Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. Like others who have spoken in the debate so far I have enjoyed the contributions across the House. Others have noted the importance of a nonpartisan approach—I join those who on this side of the House starting with the Hon Mark Mitchell and flowing through all of our contributions and those from the other side of the House starting with the Minister of Justice herself and others from other parties too noted the importance of that. So I just add my acknowledgment and thanks to the Minister for engaging with us at an early stage of the process. I think it's a sensible thing to do actually—frankly it's the practical thing—but it's also the right thing to have done.So our support extends not only to the bill itself in terms of the substance of what it is looking to achieve but also in terms of process. So the Minister has flagged that a relatively short process will be undertaken—or that she'll be proposing to the House that the select committee examine the bill for four months. It's not indecently short and there will be plenty of opportunity for the Justice Committee to do its work examining the particular provisions of the bill hearing from members of the public expert and non-expert alike and that's appropriate. Too long a time frame would cause difficulties in relation to a particular designation that has already been made. Not to put too fine a point on it others have referred to not only the events of March 15 2019—tragic as they were obviously—but also the particular implications in terms of a person who is currently incarcerated as a result of that day's actions.Others have spoken about the two different main aspects of the counter-terrorism legislation: the designation of terrorist entities and the control orders. If time allows I might offer a couple of thoughts in that regard as well but I won't repeat that material for the sake of it.I'd actually rather go ahead to considering the question of how this bill might be considered to be consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (BORA). Others have of course spoken in that space already either explicitly so or in more general terms and it's right that others across the House again from all parties have acknowledged the need for balance and of course that's often a useful way of looking at laws that are in the realm of what we might think of as human rights and certainly those protected in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act were obliged by that Act itself to conduct some sort of a balance which is to say considering whether the ultimate policy aim is such that the limits on the rights within the bill could be considered a justified limitation. Interestingly on the subject of the Attorney-General's report I have been refreshing my phone for the last couple of weeks in the hope of being able to read that once the bill had been introduced. I refreshed it as recently as question time I think; I sneakily did that today and still didn't find a copy. I recklessly did so again at 8.03 p.m. some 10 minutes ago now and found that it had been uploaded. So I have had a very cursory speed-read of that and made some even more cursory notes on the documents in front of me—this is the legislative statement but of course the discussion of the NZ BORA rights are so much more interesting even than that. So I'll offer some thoughts in the space and look forward to that ongoing discussion that the Justice Committee will have. I'm not a member of that regularly but if I speak nicely to the senior whip I might find myself subbed on to that committee for the consideration of this bill—maybe as a slight indulgence after I've done my penance as court spokesperson for the various courts-related bills that are going through that at the moment.So just thinking about the rights and freedoms. It probably almost goes without saying but I will say it nevertheless: we have no patience of course for a particular individual who conducted such atrocities in mid-March of three years ago. But nevertheless it's right to turn our minds to the question of rights and how those are impacted not least of all because they can apply to others as well as that particular individual himself. So with that obvious disclaimer we are interested—certainly I'm interested—in sort of understanding how this can fit with our existing regime of human rights. Others have raised—I think from the Minister onwards—the prospect of retrospective aspects of the legislation—or retroactive" as it's categorised in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Minister described in her contribution—and echoing the same points made in the legislative statement—there are three ways that there is retrospective effects in relation to the TSA—that's the Terrorism Suppression Act—amendments so this is the designation regime. So I won't go through those; the Minister's done a good job of explaining how that is the case. But in summary it's the fact that we're going to have a regime apply to the designation in relation to someone who's already been incarcerated—so to that extent it's retrospective. But what we're not doing I'm pleased to say is creating an offence on the statute book that makes an act criminal today that wouldn't be criminal tomorrow. So we often talk about retrospectivity in a reasonably general way and the short version of our way of looking at it is that it's not a good thing but there are ways of considering whether it could be reasonable and of course there's different aspects. In this case what we're doing nearly in this bill is saying that someone—in this case one particular individual—has already committed a crime that was a crime—to say the least of it—at the time has suffered certain consequences namely incarceration and to have a different regime applying to the designation of that entity that person as a terrorist is I think ultimately consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. I've sort of surprised myself a little bit in coming to that conclusion but I thought about it quite deeply over the last couple of weeks. I think I've reached the conclusion perhaps for a slightly different reason than the advice from Crown Law to the Attorney-General had. I'll do my best to characterise that accurately—and again with that disclaimer that I've just literally read it for the first time and quite quickly at that. The advice of Crown Law—which was given by Crown Law by the Ministry of Justice because it's a justice bill—is that the Terrorism Suppression Act amendments are civil in nature and that judicial review proceedings are still available so there's sort of some ability for a person who might object to the way that their matter is being handled to sort of have that interrogated.Then in relation to the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act the argument there is that the courts still have the ability to modify or revoke an order. But more importantly that overarching point is that public safety is such a high policy aim that if we're going to limit some individual rights along the way in the name of that greater good then that's a justified limitation.I think these are good arguments but I also wonder if we might consider that—well first of all that obvious point in relation to section 26(1) of NZ BORA "Retroactive penalties" we're not making an offence now that which was not an offence at the time that the action or an action took place. If anything the prohibition on double jeopardy might be said to be engaged—that's section 26(2) so that says if you've finally been acquitted or convicted or pardoned then you shouldn't be tried or punished again. I think this is such a relatively small punishment relative to the incarceration of a person who's undertaken such a horrific attack as was the case on March 15 that it might almost be viewed in the manner of a concurrent sentence or an aspect even of the original sentence. I know it's not exactly that but I'm just sort of trying to grapple with the fact that instinctively it feels as though this is a justified limitation. But that's something that I'd certainly be open to further arguments and thoughts. There will be others across the other side of the House who might have different views again even than those of Crown Law and my own views on the matter.Nevertheless I think it's fair to say that even if this bill were—and I think this is an important point for us as a Parliament—inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act it is sufficiently important that Parliament should pass it anyway. So for that reason—sort of as an additional layer on top of all the other key reasons that others have articulated really well already—I join others on the National Party and other Opposition parties indeed the Government parties in saying that we support the Government in bringing forward this legislation. That's not to say that there can't be really interesting and helpful discussion at select committee; we look forward to that. But for me trying to avoid any doubt we do commend this bill to the House. We support its passage."