Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I thank the Minister of Justice as well. I pick up where she left off by acknowledging the constructive spirit in which the legislation has proceeded at various stages through the House including at the select committee stage. If there are two areas of public policy that shouldn't be the subject unnecessarily of partisan debate or interest because enduring solutions are needed certainty is needed and to give confidence to those affected by the decisions I would say it would be national security and it would be the operation of courts and other mechanisms of justice. This bill sits at the intersection of those and so there was no question on National's side that when we saw this legislation was being introduced that if we agreed with the way it fulfilled its aims then we would be happy to support it. Indeed I can confirm that is still the case. Nothing has changed in that regard. We will continue to support this bill and of course along the way as one would expect we have been careful to consider the way that it will seek to achieve its aims. There's a couple of comments that I may or may not have a chance to make about particular aspects that we were interested in both at select committee and also a little bit in the committee of the whole House stage. We had a good discussion with the Minister she and I and a couple of others too besides who were able to just really tease out some of the aspects of how this system will work focusing particularly on the importance of that role of special advocate.Without getting back into those weeds too much then I'm quite keen just to acknowledge some of the basis of our discussion and conclusions that we've come to together across the parties genuinely in discussing the bill. I'm not ordinarily a member of the Justice Committee but I made sure to attend as much as possible of its consideration of the bill. We had good discussions. I see Vanushi Walters is in the House. I know that she was part of those discussions with her characteristic diligence and application of intelligence and a particular interest in the human rights realm to these questions. So it was heartening I think I can say genuinely that the people of New Zealand can gain as much comfort as is possible to hear from a politician saying trust me"—"trust us" would probably be a better characterisation. I think genuinely we've made an effort to balance these things. I will say though because I think it's always fair to acknowledge this is not a perfect institution we are not perfect beings. If it is that the balance has not been struck correctly—or rightly fairly—in any of these particular parts of how the system works then we should commit to have a look at those. So I think it's probably worth making that acknowledgment because these are really serious and important questions—important questions because they touch on very fundamental rights; rights of individuals yes but rights of other individuals and rights of the society as a whole overall. And it was balancing various tensions such as the rights of the individual versus those of the greater number—perhaps one could even say the greater good the common good—and one should always be nervous in throwing individual rights to the wolves when it comes to ensuring community safety as a whole. But nevertheless these are legitimate questions to ask how these things can be resolved to the maximum extent possible. So we also considered the relative weight of international obligations and our own interests as New Zealanders in the context of our international partnerships versus the way that we would conduct our own affairs in this country—ordinarily within courtrooms for example—and how those things should interact. The Minister was right to note in her remarks that this legislation has an underlying theme of consistency with the equivalent regimes of our Five Eyes partners and actually that's perfectly appropriate. We need to give comfort to those who want to help us even as they seek our help that they can do so with assurance that people who provide information to them in insecure settings aren't unduly going to be jeopardised by a cavalier approach to how that information is handled and its origin to be known and so forth. So these again are the tensions that we navigated in considering the particular provisions of the bill. We thought about two rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Minister has noted in passing the right to be present at one's own trial and that of course is a very specific aspect of the "Minimum standards of criminal procedure" section within the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So the balance that was struck the compromise if you will was that a person would have the ability to participate in the trial fully but of course allowing a system whereby a pre-trial hearing to determine the appropriateness of certain information and evidence being brought forward fully could also take place. So again a compromise but in the name of ensuring as much as possible that a person who has been affected by defending themselves in charges on court versus the desire to keep information closely held as much as possible. So another way that the tension was navigated was by allowing some information in the form of a summary albeit not the complete suite of information that is held about a person in their activities or alleged activities and so again we can see the desire to avoid disadvantaging a person as much as possible. This is the flavour of the legislative statement that has been brought forward and it's right to acknowledge those different ways of looking at the world and the different kinds of things that we should be taking into account as responsible legislators. A couple of other comments on the general themes and then briefly on special advocates—the civil and criminal jurisdictions are both covered within this bill. They are covered separately and that's appropriate because we have criminal courts and we have civil courts and different sets of procedure apply to each. But of course it's possible that someone will be facing a civil matter where their conduct is relevant in the context of something that is being said that they have done of a nature that might have a security dimension. I'm trying to use reasonably sort of neutral language which is possibly not as helpful as using specific examples but I'm really trying to avoid getting down a rabbit hole of that. But of course there are also matters that are by their nature very much of a criminal kind of characteristic as alleged of course—and until such time as is proven everyone is innocent until proven guilty—but nevertheless where alleged criminal offending would have a direct connection with alleged or indeed any proven terrorist activities or espionage or the like. So with my remaining time just to touch a bit on that role of special advocate. We talked at the committee of the whole House stage about how that person would be called on to do their job. Lawyers get a pretty bad rap from time to time and I'm not here to defend former colleagues of that profession except to say that there is a great reliance that people who are in a vulnerable situation who have been charged with an offence—they have that vulnerability and they rely to a huge extent on their legal representative to represent their best interests. That's why the ethical obligations on lawyers contrary to popular belief are so important. So it's important that—all the more so in this regime whereby a person might not have access to all the information themselves but their special advocate effectively acting in the way of an ordinary lawyer but with even greater powers and an even greater disparity of knowledge and information. That's such an important choice. Now the person who would be chosen to be a special advocate would be from a panel. So there's not free range for a person to engage any lawyer that they would wish but they would have at least some choice. And that was a point again that was brought out in the committee of the whole House stage. So I think that's helpful as far as it goes. Of course there's a challenge of ensuring we have enough well-qualified expert experienced lawyers practising in this field to make themselves available. But of course that's a challenge across the whole legal profession at the moment the whole justice system and it's not unique to this bill. So we don't raise that as a serious objection to the operation of the regime certainly not to the extent that we would consider not supporting that bill on that basis. So with all those thoughts and reiterating the points we've made previously we support the aim of the bill to have a systematic coherent approach to enabling matters to be heard as fairly and openly as possible in the circumstances. So we join the Government in commending this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I call the next speaker may I just remind members to put their phones into silent mode. Thank you."