-year designated period. Under proper consideration and in the normal course of a bill going through scrutiny and analysis you might be able to prove to me that that is a good thing. But what the Minister could not prove to me—and nor could you Mr Chair—is that you needed to do this immediately in this piece of legislation under urgency. I asked the question repeatedly as did my colleagues why it is needed to extend that period of denial of passport to 3 years in one go after the first year of denying the passport. Why can that not wait until a substantive review takes place legislation comes into the House in the normal way and it is considered before a select committee? Why do we have to do this now? There is no evidence that this is needed now immediately and before that review takes place.I would be grateful if the Minister could take another call and just answer those two points. Firstly why 3 years when there is no apparent need to do it urgently? And secondly could he just clarify what he is quoted as saying on Q+A on Television One and what he has said to the House? I am still left in some doubt as to whether my constituents in the circumstances I have explained would actually be able to leave countries overseas given the transcript of what he said on Q+A.