Volume 689 Week 41 - Wednesday 8 May 2013Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeVolume 689 Week 41 - Wednesday 8 May 2013[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9629. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Wednesday 8 May 2013Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.Prayers.Member VacancyMr SPEAKER: Honourable members I wish to advise the House that following the death of the Hon Parekura Horomia I have given notice that the seat of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti is vacant.Questions to MinistersQuestion No. 1 to MinisterDr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This question was originally to the Prime Minister. I seek leave of the House to have it transferred back to the Prime Minister.Hon Gerry Brownlee: No you can’t do that.Mr SPEAKER: Well he can seek leave of the House to do anything. It is very easily resolved. Leave is sought to transfer the question. Is there any objection? There is.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! This is a point of order and it will be heard in silence.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: It concerns the problem of how we are to ask questions of the Prime Minister because if we ask a generic question like Mr Shearer’s question No. 2 today then you have ruled that because it is a generic primary we cannot expect specific answers. But when we ask specific questions of the Prime Minister he transfers them to other Ministers. How are we to hold the Prime Minister accountable on specific issues if he will not answer specific questions?Mr SPEAKER: Can I ask the member to refer to Speakers’ rulings particularly 151/1 151/2 and others that clearly say it is the prerogative of the Government to determine who answers the oral question. Does the member wish to continue?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My simple question seeking clarification is this: how on earth are we going to find out whether the Prime Minister agrees with Mr English when in fact the Minister of Energy and Resources is going to answer? The whole thing is impossible at this point in time.Mr SPEAKER: As I have just alerted to Dr Russel Norman it is the Government’s prerogative—and it has been long established for many years—to determine whom it sees fit to answer the questions. There is the ability for the Speaker to decline a transfer in the event that I perceive that transfer to be something that would avoid the question being answered satisfactorily. I have had a look at this. I am quite determined that the Government has correctly transferred this question. If the member wishes to continue to ask it he will do so now.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. There appears therefore to be an error in the wording of the question. The question was to the Prime Minister and asked whether he agreed. You are absolutely right that it can be transferred and there is a lot of precedent for that but what has happened in the recent past under your rulings and the rulings of the Speaker before has been that there has been an opportunity to reword the question. The question would thenhave been reworded if that proper negotiation had occurred as “Is he aware whether the Prime Minister agrees?”. The Rt Hon Winston Peters is absolutely right that the question is about the state of mind not of Mr Bridges but of the Prime Minister.Mr SPEAKER: And again I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 152/5 that there will be necessary textual changes to a question once it has been transferred. This question has been transferred and if the member wants to ask the question he will proceed to do so now.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Will you therefore confirm that the Hon Bill English—Hon Lianne Dalziel: Trevor! Sorry Trevor. It’s changed.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Sorry?Hon Lianne Dalziel: It’s been changed. It’s changed on the yellow sheet.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Sorry I apologise Mr Speaker. There appears to have been yet another change that has occurred here.Power Prices—Increases and Electricity Market1.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) to theMinister of Energy and Resources: Does he agree with the Minister of Finance that New Zealanders are not paying too much for electricity?Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): Yes I do. I also agree with the Minister of Finance’s recent comment that a lot of us do not like the power bills we get but the one thing that will be worse and more wasteful will be politicians running the electricity system. That will look cheap for a while and then you will find that the technology has not been upgraded that the new generation that we need has not actually turned up and then there will be a big spend by the Government to subsidise something and the prices will all go up.Dr Russel Norman: How much has the annual electricity bill of a typical Kiwi family increased by under his Government?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: By about half as much as it did under Labour and the Greens. It has gone up by about 4.5 percent not 8 percent under this Government. So in fact although we saw massive rises under Labour and the Greens we have halved that steep rise under this Government.Dr Russel Norman: I seek leave to table a document prepared by the Parliamentary Library showing that electricity bills have risen by $372.80 per year under this Government.Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that paper prepared by the Parliamentary Library. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. It can be tabled.Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.Dr Russel Norman: Given that electricity prices rose at six times the rate of inflation in the past year has the National Government been effective at bringing power prices down?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Yes because as I have already said we have halved the massive steep increases we saw under Labour and the Greens.Brendan Horan: What action is the Minister going to take for the people of Tauranga as statistics produced by his own Government show their power prices are rising 15 percent faster than the national average rise?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I am going to continue to ensure as Minister of Energy and Resources that we have an increasingly competitive system. The member might like to know that in Tauranga the main retailer is TrustPower where it provides acheque back to consumers of $375 a year. That is $3 more than Russel Norman says the prices went up by last year.Dr Russel Norman: Given that power bills for the average family did increase under his Government by $372 per year what is more important to his Government: profits for electricity company owners or power prices for Kiwi families and businesses?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Prices for Kiwi families.Dr Russel Norman: Why is the Minister comfortable with the constant increase in power prices under his Government’s electricity market settings when there are better alternatives that would result in cheaper power for Kiwi households and businesses?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Because we are ensuring an increasingly competitive system. We came into Government in 2008. We had a comprehensive review of the system. We made a raft of changes and as the Electricity Authority said very recently we have seen in the last year increased competitiveness in the retail market increased activity on the futures market and improved hydro management in response to a dry year. So we are doing the right things to make this an increasingly competitive market.Dr Russel Norman: If the Minister’s actions have been so successful why have prices increased at six times the rate of inflation over the last year?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well let me give the member an example of how successful they have been. Some 700000 people have switched since we introduced What’s My Number. In Auckland you can go from the most expensive to the least expensive retailer at the moment and save $343; in Wellington $418; in Christchurch $618; and in the South Island in Balclutha $485.Dr Russel Norman: Does he agree with the Commerce Commission’s independent Wolak report that electricity companies are overcharging by $700 million a year on average?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: My understanding is that that was based on very old data but to the extent that the member asked the question no I do not agree.Dr Russel Norman: Why do you not agree?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Because it is based on old figures. Mr Wolak based it on northern hemisphere examples rather than on what is happening in this country and we are a world away and have a very different set of circumstances from the examples he used.Dr Russel Norman: Why is it that the Minister prefers to listen to the advice from the electricity companies that they are not overcharging rather than listening to the advice of the independent report from the Commerce Commission which found that the electricity companies are overcharging by $700 million per year?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well I already answered that in my earlier—[Interruption]Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I want to hear the answer.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I already answered that question in my earlier answer.Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question was: why is he listening to the electricity companies rather than the Wolak report which was commissioned by the Commerce Commission?Mr SPEAKER: And the Minister answered that by saying that he had already answered that reasonably in the earlier question. That is quite satisfactory.Dr Russel Norman: What assurance if any can he offer New Zealand families and businesses that before the 2014 election electricity prices will return to the levels that they were when he entered office—when will they return to the original levels?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I offer them my absolute assurance and conviction that our market is becoming increasingly competitive and you see that in the very sharp deals that you can get all around New Zealand at the present time.Brendan Horan: I seek leave to table domestic electricity prices as released by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment.Mr SPEAKER: Well if it is released by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is it freely available to all members on its website? Yes it is.Power Prices—Commentary and Prime Minister’s Statements2.DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): Yes.David Shearer: Does he stand by his commitment to Grey Power in 2009 that his electricity policies would “help constrain electricity prices” and “see fewer stories about electricity retailers putting up power prices ahead of inflation”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Yes.David Shearer: In light of his answer does he think it is fair that New Zealand power prices rose more than five times faster than inflation in the last year; if so why?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Firstly power prices are rising much more slowly under a National Government than under a Labour Government but part of the cost increases was the increase in transmission which is necessary to improve the national grid.David Shearer: Does he consider that residential power prices in New Zealand are too high?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: They are somewhere in the middle of the pack I think when it comes to around the OECD. What I can say is that the changes that the National-led Government has made over the last 4½ years are increasing the competitiveness of the market. That is helping to deal with the issues of the rampant price increases that we saw under Labour. But I would say that if I was to implement the sort of policy I saw announced by Labour and the Greens what I can be sure of are a few things—that the predictions—David Shearer: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The question was adequately answered thank you.Mr SPEAKER: If the member is happy with the answer we will move to the next supplementary question.David Shearer: Does he agree withConsumer magazine that “Effective regulation is needed to ensure consumers get a reasonable deal. We are yet to see it.”?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I do not agree with the last bit. I think we are seeing effective regulation. What I can say is that what we are not seeing are the 101000 bogus signatures that were on a petition—Mr SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! That is not necessary.David Shearer: Does he agree with his energy Minister that the Bradford electricity reforms introduced 15 years ago “did not have a chance to bed in”; if so how many more years will it take before these electricity reforms bed in?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: I am not sure which electricity Minister the member was referring to—there has been a number over time. But if it was Mr Bridges then absolutely because he is the face of the future my boy.David Shearer: Does he agree with the Minister of Finance who said in response to questions about electricity prices being too high: “if you look at those returns being generated particularly out of the electricity market the Government has taken the view that the market is not as competitive as it should be.”? That was this year.Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well I would need to see the full context of the speech and what happened because the Opposition has a bit of a habit of cutting and pasting these things. But yes in principle I find myself more often than not agreeing with the Minister of Finance.David Shearer: Does he have any policies that will guarantee power prices dropping in the next 18 months; if so which ones?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well I do not think it is possible to guarantee that power prices will drop. I think we can certainly guarantee that we have a market that is more competitive than the one we inherited from Labour. We can also certainly guarantee that if Labour was to ever implement its policy along with the Greens there would be a number of issues for New Zealand. One of them certainly would be that the ability—David Shearer: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. That was a very adequate answer but he was talking about our policies. I was asking about his policies.Mr SPEAKER: The question has been adequately addressed. Are there any further supplementary questions? Otherwise I move to question No. 3 the Honourable—[Interruption] Order!Government Financial Position—Crown Accounts for 9 Months Ended 31 March 20133.Hon KATE WILKINSON (National—Waimakariri) to theMinister of Finance: What reports has he received on the Government’s finances?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): Treasury has this week issued Crown accounts for the 9 months to 31 March. The operating deficit before gains and losses for this period was $5 billion which is $273 million smaller than the forecast back in December. Net core Crown debt is $1.4 billion lower than the forecast at 27.9 percent of GDP. This illustrates that the favourable patterns of good control of expenditure and gradually increasing revenue are bedding in. The Budget next week will confirm the Government remains on track to surplus in 2014-15.Hon Kate Wilkinson: What are the main reasons for Crown accounts being better than expected?Hon BILL ENGLISH: They are slightly better than expected and the reason is improved revenues and ongoing careful management of expenditure across the public sector. Core Crown tax revenue was $535 million higher than forecast due to PAYE on wages and salaries being $187 million above forecast and tax on other income of individuals around $406 million above forecast. Core Crown expenses were slightly below forecast. This is encouraging and broadly consistent with the quarterly employment survey released yesterday which showed hourly earnings are up 2.1 percent in the year to March and employment growth of 1.8 percent in the year to March.Hon Kate Wilkinson: What does the Government’s financial performance say about the track to surplus and how will this deliver benefits to New Zealand households?Hon BILL ENGLISH: These numbers released the other day indicate that the Government is on track to surplus consistent with Budgets over the last couple of years. By comparison the 2009 Budget indicated net Government debt would exceed 60 percent of GDP or more than twice current levels by the early 2020s if we have maintained the spending track at that time. The benefits to households come both in the improvement in public services despite the fact that money has been tight and secondly in lower interest rates for longer because the Government is spending carefully. New Zealand households are enjoying the lowest interest rates since 1964 and the Government of course will do what it can to ensure that that situation continues.Hon David Parker: Given the Reserve Bank Governor’s warning about rampant house price inflation and the effects of increased lending on the exchange rate and an already enormous current account deficit will he acknowledge as the Governor of the Reserve Bank did again today that a capital gains tax would help significantly?Hon BILL ENGLISH: No because that member’s version of a capital gains tax would not cover most housing. I do not know why Labour persists in the belief that a capital gains tax that exempts housing is somehow going to make a difference to housing.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it a fact that the overseas aid announced in Budget 2012 has been massively underspent by $94 million and how many other Budget 2012 items have been deliberately manipulated to get an artificial result of the type he is boasting today?Hon BILL ENGLISH: There is no deliberate manipulation but I would imagine that in the overseas aid budget like many others across the public sector Ministers and officials have become much more aware of the need to focus their expenditure on what is effective rather than just on spending more and more money. I would congratulate the Minister of Foreign Affairs on showing the same tendencies as are benefiting the whole public sector.Rt Hon Winston Peters: If that is the case what was the background behind the 2012 announcement that had the expenditure at $94 million more than is currently being spent or was there no work done at all about that budget and if that is the case why did he announce it in 2012?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I cannot answer the member’s question in detail. What I can say is that there has been discussion in past Budgets about how to ensure that the reasonably significant increase in foreign aid would sit with guaranteeing effective expenditure. If the member wants more detailed answers then he is free to put in a written question or seek the answers through a select committee.Hon Kate Wilkinson: What reports has he seen about changing data in relation to key economic policies?Hon BILL ENGLISH: I have seen one report regarding the Government’s share offer programme. It confirms earlier suggestions by the Opposition that public opposition to this policy was overwhelming. In fact the referendum which they said had over 400000 signatures turned out to have 100000 signatures on it that were not real—an error rate of 25 percent which even for Labour and the Greens is pretty high.Power Prices—Increases and Electricity Market4.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) to theMinister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement regarding the electricity market that: “Public monopolies will always rip off the consumer”; if so by how much have residential power prices excluding lines charges gone up in nominal terms since November 2008 according to the Ministry of Economic Development’s Domestic Electricity Prices Survey?Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first part of the question I stand by my full statement which was this: “It ignores risk. Under the previous Government they did have a pretty risk-free environment. They pumped up prices 72 percent in seven or eight years. We are making it a riskier environment by adjusting the market to make it more competitive and that is going to mean it is hard to make those sorts of excessive returns. Public monopolies will always rip off the consumer.” That is why we reject a scheme that would establish a public monopoly in electricity generation as proposed by the member asking the question. Monopolies simply cannot and do not do better than competition. In answer to the second part of the question according to the measure the member proposes since this Government has been in power prices have risen by that measure by 18 percent. Under the equivalent measure under his stewardship they rose by 100 percent.Hon David Parker: Why have residential power prices not dropped in the last few years but instead risen given that demand has slumped due to the recession and carbon prices have crashed?Hon BILL ENGLISH: The member is now mixing up measures. Of course as he knows one of the significant drivers of residential prices in recent years has been the line charges and transmission charges. He should be agreeing with that because his Government started out on the process of the large-scale investment in upgrading our transmission capacity. Someone has to pay for that in the end and that has flowed through into power prices. At the same time there is downward pressure from slackening of demand and a collapse in carbon prices. But I have to say that under that member’s emissions trading system policy households would pay an extra $500 per year which is well in excess of the cut that he is promising them.Hon David Parker: Why despite household demand falling is New Zealand one of just two OECD countries in the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment data that have seen power prices increase since the recession?Hon BILL ENGLISH: As I have pointed out to the member before the investment of something like $3 billion or more in the transmission grid was required in order to provide for reliable supply and the cost of that has been flowing through to consumers. But the idea that a Government department is going to make better decisions is one that very few New Zealanders find credible. In fact I think it is only the Opposition that believes it.Hon David Parker: Why does the Minister believe that hydro generators should keep the windfall profits they make from public water under the current pricing system rather than passing them through to Kiwi families and businesses as Labour is proposing?Hon BILL ENGLISH: Because we do not agree with those assertions. In fact if the member looks at one measure of the profitability of hydro companies—that is the share prices of TrustPower and Contact—they have dropped over the last 5 years. In the case of both companies their share prices are lower than 5 years ago which proves exactly the opposite of the point the member is trying to make. There are not super profits and the decline in demand is reducing the value of those companies.Science and Research Funding— Budget 2013 National Science Challenges Initiative5.Dr CAM CALDER (National) to theMinister of Science and Innovation: What initiatives has the Government announced to invest more in science?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Science and Innovation): On Wednesday last week the Prime Minister and I announced 10 National Science Challenges along with an additional $73.5 million over 4 years from Budget 2013 to help fund those challenges. This is on top of the $60 million allocated as part of Budget 2012. The National Science Challenges will take some of the biggest science-based issues and opportunities facing New Zealand and tackle them by drawing together scientists from across institutions and disciplines. Targeting these specific challenges will help the country get greater value from the $1.3 billion investment this Government makes in science and innovation annually. If these challenges are achieved they will create a major and enduring benefit to New Zealand. The funding for National Science Challenges forms part of a wider internationally focused growth package to be announced in next week’s Budget.Dr Cam Calder: What are the subject areas of the National Science Challenges?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: The Government has identified 10 challenges which cover research to protect the environment improve the health of New Zealanders andadvance our economic growth. They are ageing well a better start healthier lives high-value nutrition New Zealand’s biological heritage our land and water life in a changing ocean the deep south science for technological innovation and resilience to nature’s challenges—and do they not hate it? The challenges were chosen by a peak panel chaired by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor from submissions by scientists institutions and the public.Dr Cam Calder: How does the funding of National Science Challenges lift the Government’s investment in science and innovation?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: National Science Challenges contribute to the very significant increases in funding for science and innovation that this Government has made since it has come into Government from around $1 billion in 2009-10 to just over $1.26 billion now despite the global financial crisis. That is under the leadership of course of the Prime Minister who is very passionate about the investment in science. It includes programmes such as the Primary Growth Partnership which we have developed; increases in the Marsden Fund which were the first for many years; increases in the Performance-based Research Fund similarly; research and development co-funding for businesses which were established and grown under this Government; and funding for the development of Callaghan Innovation. Despite the global financial crisis the Government has invested significantly more in science and innovation and members can be confident that I am continuing to lobby the Minister of Finance for more money.Question No. 6 to MinisterTE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki): I note firstly that the Associate Minister of Education is not present and the Minister of Education is present and that there will be some discrepancies in the question as to the “he” and the “she”. I seek leave of the House to ask the question taking into account those small discrepancies.Mr SPEAKER: That is certainly in order but just bear in mind that you are still now addressing the question technically to the Associate Minister of Education. The member can proceed.Schools Partnership—Outcomes for Māori Students and Staffing Issues6.TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) to theAssociate Minister of Education: Does he agree with Natasha Sadler from Ngāti Wai that the whānau-engagement aspect of Partnership Schools Kura Hourua provides an opportunity for improved educational outcomes for Māori children; if so has he heard this view from other Māori organisations about this policy?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education) on behalf of theAssociate Minister of Education: Yes I do agree with Ms Sadler and I have heard this view from numerous other Māori organisations. For example Te Maru o Ngā Kura ā-Iwi o Aotearoa submitted to the Education and Science Committee that “Kura Hourua … have the ultimate opportunity to create a model of excellence for those groups of learners the system has routinely failed and neglected.” and “Māori organisations will come in in big numbers as will Pasifika. And the reason is simple: they want to be architects of their own futures and destinies.”Te Ururoa Flavell: Could the Minister please provide some feedback that he has received from Māori submitters about the opportunities that partnership schools kura hourua offer for Māori students over and above what she has mentioned already?Hon HEKIA PARATA: There was significant feedback during the select committee process but also separately about the opportunities to have flexible hours to haveflexible programmes and to be able to use teachers who were not registered with teachers’ qualifications but who through their reo and tikanga have in the past added and will continue to add value to the educational opportunities of Māori students.Te Ururoa Flavell: What procedures will kura hourua partnership schools be expected to follow if a teacher is suspected of possible serious misconduct that has occurred either prior to or during their current course of employment?Hon HEKIA PARATA: As is the case with every other school in New Zealand sponsors will be responsible for providing a safe environment for pupils and staff. For any employees sponsors will be responsible for investigating and addressing suspected misconduct in accordance with the relevant employment health and safety legislation. If suspended misconduct relates to registered teachers then sponsors will also be required to follow the procedures in the Education Act 1989 relating to referral to the Teachers Council.Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I did not want to interrupt the exchange so I waited until the end but it would be useful if the Minister who was answering the questions could clarify which Associate Ministers she was answering on behalf of because there are in fact three Associate Ministers of Education. She could have been answering on behalf of Dr Pita Sharples or John Banks and it would be useful for the House to know exactly whom she is answering on behalf of.Mr SPEAKER: That is over to the Minister. [Interruption] Order! It is over to the Minister to clarify. In my mind it was fairly clear that she was responding to that question on behalf of the Hon John Banks.Health and Safety Workplace—Task Force Report and Employment Conditions7.DARIEN FENTON (Labour) to theMinister of Labour: Does he agree with the statement from the Report of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety established by his Government in June 2012 that “the fact is that a lot of bad things happen to people at work in New Zealand”?Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Labour): Yes absolutely. Can I take this opportunity in the House to thank the task force for its thorough and comprehensive work.Darien Fenton: Does he accept the task force’s statement that a cause of our broken health and safety system is labour market liberalisation; if so how will the Employment Relations Amendment Bill and more liberalisation of workplace rights reduce the death and injury toll in our workplaces?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I think what the task force was referring to was the failure by successive Governments to implement the Robens approach fully and to see that organisationally bedded in. But unlike perhaps the member opposite I think we can hold two thoughts simultaneously in our minds and both ensure flexible labour markets and be pro-jobs whilst also having more stringent health and safety standards.Darien Fenton: How will cuts to meals and rest breaks in his Employment Relations Amendment Bill help improve workplace health and safety?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: It will ensure in certain instances people do not go off the job and ensure that there are actually very unsafe instances. But the fact of the matter is that although the member may not like it the vast majority of New Zealanders and employers will not notice anything. It is simply about not being overly prescriptive and having I think some sensible common-sense flexibility in the system.Darien Fenton: If the original reason for the cuts to meals and rest breaks legislation was breaks for air traffic controllers which have long since been resolved through negotiation why does he think these changes are still needed?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: As the member well knows these issues come and go.Hospital Emergency Departments—Waiting Times and Hospital Readmissions8.BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) to theMinister of Health: What is the average waiting time in hospital accident and emergency departments?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): I am advised that the Ministry of Health does not collect a national figure for the average time waiting to be seen but the latest results of the emergency department health target is that 93 percent of patients were treated admitted and discharged from an emergency department within 6 hours. I did do a ring-around this morning and can advise a couple of hospital average lengths of stay in emergency departments—that is the average time a patient spends in the emergency department including getting their treatment. At the North Shore Hospital the average time a patient spends in its emergency department has decreased by nearly 4 hours since 2008 from 7½ hours to 3½ hours. I am told that the average length of stay including treatment at the Whakatāne Hospital emergency department is just over 2 hours and at the Christchurch Hospital it is 2¾ hours. I do have to say to the member there will occasionally be times when patients experience a longer-than-anticipated wait in an emergency department which may be the result of a combination of factors such as the seasonal flu.Barbara Stewart: What does the Minister have to say to 82-year-old Mr John Francis Cornell who after being taken by St John Ambulance to Palmerston North Hospital waited for more than 9 hours without being seen?Hon TONY RYALL: I ask the member to bring that case to my attention and I will look into it. I have to say that 9 hours is way outside the 6-hours expectation that one would really expect in an emergency department. I have to say that we will look into that because that is an unacceptable performance.Barbara Stewart: Would he personally expect to be seen by a doctor within 9 hours of waiting at a hospital if he was suffering bleeding from the bladder and he has said that this is unacceptable?Hon TONY RYALL: That is completely unacceptable and yes I would expect to be seen. That is the reason why the Government has instituted the target requirement that patients be treated and seen within the emergency department within 6 hours at 95 percent. I would say to the member that if she brings that case to me I will check the circumstances and will make sure that what she has been advised is correct and we will make sure that that sort of case is brought to the attention of the district health board. It is completely unacceptable.Barbara Stewart: Will he acknowledge that the Government’s initiative to provide “Better sooner more convenient care” is actually poorer later and much less convenient?Hon TONY RYALL: No. As that member well knows we have massively improved the level of service that New Zealanders are getting in emergency departments and in their hospitals. That member will recall that it was only 5 years or so ago that old people lay on hospital trolleys in corridors at the North Shore Hospital under bright fluorescent lights for more than 3 days on end.Hon Annette King: Does he agree with Mike Ardagh the designated emergency department health target champion who said recently that there is no standard measure for readmission into hospital after discharge from the emergency department within 6 hours and there ought to be; if so is he going to do something about that measure?Hon TONY RYALL: If that was the circumstance now it was certainly the circumstance when that member was Minister of Health for 6 years. What I can tell the member is that—Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I asked a straight question. It is nothing to do with what happened when Labour was in Government. Either he has an answer for it or he does not.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Does the Minister require the question to be repeated? Would the Minister please answer the question.Hon TONY RYALL: Hospital readmission rates are measured generally across the sector. What I can assure the member as I am sure she was told by Professor Ardagh is that we are working with clinicians in developing a suite of quality measures to indicate the level of performance within hospital emergency departments. Things are certainly improved from what they were when that member was Minister of Health and people waited for days on end in hospital emergency departments.Budget 2013—Dementia Care9.Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) to theMinister of Health: What reports has he received regarding improved services for dementia patients?Hon TONY RYALL (Minister of Health): New Zealand faces a rising tide of dementia as people live longer. Whether it is a family member a friend or even personally dementia will touch all of our families. I have seen many positive responses to the Government’s recent announcement of extra dementia services and this is the third year in a row that this Government has provided extra funding for dementia. This means that over the next 4 years the Government will be investing over $100 million more into dementia services—almost certainly the largest increase in funding for dementia care in our nation’s history.Dr Paul Hutchison: What are some of the specific dementia services that this significant extra dementia funding supports?Hon TONY RYALL: There will be a $12 million increase in funding for dementia bed subsidies over the next 4 years. This is important because it encourages further investment in dementia beds remembering that it is projected that the number of New Zealanders with dementia will treble over the next 40 years. There is going to be another $2 million invested to support dementia awareness programmes and to support clinical teams in early detection of dementia and a further $1.2 million over 3 years will be invested in dementia-related training for health care workers. Despite very tight financial times our Government continues to make health investment a top priority including early detection and support for serious long-term conditions like dementia which are important to New Zealand families.Afghanistan—Crib 19 Deployment10.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) to theMinister of Defence: Does he agree with reported statements that New Zealand Defence Force personnel in Crib 19 were sent to Afghanistan without full pre-deployment training given that their commanding officer believed they were not adequately prepared but felt he had no choice but to deploy them anyway?Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I will be answering this question on behalf of the Minister of Defence but I would point out that there are aspects of this question that could refer to a suppressed coroner’s report which we cannot refer to in this House. In recent days Mr Goff has either deliberately released some of that material or inadvertently done so. I do not think we should exacerbate the act by speaking of it further in this House. What I will do is attempt to answer his question from general information that I have been able to pick up today from the Ministry of Defence in order to answer this question.Mr SPEAKER: Of course the responsibility for the content of the answer is the responsibility of the Minister and he can certainly say that it is not in the public interest due to a suppression order if he so chooses.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) on behalf of theMinister of Defence: The commanding officer made no such comments. Mr Goff is relying on the comments of a warrant officer who was one of more than 16 instructors who prepared Crib 19 at the collective training centre. The commanding officer of Crib 19 was confident that they were ready for deployment into the theatre where further in-location specific training took place.Hon Phil Goff: Was it correct that pre-deployment training was reduced from 5 weeks to 3 weeks because of Rugby World Cup commitments which meant that training outcomes were not achieved and that it was reported to the New Zealand Defence Force that this introduced “considerable risk” to that deployment?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The commanding officer was satisfied that they were suitably trained to be deployed into the theatre. Further training was given to Crib 19 in theatre. The situation is that the commanding officer of the outgoing unit has to be satisfied that the incoming unit is operationally capable just as the commander of the incoming unit has to be similarly in a position to assert capability. In addition the combat training trainer who went to Afghanistan to complete that in-location specific training required for troops in Afghanistan was satisfied that they were competent. The line that Mr Goff is taking is completely unreasonable and terribly disrespectful to those troops.Hon Phil Goff: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. You will recall—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Rubbish.Hon Phil Goff: Mr Speaker I am raising a point of order and the Minister I am questioning is speaking during it—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well shut up your own members.Hon Phil Goff: —and he is still doing it.Mr SPEAKER: Order! Silence will be maintained while Mr Phil Goff gives his point of order.Hon Phil Goff: As you will recall my question was very specific. By reducing pre-deployment from 5 weeks to 3 weeks and therefore not achieving the training outcomes did the Defence Force have reported to it that this introduced considerable risk? It is very specific. None of those things were answered.Mr SPEAKER: Is the Minister in a position to answer the specificity of the question? He is not.Hon Phil Goff: Of course not. Did the extension of Crib 19 from the usual 6 months to 8 months without any provision being made for leave because of that extension again caused by the Rugby World Cup leave personnel exhausted at the end of that deployment thereby also introducing further risk?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Crib 19 knew before they left New Zealand that their deployment would be extended. Further leave provisions were made for Crib 19 and on the last point I do not have enough information to comment.Hon Phil Goff: Why was Romero Base combat outpost in Bamian denied the extra medical training resource which was described as essential and given only one set of defibrillating pads which was described as insufficient if more than one wounded person needed resuscitation?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I am not in a position to answer that question.Budget 2013—Student Achievement Behavioural Issues and Community Engagement11.SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki) to theMinister of Education: What recent announcement has she made about the Government’s commitment to support parents and communities to raise educational achievement?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Today I have announced that this Government is investing $80.5 million over the next 4 years to help support parents and communities in playing their role to lift the educational achievement of young people. Of this funding $63.6 million has been committed to Positive Behaviour for Learning. This very successful initiative provides tailored programmes for parents teachers and schools to address challenging behaviour in children and young people. The $63.6 million investment over 4 years means that an extra 200 primary and intermediate schools will be able to participate in Positive Behaviour for Learning over the next 4 years and it will be available to all secondary schools by 2016.Simon O’Connor: What other initiatives has she recently announced to better support parents?Hon HEKIA PARATA: This Government recognises and values the contribution parents make to their children’s schools through boards of trustees. Boards of trustees are operated by parents and are critical to the success of our schools. That is why this morning I also announced that we are investing $14.5 million over the next 4 years to support boards of trustees—this being an increase in funding of 86 percent. This Government also wants to ensure that all parents are well informed and engaged in their children’s learning and that is why we are investing $2.4 million into a new Connecting Communities initiative which will focus on providing information to families whānau aiga and communities to enable them to confidently engage with their early childhood services and schools and we are encouraging parents to stand in the elections for boards of trustees.Government Communications Security Bureau Director—Appointment Process12.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) to thePrime Minister: Does he stand by his answer to Written Parliamentary Question No 4253 (2013) that he “neither agree[s] nor disagree[s]” with State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie that the phone call he made to Ian Fletcher about the position of Director of GCSB should have been made by Mr Rennie; if so what view other than agreement or disagreement does he have?Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I stand by the answer and I do not have a view on Mr Rennie’s statement.Grant Robertson: Should Iain Rennie have made the phone call to Ian Fletcher rather than the Prime Minister himself?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: That is a matter of interpretation.Grant Robertson: What is the Prime Minister’s interpretation of that question?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Well now you ask I am comfortable with the phone call I made.Grant Robertson: Did he discuss the possibility of Ian Fletcher taking up a position in the New Zealand Public Service when he met him for breakfast on 17 June 2011 just 3 days after he had approved the interview panel for the Government Communications Security Bureau director position?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: No.Grant Robertson: What did he discuss with Mr Fletcher at the breakfast meeting on 17 June 2011?Rt Hon JOHN KEY: Largely policy issues in relation to what was happening with economic development in Australia. [Interruption]Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Members on the other side of the House were wondering whether there were more questions. There certainly are Mr Speaker—Mr SPEAKER: That is not a point of order.Grant Robertson: —so could I seek the leave of the House to ask a further question?Mr SPEAKER: The member can seek leave. Leave is sought to ask an additional supplementary question. Is there any objection? There is.Urgent Debates DeclinedHealth and Safety Workplace—Task Force ReportKauri Dieback Disease—Research FundingMr SPEAKER: I have received a letter from Darien Fenton seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 the release of a report of the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety. The release of the report is a particular case of recent occurrence involving the administrative responsibility of the Government. Although the release of a report may warrant an urgent debate this must be exceptional especially when working through a report’s recommendations will take some time. The Minister of Labour has indicated he expects to respond in July. I am therefore not convinced that the matter warrants the setting aside of the business of the House today. The application is therefore declined.I have also received an application from Brendan Horan seeking to debate under Standing Order 386 the funding of kauri dieback disease research. A proposal to discuss a continuing problem such as the funding of research is not one contemplated by Standing Order 386 in that it is not a particular case of recent occurrence. The application is therefore also declined.General DebateHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I moveThat the House take note of miscellaneous business. I would like to have time to dwell on the broken promises of the Government: the promised 170000 new jobs—so far it has lost 30000 since it made that promise—the drop in exports especially outside of the primary sector; or the fact that despite its promises we have now clocked over 200000 people deserting New Zealand for finer pastures in Australia. I would like to be able to illuminate to the public as to why it is that 4 years into this Government we have got a terrible current account deficit. It is terrible. It is the worst in the developed world. But I do not have time for that because I want to tell the New Zealand public something positive rather than something negative and that is that under Labour if we are elected power prices will go down. They will go down by $230 to $330 a year for the average household and down by 5 to 7 percent for business. This is something that the Labour Party is proud of and we will make it happen.The National Government has made a fundamental mistake. It has said that you cannot trust Labour to deliver that. The public of New Zealand know that yes they can. They will trust us on that and they are going to vote for it. That is why National has been so vociferous and over the top with its hysterical reaction to what we announced. “Markets are good.” is shorthand for “Competitive markets are good.” It is not shorthand for “Uncompetitive markets are good.”There is a huge amount of evidence that the electricity market is uncompetitive whether it is the Wolak report of $4.3 billion of overcharging; whether it is the Auckland University study more recently of over $3 billion of overcharging; or whether it is these ever-increasing prices that have increased for 15 years at double the rate of inflation since the Bradford reforms—which Simon Bridges said need more time to bed in. We have given up on that ridiculous argument.The other problem is that under the current system over 50 percent of New Zealand’s power—close to 60 percent of it—comes from old hydro assets. They get jacked up in their values every year put into the power prices of New Zealanders every year more and more on the basis of a pricing model that is wrong. Free water is being capitalised by the Government into these balance sheets of the State-owned enterprises that are being sold. So we warned people. What did the Government say? That it is sabotage. What would people have said if we had not warned them? Those people would have been appropriately aggrieved that we did not warn them of what was coming.I want to reflect on what some of the commentary is saying. In theNew Zealand Herald Bernard Hickey said: “Power barons fail to fool the public this time around.” Around the same time Anthony Hubbard in theDominion Post said: “It’s enough to make you want to scream.” That was his description of the current situation in electricity. TheNew Zealand Herald in an opinion piece by Chris Barton said: “Power competition needs proper regulation.” He is not the only one saying that. We had Rob O’Neill the business editor of theSunday Star-Times saying around the same time that leaving the market as it stands is not good sense. He says there is a need to further regulate the market.The Labour Party is going to reduce power prices. This will have a benefit to the economy—this will have a benefit to the economy. Business and Economic Research Ltd suggests that the economic benefit is $450 million per annum in additional economic growth. In addition there will be 5000 to 10000 more jobs. On the other side of the House they look at the world through a merchant banking lens. On this side we look at it through a production and industrial jobs lens. That is the difference between us and that lot on the other side. It is not Stalinism or Albania or North Korea. It is because of a failed experiment by Max Bradford under National that power prices are remorselessly going up.Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): What Kiwis know Mr Parker—that Mr Parker clearly does not know—is that if it sounds too good to be true well it is. What is very clear and what we know about what the Labour Party is saying and the Greens are saying when it comes to power prices is that there will not be another bean in generation in this country under their policy. If there is it will be from taxpayers not consumers as it should be. They will undermine investment. We have seen very clearly the business community in this country rebel in horror at what it has heard from Labour and the Greens. So I say this to Mr Parker: why does he not just offer a couple of the easiest words to say in the dictionary—just say sorry? Just say sorry.He says: “Well it is not Albanian policy.”—he says that it is not Albanian policy. Well let me give him a list of countries or states where the single buyer model is currently used: Poland—I have nothing against Poland; my wife is half Polish and that is very nice—Ukraine Honduras Indonesia Pakistan Mongolia Thailand Morocco and much of Latin America. Well I have got nothing against those fine countries at all but what is—Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. We are doing our best to follow this speech but there must be something wrong with the sound system. I cannot understand a word he is saying.Mr SPEAKER: Well I can certainly understand what he is saying but there is some difficulty in hearing it because of the noise coming from the Opposition benches.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: For the respected elder gentleman I will talk more slowly. What is very clear in this House recently—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Your voice is breaking Simon.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Mr Cosgrove I am going to speak about your good city. What is very clear is that there has very recently been a power list in Canterbury. A power list has come out and we know that the Prime Minister is No. 1. That is understandable. Gerry Brownlee made I think No. 2 or 3. I did not see Mr Cosgrove’s name on it but that is OK. Look Lianne Dalziel I think did make it. That is all good. Well I wonder if the Green Party had a power list who would be on that power list. Who would be—Hon Trevor Mallard: “Cougar Bait”.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well I do not know whether there are cougars; I think they were looking for a panther down on the river at one stage Mr Mallard. But if the Green Party did a power list who would be on that list? Well Nos 1 2 and 3 would be one and the same I think: “Hey Clint” take a bow. “Hey Clint” would be running that party. And he does not just dictate the media lines for the Green Party; he is clearly running the numbers the strategy and everything else in the meetings that I have been at. So that is all good for Clint. But I say this to the Green Party: why is it trying to orchestrate democracy from the outside? If Clint is so good why does he not stand for Parliament?While we are speaking about orchestrating democracy here is what we know about the Green Party: it spent around—wait for it—$400000 of taxpayers’ money on the asset sales petition. Well not even the Labour Party would do that. Not even the Labour—Hon Annette King: What about the million you spent on adverts on television?Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Not even Annette King in her worst vote-buying days would spend $400000 on an asset sales—Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. It is not acceptable for a member to accuse another member of vote buying.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Speaking to the point of order I said that she did not.Mr SPEAKER: That is right. This is the general debate. It is a robust debate. Would the member please continue with his speech.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I say to the member Annette King to stop being so precious sweetheart because I do not think that you would vote-buy. But what I am saying clearly is that $400000 was spent by the Green Party on an asset sales petition. What else did those members do when they did that? Well we know that 26.9 percent of their 400000-odd signatures—26.9 percent—did not count.Hon Trevor Mallard: They weren’t on the roll.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: That leaves 292000; 107000 were wrong. So how did they do that? Well if Mr Mallard is going to take a call he can tell me. Did they sign up children? Is that what they did? Did they sign up people two three four or five times? I would like to know how a population the size of Tauranga or Otago was signed up on this petition.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): It is always a pleasure to follow such an erudite speaker as Simon Bridges the previous member. He has obviously invested a great deal of time and effort in the research and understanding of his subject and I wish him well in so far as the realising of the returns from that investment are concerned. I say “returns” because that is of course why anyone makes any investment—they expect a return from it. A good investment made wisely may return a handsome profit. Thereturns on the member’s investment may well be recognition promotion and a happier and more successful parliamentary life. I wish the member every success with that.Perhaps he could even take a few moments to enlighten the Prime Minister as to an explanation of the word “investment” because the Prime Minister does not appear to know what it actually means. It may strike some members as rather odd that I should make such a claim because as members know very well “investment” is one of the Prime Minister’s favourite words particularly when referring to his Government’s planned sell-off of New Zealand’s family silver and the actual and ongoing sell-off of our lands forests fisheries businesses and anything else that is not nailed down to foreign buyers. Investors the Prime Minister calls these buyers. They are investing in New Zealand and that we are invited to believe is a good thing. The investors to whom the Prime Minister refers are indeed wise to commit their money to the purchase of land and assets in New Zealand to the purchase of farms and forests and power stations because the returns in profits will be great indeed for them.For us however for the people of New Zealand—for the citizens and taxpayers of this country which is being invested in—the results and the returns and the profits will not be so handsome. For us this so-called investment—this foreign investment of which the Prime Minister speaks so often and so enthusiastically—in reality represents a loss. The profits taken by foreign buyers come at the expense of us the seller. This is logic. In business one person’s profit can come only from another person’s expenditure. If that expenditure was itself an investment for us the seller from which we might expect a return or if the expenditure was for a service or product not previously available that the investors’ investment had made available then this would not be such a bad thing. But when the sale of our lands forests fisheries and power stations involves no new actual investment—in other words when it involves only the transfer of ownership and the transfer of the wealth associated with that ownership—then it is to the nation’s detriment and it is not the desirable foreign investment that the Prime Minister appears to be so enamoured of.If a foreign buyer comes to New Zealand and buys 1000 acres of gorse-covered scrubland and turns it into a prime dairy farm buys shares in Fonterra and sets up home and lives here and becomes a citizen and sends his kids to the local school then that is something that increases the wealth of this country. It could rightly be called an investment which we should welcome. But when a foreign buyer snaps up 16 dairy farms from a receiver that is not an investment for anyone other than the foreign buyer. There will be no more cows than there were before. There will be no additional jobs for dairy farm workers. There will be no increase in the volume of milk produced and processed. And when the new owners build their own processing facility and ship the powder it produces directly back to China there will be a net loss of wealth from this country because that will be the milk powder that Fonterra used to process and now does not and the profits for the dairy industry that used to remain here in New Zealand will now go to China instead.When a so-called business migrant comes to Auckland from Shanghai and buys 10 houses to rent out pushing the market up and out of the reach of New Zealand families and first-home buyers that is not investment. It is transfer of ownership and that is all. There will not be 10 new houses built as a result just 10 more rent payments going offshore.When the Superannuation Fund sells New Zealand forests to the Chinese Government that is not an investment we should welcome. It is the transfer of national wealth from New Zealand to China. The Chinese Government will not plant more trees here than would be planted if the forest remained in New Zealand ownership. It will not build more sawmills or particle board mills or newsprint mills or furniture factories.There will not be more jobs for factory workers or logging truck drivers than there were before. All that will happen is that the same number of raw logs that used to be exported to China will continue to be exported to China except that because the Chinese Government now owns the entire forest New Zealand will not even gain the benefit of the value of a log which on its own is worth less than the same tree would be worth as firewood. I know this because I used to be a firewood contractor.Unlike the Prime Minister I have lived in the real world and I have had real jobs. The Prime Minister is a currency trader or he was a currency trader and he knows about making money and making a profit. If I buy 100 million—Mr SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My colleague was making so much sense that I move an extension of time.Mr SPEAKER: You could seek leave to do so obviously and I do not even think the member is bothering to do that.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): How humiliating it must be for them must it not? Despite spending nearly half a million dollars and involving the entire membership of the Labour Party and of the Green Party and most of the unions they were unable to get enough valid signatures on their little petition to try to stop the partial sale of State-owned enterprises. How humiliating for them. Do you know that the Greens spent $91000 of their budget—that is their publicly funded budget; that is the budget allocated to them for parliamentary purposes—buying signatures? Labour allocated 30 hours a week. Labour allocated publicly funded hours of MP time and resources and I would love to hear a more comprehensive list of the public money that Labour spent on this petition. And the unions paid a national coordinator for 3 months to run this petition. What else did they do? All this—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: So what?JACQUI DEAN: “So what?” says Clayton Cosgrove—so what? All this to buy signatures. All this effort and they were way way short with over 110000 signatures counted to be invalid. There were people signing two and three times people not on the electoral roll people who never existed. It is kind of like they thought in their innocence—in their cute little happy innocence—that the Clerk of the House was not going to check. Well the Clerk of the House did check.The Labour-Greens have ripped off the New Zealand public. They have used public funds to buy signatures. They were so lazy they were so arrogant that they did not bother to check that one in four of those signatures—one in four of those signatures—was made up was false was duplicated and was bogus. The Labour-Greens said they had massive support but they did not have massive support. They had to buy that support. Even then—even then with all that effort and all that public money—they have fallen well short of the public support that they needed.Do you know what? The Labour-Greens should try playing within the rules. When the Labour-Greens issued a press release saying they had 393000 genuine signatures guess what? They were wrong. They have been exposed as playing fast and loose with the democratic process and do you know what? They should just apologise. They should apologise to all those New Zealanders whom they tried to dupe. Do you know what? Support that has to be bought is not support that is freely given and therefore is no support at all.Do you know what? The National Government has always been upfront about the policy of partial sales of State-owned enterprises. We campaigned on the policy going into the 2011 election. We played by the rules. We took that policy to the country. What was Labour’s flagship 2011 election policy? What was it? No asset sales. Well guess what? That won—Hon Member: Get GST off fruit.JACQUI DEAN: And GST off fruit. That won it 27 percent of the vote. Our election commitment to the New Zealand public was to protect New Zealand’s economy through a programme of partial sales of energy State-owned enterprises. We went to the country—the National Party went to the country—with a plan to responsibly manage the nation’s finances and to build a more competitive and productive economy and that is what we are doing.Labour on the other hand—well it has kind of lost its way. Labour is opposed to all the initiatives that would create jobs and boost incomes. Labour is increasingly being known out there in the public as the anti-growth party. It is becoming a bit obvious that under the influence of Grant Robertson and Russel Norman the Labour-Greens are shifting ever further ever further ever further to the left. They want to do things like increase the impact of the emissions trading scheme on households to the tune of $500 a year. They want to discount the price of electricity by around $300 a year with a net increase to households of $200 a year. With that kind of “freak-onomics” it is no wonder they are getting increasingly desperate.National’s policy is to responsibly manage the country’s finances and build a competitive and productive economy. It is what we said we would do and it is what we are doing.Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): The only thing that could be said for that speaker Jacqui Dean is that she did not try to sing a song. Just when we thought that Paul Quinn’s arrival would lower the tone of the House somewhere unfortunately concealed in the labyrinths of Parliament is an office with a Gilmore lock on it a sturdy Samoan security guard outside and that is the price you pay for abusing your status as an MP and not fronting up. The less said about that the better. I am an expert in these matters and you would be well advised to take the advice of someone who still actually shows the scars but that is another matter.I want to talk about the proxy for the National Party given that its members are unwilling to go out and sell their own policies—that very small cabal who seem to think that the households of New Zealand do not deliver an improved cost of living equation. Under the leadership of David Shearer and the architecture of our senior finance spokesman David Parker we will be reforming the lazy self-serving unfair energy sector. We will be bringing in a Pharmac-like agency that will drive down the costs to the ordinary Kiwi household and improve their cost of living enabling them to have more pūtea to do doctors visits which are getting out of control under Mr Ryall to buy sports shoes and to actually have a wee bit more pūtea so that day-to-day living can be made easier. For businesses they are already saying that if they stand and if they are identified by Steven Joyce for example as approving the direction of our policy they will be hammered. In key industrial sectors people have told me very very forcefully: “Do not back down on this policy. Do not listen to Phil O’Reilly. Do not listen to Mr Barnett.” I say to them that they have decided to don the garb of the current Government. From this day on they will be treated appropriately.It is reasonable to have a public policy debate and for advocates from that sector of society to come forward. But do not come back into the political ring on one day presuming that you are even-handed and the next day trot out the diatribes of the Government. Where were they? It was $3.6 billion down the bog hole for finance companies. Never heard a single word from Barnett. Never heard a single word from Phil O’Reilly. Where were they when the $22 billion cost according to PricewaterhouseCoopers has been imposed on society in general for the debacle of leaky houses? Much of that responsibility lies within the stewardship of industry. Not a single word. We stand up for households we stand up for equity and we stand up forlong-suffering Kiwis. And we get this avalanche of hostility which is not based on fact. There is no wealth dissipation or destruction; there is distribution. That is what Governments do. That is what we are going to do. If it was good enough for John Key to deliver the largest percentage of the tax cuts to a narrow range of New Zealanders—if that is not distribution what is? If it is good enough for you to manipulate the tax system through policy changes for those distributed purposes watch this space we will do exactly the same.We are resolute about this. The business of looking after households is miles away from the mahogany-topped tables of merchant bankers and their Kohimārama bases. Get on with it live your life but do not live it on the backs of and do not rip off ordinary Kiwis who by and large are powerless. That is why they look to this side of the House because at the essence of what we stand for is equity reform and improvement. That side is not a party of reformers. The reformers sit on this side: capital gains tax massive reform; compulsory savings massive reform; and changes to our monetary policy massive reform. Getting rid of the self-serving profit-seeking and mean-spirited tsars of the energy sector and their merchant banking friends is a reform well overdue. We will not resile irrespective of how many hired mouthpieces turn up. I accept when the backbenchers come to participate in this debate they need merchant bankers to talk for them because no one knows them.Hon TAU HENARE (National): A mere apology is not going to reinvent the man from the North. This is the man who saw an investment opportunity. He bought all the electricity houses in Meremere all the old rundown houses and then he shifted them to the North and he rented them to his own whānau. In fact his own whānau said “No thanks Shane that’s a bit of a ramshackle house. I’d rather be in a State house.” That is the sort of slum landlord Shane Jones is and that is what the Labour Party has invested in.Grant Robertson: Oh!Hon TAU HENARE: Oh do not worry about that. There are plenty of people in the North who were offered those houses. So how dare he come into this House and say he is the new messiah that he is the new man? He is nothing but an old man and an old man who has said sorry for his appalling behaviour. Saying sorry does not actually cut it. Saying sorry does not actually mean you receive the baton from somebody like Parekura. Saying sorry is not going to get you anywhere near the leadership. I will tell you something else.Hon Annette King: You should know Tau No. 80 on the list.Hon TAU HENARE: I am proud to be No. 40—I am proud to be No. 40.I will tell you something about the petition. It was an absolute rort at half a million dollars. One in four signatures—it was basically signed by 2-year-olds basically signed by other people who had already signed the petition. There needs to be an inquiry into that behaviour of the Greens. And let us not point the finger too much at the Greens because who were their mates in this dastardly act? It was not New Zealand First. It just wants to steal property. It just wants to steal property—it wants to nationalise it. It was the Labour Party.Grant Robertson: Shameful Tau.Hon TAU HENARE: What was that?Grant Robertson: It was Grey Power so you’re abusing—Hon TAU HENARE: No no it was not Grey Power; it was the Greens and Labour who spent half a million dollars of taxpayers’ money. And here is the shameful thing: they could not even get the signatures that were required. They could not even get the signatures. They had months and months and months of getting out amongst the people and asking the people to sign a petition. How many signatures did they fall short of?Sixteen thousand—in fact it was most probably more but I think the Clerk of the House was being kind.Todd McClay: How many fakes?Hon TAU HENARE: How many fakes? Sixteen thousand as far as I am concerned.Todd McClay: 100000.Hon TAU HENARE: Sorry I got my figures mixed up. It was 100000—100000 signatures. I could have understood there being 1000 signatures that were a bit dodgy.Dr Cam Calder: Human error.Hon TAU HENARE: Yes human error. But 100000 people in this country? No it cannot be. I cannot believe that a political party or two political parties would rort the system that much—that much. I think there should be an inquiry. In fact I will call now on the Auditor-General to get down here and make an inquiry into the performance of the Green Party and the Labour Party because half a million dollars could have gone to feeding some children. Half a million dollars could have gone to buy some Weetbix for the children so that those children could go to school with a couple of Weetbix in their belly.You see how silly the Green Party and the Labour Party have been in trying to rort the system. One in four signatures was dodgy. One in four signatures was made up. One in four signatures was—well I have to say this: it is criminal. It is criminal. If we were to find somebody double-voting they would have the full force of the law come down upon them. But what about double signatures here? What about the people who rorted the system here? Let us have a look—Grant Robertson: Arrest David Farrar now then.Hon TAU HENARE: There is no need to say that we should arrest David Shearer. There is no need to say that.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): If Mr Henare really cares about the starving children in this country he could give back the massive tax cut that he gave himself—tax cuts that overwhelmingly went to people who needed them the least. So cry me a river Mr Henare about how much the National Party cares about poor children because your record speaks otherwise.I want to talk about the incredible announcement that was made by the Labour Party over a couple weeks ago regarding New Zealand power—a real game-shifter in terms of how the electricity market will operate in New Zealand in the future. I want to know why the National Party does not want households to have cheaper power does not want businesses to have cheaper power and why it continues to defend a market that is not competitive. Does anyone in this country really believe that we have competition in our electricity market? The Minister of Energy and Resources says that he believes we do. Well I can tell you that the voters in this country do not because they are sick and tired of the rorting of the electricity system and the fact that it is the struggling New Zealand consumer who is constantly having to pick up the cost of ever-increasing power bills.We have a surplus of generation at the moment. We have flattening demand for electricity. We have a collapsed carbon price and yet every single household in this country saw its power go up on 1 April this year. The chief executive of Contact Energy indicated that further price increases were on the way. If at a time of surplus generation flattening demand and a collapsed carbon price we do not see power bills go down what will it take? I tell you what it will take. It will take a Labour-led Government to ensure that the market operates fairly for New Zealand consumers.I was astonished at the hysterical overreaction that came from the Government. It is a hysterical overreaction that has continued to this day because we still have not actually heard any kind of logical argument from Government as to why what Labour and the Greens are proposing would not work. We have not had any debate on the substance ofthe policy. All we have had is over-the-top rhetoric that this is like the Soviet Union. Well it is not actually. It is like the United States of America and I was not aware that the United States of America is now considered a communist country. This is a system that operates around the world. This is a system that will ensure that in the retail market we have innovation and increased competition—real competition.Our proposal is not to regulate the retail market as the Government is trying to claim but we will see more competition. We will see more players able to offer newer products newer options to consumers because they are not going to be shut out in the way that they are now by the four big players—the generator-retailers—in the electricity market. What that means is a reduction in power bills in the order of hundreds of dollars for the average household. It also means a reduction in power bills for businesses particularly small and medium businesses that do not have the negotiating power that some of our very big energy-using companies do.Colin King: Explaining is losing.MOANA MACKEY: “Explaining is losing.” says Colin King. Well we would like to have the debate with your Government Mr King. I can say that hysterical overreaction and misrepresentation is definitely losing Mr King and that is exactly what your Government has been doing—flat-footed over this policy because National says that New Zealanders are paying a fair price for their power bills. It does not think that in a time of recession of flattening demand and of surplus generation power bills should go down. It is quite happy to see them continue to go upwards and upwards.What did National say was the one big thing it had done? The What’s My Number campaign. Well I would like to live in the world that National members live in where they do not see the people coming through their offices every day who are lucky if they can find one power company to take them on. The idea that they have a choice of power companies given their credit histories because they cannot afford their bills is ludicrous. It shows the kind of entitled la-la land that the National Party lives in. Early payment discounts matter or work only if you can actually pay your bill Mr King. For too long in this country it has been the poorest families who have not had any benefit from any of the measures that Governments with the best of intentions have tried to put in place.Well I want to ask a simple question of the National Party. Does it think that the Labour Party was wrong in regulating lines companies? Silence. Silence. I tell you this: we regulated them because they were monopolies. If you act like a monopoly you can expect to be treated like a monopoly. If you exhibit monopolistic behaviour which is what has happened in this country then the Government should step in and regulate to ensure that New Zealand consumers and businesses are getting a fair deal and under a Labour Government they will.Dr CAM CALDER (National): This Government has delivered a GDP that is amongst the highest in the developed world at a time of long-term ongoing financial turmoil. Such a record is possible only because a National-led Government offers a safe pair of informed hands—a safe pair of hands not the desperate clutches from two parties promising cheaper power but seeking power at any cost. Blasé ignorant or blithely unconcerned about their antics—they have already caused massive depreciation of the assets of hard-working New Zealanders risked the drying up of international confidence in financial direct investment in our markets and potentially been the direct cause of New Zealand having to borrow more to finance essential investment in our schools in our hospitals at ultimately greater cost to New Zealand Inc.Far from saving New Zealanders money this crypto-renationalisation of the electricity sector will lead to additional costs for every taxpayer and we have not even factored in the avowed aim of the coalition of the left which is to dramatically increaseliabilities to all under their extended expanded emissions trading scheme which will bring in agriculture. From the party that gave us the Electoral Finance Act perhaps we should not be surprised but this takes the cake for barefaced effrontery. It is cocking a monumental snook saying “pedicabo” to the carefully nurtured long-term consensus between the two main parties on economic policy with its emphasis on the free market and competition.Socialism had its moment in the sun over decades ago but it has withered across the world with its few remaining outliers in Cuba and Tanzania sustained only by the benevolence of others. Yet a desperate Labour Party has announced it will jump into bed with the money printers of a green-red hue and excise a wedge of wealth from the taxpayers and shareholders in the energy companies and somehow supposedly transfer this wealth to businesses and householders by political decree. Central planning did not win much kudos for promoting competition in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and it is unlikely to be any more successful in Aotearoa. More likely the dead hand of the State would deal up far less fizz in energy marketing the touted savings will be found to be largely illusory and the observed gains in energy efficiency and the development of new generational capacity we have enjoyed to date will be found to slow. The statists have made no mention of reining in the increase in costs of local and grid transmission—another reason to expect less from their policy than the political rhetoric promises. Having seriously eroded confidence in and wiped hundreds of millions of dollars off our capital markets how else could this merry posse of political pranksters destabilise New Zealand Inc?New Zealand is a trading nation. In another life the Labour Party acknowledged that. Indeed a Labour Government signed the free-trade agreement with China. This Government has fostered the first mover nature of the relationship assiduously. Trade which in 2007 was running under $2 billion last year reached $6.9 billion an increase of almost 17 percent in the year. That is a huge success story for New Zealand Inc. Prime Minister John Key in his recent talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping building on the bountiful opportunities becoming apparent in a multiple of sectors including agriculture tourism forestry science education and high tech was seeking buy-in for a further development in our relationship: nothing less than New Zealand becoming China’s preferred partner in creating global supply chains to feed its population.Contrast this with a hypothetical Russel Norman interchange with the Chinese President: “Can I have my flag back now please sir?”. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is integral to this. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is nothing less than a wider Asia-Pacific free-trade agreement which had its genesis in the strategic decision of New Zealand and Singapore to negotiate a bilateral free-trade agreement in the 1990s with the bigger picture in mind. Only last month Japan was welcomed to join the US and 11 other countries at the negotiating table. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is about economic change of a manageable useful and ultimately essential nature if the New Zealand economy is to continue to be able to participate fully in the burgeoning and vibrant 21st century Asia-Pacific economy. Many visionaries see the Trans-Pacific Partnership as an essential building block for a future APEC-wide zone of trade and investment integration.The Greens never cease their alarmist carping opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. How could Labour resist the ceaseless importuning of its new bedmate? Labour’s slippery slide to the left will have red warning flags waving furiously among the thoughtful members of New Zealand society. The threat to the health of New Zealand Inc. is real and apparent. Should the unthinkable happen and the populist posturings result down the line in a future Labour-Green Government then Fiji wouldlook increasingly attractive not just for a holiday but as a long-term destination. Economically we would feel right at home.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Talking about Fiji if I look at some of the legislation we are seeing in this Chamber today that is what makes me think of Fiji. It is not lower power prices it is not lower housing prices and it is not our economy going forward which is not what we see from the Government benches. If we are talking about Fiji let us look at some of the legislation the spying legislation that this Government is introducing and passing under urgency in this Chamber.What a low standard of debate we have seen from the Government benches today. Government members are not focused on ideas and they are not focused on solutions; they are focused on the Opposition. Do you know why? I guess it gives us a bit of heart as well because it is the Opposition that is coming up with the ideas. It is the Opposition coming up with solutions. All we hear from the National Government on power is 20 years of excuses. For 20 years all Kiwis have heard is excuse after excuse about why their power bills have to go up. While our power bills over the last 20 years have gone up 70 percent in real terms across the OECD the average has dropped 6 percent. Under this Government we have seen power bills go up over $300 a year—under National—and there is no relief in sight because all we hear is excuses attacks and rhetoric ignoring the real issues facing us.That is why the Green Party and the Labour Party came out with our positive suggestion our positive solution for a Pharmac-style single buyer. We came up with the ideas of progressive pricing and greater energy efficiency. Those are going to have a huge impact for the economy. We have seen that with the Business and Economic Research Ltd report. We could see more than 5000 jobs created. That is more than we can see in the Government’s agenda. Those members have lost 40000 jobs in manufacturing over their term in Government. We could see the creation of 5000 jobs from NZ Power. That is going to have a huge impact for households because we know that Kiwis are shivering over winter. We know that Kiwis are going without energy just to eat. A quarter of our whānau are in energy poverty. They are spending 10 percent or more of their weekly budget just to stay warm.NZ Power is going to have a huge impact for the environment as well. Progressive pricing is going to help I think two key parts of the country. The first is those people just going without power. They are going to use power to keep warm. They are going to use power to stay healthy. Also NZ Power is going to drive efficiency because if you have taken advantage of the Warm Up New Zealand healthy homes scheme if you have got an efficient house and if you have got efficient appliances there is going to be a huge incentive to reduce your power bills to stay within that 300 kilowatt a month progressive-pricing threshold the Greens will introduce. NZ Power is going to drive energy efficiency. Having NZ Power is going to drive cleaner energy. The Government is failing in its target to try to get 90 percent renewable energy in the future—it is failing. There is no carbon price and there is no signal from the Government. It is just picking winners in the oil fracking and mining sectors. NZ Power is going to drive clean energy like solar in households.Like the Green plans to support our information and communications technology industry through a second internet cable we also have plans to lower housing prices and give housing affordability to Kiwi families. It is the Green Party not the National Government that is coming up with real solutions for Kiwis. What we see from the National Government is just this irrational hysterical approach. Its members said the plan was from the USSR. Steven Joyce said it was like North Korea. This is a guy who is fond of saying “jumping the shark”. I cannot think of anything more “jumping theshark” than Steven Joyce’s North Korea comments because it is not North Korea but South Korea that has a single buyer like NZ Power which Labour and the Greens propose and it is South Korea that has seen its electricity prices drop 38 percent over the same period ours have been driven up 70 percent.We saw Business New Zealand come out to try to defend the long-run marginal cost electricity generation pricing system where basically all electricity even if it is cheap clean hydro paid for decades ago is charged at the most expensive rate. We have seen accusations thrown around of economic vandalism. Economic vandalism is the $700 million that the Commerce Commission’s Wolak report said was coming out of our economy every year in excessive super-profits—that is the economic vandalism. It is the hundreds of dollars extra that Kiwi households are paying every year in their power bills and excessive profits that we are going to see with the asset sales simply going offshore—that is the economic vandalism. It is the $200 million a year that Kiwi businesses are going to miss out on because the Government has got its head in the sand over rising electricity prices and no solutions—that is the real economic vandalism.It is clear that the current market is not working. Simon Bridges reckons 20 years is not long enough for it to bed in. We do not see real competition. It is the same five generator-retailers that control the market. We have seen more than $300 million a year in assets’ upward valuations driving it. What we are doing is giving Kiwis a real choice on energy. Under National you are going to hear more excuses and more tinkering. You are going to see your assets flogged off. Under the Greens Kiwis are going to save money. They are going to see cheaper power. They are going to see cleaner power. It is like the National Government is advocating for old Telecom. Why does it not advocate for re-bundling the network if it supports old-fashioned uncompetitive markets? We are giving Kiwis a real choice and I think Kiwis like the idea of cheaper power.TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): I want to follow along the lines of something I heard on television a little while ago from somebody few New Zealanders respect: “Hey Clint what do you think of that last speech? But are we pleased Clint? Clint are we pleased?”. Well how am I going to explain this? You have heard of the “ghost chips” ad on TV. Well that was the ghost Greens-Labour Minister: “Hey Gareth. Clint thinks you’re dumb.” It is as simple as that.I want before I get into the meat of this speech to pay a tribute to and recognise the Hon Parekura Horomia on his passing. I have not had an opportunity to speak in the House since yesterday. It was a very sad day for New Zealand. Yesterday I think in this House the way members came together showed the great respect that we had for Mr Horomia and all that he did. I remember being down playing rugby with the Parliamentary Rugby Team a couple of years ago in his home district. The great hospitality he showed to all members of this House but also indeed what the public showed to him is a mark of the man. I want to recognise that and put it officially on record.I come now to the issue of today’s debate. It is really about who is fit and able to govern this country. We have heard other speakers talk about this Government’s record over the last 4½ years coming on 5 years. Indeed after the first 3 years of our Government New Zealanders looked at what was put before them and went to the election. They had a chance to vote and we were returned to Government with a larger number of votes than was cast 3 years earlier. So through some of the most difficult economic times that New Zealand had faced in certainly a generation after 3 years of the great difficulty that the rest of the world had faced New Zealanders had faith in the job that John Key and Bill English were doing in a National Government and they returned us.A year and a half from now there will be another election and again the Opposition will come forward and the same old rhetoric the same messages of the previous 3 years and the re-election will be that the Government has not done a great job. New Zealanders will be able to judge and we will be very happy to come forward on the campaign stumps and make our case. But what New Zealanders will also be able to do for the first time in the 6 years we will have been governing is have a real snapshot of what an alternative Government—the current Opposition—would be like. Whatever Opposition members said at the last election New Zealanders did not believe them. They did not trust them. The Opposition will be able to come forward and talk about what they believe they will do for New Zealand.It is very important that New Zealanders get to balance that because what we have seen over the last few weeks and what we hear in this House today is about a Green-Labour coalition and the direction it will take New Zealand in. It has very extreme left-wing—extreme left-wing—policies around the economy which I actually think the Green Party are driving more than the Labour Party. I know there are moderate members over there who are much more sensible than what has been brought forward in public but we often know that in Opposition members of Parliament will do and say anything to get over to this side of the House and that is what I think is happening here. So I think New Zealanders will accept what a lot of the Labour Party members are saying at the moment but the direction that the Greens are driving them in is of great concern.Let us have a little look at what it might be like under that Green-Labour Government of the future. Well the first thing they would want to do is go out to New Zealanders and say: “We have the ability to manage affairs properly to work out what policies we should have and to put them in place. You can take our guarantee that these things will work.” So they could say for instance: “Well we’re going to go out and collect 400000 signatures for something and that’s the feeling of what New Zealanders want.” Then we would find when they brought it back to this House that all of a sudden oh no it was not 400000 signatures. They were a few wrong. As Mr Henare said earlier 100000 signatures were collected by the Green Party and the Labour Party by many of the Labour Party’s hard-working volunteers and by the Green Party—people they paid with parliamentary money taxpayers’ money. They paid on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayers to collect signatures. And what did we find when they said “We’ve done a great job.” and they brought the boxes to Parliament and were so very very proud? What did we find after their hard-working volunteers around the country had been out in the markets and the sunshine and the rain collecting these signatures? What did they find? They found they had got their numbers wrong and the job was not done properly.So to every single New Zealander out there who voted for this Government in the last election and who will have a chance to weigh up the two sides in the next election mark my words: they got it wrong there and they will do and say anything to get over on this side. Question all of the promises that they make and make sure that they can count properly when it comes to simple things like signatures.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): Ko Tītīrangi te maunga ko te Whau te awa ko Ngāti Pākehā te iwi ko Parekura Horomia nā Īhowa.[The mountain is Tītīrangi the river is Whau the people are of European descent and Parekura Horomia belongs to the Lord.]This is the first opportunity to speak since Parekura Horomia’s passing and I would like to add my short words to those of other colleagues who have spoken for him and acknowledge you and other members of this House who have honoured our colleague and friend in his passing last week.I wish to address the claims the member opposite Todd McClay has made. This is not Soviet Union economics; this exists in the United States. This is not North Korean economics; the single-buyer electricity model is handled in South Korea currently one of the world’s most successful economies. It is not bizarre; it is common EU policy. It is followed in many of the world’s most successful developing tigers like Brazil—indeed countries like South Africa. It is widespread around the world. And why is that? Because we have a problem: the electricity market is not working. It has not worked for a number of years. Successive Governments have tried to fix it since Max Bradford wrecked it and it has not worked.It does not work because it is declining gas and coal resources that are setting the price for the whole market. It has not worked because residential tariffs have skyrocketed while commercial and industrial tariffs have not. That has widened the gap and meant that ordinary Kiwis are being ripped off. It has not worked because there are huge problems in the so-called free market. The spot market is so thin because the generators and the retailers co-own each other and trade only internally not on the spot market. So you have the bizarre thing where the marginal unit of coal sets the whole price for the whole country through a spot market that does not work and that is closer to Albania and North Korea than what Labour is proposing.The single-buyer model is one of three absolutely standard models around the world. The first one is a regulated market. Well that is what we have tried and it has not worked. The current Government does not have the foresight to see it. The second is a monopoly seller or a single seller that is controlled. We had that in ECNZ; the previous Government wrecked it. The regulated market cannot now work because the Government is privatising half of the Crown’s power companies meaning domestic price rises will be even more rampant in the future and New Zealanders will be exposed. Why does that matter? Well as our leader David Shearer has said it is the little people who get it in the neck. I remember doorknocking a senior citizens village in Glen Eden in my first campaign in winter and I remember seeing senior citizens with their eiderdowns pulled around their shoulders because they could not afford heating.Hon Gerry Brownlee: That’s the last time you visited them 12 years ago.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: They could not afford to turn on an electric blanket. That member may have his own insulation but many many Kiwis do not and they require decent power prices to stay warm in the winter.It is very interesting what this debate is telling New Zealanders about the choices they will have next year. As people can see they will have real choices: a choice between a bunch of cronies of the so-called free market who have spent the last years giving tax cuts to the wealthy and blessing the worst rorts we have seen for generations; and on this side of the House a team that is united behind the interests of ordinary New Zealanders—a team that is going to go forward win Government and deliver real change. This team is going to deliver lower prices higher employment greater social equity fairer chances for New Zealanders and prosperity for all for many years to come. Thank you.COLIN KING (National—Kaikōura): It is rather sad really because when one listens to the stories coming from the other side of the House we are not hearing the complete story. When we look at the Greens-Labour view of the world power prices are set to continue to rise. The truth of the matter is that household prices will be affected enormously under the raft of intended policies that have already been put on the table by the Opposition. If you consider that house power prices were meant to drop by $300 and yet the entry into the emissions trading scheme will raise house power prices by $500 simple mathematics tells you that house power prices will continue to rise. It is very similar to that petition for a referendum that the Greens-Labour Opposition attempted toput together. Again the figures do not add up. In actual fact it is representative of a lot of the policies that Labour members are speaking about. One has to cast one’s mind back only about 3 months and what they were talking about then is no longer included in their rhetoric.Effectively what we really want to do at this point in time is give New Zealanders a real shot of what the economy is looking like. During the most difficult times in 3 decades—or three generations—the living costs are at the lowest levels of increase since 1999. The interest rates are the lowest that they have been since 1965. The wages after tax have risen by 22 percent. That is what benefits all New Zealanders and we can assure New Zealand that by 2014-15 the Government will be back into surplus. That may be a signal to the Labour-Greens Opposition to spend up large with reckless gay abandon; we however have to maintain that situation to ensure that we make those gains lock them in and benefit New Zealanders entirely. So from that point of view it is important that we continue to look for growth. Unfortunately over on the other side of the House all we hear is about rewriting history and if that does not work they pretend that the 9 years that that Opposition was in Government never ever happened.Let us not forget New Zealand that the Opposition that we have today put New Zealand into recession before any OECD country. That is something that needs to be remembered. When the Labour members were on the Treasury benches power prices went up by 72 percent. It is not rocket science; we have to bear those things in mind. It is all right to talk about spending money with gay abandon—it may even be on the side of the angels when Labour talks about this limited competition—but let us stop and think about some of the stuff that Labour has talked about that is very anti-growth. It wishes to introduce a capital gains tax. It sees that as being a sort of silver bullet and yet the tax will not be on the family home and therefore will not address the issue that it is trying to deal to. But what it will do is morph into death duties through intergenerational assets being passed on and that will affect growth within the farming industry.I talked earlier about the introduction into the emissions trading scheme. The Opposition will bring agriculture into the emissions trading scheme. That in itself is an anti-growth agenda. There will be higher tax. There will be higher company tax. There will be charges on water because we have heard that from the Greens. We know that the way the policies are at the moment there is a dramatic shift by Labour towards the left. We are told that they will do away with the 90-day new employment test for employers and employees which we know has made 13000 jobs available. This Government here is a pro-active growth Government. It has got a great track record and what we are hearing from the other side of the House the Opposition is only half of the facts.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.UrgencyHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House): I moveThat urgency be accorded the introduction and first reading of the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill and its referral to a select committee the introduction and first reading of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill and its referral to a select committee the second reading and Committee stage of the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill the second reading and Committee stage of the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill the second reading and Committee stage of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill the introduction and passing of the Trustee (PublicTrust) Amendment Bill and the first reading of the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill and its referral to a select committee.This is a very important suite of bills that the Government wishes to make significant progress on. I will just work back through them.The Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Amendment Bill is about ensuring that in the event of insurance company failure there is capacity for the Reserve Bank which is effectively the regulator to ensure that there is an orderly run-out of insurance services. We know that in the environment in which we live at the moment the prospect of distressed insurers getting into trouble is very real. We have seen three companies in that position so far. We need to be prepared for the worst if it were to happen.The introduction and passing of the Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill is necessary in order for the House to take a position ahead of the High Court deciding some matters in the Capital + Merchant Financecase effectively ensuring that it is not the Public Trust that becomes the default trustee in circumstances of finance company failures. Once again we have seen some pretty awful stuff in that regard in recent times.The Land Transport Management Amendment Bill deals with a significant issue that is on the Order Paper of the House as a discontinuance allowance. Without this there would be no clear ability for people who operate off-road vehicles to in fact escape the road-user charge regime. There are a number of other measures that go into that bill that are extremely important and relate to the road-user charge and excise calculations on vehicles.The Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims (Continuation and Reform) Amendment Bill is one that the House has dealt with on a number of occasions. There have been several extensions of that legislation. It is now time to have a position that will take us forward.The Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill is one that the New Zealand Police and the Ministry of Justice are very very keen to see progressed and one that I believe has widespread support from the House. It is one of those bills that will make a difference to the way in which prosecutions are able to be brought in a timely and speedy fashion.The introduction of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill with its referral to a select committee for a 4-month period is one that clearly deals with a number of issues that have been topical in recent times.Finally as to the introduction of the first bill that we will deal with today the first reading of the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill this bill clears up a number of matters that were brought to light in the recent inquiry so that the operations of our security services can be carried out in a fully lawful way.A party vote was called for on the questionThat urgency be accorded.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes56New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment BillFirst ReadingHon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice)on behalf of theMinister responsible for the GCSB: I moveThat the Government Communications SecurityBureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 26 July 2013 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 188 and 191(1)(b) and (c).This omnibus bill focuses on New Zealand’s intelligence community which has a vital role to play in our national security. The bill makes amendments to three separate Acts and it has three main objectives: first to provide a clear and consistent legal framework for the Government Communications Security Bureau to operate within; second to update the bureau’s legal framework in response to the rapidly changing security environment particularly in relation to cyber-security and information security; and third to strengthen the oversight regime that applies to our intelligence agencies.The recent compliance review of the Government Communications Security Bureau has highlighted that there are difficulties of interpretation in the existing Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003. The 2003 Act sought to codify and make transparent existing practices of the then Government Communications Security Bureau but under scrutiny the 10-year-old Act potentially limits the bureau’s ability to provide the support and advice that successive Governments expected possibly limits current support and advice that can be provided and most certainly will restrict the bureau’s ability to look after New Zealand and protect New Zealanders. For an organisation with intrusive powers like the Government Communications Security Bureau an unclear legal framework is simply not good enough. Therefore the responsible thing for this Parliament to do is to move to clarify that Act. This bill does that. This bill will make the Government Communications Security Bureau Act clearer and more transparent so that it is clear what the agency can and cannot do. In addition to that the bill also strengthens the oversight regime of our intelligence agencies by making amendments to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Act 1996 and the Intelligence and Security Committee Act 1996.The Government Communications Security Bureau is arguably more important in New Zealand now than it has been for many years. As the key agency responsible for advising on and protecting against threats to New Zealand’s cyber-security the Government Communications Security Bureau is at the forefront of tackling a rapidly increasing threat. The bureau has three core functions: first information assurance and cyber-security; second foreign intelligence; and third cooperation and assistance to other entities. Two of the Government Communications Security Bureau’s three core functions—specifically information assurance and cyber-security and cooperation and assistance to other entities—are currently compressed into only a single paragraph in the Act. This makes it both complex to negotiate and inadequate to empower the bureau to carry out the full range and scope of activities envisaged in these functions. Splitting the two functions apart in the legislation will allow us to more easily articulate what the Government expects the Government Communications Security Bureau to do and will provide greater transparency. It is important because New Zealand is no longer as distant from security problems as it has been in the past.The particular role of assisting with information security is clearly indicated in the Government Communications Security Bureau Act but the current wording could be interpreted to mean helping only the public sector potentially excluding critical infrastructure operators and organisations of national significance. We want to be able to use the Government’s significant investment in technology and expertise in this field for the benefit of the wider State sector critical infrastructure operators and other keyeconomic contributors. A safeguard is built into the bill in this area. It requires the Government Communications Security Bureau to get a warrant from the responsible Minister and the Commissioner of Security Warrants when it is performing this function in relation to the communications of New Zealanders.I will now speak briefly about the bureau’s foreign intelligence function. This function is currently defined in the Government Communications Security Bureau Act in a highly prescriptive way describing the overall function that the function involves and how it is to be achieved. The Act specifies such activities as deciphering decoding translating examining and analysing communications. When the House considers how technology has changed the way we communicate over the past 10 years and in light of future changes that can already be anticipated these specific descriptions are extremely limiting. They are also likely to mean that the Government Communications Security Bureau’s abilities to protect New Zealand and New Zealanders are left behind by technology. We are therefore proposing to describe the bureau’s foreign intelligence function at a higher level than the current prescriptive legislation.I would like to move now to talk about the third function of the Government Communications Security Bureau which is cooperation and assistance to other entities. A particular issue has arisen around the bureau’s role in supplying crucial support to other entities including the New Zealand Defence Force the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the New Zealand Police. It has been a longstanding practice of the Government Communications Security Bureau including under successive Labour-led and National-led Governments to provide assistance to other entities. However as I stated earlier there are difficulties of legal interpretation in the existing Government Communications Security Bureau Act including in relation to this assistance. The Government has decided that there is too much uncertainty to continue this very important activity under the existing law. The vast bulk of this type of activity remains on hold until legislation is passed by this Parliament to provide greater clarity about whether the bureau can provide assistance to others. Currently the Act says that assistance may be provided but only on matters relevant to the pursuit of the bureau’s own objective or the safety of a person or the prevention or detection of serious crime. That limits or at least makes uncertain when the bureau is able to share its expertise across the intelligence community and the wider public sector. We want to provide greater clarity and ensure the bureau can help other agencies fulfil their lawful duties particularly in the areas of security and law enforcement.I would like to move now to speak about the significant changes to the oversight regime supporting the clarifications to the Government Communications Security Bureau Act. The most immediate oversight of activities by our intelligence agencies is internal oversight within an organisation. In respect of the Government Communications Security Bureau two of our proposed law changes to the Act will impact directly on the way it manages itself. First the bureau will be required to maintain written records of all warrants and authorisations in a way that is readily accessible by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. This will support a compliance culture.Second we are creating new obligations for the bureau in respect of the handling of personal information. These obligations will be based on the following principles which are recognised under the Privacy Act: the purpose of collection storage and security accuracy and not keeping information for longer than necessary. Under this bill the principles identified above will be transposed into the Government Communications Security Bureau Act with appropriate modifications to recognise the requirements of national security and the nature of intelligence gathering to serve as the basis of a new policy on personal information. This policy will be signed off by thedirector of the Government Communications Security Bureau in consultation with the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and the Privacy Commissioner and compliance will be regularly audited with results communicated to the Privacy Commissioner. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security will have overlapping responsibilities in this area which will help give confidence that the bureau is implementing these privacy protections.I would like to discuss external oversight which applies to intelligence agencies as a whole. As one of our most important new measures we are creating the role for the Commissioner of Security Warrants in relation to the Government Communications Security Bureau Act. Whenever the bureau is called upon to intercept the communications of New Zealanders—this could occur either as part of its information cyber-security function or when the bureau discovers a New Zealander acting as an agent of a foreign power as part of its foreign intelligence function which is one of the existing exceptions to the basic premise in section 14. In such circumstances before the bureau can take further action it will first be required to get a warrant issued jointly by the responsible Minister and the commissioner. This is very similar to the role of the commissioner in respect of domestic warrants sought by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and is an important safeguard in respect of New Zealanders’ privacy. Of course the commissioner will not play a role when the Government Communications Security Bureau is assisting another entity to perform that other entity’s functions. This is because the other entity will have the authority to undertake that activity. Such authority could take the form of a warrant issued by the courts or an existing statutory authority granted by Parliament or such other source of legal power to carry out the activity. In such cases the bureau will be governed by the restrictions and limitations that apply to the other entity.In broad terms the changes to strengthen the Inspector-General legislation fall into three categories: the first is legislative changes expanding the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security’s work programme and enhancing reporting responsibilities; secondly increased resourcing of the Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security; and thirdly legislative change to address the required qualification to broaden the pool of candidates and the appointment process. It is the Government’s intention that the Inspector-General’s office will become a more proactive overseer of the intelligence community that is able to launch its own investigations and is better resourced to do so.In conclusion the changes proposed to the Act do not represent an extension of powers but do clarify that the Government Communications Security Bureau can resume its longstanding practices under successive Governments. The legislation must be clear must be fit for purpose and must allow the Government Communications Security Bureau to get on with the job of protecting the interests of New Zealand and of New Zealanders.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Before the Minister sits down on the issue of process and good governance it is important for the Minister to indicate to the House to which committee this legislation is to be sent.Hon Trevor Mallard: She did.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: OK I did—I did say it.DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition): Today we see the Government trying to do a patch-up job on an intelligence network on intelligence agencies that have some very serious shortfalls. I would put it to you that it is too important to simply apply a band-aid to save face for the Prime Minister. This is about our national security. It is about our human rights. It is about Kiwis’ confidence in the integrity of our intelligence agencies in agencies that we need. We need them to function according tothe security demands that we have on us but also according to the protection of our privacy and our human rights. That is why we have been calling from the very beginning of the debacle around the intelligence agencies for a wide independent inquiry right across our entire intelligence network not just about the internal workings of the Government Communications Security Bureau because it is the right thing to do. We need to do this properly we need to do it once and we need to get it right because we cannot go on as we are.I want for the House to reflect just exactly why we are debating this issue in the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill today. We are debating this issue because we have had a train wreck over the last few months around our intelligence agencies which has severely undermined the confidence that the public has in those agencies. On 20 January last year the police with the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the home of Kim Dotcom after the Government Communications Security Bureau had been spying on him for more than a month. The very next month in February 2012 questions were raised with the Government Communications Security Bureau by other agencies about the lawfulness of that surveillance because Kim Dotcom was a New Zealand resident. It concluded strangely enough that its actions were lawful. In May the directors of the Government Communications Security Bureau the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security all knew there were legal issues with the bureau’s spying on New Zealanders and not just in Kim Dotcom’s case. In July it told John Key about the possibility that New Zealanders were being spied on unlawfully and he did nothing.The next month the Government Communications Security Bureau director went to see Bill English and asked him to sign a ministerial certificate suppressing the details of the agency’s involvement in spying on Kim Dotcom—suppressing the details and keeping out of any public scrutiny the fact that it had screwed up. John Key claims he was not told about any of the purported illegal spying until 17 September when he was told that the Government Communications Security Bureau had acted unlawfully. He did not admit at that point that the broader concerns about illegal spying on New Zealanders had in fact been raised with him 2 months earlier and he had done nothing in order to suppress that possibility of that spying being illegal. I have not even mentioned the fact that in the midst of all this John Key shoulder-taps a friend of his to become the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau. All of that contributes to an overwhelming lack of confidence in our intelligence agencies by the public at large.Now in the heat of all of that political fallout over this debacle what the Government is trying to do is to rush through legislation in hindsight to make these activities legal into the future. That is not what is needed. What we need is a full and independent inquiry an inquiry that obtains terms of reference from right across Parliament and an inquiry that can be agreed upon. I believe that is entirely possible. We need an inquiry of the ilk that is being done in Australia. In Australia they conducted an inquiry in 2003 an independent inquiry that looked at all of its intelligence agencies and did it again just 2 years later. Australia is not afraid of being able to look at its intelligence agencies in total. We should not be afraid of doing that either.This fully independent inquiry will look right across the agencies. It will look at all of their functions and all of their accountabilities. We accept I certainly accept that some of the findings that could come from that inquiry may well be similar to the conclusions that appear in this legislation—completely accept that. But we know it will be part of a much broader analysis. We need this inquiry because in addition to thedebacle that we have seen over the last few months around the Government Communications Security Bureau we know that the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service wants to expand its role and has got legislation. We have not seen that yet but we know that legislation is written and has been put to one side at the moment to be introduced at some later date no doubt. We know that there has been no independent inquiry since the 1970s in this country. There have been massive changes in technology and I completely agree with the Prime Minister who says that there are threats to our cyber-security. Absolutely—I completely accept that. But we need to be going about this in a way that makes sure that we have the best possible set-up and structure to enable those threats to be dealt with and with the correct ability to provide oversight.One of the things that some of this legislation deals with is the Intelligence and Security Committee the parliamentary oversight of these intelligence agencies. I can tell you that the ability of that parliamentary committee to provide oversight is woeful—it is woeful. I want to give you two examples. First we are not permitted to speak about what we discuss in these meetings but I can tell you that at the last meeting that we had to look at some of the legislation that was coming forward the briefing that we got was well below the level that the press gallery received a few hours later the following morning together with an 8-page briefing statement that we did not get a chance to have a look at. Why do we have a committee that is given less briefing than what the parliamentary gallery will be able to receive about something as important as this legislation? The second example: when the legislation was announced at a press conference by the Prime Minister earlier this week I got a copy of the legislation 2 minutes—2 minutes—before that press conference. I am a member of that committee and I got it 2 minutes before. So if this committee is going to be treated with that sort of approach I think that this legislation does not go anywhere far enough in terms of being able to satisfy public opinion that scrutiny is adequate and able to give the public the confidence that these agencies are operating effectively.Then there is the question of urgency around this legislation. We need to rush this through because—why? Because we are led to believe that there are somehow threats around New Zealand. Again I believe the Prime Minister is playing politics. If it was so urgent why did we not rush it through last year? This is now May. Either the Government is not taking those threats seriously which it says it is or there is actually no real problem and therefore we do not need to rush it through today. In fact we could have had an independent inquiry that had the buy-in of the entire Parliament last year. We could have had the buy-in of the entire Parliament we could have had terms of reference that were agreed to by the Parliament and we could have had that inquiry reporting back to Parliament in a way that gave New Zealand real confidence.We oppose the legislation because it is a band-aid. It is an ad hoc approach it is way too mired in politics and it is an attempt to get the Government out of a hole. It is not durable it is not lasting and it is not going to go as far as it needs to go in terms of satisfying the public that they can have real confidence in our intelligence agencies. We need to balance our national security both our physical and economic security with our right to privacy and civil liberties. If the Government was to establish such an inquiry that would enable us to satisfy both those competing objectives we would cooperate with that we would work with it and we would work to bring forward to this Parliament legislation that would be able to give the public the confidence that our agencies not only are up to date but have the scrutiny and the correct accountability that we need.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I understand that the Minister of Justice wishes to correct her statement to the House.Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Is it a personal explanation or a point of order?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I think it is probably a point of order.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): All right a point of order.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I think it is a point of order. I am sure you will tell me if I am wrong Mr Assistant Speaker. At the end of my speech on the first reading you asked whether or not I had nominated the committee. I thought we had and other members thought we had. I think there is some doubt about that. In fact I meant to and I do nominate that the committee is the Intelligence and Security Committee. Mr Assistant Speaker I am sorry that I gave you the wrong information.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you.Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Minister of Energy and Resources): It is a privilege to speak on this important bill the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill where we are acting responsibly as a Government in the interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders.This omnibus bill is about New Zealand’s intelligence community which is of course critical for our national security as New Zealanders. As the Minister of Justice has said this bill effectively has three objectives: to provide a clear and consistent legal framework which is fundamental in an area such as this; to update the Government Communications Security Bureau’s legal framework again fundamental as we live in a fast-moving and fast-paced world; and thirdly to strengthen the oversight regime that applies to our intelligence agencies which of course is important in a country such as New Zealand where we abide by the rule of law.The history of this bill is reasonably well known: a compliance review of the Government Communications Security Bureau by Rebecca Kitteridge a review of the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003 and a review of the oversight mechanisms that apply to our intelligence community. We are also addressing recommendations that have been made by the Law Commission regarding intelligence agencies and privacy law.The Government Communications Security Bureau has an absolutely pivotal role to play in protecting our security as New Zealanders. Its operations are highly sensitive and its work cannot be talked about in detail because of a need to protect its capabilities and areas of focus. This means that its successes can rarely if ever be publicly discussed. But we are in no doubt on this side of the House that the Government Communications Security Bureau has along with its other intelligence community colleagues made an important—indeed a very important—contribution to our national security over the years.We cannot have in New Zealand an unclear legal framework that leaves room for interpretation and debate. That would not be just not good enough; it would be entirely wrong. Therefore I started this speech by saying that through this bill we are doing I think the responsible thing as a Parliament in moving to clarify the law. This bill will make our regime clear and fit for purpose and will allow the Government Communications Security Bureau to get on with the important job of protecting New Zealand and New Zealanders.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I rise to oppose this bill the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. I think the speech we have just heard from Simon Bridges gives us some insight into what the problem is here. He spoke for what 3 or 4 minutes about legislation that he himself tells us is significant and important and covering a significant and important agency and he cannot even be bothered filling up his time to talk about that.This is as David Shearer has said a band-aid solution. There are significant issues at play here for our security for our human rights and for privacy and this Government thinks that it can sweep all of the problems—the debacle that has taken place over Kim Dotcom and the Government Communications Security Bureau’s behaviour—under the carpet with this piece of legislation. That is simply not good enough.We do need a full inquiry. We need that inquiry because this is not about just the Government Communications Security Bureau; this is about all of the intelligence agencies that work in New Zealand. We know that the SIS legislation had been drafted. We know that there were to be changes to the way that the SIS operates. Since the Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003 was passed the Organised and Financial Crime Agency of New Zealand has come into existence the Police’s organised crime agency. We know that the Directorate of Defence Intelligence and Security now apparently wants the Government Communications Security Bureau working with it as well. There is an interconnected group of intelligence agencies and for the Prime Minister to come down to this House and put in place a piece of legislation that sticks a band-aid over a problem that he does not want New Zealanders to focus on in the Government Communications Security Bureau and say that this is the answer to everything is simply wrong and unacceptable.It is not just the Labour Party that is saying this. I want to quote from John Armstrong’s column in theNew Zealand Herald from Thursday 11 April. This is what he said: “A full inquiry is needed because formally allowing the GCSB some room to function in a domestic context is potentially a huge foot in the door in that arena whatever conditions or provisos are put on such change.” He calls it “No8 fencing wire sort of stuff” and that is not good enough when we are talking about an agency with the intrusive powers of the Government Communications Security Bureau.Doing this enlarging the functions in this way—and it is simply not credible for Judith Collins and Simon Bridges to tell us that there is no enlarging of the function here; there quite clearly is. Whether or not that is justified given the changes in terms of cyber-security given the different agencies that now operate in New Zealand we simply do not know today. That is why we need that formal inquiry.But it is quite clear when we look into the detail of the language in this bill that the assistance that the Government Communications Security Bureau is now going to be able to provide agencies is “in their lawful functions”. It has not got anything necessarily to do with national security; it just says “in their lawful functions”. What does that mean? What greater powers does that give? Are we moving here away from information assurance into some other kind of area? What priorities are going to be put on the Government Communications Security Bureau? We cannot answer any of these questions because we simply do not have enough information about the way that these agencies interact with each other.But the scale of the change here justifies far more than a band-aid solution. This goes beyond clarifying the law. It goes into how this agency operates. It is very important that people understand what the distinction is between the Government Communications Security Bureau and—let us take one of the other agencies—the SIS. That distinction is that the bureau operates as part of an international network. The assurance I think that many New Zealanders would want is if the bureau is going to be given powers to work with other agencies what assurance New Zealanders have that that information is not being passed overseas. The very nature of the expertise that the bureau is bringing to the table is its connection with international agencies.So here we have a fundamental change to the premise of the difference between in this case the Government Communications Security Bureau and the SIS. That is not a minor clarification; that is a fundamental change in the way the agency works. Justputting a bill before Parliament and saying “This is just to clarify what we’re already doing.” is not good enough when it comes to addressing the differences and the distinctions between those two agencies. As David Shearer has said there may well at the end of an inquiry be a need to change this legislation to take account of new technology and to take account of new threats but it is not good enough to bring this in and not have the discussion about that as part of a wider and fuller inquiry.When I obtained the documents from the court about the Kim Dotcom case one of the things that struck me about the documents that came from the Government Communications Security Bureau as part of those court documents was the classifications on top of each page of those documents. Having worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade I am used to the various titles and names but there were some that I did not recognise and on further investigation they were classifications that indicated that this material was going to be shared with international agencies. We have been told publicly by various people with the bureau that this material would not be shared but that information—those designations on those documents—indicates that it is routine for Government Communications Security Bureau information to be shared internationally. What assurances do New Zealanders have that under this legislation if the bureau is working with those other agencies that information will not be shared overseas?It seems to me that the fundamental purpose of the Government in bringing this legislation to the House is to sweep under the carpet John Key’s role in the Kim Dotcom affair because for all of Rebecca Kitteridge’s report into what was going wrong at the Government Communications Security Bureau the one thing she was not allowed to investigate was the Kim Dotcom case. The one thing that actually started all of this off the Kim Dotcom case she could not investigate. That is because the Prime Minister does not want New Zealanders to know about his role in that affair. We have managed over months and months to drag out information from the Prime Minister and we now know that as early as July last year he was aware of unlawful spying and he did nothing. He did nothing about that. In May the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security raised concerns about this and the Government Communications Security Bureau we are asked to believe did nothing about that until it talked to the Prime Minister in July. What we do know is that in February 2012 the bureau knew that its spying on Kim Dotcom had been unlawful.Where was the Prime Minister in all of it? There is a lot of talk in this legislation about oversight and the importance of oversight. We have seen the most lax oversight of this agency by John Key the Minister responsible for the GCSB and that is why he does not want us to look into that. We cannot have a proper conversation about changes to the Government Communications Security Bureau Act without knowing exactly what went on in the Kim Dotcom case. David Shearer has already mentioned the fact that Australia has had such an inquiry and one of the outcomes of that inquiry was greater parliamentary oversight. I strongly believe that we do need that.There are some things in this bill that are useful around the oversight. The expansion of the Inspector-General’s office to have a Deputy Inspector-General—that is a good thing. We need to look at the clauses around how that person is appointed but I think widening the pool beyond a retired judge is a good thing as well. But what about that parliamentary oversight? In our democracy we need to have confidence in institutions and agencies such as the Government Communications Security Bureau. Public confidence in our intelligence agencies is at rock bottom and putting up band-aid legislation simply is not going to satisfy that.I am going to appeal now to the parties in this House that could stop this legislation and give us the full inquiry that we need. I want to quote something that Peter Dunnesaid in October last year because I believe that he is actually right in what he said. He said when talking about the intelligence agencies “I … believe very strongly that when exercising their responsibilities the agencies of the state must at all times act within the law they are pledged to uphold. In a free state it cannot logically be otherwise.” He finished by saying: “Free societies operate on the basis of mutual consent. We respect the authority of the state because we believe it to be exercised in our best interests. When confidence in our institutions is diminished by their own actions the cohesion of our society is eroded. That erosion and where it might lead is what has me feeling uncomfortable right now.” That is what Peter Dunne said last year.This legislation cannot get rid of the discomfort that he feels because all it is doing is putting a band-aid over the problems that he himself identified. I am calling on Mr Dunne and others to oppose this legislation because New Zealanders deserve a full inquiry into our intelligence agencies to restore confidence in them and to create around them the legal and oversight framework that can balance together issues of national security freedoms and privacy. That is the only responsible course to take. This bill does not take that course.Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green): I rise to speak on behalf of the Green Party about the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. It strikes me always as strange that it is the parties of the right that want to restrict our freedom. Time and again what we find is that the parties of the right want to intrude into our lives. They want to listen to our phone calls they want to read our emails and they want to know what we are looking at on the internet. And here we have in front of us yet another bill from the parties of the right—the National Party and the ACT Party supported I guess by Peter Dunne but I hope he changes his mind—to restrict our freedom and breach our privacy.Let us remember what this bill does. This bill gives the Prime Minister and the Government Communications Security Bureau greater powers to break into our houses to put bugs into our houses. It gives it greater power to listen to our phone calls without a warrant. It gives it greater power to look at our emails without a warrant—it does not need a warrant. It gives it greater power to monitor every activity that we do every second of every day. That is what a surveillance State is about. It is striking that it is always parties of the right that support the surveillance State that oppose freedom and that try to breach our privacy year after year after year and here we have another example of it.The tragedy of it on this occasion is that in the past the attempts to basically undermine our freedom have been justified by the war on terror or whatever and of course there was the “Red Terror” before that. On this occasion the justification for the expansion of the powers of the bureau to spy on us even more is in order to cover up the Prime Minister’s embarrassment. That is the tragedy of this particular piece of legislation. What stands behind it is the fact that the Prime Minister is embarrassed as the responsible Minister who was supposed to be keeping the Government Communications Security Bureau acting lawfully and failed. This bill to allow the spy agencies to intrude further into our lives—its sole purpose really or its main purpose driven politically is to cover up the political embarrassment of the Prime Minister and that is a tragedy.Why is it that the parties of the right always support further intrusion into our freedom and our privacy? I would argue it is because they think that they are never going to be the target of it. They think: “Oh we’re conservatives. The security institutions don’t target us. They’ll target those lefties those greenies those radicals—they’re not going to target us. So we don’t care that we give more power to the Government Communications Security Bureau to break into our houses and listen to ourphone calls because we’re not going to be the target of it.” and maybe they are right. I mean if you look at the history of the SIS it was found that it was spying on Aziz Choudry an anti - free trade activist. The SIS persecuted Ahmed Zaoui because he was a democracy activist in Algeria and had upset the Algerian regime. We know that in the Kim Dotcom case the Government Communications Security Bureau was acting on behalf of the US Government. The Obama administration of course is highly dependent on donations from Hollywood. Hollywood is very upset with Kim Dotcom and when Hollywood said: “Jump.” the Obama administration jumped; when Obama jumped then the Government Communications Security Bureau jumped because the bureau is part of the “Five Eyes” network.So we know that the targets for the security agencies tend to be groups of people whom parties of the right figure they are never going to be part of: lefties progressives greenies. So what would they care if they breached the freedom and the democratic rights and civil liberties of ordinary New Zealanders? Of course those ordinary New Zealanders whose freedom and civil liberties the parties of the right like the National Party are happy to breach are people like anti-apartheid activists. Of course we have a Prime Minister who cannot remember whether he was opposed to apartheid or not but those people who were opposed to apartheid—of course the National Party was not opposed to apartheid; the Prime Minister just cannot remember whether he was or he was not opposed to apartheid—were the targets of the security agencies. Those people who campaigned against apartheid were the very targets of the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau and those are the people who in the future given these new powers of the bureau will once again be the target of these agencies.It is very difficult for us to know what the agencies do. Only very rarely does it become clear what they are up to. The Aziz Choudry case is an exception and the Ahmed Zaoui case is an exception as is the Kim Dotcom case. Mostly we do not know what they do because they operate in secrecy. But when it is revealed what they do what we find is that their targets are progressives. That is whom they have targeted historically and this is a bill to give them more power.Mr Shearer from the Labour Party made a very valid case for having an independent inquiry. I believe that not only do we need an inquiry into the illegal activities of the Government Communications Security Bureau—an independent inquiry of which there has been none—but we need an inquiry as to what is the role of the security agencies. Remember these were established during the Cold War. They kind of ran out of steam after the Cold War ended and then they used the war on terror as a justification for what they were doing and now they are trying to find new justifications and cyber-attacks are part of it. There is no doubt that cyber-attacks are real—no question about it. The question is this: what should be the role of these kinds of agencies in a free and democratic society given that they involve fundamental intrusions into our freedom and civil liberties? That is why we need an independent inquiry that is broader than just the Kim Dotcom case and that goes into the role of the agencies themselves. If they are to exist then we need to know why they exist. We need to know what kinds of limitations on our freedom and democracy we are willing to withstand or put up with by the very existence of these agencies.I think this thing goes to the issue of oversight. What we know is that in other jurisdictions there is some kind of parliamentary oversight of these agencies. There is no parliamentary oversight of these agencies here. The sole democratic oversight is John Key. John Key as we have seen has forgotten his role amongst many other things. He has forgotten that his job is to protect our freedom and democracy from the intelligence agencies and he has not performed that function. In other jurisdictions there is democratic oversight. When I have spoken to people who have been involved in theintelligence community over the years what they have said is: “The thing we’ve always feared in a United States framework was that the congressional committee would pull us up and we would be forced to give testimony to the congressional intelligence committee about what we’d done and if we’d broken the law we’d be put in jail.”There is no parliamentary capacity in the New Zealand system for the Intelligence and Security Committee to force any of the agencies to give testimony. They do not have to say a word to us. We have no ability to force them to tell us what they are doing. I am a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee. We have no capacity to force the intelligence agencies to tell us whether they are acting lawfully or not. We have no capacity to force an intelligence officer to appear in front of the committee and tell us what they are doing. We have no capacity to inquire into it.If you think about it the Intelligence and Security Committee is going to have to consider this legislation. It would be a bit like if the Social Services Committee had to consider legislation about Work and Income but it was not allowed to ask any questions about how Work and Income operates; it was not allowed to ask how the unemployment benefit is administered or any of the other benefit systems; and it had to decide whether the legislation was good legislation or bad legislation without knowing or being allowed to ask a single thing about how Work and Income operates.The Intelligence and Security Committee that considers this legislation will have to make a decision about whether it supports the legislation or not without ever being allowed to ask a single question about how the intelligence community actually works in New Zealand. Under the statute under which it is established we do not have the right to do that. That is the level the woeful level of parliamentary oversight of the intelligence and security services in New Zealand. Is it any wonder that these agencies which have been living under a stone for three or four decades with no public scrutiny no sunlight ever exposed to them went dysfunctional? Are any of us really surprised that a group of a few hundred people who never never had any oversight became dysfunctional? The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security was a joke. There was never any oversight of what they did. They lived under a rock and they did what they liked. So at the end of it we found they were highly dysfunctional. That is what the Kitteridge report showed. Just in purely bureaucratic efficiency terms they were highly dysfunctional. We found they were operating unlawfully. Is anyone surprised when there is no proper oversight of these agencies?This bill does not put in place proper oversight of these agencies. There is still no democratic oversight. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security should be an Officer of Parliament. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security should report to Parliament as the Auditor-General does or the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment does or the Ombudsman does. That should be the role of oversight. The Intelligence and Security Committee should be a committee of Parliament that has the right to require the intelligence agencies to appear before it and the right to force information out of them. We do not have that right.So in the absence of an independent inquiry in the absence of any parliamentary oversight and given the record of the intelligence communities to target progressive activists it is obscene that the parties of the right once again want to restrict our freedoms want to breach our privacy want to break into our houses and want to give these intelligence agencies all these expanded powers. We cannot support this bill.JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am very pleased to stand and speak on the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. Thank you for your attention and for the remarks of the previous speaker Russel Norman who I am sure would be a great author of a conspiracy novel because that is what his speech sounded like.We need to understand that the safety and security of this nation is dependent upon organisations such as this and we need to understand that they must have a strong clear legal framework in which they operate. New Zealanders expect that. New Zealanders expect this Government to provide security and safety to its citizens and it is important that we have agencies that can assist and do this in a way that is appropriate.The Government Communications Security Bureau Act 2003 sought to codify and make transparent existing practices of the then Government Communications Security Bureau. But under scrutiny the 10-year-old Act potentially limits the bureau’s ability to provide the support and advice that successive Governments expect and have expected and possibly limits current support and advice that can be provided. So it is important and it is the responsible thing for this Government to do to move to clarify the Act. This bill will make the Government Communications Security Bureau Act clearer and more transparent so it is clear what the agency can and cannot do.The functions and resourcing of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security of his office will be increased and improved. It will increase capability and enable the office to have increased scrutiny over the operations of this agency.The Government Communications Security Bureau has a crucial role to play in protecting the security safety and best interests of New Zealand and New Zealanders. It is for this reason that this bill after the compliance review by Rebecca Kitteridge is progressing in order to bring those improvements to bring the improvements of oversight mechanisms that apply to our intelligence community. I am very happy to support the progression of this bill in the House. Thank you.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I think the background to this legislation the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill is well known by most New Zealanders. It is a shameful background of neglect of cover-up and of failure to answer parliamentary questions or a failure to front up to the media and tell people what happened and what went wrong.We are charged as a political party with writing a law that hopefully the mass majority of members of Parliament can support in the interests of the national security and safety of New Zealanders in our role as participants in seeking to obtain a safer world internationally. The outcome New Zealand First seeks therefore is to create an effective watchdog that does not bite the people it seeks to protect. New Zealand First seeks specific safeguards in the legislation to ensure that the Government Communications Security Bureau does not operate outside the law. We have set these out: first “Each surveillance to be authorised by warrant by the responsible Minister”; second “The warrant to comply with specified criteria to identify the potential security risk”; third “The method of surveillance and the time frame of the operation”; and perhaps as important every warrant from the time of its issue is to be made available to a group in which the country can have total trust and confidence so that it can review within 3 weeks that warrant—that is a review by an independent authority selected from the judiciary the Defence Force and the police.We have written to the Prime Minister setting out the circumstances in which we as a party would seek to pass a law not for political reasons but for reasons that I believe and we believe are the responsibility of any member of Parliament. New Zealand First’s position on matters of security is clear and unambiguous.The first duty of any Government is to ensure the safety and protection of its people. We therefore must live in the real world. We cannot put our heads in the sand in a world of extremists and terrorists and for one the party that I belong to New Zealand First and my caucus colleagues are not going to be standing by so that one day there is mayhem and murder and extremist actions in this country and people point a finger at us and say: “But what did you seek to do about it?”.In short we understand the real world and parts of the real world are a very evil place. To ignore the threats posed by such groups would be irresponsible. Recent events graphically illustrate that terrorism can be home-grown and it also does not respect international borders. New Zealanders as we know enjoy civil liberties that are not universally shared. These are precious and men and women have in the past fought and died for them. As a nation we have always jealously guarded our freedoms and view with suspicion any moves by the State to impose any sort of “Big Brother is watching” scenario. The outcome New Zealand First seeks therefore is to create an effective watchdog that does not offend or bite the people it seeks to protect.We have specific areas of the legislation we believe need addressing. For example new section 8A in clause 6 of this bill refers to “any other entity authorised by the Minister”. That is far too wide and should be limited to those entities with accountable authority and specified in the legislation. New section 8A(c)(ii) refers to “any person or office holder”. That is far too wide is far too open to abuse and is not susceptible to transparency and accountability. New section 8B(1)(c)(ii) refers to “any person or office holder”. Again this is too wide. New section 8B(2) in clause 6 refers to “any public authority … and any other entity”. These are phrases that are far too wide and they would have appeared surely to the drafters as obviously not capable of being supported by responsible members of Parliament. New section 8C(1)(d) in clause 6 refers to “any department”. This should include a schedule of departments. The subsection is not clear. New section 25(3)(d) in clause 24 refers to “any other person that the Director thinks fit”. Where on earth would they have got such a catch-all carry-all include-all phrase if they seriously wanted members of Parliament to support this?Although New Zealand First agrees with the necessity to gather information and to share it with appropriate authorities we believe there needs to be far clearer definition about this and also serious general oversight. We have suggested an independent committee to oversee the Government Communications Security Bureau’s information-gathering activities. Where New Zealand citizens or residents are involved we want this committee to be informed when a warrant is authorised and the same committee must be given the power to review the situation within a period of 3 weeks. That is proper oversight. This provides a measure of safeguard to avoid unfounded fishing trips on New Zealanders.The Government Communications Security Bureau is an important agency. I can tell from the correspondence and communications that a number of people are suspicious of this. Let me ask them what they would have done in circumstances in which terrorism could have been discovered before it happened. When were they going to take responsibility or whom did they trust to take responsibility for that? We are not asking people to sign up to spying on our fellow citizens. But there are some people in our society as in a lot of societies—take the serious drug-trafficking in this country and on the borders of this country which is surely a case in point—who simply cannot be trusted. Their whole record shouts that and we know it.The bureau must operate professionally to meet the challenges faced by New Zealand and our allies. New Zealand First has said—and we have written to the Prime Minister today—that we will assist the Government to meet these goals so long as our concerns are addressed in this legislation because we will not support the idea of rubber-stamping the bill as it stands.I have heard some of the previous speakers from the Government side. Frankly with respect I do not think they know what they are talking about. I have been a Minister who twice in my career signed out on countless authorities or warrants because I had to but I was seriously concerned at the time about the safeguards where there may have been some impact on New Zealanders.Hon Trevor Mallard: He was no rubber stamp.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No I did not rubber-stamp them. That is a fact.Hon Trevor Mallard: Read them unlike Bill English.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I most certainly read them. But here is the point: we had a Prime Minister who according to the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau at the time Mr Ferguson paid no attention at all to this most serious of all obligations. We consider that the Government should seek as wide a degree of cross-party support for this bill as possible. In short this legislation surely has to be supported by enough of Parliament to ensure that it survives the next election the one after that and the one after that if it is going to have any serious meaning in terms of the security of this country. That being the case and because we have written to the Prime Minister and the Government has preferred under urgency to press this bill deficient as it is at this point in time we oppose this legislation.JAMI-LEE ROSS (National—Botany): This House is considering the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill because it is important that we take security threats seriously and we ensure that the legislation under which agencies such as the Government Communications Security Bureau operate is sound is robust and is fit for purpose. There are some important changes in the bill that I suggest to the House should be supported by the whole Parliament.I heard some comments from Mr Robertson and Mr Norman. Mr Robertson spent a lot of time talking about what New Zealanders deserve. I think New Zealanders deserve a Parliament that takes security matters seriously. We live in a changing security environment where threats are increasingly interconnected around the world. Globalisation means that New Zealand is not safe from threats. We need to have an agency there that is looking after us. Mr Robertson does not believe legislation like this which improves the framework under which the bureau operates is important. I think New Zealanders deserve to have changes made to the Government Communications Security Bureau Act so that they can have greater confidence in the bureau and so that they can have a bureau that has greater oversight by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and an inspector-general who has greater resources to provide that oversight. That is what New Zealanders deserve.New Zealanders deserve to have a Parliament that takes seriously the review undertaken by Rebecca Kitteridge. Rebecca Kitteridge made some important recommendations and highlighted some difficulties with interpreting the Government Communications Security Bureau Act. What was the bureau doing when the difficulties she highlighted were pointed out? The bureau was simply assisting other agencies carrying out their work.Mr Norman talked about the parties of the right trying to clamp down on freedom. In fact with this legislation the parties of the right are providing greater oversight greater transparency and a clearer authority for the Government Communications Security Bureau to assist other agencies to do important work on behalf of New Zealanders. This bill will improve the bureau and other similar agencies that it interacts with and it should be supported by this Parliament.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I agree with one thing at least that Jami-Lee Ross the member who has just resumed his seat said. This Parliament needs to take security agencies seriously. If only the Government would do so. We have seen a debacle a farce surrounding the Kim Dotcom affair. The Prime Minister cannot even remember whether he was briefed on Kim Dotcom. He did not know Kim Dotcom. He did not know about the guy—the biggest guy in his electorate who had the largest mansion in his electorate and he had never heard of him. He had never been briefed by the Government Communications Security Bureau. But he had been.There was the appointment process of the director. The Prime Minister thought he could ring up a mate and say “How would you like this job? There won’t be any competition. You’ll be the only interviewee.” and get away with it. He thought he could get away with not telling this House the full truth. The Prime Minister never admitted that he had breakfast with him on a number of occasions never admitted that he was a good mate of his and went about it in a way that the State Services Commissioner himself said was flawed. He usedYes Minister language but what he was really saying was that the Prime Minister broke the protocols—did it wrong. If anybody has undermined the confidence of New Zealanders in our security agencies it is John Key who is meant to be the Minister responsible for the security agencies and is meant to exercise the oversight but time and again has failed to do so.I am one in this House who believes that the security agencies do need reform. They need reform in regard to their powers so that they are 21st century powers and they are appropriate to the work they need to do. But just as important they need reform around the oversight of how these agencies which act in secret—act outside the public oversight—can be checked and how it can be made sure that they are acting under the law and that they are acting properly. To do that you need proper legislation.We also need legislation moved through this House in a way that would restore public confidence in the security agencies. TV3 ran a poll the other day. What did it show? A massive 40 percent of New Zealanders have no confidence in do not trust the Government Communications Security Bureau. You cannot operate in a democracy with security agencies that so lack the confidence of the public whose needs they are meant to be serving. That is an indictment on the bureau. It is an indictment on how the Government has handled this matter.If we do not get this legislation the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill right and if we do not do it in the right way—build consensus because you need consensus across the House on how these agencies should be run—we will end up with the bureau damaged in the same way that the SIS was way back in the 1960s. You will remember the case where the SIS agent left his briefcase on the street in Wellington. It may have had secret documents in it but more attention was given to the copy ofPenthouse and the cold pie that he had in it. That made the SIS a laughing stock. We cannot afford for our security agencies to be a laughing stock. Unless we do this well the Government Communications Security Bureau will be just as the SIS was a laughing stock that lacks public confidence.What I am saying to you is that if you are going to do this well you do not do it in an ad hoc way; you do it comprehensively. We know that this House is expecting another piece of legislation which the Government has tucked away in the wings on the SIS—so a separate piece of legislation on the SIS—and this legislation rushed into the House under urgency today on the Government Communications Security Bureau. Who is going to have confidence in the outcome of legislation that is done in an ad hoc way? Who is going to have confidence in legislation unless there is a full and public inquiry into how our agencies are operating what powers they need and what safeguards there need to be?Better than most people in this House I have an understanding of how our security agencies work. As a foreign affairs and trade Minister and as a defence Minister I worked with those agencies for 9 years. But I think the time has come to fully comprehensively and coherently reform those agencies. I do not think they do the job that we need them to do I do not think they do it thoroughly and competently enough and I do not think that the powers of oversight over how they carry out their functions are done properly.The reason we have got this legislation is not that there are terrorist groups lurking in the wings. You can never rule out that you do not have nutcases like the Boston bombers who can operate in a country but that is not I think something that is actually such a risk to New Zealand that we need to rush legislation through in an ad hoc way. I think there are more important questions to ask about cyber-security about commercial interests and State interests outside of New Zealand that would like to break into our IT networks and use that information. Maybe the Government should be asking itself some questions about why unlike Australia and the United States it has accepted Huawei into New Zealand when that in itself is regarded by two of the countries we work closely with as being a security risk. The Government will not talk about that but that might be what it actually needs to be focusing on.You know we have this legislation to distract the public from the embarrassment that John Key feels about the debacle of the Kim Dotcom affair. The police went into that mansion with a combination of Rambo and the Keystone cops—total overkill unnecessary. That was bad enough. What was worse according to Justice Winkelmann is that they went in without a valid warrant to search the place or to break into the place and that makes us as New Zealanders and as taxpayers liable possibly to tens of millions of dollars in damages if that is the way it goes. So we certainly need an inquiry into the Kim Dotcom case.We need to know why—when they acted illegally when the advice of Crown Law was inadequate when the Ministry of Justice did not get it right when the police did not get it right and when the Government Communications Security Bureau did not get it right—Bill English suppressed information that revealed those facts. Why did he cover it up? Is it credible that John Key who is the Minister in charge of the security agencies and the Prime Minister was never told about Bill English’s once-in-a-lifetime warrant to suppress public information about the Government’s illegal doings? He did not brief John Key.Hon Trevor Mallard: Who believes that?Hon PHIL GOFF: Who believes that? I mean either you have got a totally incompetent and disloyal deputy or you have got a Prime Minister who is not telling the full truth. I will leave it to the public to make up their minds on that. We need a proper job to determine the powers and the oversight of the Government Communications Security Bureau. This bill does not do it and this process is such that there will be no restoration of public confidence in those agencies.I want to look very quickly now in my last minute and a half at the oversight proposals in this bill. Rebecca Kitteridge who is a very competent woman I think got the direction right but she did not go far enough and this bill does not go far enough. You need an Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security who is not in a retirement position. You need an active inspector-general—more than that you need a proactive inspector-general—and you need that person to be backed by staffing and resources so that they can ensure compliance. We need to have a strong inspector-general and that person if they are not to be a retired judge needs to have the confidence of both sides of this House. So in this bill there should be legislative provision that the appointment needs the concurrence of the Opposition just as you do for the Governor-General because that is how important the position is.You also need changes to be made to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I served on that committee for 3 years. It is a farce. It does not do the job because John Key does not let it do the job. It hardly ever meets it does not get briefed properly and it does not give anywhere near adequate reports to this House. It is an absolute conflict of interest that the Minister in charge of the Security Intelligence Service should be the chair of the committee having oversight into the Intelligence and Security Committee.He is the person who should be held to account. This bill says: “Oh put the Deputy Prime Minister in or the Attorney-General.” That is not good enough. Maybe we should look at the Regulations Review Committee and like that committee have an Opposition member chairing the committee.TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): What an angry speech from an angry man. Mr Goff is a man who comes to this Parliament after continuing to leak to the media suppressed details from a coroner’s report a report that is still subject to a suppressions order in an absolute disregard for legal process and the laws of this country. Then he has the audacity to come down here to this House and lecture us on what he views as being right and being wrong. You see the problem that we have here is that Mr Goff has just questioned whether or not the Prime Minister received a briefing. What we have got to do is look at the year before last when he was Leader of the Opposition. Do you remember that he was the man who forgot he received a briefing from the SIS? And then he said he would not meet with the SIS again without somebody else there who was independent because he forgot. So it is not just that he does not trust all intelligence services in New Zealand; it is that Mr Goff forgets sometimes but he will not own up to that.This bill the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill is a responsible piece of legislation on behalf of the Government and for this Parliament. It does a number of things. The first is that it looks at a service—the intelligence community—that has a vital role to play in our national security. Very clearly the bill is to provide a clear and consistent legal framework for the Government Communications Security Bureau. It will also update the bureau’s legal framework in response to a rapidly changing security environment. And the third thing it will do is strengthen the oversight regime that applies to our intelligence agencies—something that everybody in this Parliament must surely want.One of the challenges we have is that the Government Communications Security Bureau is arguably more important today than it has been for many a time. The reason for this is that cyber-security and the way that security must be handled on behalf of nations around the world has changed and continues to change rapidly. We need to continue to be able to have our services tackle a rapidly increasing threat. Very clearly what will happen is that the Government Communications Security Bureau will continue to have three core functions: information assurance and cyber-security foreign intelligence and cooperation and assistance with other entities. This legislation will help Parliament look at that and make sure we are doing this work in the right way and give the surety that New Zealanders need that the agencies are working in their best interests. I look forward to it passing through this House and to further discussion. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand the next call is a split call.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I think I would start my point by noting the fact that the Government decided to put up Todd McClay on intelligence legislation—a contradiction in terms to start with.I think most people are aware of the fact—although some of the new members might not be—that I have had a mixed history in this House to do with security legislation. I was arrested in the House opposing the 1977 legislation and the core reason that I was opposing it and why many many New Zealanders marched on this Parliament was because we did not think the Prime Minister of the day deserved the trust that was being given to him as part of that legislation. I think we have come full circle. I certainly trusted Jim Bolger with the legislation. Jenny Shipley I did not know well enough to know how she acted in this area. Helen Clark and David Lange certainly took thislegislation very very seriously across security areas. But times have changed. I have no doubt that we need changes in our security legislation not only to do with this agency but also to do with the SIS. In fact I have been part of consultations on changes to the SIS legislation and it just seems to me unbelievable that the Prime Minister is trying to do a patch job on this bit of the legislation the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill without having a proper look across all of the agencies as to what needs to happen.And I will say something else. There are considerable infringements of personal liberties that flow from this legislation—considerable. What this Parliament does when it is doing its work well is it comes together and works out what is fair and what is reasonable. I am just going to say this a little bit carefully to the people who I hope will be supporting a Labour Government later on: we do not always get everyone on board but I think it is important in order for legislation to be seen as reasonable for it to be at least bipartisan. I think that that is a minimum for this sort of legislation which infringes so badly on the liberties of individuals.I think something else is important and that is oversight. I want to say that there are two levels of oversight that I am worried about here. There is the oversight of the legislation—and we will get back to that later on as to which committee it is going to go to and for what period—but there is also the question of the oversight of the agency itself. I think we should soon be at a point where we can have someone whom we trust to oversee it—someone who cares about the governance someone who gets regular briefings on matters that are important and someone who does not appoint his boyhood friend as a director and does not suggest to him that he should apply for the job. We want to have a group in charge of this that is going to haul the director over the coals. It is important when so many rights are being taken away that the individuals who are making those decisions are properly accountable and this legislation does not get anywhere near that at all.That is why in my opinion there needs to be a proper review—a proper inquiry. I would suggest that it would be a good idea to involve people from offshore as well as from New Zealand—Australia has done it twice in recent memory—to have a really good look at our mosaic of security arrangements because I do agree with the Prime Minister that they are out of date. The legislation is out of date. I think the pattern of arrangements is out of date. The fact that it appears that our information is sent almost automatically to the United States from this organisation is out of date. It has got to change and this legislation does not do it.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I rise to speak to the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. The question has to be who makes New Zealand spying law and whom it is for. Clearly it is for John Key and his mates but it is also I suggest for Echelon the five-nations USA-dominated spy agency that has its Government Communications Security Bureau arm run spy domes at Waihopai.This week there are three different significant spy activities going on in New Zealand. The first is these new spy laws being fast tracked into Parliament instead of first having an independent inquiry into the Government Communications Security Bureau its illegal spying on us Kiwis and its functions. The second is the faux damages trial of the three penniless dome-busting peace activists for $1.2 million for their costs for popping one of the Waihopai domes while trying to interrupt New Zealand’s part in the bloodshed of innocents—Government Communications Security Bureau material again. That really embarrassed New Zealand to its USA UK Australian and Canadian spy mates so today John Key has got a gift for them: this bill.The third is very disturbing as well I think. Today the US Attorney General Eric Holder is in Auckland New Zealand for the five-nation meeting of Attorneys-General. That is a meeting of the US Attorney General; the Aussie Attorney-General; the New Zealand Attorney-General; the England Wales and Northern Ireland Attorney General; and the Canadian Attorney General—the same group from Echelon. Also today they are holding a joint session with the FBI-instigated Strategic Alliance Group comprising the same five nations’ federal policing agencies: the FBI the Australian Federal Police the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency the New Zealand Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. So the five Echelon States have their Attorneys-General and policing agencies all here having a chat about among other things Kim Dotcom’s Megaupload and who knows what of the other 88 people illegally spied on by the Government Communications Security Bureau which this bill intends to make legal in the future.John Key must feel very very smug at having a new spying law for his mates in town that can allow Echelon to spy on effectively anyone and have total access to all telecommunications and internet systems. A big focus will be on the USA-UK corporate masters’ income protection including their Hollywood mates but it is a huge huge loss for the civil liberties of Kiwis. New Zealand needs to break away from these alliances which are set on protecting the USA-UK industrial military complex and needs to show an independent peace-loving example predicated on human and civil rights.So we have John Key and his hand-picked mate Government Communications Security Bureau Director Ian Fletcher spying on us New Zealanders.I will give just a little reminder of where the Government Communications Security Bureau Act came from in 2003 when MPs repeatedly commented that there was nothing to worry about because the bill expressly stated that New Zealanders could not be spied on. But we know of at least 88 now. In 2003 Tony Ryall said: “people who have quite a bent on conspiracy theories and seem to think that all the Government Communications Security Bureau ever does is listen on New Zealanders’ telephone calls which is of course expressly prohibited. The bureau is not allowed to listen in on New Zealanders.” Peter Dunne also said he would listen to no concerns when the 2003 bill was passed. He said: “This is a good bill. I do not accept the criticism of those who speak against it that somehow it means that information about people will be gathered improperly”. Well Tony Ryall and Peter Dunne showed how clear it was to Parliament when it passed that bill that the bureau was not permitted to spy on New Zealanders. The law and the intent of the law were not confusing; the bureau just did not follow it. There is no justification for the expansion of powers other than that the bureau was breaking the law. It is not needed. The law is adequate. The Greens want an inquiry. We think the bill should be pulled and we oppose it.TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): The Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill is needed. The law is inadequate and that is exactly why we are introducing this measure this afternoon. It is naive to suggest that this bill is simply about making life easier for the Prime Minister and his mates or whatever the exact wording was that the previous speaker Steffan Browning used when he was on his feet.The fact of the matter is that this is an ever-changing world. We know just with cyber-security how rapidly things change and as a result it is important that we have clarity in our legal framework. Yes there are some extensions in powers here but that is because they are needed. Most New Zealanders understand why we are doing this and they are supportive of it. I have great pleasure in supporting the first reading of this bill.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a first time.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes59New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a first time.The question was put that the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill be referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be agreed to.Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes59New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 14; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Question agreed to.Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice)on behalf of theMinister responsible for the GCSB: I moveThat the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 26 July 2013 and that the Intelligence and Security Committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) during an evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 188 and 191(1)(b) and (c).The Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill will go to the Intelligence and Security Committee for a shortened period because the difficulties of interpretation in the Government Communications Security Bureau Act need to be resolved in a timely manner. The compliance review by Ms Rebecca Kitteridge raised issues that need to be addressed. Until legislation is clarified the Government Communications Security Bureau remains in the situation where it has put important activities on hold. This includes the vast bulk of its assistance to other agencies like the New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. Until the legislation is passed the bureau’s ability to help important private sector companies with the rising threat of cyber-attack is also unclear. This needs to be resolved. The public will have a chance to have its say and rightly so but for a reduced period of time.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I rise to oppose the motion that has been moved by the Minister of Justice. The 2-month period that is being suggested here is woefully inadequate to give members of the public the opportunity that they need to have a say on such significant legislation as the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. The Minister has just told the House that the lack of ability for the Government Communications Security Bureau to continue to assist other agencies is hamstringing it from important activities. Well if timeliness is the issue here we know that in at least July last year the Prime Minister knew that there were issues with unlawful spying and then in September according to statements the Prime Minister has made the kinds ofactivities that are being talked about here were ceased. So if there is an urgency that requires only a 2-month period why was legislation not introduced in September last year? In order to justify such a truncated select committee process the Government needs to answer the question of how it is that when it has been aware of this since at least September—actually July last year in the case of the Prime Minister—it did not act at that point.It has introduced legislation to the House today that has not been adequately scrutinised by anybody. It put that legislation in front of the House and asked for an exception to grant it only a 2-month select committee process. The gravity of the issues involved here in terms of personal privacy in terms of human rights and in terms of our national security is such that it is simply impossible that a 2-month committee process would be able to take that on board. I imagine many many New Zealanders will want to make a submission to this bill and to have only a 2-month period guarantees that the voice of a lot of New Zealanders will not be heard in the committee process.I want to speak too about the nature of this particular committee the Intelligence and Security Committee and its relationship to this truncated select committee process. This Intelligence and Security Committee is unique in our Parliament. It is constituted in a different way from all other select committees to the point that members cannot be substituted on this committee. So in such a truncated period will members of the committee actually all be available to hear submissions? I am not certain that they will and there is no capacity to have a member substituted on. Can the Government guarantee in this House today that the Prime Minister will be present throughout the submission process? Can it guarantee that to the House? If it cannot then New Zealanders are being denied their right to participate in discussion on this legislation in front of a full committee. Certainly in terms of the Labour Party’s representative on that committee David Shearer in this 2-month period—it is a very very busy period. We have just had the Prime Minister announce today that the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti by-election will be held on 29 June. The National Party is not participating in that by-election but this is a period of time that is extremely busy. It is a committee that operates in quite a different way from other committees in the House and I do not think sending a piece of legislation to that committee for only 2 months is satisfactory.We know that there will now have to be submissions called for. That will be a very narrow window for people to put submissions in and then a very very narrow window for those submissions to be heard. There are issues that are raised in this legislation that may well be of a confidential nature. People who want to make submissions to the committee may well have issues that they need to raise that will be of a confidential nature. What processes are going to be set up to allow that to happen to allow people to have an adequate say?We heard in the earlier debate both sides of this argument talk about the significance of what was being done here that there were significant changes to the way in which the Government Communications Security Bureau would be acting and yet the Government has put up a motion that says it needs only 2 months to do this. That is not consistent with what we know about when the Government was informed about unlawful spying. The urgency with which this is being put through simply does not match the process of events that took place last year—and I will rehearse those again because they are relevant to the question of how long this committee should have to assess this bill. If it is true that the Government Communications Security Bureau itself became aware in May last year of unlawful spying—Hon Trevor Mallard: February.GRANT ROBERTSON: February initially that is right—February initially and then the bureau swept it under the carpet. Then in May it returned to the matter whenthe Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security raised concerns. Then in July Ian Fletcher decided it was time to let the Prime Minister know about the unlawful spying and nothing happened at that point. Nothing happened along the way there to say: “This is a hugely urgent matter—we better get a bill in front of Parliament and rush it through.” That did not happen. Then between July and September it appeared the Prime Minister was happy enough to see the Government Communications Security Bureau continue to operate under the existing law. He did not seem concerned about the information that he had been told about unlawful spying. But in September the game was up because finally the bureau and the Prime Minister had to come clean about what had happened in the Kim Dotcom case.At that point if a bill had been introduced to this House and the Government had said we have to get this through quickly because we have got to make sure that the Government Communications Security Bureau can continue to do the work it has been doing on behalf of other agencies that would have made some logical sense. But that did not happen. Nothing happened until today when a bill was introduced to Parliament. The Minister stood up and moved a motion that said there needs to be only 2 months’ worth of consideration by a committee that is restricted in the way that it operates. I simply do not believe that that is adequate for this piece of legislation.I believe that the people of New Zealand when we are dealing with issues of such sensitivity and when we are dealing with an agency with intrusive and significant powers and that operates in an opaque manner deserve a proper process for this piece of legislation. I have not heard anything advanced today by the Government most especially in the recent contribution by the Minister that actually indicates why this urgency is required because if it had been required we would have seen legislation in September last year. The fact is that it is being referred to a committee that operates as David Shearer has already said to the House today in a way that I think is woefully inadequate in terms of parliamentary oversight and that committee is then being given only 2 months to do its work.I believe strongly that this legislation deserves full scrutiny by this Parliament and New Zealanders deserve an opportunity to make submissions and know that if they request to be heard by this committee they will be heard. With a 2-month window it is simply not credible that all the New Zealanders who will want to be heard on this bill will be able to be heard on this bill. That is possible only with a full select committee process. The Labour Party is on record as saying that we need a full inquiry into the intelligence agencies. The severity of the change in this bill actually indicates that that inquiry is needed more than ever but in the absence of the Government agreeing to that inquiry this select committee process for this bill is the only opportunity that New Zealanders have to actually have their say.I think that the Government needs to think again about how it is treating these issues. These issues are about the balance in our society between the fundamental freedoms that New Zealanders expect—the fact that they can go about their business without the intrusion of the State—against our national security. Those are weighty matters. I accept the need in our society for these kinds of agencies but without New Zealanders having confidence that the checks and balances are in place we run the risk of totally undermining the confidence that New Zealanders have in our security and intelligence agency which is at an all-time low now I would suggest. Nothing that the Government is doing today will increase that confidence; it will simply decrease it. The idea that the Government is ramming through under urgency this first reading and the idea that it is putting in place a truncated select committee process simply fuels the view of many New Zealanders that this Government is trying to sweep under the carpet the problems the debacle of the Government Communications Security Bureau and the role of thePrime Minister in it. Democracy is not being served today by a truncated select committee process through a committee that does not operate properly. I urge the Government to reconsider this motion and I oppose it.Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I am surprised that no one from the Government is prepared to defend this rorting of the parliamentary process that is being attempted by Judith Collins and John Key today. We set up rules for the running of this Parliament. We set up rules for the running of it and one of the great things about our democracy is that just about every piece of legislation is referred to a select committee—a proper select committee of this House—and the public have the right to come in to have their say and to be considered.You will have noticed that on an earlier motion the Labour Party voted against this bill the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill going to the Intelligence and Security Committee. We did that because we thought that that was not the appropriate committee. It would be better to get it to a proper select committee one in which the normal rules of Parliament work and where there is an opportunity for proper discussion and proper debate. In fact I think that if the Government looks at this carefully it could think about referring the bill from the Intelligence and Security Committee to the Government Administration Committee or a similar committee which works on the edge of these matters but has I think some independence to consider matters carefully.But even if the bill did get cross-referred to that committee I would still be opposed to this shortened time. My view is that what we need is a period long enough for there to be a proper review. In fact if there is an exception to be made to the normal Standing Orders of the House with regard to the length of time that this bill is at a committee then consideration should be given to making an exemption to the 6-month maximum—the normal maximum period—that a bill is at a select committee in order to ensure that a proper inquiry takes place an inquiry with people who are experienced in intelligence matters preferably someone from overseas and preferably people who have been involved in the Australian arrangements. To do that we know—to do a proper job—it cannot happen in 5 minutes or in the 10 weeks that John Key has decided that this committee will have.I also want to refer again to the busyness of this period. There is a by-election to be had. It is my expectation that our representative on the Intelligence and Security Committee the leader of the Labour Party will be actively involved in that by-election. It is not like it is a minor wee seat that sits in one of our metropolitan areas; it stretches from Wainuiōmata around the top of the East Cape. It is an enormous seat and it is our expectation that our leader will be out. I know that the National Party has run up the white flag as far as that by-election is concerned and that that problem will not affect the Prime Minister in the same way because he will not have the expectation of being involved.The other not so minor matter that is occurring I think in another couple of weeks around which there is going to be quite a lot of debate and quite a lot of business is the Budget. I do accept that there are one or two engagements that follow the Budget that the Prime Minister takes—about the same number as for the Leader of the Opposition—but all of the party leaders and all of the people who are members of that committee will have quite a chunk of their time taken out around Budget matters.We know that by now the Budget is in bed. It is finished. Its proofs are probably being read at the moment. The Prime Minister’s work in understanding the Budget is now finished. He will not be involved in that because he will be right across it like he was right across the paper boy tax last year and a number of other things that he missed. But for people who are not part of the Government it takes a lot of time for them to getunderstanding of the Budget matters and the things that are within it and that is time that will not be available. If the Intelligence and Security Committee is going to be meeting around that time—the time immediately after the Budget—again that is time that is not available for the leaders of the other parties to be doing what is essentially what I would describe as their core work for June. Most of this period is in June. It is the biggest chunk of it and post-Budget the last week of May and the weeks of June are when that occurs.Again I want to just go back to a point that I made with regard to the legislation generally when I was talking about it and that is the importance of consensus wherever possible around this sort of legislation. I think there should be consensus around the process. I reiterate what I said before that I do not expect total consensus as to the results. We have parties that have different views and I do not think we will ever quite get there by way of agreement. But if we could have consensus around the process and an acceptance that those views that might be described as outside the mainstream have an opportunity to be heard and at the end of it there can be some bipartisan agreement to the legislation then that means that New Zealanders are more likely to be happy or accepting of the result. I think to be absolutely fair most New Zealanders are not happy at the idea of video cameras in their bedrooms. I mean most people do not want that—Grant Robertson: If they put them there themselves Trevor—Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The member might. We are talking about the ones that John Key puts in there and looks at. Most people—most people—are not happy with the idea of intrusions video or audio into the personal parts of their lives. But what we are doing here is for the first time granting the right not of the police who are trying to stop a crime but of an agency that feeds material to the United States and the United Kingdom to make video and other surveillance of Kiwis. Previously it was not allowed to. There can be with a judge the right for the New Zealand Police to use that sort of approach. But if we are going to extend it we need to make sure that a consensus can be built around it.The other obvious point is very clear from listening to the Prime Minister about this. You know I acknowledge that Clare Curran and Grant Robertson have both got their heads around some of this cyber-technical stuff much better than I have but I know that I can understand it better than the Prime Minister. What we do need to know is that there is enough time at that committee for the proper briefings to build the Prime Minister’s understanding of the technology in order to make sure that both the current technology and the stuff that is coming in are one properly covered and two properly protected. It will take much longer than 10 weeks for the Prime Minister to understand that. It will take much longer than 10—Grant Robertson: It’ll take years.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: No I disagree. I think if the Prime Minister focused on it if he put his mind to it and if he worked hard at it he could understand it—Grant Robertson: He’d quite probably forget.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well no there is no chance of him remembering. All we are talking about is understanding for a short period of time so that the committee can make decisions. If he forgets after that well we understand that that happens with him.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): This very very short time that has been mooted for reporting this Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill needs to be reviewed because this is a significant piece of law. It affects all New Zealanders. It affects New Zealanders in a range of ways. It can be in their individual lives. It can be in their membership of different organisations. It can be to do with their faiths. It can be in all sorts of ways that this bill will cover them.Those people need significant time to actually get a grasp of the enormity of this bill. They need to be informed on the way that it can affect them in their lives. They need to be able to get expert advice if they so choose. They need to be able to draft submissions. They need to review those submissions and they then need to submit and they need to have access to the Intelligence and Security Committee to speak to their submissions. We are talking about potentially everyone and anyone. Having only 2 months is definitely going to block out significant numbers of people even though they may wish to submit to that committee.It was concerning to be reminded that no substitutes are able to be on that committee. Although it is in a way contrary to another call—ensuring that this very small committee may basically struggle to have full attendance if the Prime Minister or other very busy members of Parliament are away—I actually think it would be very very good if we did have substitutes. Maybe that needs to be considered because in this instance where we are considering whether we need more time we need to reflect that the Prime Minister himself is absolutely culpable in the illegal spying that has pre-empted this bill. Fast tracking over a couple of months to report by 26 July will not cut it.This is about civil liberties. New Zealanders as I say need time to engage with this bill. We need to give them the opportunity to find out about it and we have to think about who is going to do that. We have got an organisation the Government Communications Security Bureau that is covered by the bill. We have the SIS implicated in it and also a number of departments. Are they going to be letting New Zealanders know about the significance of this bill and that they need to get involved and submit on it? There are a lot of questions about that and certainly the time is not there in this process.I need to point out the types of organisations that could be affected. There is a March Against Monsanto shortly to do with genetic engineering and pesticides and things like that. Those are the sorts of people who potentially would be spied on. They may want to submit and talk about the fairness that they should be covered by in terms of legislation. There are the Ploughshares people whom I mentioned earlier and civil society generally and there are a lot of organisations involved there.There are professionals and academics who will want to be involved. I note anOtago Daily Times article about some University of Otago professors talking about the national security State brought on by this bill. I am sure that they will want to make a submission. They point out the worrying implications for individual privacy civil liberties and national security that this proposal has. And that covers everyone—that certainly covers everyone—and everyone needs a full opportunity.They added: “We do not think this critical law should be changed without more extensive public discussion about its potential costs and benefits.” So I think Professor Kevin Clements and Professor Richard Jackson from the university’s National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies raise a very very important point. That point if it is to be considered appropriately and if we are to extend it would mean that we should be giving much much much more time for this bill to be put in front of a committee—a committee that probably should not have John Key anywhere near it and certainly not voting on it.There have been at least 18 months of illegal spying. We have no inquiry. The nearest thing to an inquiry will be the submissions to the Intelligence and Security Committee. So surely the public could have at least 6 months—a third of the time that illegal spying has been going on which this bill is about. What we have got is 2 months a ninth of the time of that illegal activity which John Key knew about. This is the amount of time that the public will have to properly realise in respect of this bill whichhas been thrust on them this week that they can suddenly get into gear and get submissions in that would have enough import to potentially change the wording of this bill and come to us as members of Parliament who might be able to assist particularly those involved in that committee. They clearly have not got a chance of getting very very far.I would just point out the functions of the bureau as such in the old law which finishes in a way: “The performance of the Bureau’s functions is subject to the control of the Minister.” John Key and—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): No. Order! This debate—if the member would sit while I am on my feet—can deal only with why the report-back period is being truncated. There is Standing Order 286(3). So if the member would just come back to that. You have been fine up to now but you cannot deviate and start talking about things of substance.STEFFAN BROWNING: Yes thank you. I have expressed a fair amount of it. I think there are those organisations that will want to come to the committee. As I mentioned earlier there are the faith organisations. They are generally involved around these civil liberties issues of privacy. Business will be concerned as well because of the levels that this bill can go to. So they will want to submit. The telecommunications companies—and we know we have got another bill that will affect them too—will want to be involved. I would expect that the departments that are included in the powers of this bill—and a number of Government departments are given access to it—would also want to be involved in how that is managed for them.Everybody will want or should want to be involved here and the 2 months aspect of it may actually make some of them say: “Well this isn’t worth it.” and that would be very very disappointing. Maybe that is part of the point of it. So I wonder—Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.STEFFAN BROWNING: What we are actually talking about is that the limited amount of time this Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill has before the committee is far from adequate. We certainly need an inquiry. The various groups that I was talking about before need a lot of preparation time. I have been able to check on some of that through the dinner hour. We know that this short period of time is not going to be adequate to explore the issues that this significant piece of legislation requires.The Green Party would like to see an extension. We would like the Minister to reconsider the time frame that has been put up for this significant piece of legislation. We did point out that the illegal spying was going on for 18 months. I think that needs to be taken into account to give as long as is legally possible for all the public who will be exposed to this law an opportunity to come back on it. The Green Party would like that to be taken into account and hopefully the Minister will respond to it. Thank you.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): This motion has two elements to it; both are important. The first aspect of the motion is to truncate the process by which submissions can be made to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I want to come back and construct the argument around why this legislation of all legislation should be subject to a full and proper process of democratic consideration. The second aspect of the motion is to refer the legislation the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I want to suggest to the House and seek a response from the Minister of Justice why that is not an appropriate committee to send this legislation. Those are the two aspects of the motion.Let me come back to the first one which is the truncating of the period of time for submissions because the Minister’s motion states that this legislation needs to be referred back to the House on 26 July. It will not go through the full process of scrutiny. It will not allow people the normal time they would have to put their submissions together. It will not allow them the time that they would need to present those submissions. I would argue that it would not allow the committee to properly analyse the submissions that are made to it.For as long as I have been in this House I have seen changes in the process of Parliament that have actually strengthened democracy. That process was predominantly about sending all legislation to a select committee and making sure that people had the proper time to be able to present to the select committee. That is how we involve the New Zealand public in the scrutiny of legislation and give them confidence that as members of a democracy they will have their voices heard and they will be listened to. There is a particular reason why we need to reinforce public confidence in that process on this particular piece of legislation. That reason is that this is a particularly intrusive piece of legislation giving very strong State powers to interfere in the lives of people to subject them to scrutiny and to intercept their correspondence. It is something that would not normally be allowed in a free liberal and democratic country. There may be an argument specifically for why the intelligence agencies need these powers but you therefore need to be very careful in terms of what powers you give them and what scrutiny the exercise of those powers are subject to.We know at the moment because of a variety of reasons that the Government Communications Security Bureau has lost a huge amount of public confidence. In a TV3 poll 40 percent of people have said that they do not have trust in the Government Communications Security Bureau. I think that is bad. That is bad because we need an organisation of this nature but because of its intrusive powers we need to have public confidence that it is exercising its powers properly that it is subject to proper scrutiny and that the process of giving it those powers and the process of determining the oversight is subject in turn to the scrutiny of the public. They get this opportunity at the statutory committee but the Government has made the decision in this motion to cut back the period of time that people have to have their voices heard. If ever there was a piece of legislation that you wanted to build public confidence in the process that you are operating so that the Government would get it right it is this legislation.We know that what the Government Communications Security Bureau does in its normal course of events is not subject to public scrutiny. We do not know how it operates what it does—or most people do not know. I know because I have worked with them but most people do not know. They have a worry that for the first time this organisation is being given the power explicitly to spy on New Zealanders. You would think that the process by which we debated giving it this power would be subject to the strongest possible public scrutiny of the legislation itself and that is not going to happen. We saw in the debate on the bill that the National Party got up and spoke for 1 minute or 2 minutes. It did not speak to any matter of substance and did not take the full call to properly debate in front of the public why this legislation was necessary. This motion itself is a motion that truncates the process of democracy and no member of the Government is getting to their feet to defend why they are doing that. That is wrong. That is why we are opposing this motion. This is a process that should be particularly thorough and that should give the public the maximum import. If anything they should have longer to do their submissions on this piece of legislation but under this motion they have less. We are against the time frame that the Government has set but equally we are against sending this bill to the Intelligence and Security Committee.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!Hon PHIL GOFF: I have sat on that committee.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Standing Order 286(3) is quite specific and in reference to the debate on the question: “for a motion under this Standing Order is restricted to the special powers or instruction set out in the motion. It may not extend to the principles … of the bill.” etc. The statutory committee motion has already been passed by the House. The motion that is under debate does not mention the specific statutory committee. The House has already dealt with that element.Hon PHIL GOFF: The statutory committee that it is going to is relevant to the point of how much time that committee will have to hear the submissions. This has been commented on earlier in this debate but it is a particularly important point and I want to reinforce it.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well I will hear the member but it must be pertinent to the truncation of the process.Hon PHIL GOFF: Yes it is pertinent. Firstly the statutory committee is a very small statutory committee. It has only six members. The second thing is that it is unique amongst committees because you cannot substitute for those members. I am wondering how you are going to have the time on that committee in a truncated time period to hear the submissions when that committee has for example the Prime Minister who is normally known to be a reasonably busy person so he may not be available for the timing that committee needs to meet. It has the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition will be going up and down the country both talking on the Budget which comes in the middle of the submission period and campaigning in the by-election in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. So it is really difficult for the two key members of that committee to actually be able to be there so that the committee can hear from the submitters in the time frame that is given. If you look at the other members of the committee you see that one is John Banks. Given the court case today he might not be available at all but we do not know that yet. The other person is Peter Dunne. He is the leader of a political party and one suspects that he has a lot of things to do. The other is the Leader of the House and the Minister of something or other. He is going to be busy. It is pertinent to the question of timing. We have got a truncated period of time for the committee to consider submissions and we have got members of the committee who will make it even harder for those submissions to be heard within that time frame. It is a real problem it is a practical problem and I do not think that the combination of those things will give adequate opportunity for the democratic process to be followed properly in this case.I want to reiterate the point. The timing that people have to participate in the statutory committee process is absolutely essential given the nature of the legislation and given the confidence-building period that the submissions should be involved in helping to develop given the loss of confidence in the Government Communications Security Bureau. This is an important piece of legislation. The Government should be taking it seriously by taking calls in the debate. The failure of the Government in this debate to take calls will just reinforce the impression that members of the public have that this is designed to be a quick and dirty process. The Government has made up its mind. It does not actually want to hear the submissions on the legislation. It is limiting the time and it is making it really difficult actually even to put the committee together to hear those submissions.There was a really important opportunity in hearing the submissions on this legislation. It was to build an understanding about why certain powers should be given to the Government Communications Security Bureau and why strong powers should exist for oversight of that organisation. But if the public takes the message that the National Government is giving it tonight that it is not taking this process seriously thenthe public will take the corresponding message from that that the Government is not interested in a process of democracy that it is not interested in people having adequate time to prepare their submissions and have their submissions heard and that what the public says actually will not count for anything anyway. This bill itself is wrong and the process is a disgrace.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): We in this House are the guardians of civil liberties for the people whom we represent. There is no one other than us who stands between inappropriate legislation and inappropriate legislation being passed and applying to the citizens of this country. Nowhere is it more important to look at the civil liberties of people than when it comes to legislation that gives to the State powers of intrusion into people’s lives. When we do that we are allowing the State more rights than we normally give to people to intrude into other people’s lives and we have got to be very careful that we guard those rights jealously. One of the most important protections that we have in any democracy is delay—not undue delay but appropriate time periods that allow the fourth estate the media and interest groups that might be getting their heads around the implications of policy changes—Jacqui Dean: Say it like you mean it.Hon DAVID PARKER: Actually Jacqui Dean I say it like I mean it. I would actually like you to take a call and say it like you understand it. That is the sort of inane interjection that we get from National members—not debating the substance of an important issue but saying: “Say it like you mean it.” I would say to Jacqui Dean that I actually do mean this—I do mean this. I am quite happy to be one of the people who stake my reputation on appropriately protecting the civil liberties of our citizens from inappropriate State intrusion. I do mean that Jacqui. I do not have to shout it to mean it but I am willing to take a call and state what I believe.Time is important. The time for processes ought not to be unduly truncated in any democracy. It is especially important when you live in a jurisdiction that has only one House of Parliament. It has no Upper House to negotiate once legislation is passed by this House. There is no effective constitutional check on intrusions into civil liberties in New Zealand except through this House of Parliament. I have not seen a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet on this bill the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. I do not know whether anyone else has had an opportunity to read the vet. I do not even know whether there is one. We have not heard any discussion of it today—Grant Robertson: It was only tabled today.Hon DAVID PARKER: The bill was tabled only today. We have not had the opportunity on this side of the House to get our heads around the full implications of this bill. If we—with all of the resources that are open to us and our ability to devote full-time attention to this—have not been able to what hope is there that members of civil society have properly been able to consider the implications of this legislation? That is why we allow ample time for submissions to be made so that people can think through the implications of legislation that impact upon civil liberties rather than rushing it through.Parliament views that so seriously that it recently introduced a change to the Standing Orders so that we can have this very debate. Until a few years ago we would not be having this debate as to the inappropriate truncation of select committee procedures. It was through a change to the Standing Orders which was agreed across all sides of Parliament that we changed the Standing Orders through the introduction of this Standing Order 286 which is why we are debating this motion. It provides that where truncation of the select committee process is shortened by an inordinate degree we should debate whether that is proper. That is to enable us to highlight to the publichow inappropriate it is that in a unicameral system with only one—one—House of Representatives with no Upper House acting as a check on our conduct it is appropriate that we properly protect our citizens from inappropriate intrusions by the State through proper scrutiny of proposals.Now we are going to have this rushed process. The Hon Phil Goff has already said how difficult that is given the make-up of this committee the Intelligence and Security Committee. This committee according to what the Hon Phil Goff says—and I did not know this actually Phil—can never have substitutes. The committee can never have substitutes. Remember we have the Prime Minister sitting on it hearing submissions and the Leader of the Opposition and representatives from other parties all of whom are very senior very busy with lots of other obligations and the idea that they can do justice to this within that time frame is wrong.But the idea that they will have the submissions before them is also wrong given the truncated process. A lot of the organisations that are submitting on legislation like this are effectively volunteers in that process. They are not doing it because they are being paid to do it; they have been doing it because they think there is a public interest in submitting or that they have got some knowledge that Parliament could benefit from hearing. They cannot drop their ordinary lives. Sometimes they are accountable to committee structures that meet only once a month. How do they get this information out to their members form a view and then submit to the committee within the time period that Parliament because of what the National Government is doing today is imposing upon them? They cannot.This is another reason why the normal rule is that you have a longer period of consideration by the committee which then enables the committee to give a fair notice through public notices to all and sundry through the country. It enables people to get up campaigns though the media in the fourth estate and all of the little committees that might be interested in this in civil society whether they are members of councils for civil liberties or whether they are Rural Women or whatever. There will be lots of people who are interested in these issues but they do not have time because of a truncated select committee process to be given sufficient time to submit to the committee to give a considered view of what the implications of this legislation are.In the Labour Party we accept that the Government Communications Security Bureau needs powers. We also accept that it is appropriate for the State to have powers of intrusion in respect of New Zealanders. We are not sure what the arguments are for and against—the issue as to whether the Government Communications Security Bureau should be given powers in respect of the surveillance of New Zealand citizens that could not already be done through the likes of the police. These arguments are very very important. They need to be explored at the committee. Why is it that we cannot just rely upon the police to use their warranted powers rather than giving the Government Communications Security Bureau the powers to spy upon New Zealanders? There are no doubt arguments on both sides of that debate. We want to hear them—we want to hear them properly.The fact that this has been a live issue for the Prime Minister since the middle of last year is already a matter of public record. We know that the Government Communications Security Bureau warned the Prime Minister that there were doubts about the legality of some of the bureau’s conduct arising out of the Dotcom fiasco—which it has to be called—in the middle of last year. So since the middle of last year the Prime Minister has known that there is an issue or that there may be an issue at large. Here we are just about a year later and what does the Government do? Having mucked around for all of that time having obfuscated and having all these faded memories as to what was said where and when we now are told that we have got no time for a normalselect committee process to consider whether the civil liberties of New Zealanders are inappropriately infringed by this legislation. The Government now says—having delayed all that time the best part of a year—it has now got to truncate the only part of the process that the public can be involved in.How cynical is that? How inappropriate is that? How unprincipled is that? You look at how long we took for the search and surveillance legislation. A good process was run around that. It actually took over a year. It is important to get these things right. There are civil liberties at stake. There are high principles that go back for ever. You know you do not have to think too far back to think when we have had Governments in New Zealand that have gone a wee bit towards the totalitarian fringes. It happened in New Zealand under Mr Muldoon—it did. The courts pushed back against that. You have got to think of this legislation long into the future when you may have a Government that is not as benign as the Governments we have now or have recently had. These principles are important. These principles are meant to be protected by the Standing Orders. This motion should not be agreed to.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a brief call on the instruction on the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill. As members are well aware but maybe people watching and trying to learn about our democracy and Parliament might not be aware under Standing Order 286 when a Government Minister instructs that a bill must be reported back from a select committee in less than the traditional time it allows Parliament to debate for an unlimited amount of time this instruction.What we are seeing is this Government giving this legislation only 2 months—only 2 months—to be reported back to this House. Remember this is legislation that only recently was given to the Opposition. It is legislation that had no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet. It is legislation that is being introduced in urgency and it is important that the Opposition has a say. This is in fact the only protection our country our democracy has when the Government abuses I believe the system needlessly for a bill such as this.We have not seen a bill pass with the unanimity of this House. We have seen a bill pass its first reading by the smallest of margins—61 votes to 59. We see a bill being passed under accusations by the New Zealand First Party of bully-boy tactics. We see a bill entering this House under urgency with a constrained shortened select committee period. Select committees are vitally important to our democracy. That is where the real work is done. That is where I wish more people would actually watch and tune into the work that MPs across all the party lines do because people would see MPs work collaboratively. They would see MPs not always butting heads as they do inside this Chamber. They would see legislation actually improved. You see experts the public and interested parties get a say and that is not what we are going to see with this important bill which deals with issues of security issues of spying issues of surveillance and issues of civil liberties and human rights. I think the Hon David Parker quite aptly explained why select committees are so important in our unicameral parliamentary system where there are so few constraints on executive power.We have seen no arguments I believe from the Government benches. In fact no National members—I see what about eight in the Chamber today—have stood up and been prepared to take a call to explain why this bill is going to be reduced to having only a 2-month period at a select committee instead of the traditional period. We have seen some waffly claims which I think most New Zealanders do not take particularly seriously of potential nuclear weapons information acquisition through New Zealand. We have seen some claims of cyber-attacks. The Green Party takes these allegations seriously. We take the security of our country seriously. Obviously we do not supportor in any way want to be seen to support those who use in the name of political goals violence such as obviously what is in the definition of terrorism used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the States.We take these issues seriously and that is why we do not think the Government has gone about it the right way. If the Government was concerned about an imminent or urgent threat to our country’s security it would have gone about this bill in an entirely different way. It would have convened a meeting of the parties. It would have done it in a much different way as we have seen in our country’s history over the decades and centuries. But instead what we see is politics being played.As Steffan Browning said we have got the US Attorney General and representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New Zealand and representatives of other spying partners of which New Zealand is one of five members—the little finger of the fist some people call it. Mr Browning quite rightfully I think posed the question as to whether we are seeing this bill introduced under urgency today to send a message to the US that New Zealand takes its concerns seriously—that New Zealand will do whatever it can if Washington beckons. We have seen it with Dotcom. We have seen it even with copyright legislation where the WikiLeaks cables have shown that the US Government asked New Zealand to jump and the National Government said: “How high?”. This is why it is abhorrent and I believe egregious that legislation containing such important issues with such significant ramifications for our country and for our human rights and civil liberties is getting such a constrained select committee process.What we know is that 80-plus New Zealanders have likely been unlawfully spied upon over 18 months and I think this is a crucial thing when we are putting the context of a 2-month report-back period. Over 18 months we have seen potentially unlawful spying on Mr Dotcom and on other New Zealanders potentially over a longer time. For 18 months we could have sorted out and dealt with this issue but instead the Government wants through urgency and through a constrained select committee process to rush the issue. That is not how good legislation is made. That is not how good enduring political consensus is made. Despite a multiplicity of views in this House—which is only right in a mixed-member proportional system; obviously we are not agreeing with the Labour Party on everything and we obviously do not agree with the National Party on everything—we should have a more considered deliberative time to go through and get this stuff right.We should have had an inquiry and this is why the Green Party has been calling for that. A constrained 2-month period at a committee will not cut the mustard. It is nowhere near an inquiry but this is the closest thing our country is going to get.So I urge a National member if they stand behind the decision of the Minister responsible for the GCSB to take a call and defend your arguments. Put your arguments so that the people of our fine country can hear them. But no we see members shaking their heads. We are not going to see a National member taking a call but I urge them to.I guess it is not a good day to be a National member is it? We have got the Prime Minister talking only about Aaron Gilmore—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! The member is outside the scope of the debate.GARETH HUGHES: Good call Mr Deputy Speaker. I acknowledge the call. I think it is bad process that we are seeing today. It is not a good day to be a National member. But look if those members are going to take decisions like this to rush bills through in urgency and if they are going make a decision to put the bill through only a 2-month report-back period stand up and defend it. Put your words in theHansard if you defend it. I challenge a National MP to put your words on the record of this House.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I moveThat the question be now put.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Chris Simpson.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): “Hipkins” I believe is the word you were looking for then Mr Deputy Speaker—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry I do apologise.CHRIS HIPKINS: —but I will forgive you. I will forgive you. I am mortally wounded!There are two procedural aspects to this debate which are kind of new for the House because of the changes to the Standing Orders that were made by the Standing Orders Committee of the last Parliament. One is that we are debating this matter under urgency—and I will deal with that one in a minute—but the second is that in what has now become a relatively rare occurrence we are debating a referral motion that gives the committee a shortened time frame and a whole lot of additional powers. It was standard practice in the House that Ministers for quite a long period of time would be able to move all sorts of additional powers for the committee in their referral motions. There would be no debate on those; it was just standard practice. It would happen all the time. The Standing Orders Committee considered that issue along with a range of other potential amendments to the Standing Orders when the Standing Orders were reviewed at the end of the last Parliament. This new provision which has been enacted now and which allows this motion to be debatable was part of a whole package of amendments made to the Standing Orders and it was part of the trade-offs.The changes to the Standing Orders made by the last Parliament actually gave the Government a number of additional powers to expedite business before the Government without the need to do the sort of thing it is doing within this referral motion. It gives the Government powers to use extended sittings for example so that it does not have to use urgency so much. We are considering this under urgency which in itself is unnecessary because there are a whole lot of additional ways that the Government could gain the additional time it needs in the House to consider this matter without having to resort to urgency. We are debating a much-reduced time frame for the bill and I think it is a good advance that these motions are now debated and therefore have become much more rare in their occurrence.The question that the House has to turn itself to in these sorts of debates is whether the justification for shortening the time frame is sufficient. I want to talk through a little bit about the process of what happens to the bill from here. There are certain time lags within the process when the bill gets referred to a committee that draw into question whether the bill could be adequately considered within the 8 weeks that we have given in this House. I would hope that the committee that this bill is referred to will advertise and call for public submissions. In order to do that they have to have a meeting. The committee comprises the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition among others. Therefore getting them together to have the first meeting in order to call for submissions will probably take a little bit of time and if we pass it today it may not even happen this week.The Prime Minister traditionally is not in the House on Thursdays. I do not think I am supposed to say that but on Thursdays we do not necessarily expect the party leaders to be here and therefore they may not be here tomorrow. So the meeting may not happen this week and it might not happen until next week. At that point there is then a process to lodge the advertisement with the newspapers. That normally takes a couple of days by the time the advertisement actually makes it into the paper. You have then got to give people a reasonable amount of time to read the advertisement and prepare their submission. So the question then becomes well who are the sorts of people whoare going to be interested in making a submission on this? It will be civil liberties groups lawyers people with expertise in this particular area and they will also typically be quite busy people.I would imagine given the subject nature that there will be members of the fourth estate of the media who are going to be very interested in the extension of powers to the Government Communications Security Bureau and they may also want to make submissions. The fact is that the bureau’s powers have been used against the media by the current Government over the teapot tapes so the media are going to have an interest in an extension of the bureau’s powers and are likely to want to make a submission. We need to allow sufficient time for them to consider the nature of the bill the contents of the bill and make informed and educated decisions around what sort of input they want to have into that process and the time frame that we are allowing does not do that. It is another attack on the freedom of the press.This bill is another attack on the freedom of the press because we know that the Government we have now is very happy to use the bureau’s powers to attack the media and therefore we have to make sure because the media are a very important safeguard in our democratic process that they are given sufficient time and opportunity to make submissions and to have their voices heard in this process. The truncated time frame simply does not allow that to happen.So why the urgency? Why are we even trying—it is not “we” because the Opposition is firmly opposed to the shortened time frame—why is the Government even trying to push this bill through with such haste? Given that it has known about these activities that this bill relates to for over a year why is it that all of a sudden now the whole thing has to be fixed within 8 weeks? It is completely unnecessary. In fact what the Labour Party has said is that the process should be a longer one and a much more extensive one—one that considers the wide-ranging ramifications of the concerns around the way the Government Communications Security Bureau is operated and pushing this through simply thwarts what should be a very constructive debate around how the bureau uses its powers.Let us be very clear about the nature of the bill that the Government is trying to push through. It is around illegal activity by the Government spy agency spying on New Zealanders and it seeks to make that legal. I have mentioned in my speech so far some of the organisations that may be interested in making a submission on this bill such as civil liberties groups lawyers and the media. But actually this being the people’s House any New Zealander should have the right to be able to consider this legislation and make a submission on it. The bill gives the Government Communications Security Bureau the power to spy on any New Zealander. Any mum or dad as John Key refers to them could be spied on by the Government under this legislation. Will they have an opportunity to make a submission on this bill within the time frame that is proposed? I do not think that the Government is doing anything more than paying lip-service to the democratic process because in fact if the Government was genuinely committed to providing an opportunity for people to make their submissions and to have a say it would not be trying to push this through in 8 weeks.The regular time frame for a select committee consideration is somewhere between 4 to 6 months so the default setting really is about 6 months. There is another provision and it is non-debatable. This debate would not happen if it was 4 months or longer. So the Government can shorten it by 2 months without having to have the debate. But there is another way that the Government could shorten the time frame for the committee and that is to take a recommendation to the Business Committee which is comprised of all of the parties in the House and get agreement on a shortened time frame. Even if a shortened time frame was deemed to be desirable and it was deemed to be desirableacross the House—so it was not being done for political purposes but there was some genuine need for urgency—there is a provision in there for this whole debate to be avoided. The Business Committee could agree to a shortened time frame.The records of the Business Committee—[Interruption] No the records of the Business Committee will record that no such proposal has been received. The minutes of the Business Committee I think are public—certainly the determinations of the Business Committee are public—and no such proposal was received. The Government did not even attempt to gain cross-party agreement for this shortened time frame. So that is a matter of concern because what it means is that the Government is using a wafer-thin majority in the House—a wafer-thin majority in the House and getting thinner by the day—to try to push through legislation that is incredibly controversial that gives the Government Communications Security Bureau the power to spy on New Zealanders and dramatically reduces the opportunity for the people who will be the subjects of this legislation i.e. every single New Zealand citizen and resident—very important and resident—to fully participate in this process.That is fundamentally wrong. This bill should go through a full regular select committee process but in fact even that is premature because what should happen first is there should be a full review into how we got to this position so that the New Zealand public can have confidence that this Government is protecting their rights to privacy among other things. This bill does not do that. It is in fact a violation of that principle and the process around passing it is a further violation of our democratic principles in this House. It is an affront to our democratic process.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I moveThat the question be now put.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: We did get some new material then so I will hear Denis O’Rourke.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First opposes the time frame proposed in the motion. We think 2 months is ridiculously short. The essential issue of course is whether the Government really has any genuine interest in the views of the public and in the contributions that might be made by special-interest groups. There are likely to be many of them on this particular bill the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill.The shortness of the time frame indicates to me and I think to many others that the Government has in fact prejudged the issues in this bill and that it is not interested at all in what the public has to say. Nor is the Government interested in getting quality submissions because quality submissions from the public do take time. Hurried submissions are likely to be less considered and less comprehensive. So what are we really achieving by having such a constricted time frame? What we are achieving is less quality and a less properly considered bill by the public. The public does have a right to participate properly in these matters.It is a shame that that is the case because much can be learnt from the public and from special-interest groups. Many bills as we all know are altered as a result of well-considered public submissions. We have to acknowledge that we members of Parliament the Government and the officials do not always know everything about these issues and certainly do not always get them right. In fact the history of this legislation shows that past Governments and officials got it wrong.I have studied the bill and have seen in it several important issues that I will wish to consider much further. And of course as Winston Peters said earlier today New Zealand First has already written to the Prime Minister seeking a whole raft of changes. If that is the case with us it is likely also to be the case with special-interest groups especially and with very large numbers of members of the public.This is not a simple bill. It is complex; even the most cursory reading will demonstrate that. There are many options possible within its provisions especially I suggest those regarding oversight and supervision issues. These matters take time to understand and they take time to consider. It takes time to look at other possible options and it takes time to write all of that down and submit it through the process. Time is needed for proper consideration and that is what the time frame in this motion is I think quite deliberately avoiding.The Government is in fact treating the public with contempt for that reason by not giving adequate time for submissions. It knows that it is doing that and it is doing it quite deliberately. The public needs to know the contempt in which it is being held in this way. Firstly in the context of matters of high public interest—and there have been few issues of higher public interest in recent times—secondly in the context of matters of high importance to our freedoms and democracy which this unarguably involves and thirdly in the context of the significant complexity that I have mentioned with regard to this particular bill the lack of an adequate time frame is a sad indictment on a Government that is obviously just trying to put an awkward situation behind it. Well that is not a good enough reason to treat the public in this way.Just as disappointing to me has been the lack of argument by Government members opposite. I have waited to hear from them. I have waited to hear good reasons why this motion proposes such a ridiculously short time frame but nothing has been offered. That proves I think the points that I have been making. So for all of those reasons that I and others have stated New Zealand First will certainly oppose the motion.JAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National): I moveThat the question be now put.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the question be now put.Ayes64New Zealand National 59; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes54New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill be reported back to the House by 26 July 2013 and that the Intelligence and Security Committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions) during an evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House despite Standing Orders 188 and 191(1)(b) and (c).Ayes61New Zealand National 59; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes57New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; Independent: Horan.Motion agreed to.Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) BillFirst ReadingGRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance and I apologise to the Minister for Communications and Information Technology. I have checked with the Bills Office and there appears to be no regulatory impact statement available for the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. It is noted in the explanatory note of the bill as having been created. I seek your guidance for us as members of Parliament unable to access that regulatory impact statement when we are debating the bill. It seems to me to be something that members of Parliament should have access to; we certainly did for the last bill. I seek your guidance as to how that works for us and what process there is available to us.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no requirement that I am aware of under Standing Orders. It is an advised and an accepted practice. It is up to the Minister. I think the member has made a valid point.Hon Amy Adams: Speaking to the point of order Mr Speaker—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I have already ruled. Are you seeking the call?Hon Amy Adams: I wished to cover why—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: You can do that in your speech if you like.Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for Communications and Information Technology): I moveThat the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill be considered by the Law and Order Committee and that the committee present its final report on or before 20 September 2013.The telecommunications sector has been evolving rapidly in recent years with the development of faster smarter and globally reaching technologies networks and services. The change has been accompanied by a fragmenting industry structure and the proliferation of new entrants in the telecommunications industry. Our legislation needs to keep pace with these changes and be flexible to accommodate continued change in the coming years. With the increasing day-to-day reliance on the internet and information communications technology by the Government businesses and individuals a secure telecommunications infrastructure is essential to protect New Zealand’s national security interests including our economic well-being. The ability for the Government to appropriately use telecommunications capabilities is also important in the fight against crime.This bill has two main parts. Firstly the bill will repeal and replace the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act 2004 updating existing obligations on network operators to invest in specialised equipment and expertise to enable lawful interception. Secondly the bill will introduce a formal framework to ensure the security of our telecommunications networks through partnership between the Government and network operators where there may be a risk to New Zealand’s national security or economic well-being.Lawful interception relates to the ability of New Zealand Government agencies to intercept private telecommunications where they have the lawful authority to do so. The bill is about the obligations on the telecommunications companies and their relationships with surveillance agencies. It will not in any way alter the authority of police or intelligence and security agencies to intercept telecommunications nor will it reduce the checks and balances on how these agencies can access and use privatecommunications information. These matters are dealt with under separate legislation that must be complied with before the regime under this legislation can be utilised.Today interception of telecommunications plays a vital role in investigating disrupting and prosecuting serious crime detecting and prosecuting international and domestic cyber-crime combating threats to national security and responding to emergencies like kidnappings. Surveillance agencies rely heavily on the cooperation and compliance of telecommunications companies for interception. This bill aims to make the interception capability obligations on industry more proportionate and remove the need for unnecessary expenditure. This will be done by removing or reducing obligations in areas where they are unnecessary for operational reasons they are duplicated or they are disproportionately expensive.To ensure flexibility and responsiveness the bill provides that other telecommunications providers can be deemed to have interception capability obligations noting that all network operators and service providers will retain their current obligation to assist with interception warrants regardless. These provisions will be exercised through a ministerial direction and can be used only when more onerous obligations are justified for reasons of law enforcement or national security.The bill also makes other changes such as specifying the international standard to be adhered to when formatting intercepted material for delivery to the surveillance agencies providing a speedier process for exemptions clarifying the obligations under the duty to assist and stating clearly that these include help with decryption and that the duty applies to both domestic and offshore providers and allowing network operators to share specialised equipment and staff. These changes will make a significant positive difference for network operators. Their obligations will be clearer and more easily varied when appropriate and the costs of complying will be more proportionate.The Government already works closely with telecommunications providers to address national security risks relating to the design build and operation of telecommunications infrastructure. It is timely that this arrangement be formalised to take account of the rapid changes in technology changes in industry structure the entry of new and specialist providers and our ever-increasing reliance on the internet and information and communications technology and its security to conduct our lives. The security of telecommunications networks are critical if we are to prevent the unauthorised ability to access copy or divert data and prevent espionage or the disruption of critical services we all take for granted—for example in our banking and energy services.The bill will introduce provisions that will mean network operators will be obliged to engage with the Government through the Government Communications Security Bureau on network security where it might affect New Zealand’s national security or economic well-being. The bill gives network operators direction on when to notify the Government Communications Security Bureau and about what. It puts obligations on both the network operator and the bureau to notify each other as soon as they become aware of network security risks or potential risks. It provides a step-by-step process for addressing those risks.These provisions are about formalising the existing relationship and the existing partnership approach based on principles of working cooperatively and collaboratively with each other and agreeing on decisions and actions that are effective and proportionate to the risk. In rare circumstances where agreements cannot be reached there is provision for a ministerial direction. This direction will be issued only after taking into account submissions by both the Government Communications Security Bureau and the network operator and after consulting with other relevant Ministers and only where a significant national security risk is evident. The direction may require thenetwork operator to refrain from a particular course of action to undertake a specific activity or to make a specific change to the design build or operation of their network.The lawful interception and network security regimes are both underpinned by a shared compliance and enforcement framework. A register of network operators will be established with network operators being required to register details including the size of the customer base and services provided. Surveillance agencies will be given the power to request information from network operators relevant to their obligations.Network operators can be asked to participate in compliance testing for interception capability and their chief executives can be required to certify that they are compliant with the legislation. The new two-tiered enforcement regime for non-compliance distinguishes between minor non-compliance and serious non-compliance. Minor non-compliance will be dealt with by way of a notice requiring that the breach be remedied within a specified period of time. Serious non-compliance will be dealt with through the High Court as is currently the case in existing legislation.These changes to the current legislation are necessary to modernise existing interception capability requirements and to establish a formal and transparent framework for network security. The provisions in this bill will ensure that New Zealand’s telecommunications providers have a clear understanding of how to meet their interception obligations and will safeguard our telecommunications infrastructure. The bill will provide greater certainty and transparency for the telecommunications industry and the New Zealand public. I commend the bill to the House.CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): This bill the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill represents a major and frightening expansion of Government powers over New Zealand’s communications networks and over those who provide services to New Zealanders on the internet. That is a sobering prospect. It is potentially a big step towards an authoritarian approach to Government.This bill raises serious issues affecting the civil rights and personal privacy of New Zealanders and it has a lack of checks and balances. It provides extraordinary discretionary powers to the Minister on the advice of the Government Communications Security Bureau. On the face of it this bill could impose unreasonable and illogical costs on network operators to comply with the new requirements. On the face of it it could capture small network operators such as schools and Wi-Fi communities and result in unreasonable and unnecessary compliance and surveillance measures.It gives ministerial discretion to decide what sort of network should be captured. If for instance a network was established to provide information and provide a campaigning tool for an issues-based organisation—an NGO that was of a political nature—could the Minister on the advice of the Government Communications Security Bureau decide that this was a threat to national security or economic well-being? That is a frightening thought and it does go to the heart of democratic activity.On the face of it this bill hands the control of the network design and operation of a telecommunications network to the Government Communications Security Bureau in the name of “security” which not only loads a level of bureaucracy and complexity to a legitimate commercial operation but provides an extraordinary level of potential interference in that commercial operation.This bill gives sweeping powers to the Minister responsible for the GCSB to prevent mitigate or remove a significant network security risk that could be related to national security or our economic well-being—in other words to have the ability to shut down a network or part of a network should it not comply with its demands. This is not supposition; this is how the bill reads.On the face of it this bill contains no definition of the problem that is trying to be solved. I would like to just reiterate the words from the previous discussion around thisbill and that is that the privacy of New Zealand’s citizens counts the civil liberties of New Zealanders count and checks and balances count in all of our legislation and they do not exist in this bill as it has been tabled in this House today. On the face of it this bill should make New Zealanders afraid of what their Government is trying to achieve. There are so many unanswered questions and too little information about the reason that this bill has been brought before us in this form. It has been brought before us with no consultation no discussion no analysis of the problem that it intends to solve no regulatory impact statement and a lack of checks and balances that would give the New Zealand public confidence in its security agencies and in its Government.Labour supports the modernisation of legislation. Labour supports the need to ensure that New Zealanders and New Zealand businesses are protected from cyber-threats. Let there be no doubt about that. Labour has serious concerns though about the two core underpinnings of this bill—the obligations being put on telecommunications companies and the changes to the interception capability regime—and deep concern about the introduction of a formal so-called transparent network security regime and the sweeping powers that it gives to both the Government Communications Security Bureau and the Minister.Labour cannot support this bill. Labour opposes this bill. This is about our national security about our human rights and about Kiwis’ confidence in their security agencies and in their telecommunications agencies. It is also about confidence in the Government and trust that our Government will do the right thing.We want to see evidence-based analysis that would demonstrate the need for such sweeping powers and changes. Late on Monday night I received a media release email with a link to the bill before us. Last night I received in my office a letter from the Minister for Communications and Information Technology regurgitating that media release that she had sent out the day before. Less than 24 hours later we have the first reading of this bill. There has been no briefing to the Opposition on this bill. There has been to my knowledge no in-depth discussion with the industry about this bill. There has been as we have said no regulatory impact statement released to the public.This bill sits alongside the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill which Labour also opposes. We believe that before such an overhaul can take place there has got to be an independent inquiry into our intelligence agencies and as I said an evidence-based approach to why this legislation is necessary.The process around this is incredibly shoddy and it is quite frankly frightening because it shows that this Government does not take seriously the concerns of citizens about the important checks and balances that such an important piece of legislation should contain. I am pleased to hear that the bill is going to the Law and Order Committee which will actually be able to have participation in it. I certainly hope that there will be adequate time for those submissions to be held.This bill replaces the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act 2004 but it adds a significant new component to the title and that component is “Security”. It also defines threats to our economic well-being as being security risks but there is no definition about what that means and that definition it appears lies with the Minister and the Government Communications Security Bureau. There is in this legislation no independent oversight or accountability on what economic well-being or national security is.The process around getting this bill to this House has been shoddy yet the Prime Minister has said that he wants cross-party support. So why has there not been a discussion with the Opposition parties about this bill? Why has there not been an explanation of the problems that require such sweeping powers to be given to a Ministerand to the bureau? Why have we not been told that the intercept arrangements that exist right now between the surveillance agency and the telecommunications companies or the network operators are insufficient? What is wrong with those arrangements? Why has there not been a public discussion on that issue?We certainly know that there has been a raft of data breaches and security flaws exposed within Government departments and agencies over recent months. In the last year tens of thousands of New Zealanders have had their private information exposed because of lax processes and insufficient IT capability expertise and governance arrangements across those Government agencies but will the bill solve those problems? No. Will it address any of those problems in any way? Is the Government doing anything about those issues in any way? No. What is it doing? Nothing.Will this bill make New Zealanders feel more safe and secure? My fear is that it is actually going to make them feel more vulnerable—more vulnerable to intrusion into their privacy and civil liberties. There could be intrusions also into the lawful commercial business activities of our network operators and that is one of the potential dangers behind this bill. Will it have a chilling effect on the innovation of network operation centres and the development of new services? That is a question that is being asked today about this very issue.Could we see our economic well-being being undermined by this bill? New Zealanders should be aware that this bill covers their email their texts Twitter other social media Skype and private encrypted discussions through chat sites and cloud services such as Microsoft Lync Dropbox Google Drive and Mega. It would include any business operating cloud services. It could cover the likes of Xero and TradeMe. The limits of the ministerial and Government Communications Security Bureau powers have not been defined and they leave many questions unanswered.JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): This bill the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill repeals and replaces the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act 2004. There are two parts to the bill. The first part clarifies interception obligations for telecommunications companies and the second part introduces a transparent network security regime for network operators and the Government to work together on matters of national security. I look forward to scrutiny of this bill in the Law and Order Committee. Thank you.GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour): Once again we have the sight of National members supporting a bill through this House that makes significant change to the activities of the Government Communications Security Bureau and to the activities of telecommunication providers and telecommunication users and we get 1 minute - long fatuous contributions like that from Jacqui Dean. It is a disgrace to be in this House tonight and watch the National Government once again ride roughshod over democracy just as it has done time and again over the last 5 years. This Government’s commitment to democracy is wafer-thin.I want to speak now briefly about the question of the lack of a publicly available regulatory impact statement for this bill the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. I want to read from the Treasury website what it says about regulatory impact statements: “To help ensure that the regulatory process is open and transparent Regulatory Impact Statements (RISs) prepared to support the consideration of regulatory proposals are published at the time the relevant bill is introduced to Parliament or the regulation is gazetted or at the time of Ministerial release.” We are standing here in this Parliament tonight without a publicly available regulatory impact statement on a piece of legislation that imposes significant additional regulatory burden—Hon David Parker: Or a Bill of Rights vet.GRANT ROBERTSON: —on telecommunications matters. In addition to that as my colleague David Parker says for the second piece of legislation in a row tonight there is no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet—no section 7 report under that bill for these two pieces of legislation. These are pieces of legislation that cut to the heart of New Zealanders’ fundamental rights and freedoms: the rights to go about their business without the State intervening in it.We have had the discussion already tonight that there will be occasions when we expect our intelligence agencies to undertake activities. We do need to defend our national security but we do that in balance with the right to privacy with the right to freedom of expression and with the right to freedom of organisation. We balance those things together and tonight this Government rams through two pieces of legislation without releasing a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet and in the case of this bill without putting up a regulatory impact statement.That is wrong. It is against the principles of this House. As a member of Parliament I expect to be able to read a regulatory impact statement and understand what Government officials believe the impact of this legislation will be on those who are affected by it and I am unable to do that tonight. Not one member of the National Government should be voting for this legislation tonight in the absence of that material.I am quite confused about this because what the explanatory note to the bill tells us is that the regulatory impact statement was completed on 12 March. Well where is it Minister? Where is it? The Minister for Communications and Information Technology keeps her head down now because the Government is not prepared to give New Zealanders proper information to debate this bill. This bill has been introduced today to this House and we are debating its first reading tonight. This is a disgraceful display from a National Government that is riding roughshod over democracy.When we move to the substance of the bill my colleague Clare Curran has outlined some of the concerns that are in the public arena. It is very important that we set the context of this. The context of this is a time when public confidence in the Government Communications Security Bureau is the lowest it has ever been. A survey told us that 40 percent of New Zealanders have no confidence in the bureau and yet here we have a piece of legislation pushed through under urgency for its first reading that will extend the powers of the bureau significantly.I repeat again for this House that this is the time for a fundamental review of our intelligence agencies. Yes there are new threats to New Zealand security out there. Let us make sure we get in place the organisation and the legislation that will protect New Zealanders’ security and protect New Zealanders’ rights. How can we know that we are doing that without that proper fundamental review? Once again this legislation is being put through Parliament in this way because the National Government wants to sweep under the carpet the debacle that has taken place with the Government Communications Security Bureau around the Kim Dotcom affair and what has followed on from that. That is not the way to make legislation; that is not the way to take on an issue that is of such significance for New Zealanders.The big difference between this legislation and the 2004 legislation that it seeks to replace is the introduction of the concept of security—it is in the title of the bill—and the idea of national security. The absence of a proper definition of that the absence of any shared understanding of what we are actually talking about is the fundamental problem I have in this first reading. What we now see in this legislation is significantly increased powers for Ministers. Ministers are deciding what “national security” means here—in fact not Ministers but one single Minister. That is a massive extension of the power of what Ministers can do.Members of Parliament will recall that one of the interesting moments in the Dotcom saga was the ministerial certificate signed by Bill English in John Key’s absence to suppress evidence in the court. Well what this bill does is set up a whole process for being able to put evidence to a court that only the court will see and defendants will not see. And who will be making that decision? But one single Minister. It massively extends the power of an individual Minister.More than that the Labour Party over the years has copped a lot from the National Party about so-called nanny State initiatives. Well what is this? What is this apart from going into private business and setting enormous burdens upon those businesses about what they are able to do and the things that they have to do? It talks about an escalating enforcement regime. This is a piece of legislation again that—we do not have a regulatory impact statement to get the officials’ background on this but on the face of it—will increase costs significantly for people in the telecommunications industry. And for what? The Government has simply not made the case for why this is necessary. Perhaps in the select committee process we will start to get some greater idea from this Government about what the case is that it is making here. But at this stage we have not seen that. All we have seen is a bill that increases the powers of Ministers that puts further burden on businesses—and we all know that it will be the users of those businesses who will wear the costs in the end.This bill in its shoddy process that it has come through to us actually does a number of things that I believe people in the telecommunications industry will be deeply concerned about. What it actually says is that the Government Communications Security Bureau now has a role in the design and development of data and voice communication networks in New Zealand. It actually gives the bureau a role in that—a vetting role a role where it could actually stop the development of a network if it believes it somehow breaches this undefined national security. Have a think about that. That is a Government agency having the ability to say to an NGO or to a private business that it is sorry but its network is not acceptable to the bureau. That is the kind of intervention that this bill is proposing.Clare Curran: What’s that going to do to investment?GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right—what will that do in terms of people who want to invest in telecommunication networks in New Zealand? The Government has simply not made the case. There are numerous unanswered questions within this piece of legislation—a piece of legislation introduced today under urgency.We need good strong measures to protect New Zealand’s national security. If we are going to get measures that are durable that requires a cross-parliamentary understanding. We support having good strong intelligence agencies but what we cannot support is legislation that rides roughshod over democracy that fails to make the case for why it is necessary and that appears on the face of it to give the Government extraordinary powers to intervene in the activities of private businesses. That is the kind of thing someone once told me the National Party was all about—supporting the rights of business people to go about what they do without unfair interference. Well that has all gone because tonight what we see is legislation from a National Government that has no commitment to democracy and is obsessed by its control and the control of individual Ministers. This bill is being opposed by the Labour Party tonight. We have not seen a case made for it by National and the way it has gone about it the process it has used has been a shoddy shoddy process and it is making a sham of our democracy.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): Kia ora. I rise to speak to the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. It could also be called the “TELCOs (Spying on Kiwis) Bill” or the “TELCOs (Let’s Get Hacked) Bill”. We have to ask: why now? What is the gap in legislation that we need this bill to cover? Wequestioned that in April when this bill was being mooted and at the time of the announcement that the Government was to change its plans to modernise the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act 2004. We opposed that Act for good reason and since then there has been plenty to show up why we should have and why we did. Rather than amend that law it should be reviewed. The Green Party opposed that law because of the great power it gave agencies to spy on New Zealanders’ online activity. Of course when we learn about the 88 people who have been illegally spied on we may see that that has been an abuse of this. Maybe that is the patch-up that this new bill is about—about covering up another one of the gaps where the Government has clearly been operating illegally.It is very concerning that the changes to this interception capability are being developed at the same time as the Government changes the law around the Government Communications Security Bureau—and not just New Zealand agencies; it is around the agencies of those other nations such as the US which is the main one behind it the UK Australia and Canada. It gives those agencies associated with that the ability to spy on New Zealanders as well. Or is the reason for this change that agencies have yet again been caught outside the law and also that in building “interceptability” let us call it into the network it has actually created weaknesses? We think that they have created weaknesses that could be exploited and they now need to be patched up.But tell us the truth. What is going on here? What is the real reason? What are the real reasons for this bill coming at the moment apart from just overall having a total surveillance State in New Zealand? A commission of inquiry is needed into both the Government Communications Security Bureau and the telecommunications laws the laws that allow that surveillance and their operation. We need a review. We need a full commission of inquiry rather than these piecemeal pieces that the Government is putting in.What does this bill open us up to? Well one thing is that the increased capacity in security systems will basically allow National’s chosen spy mates its chosen agencies like the Government Communications Security Bureau and its US mates to get into as I said that deeper hacking. Shortly after Parliament passed the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act 2004 there were concerns raised as a result of what we called the Greek Watergate. In 2004 and 2005 hackers gained access to Vodafone Greece’s mobile system and to the built-in law enforcement interception capability back then and they tapped months of calls of more than 100 mobile phones. These days hackers do it much much more. The reason they could do that was that they were using the interception capability put in by the spy agencies. Greek officials believed that a foreign intelligence agency was responsible and the news media including the BBC and theWall Street Journal at that time raised the United States intelligence agencies—the Government’s mates—as the leading suspects.What we are doing here is putting in laws to make it legal for those agencies to spy on us. We do not need to rely on them hacking in any more because we are setting up laws for them to do it—not us; the National Party and its buddies. There was another thing that happened in 2004—to United States wireless company T-Mobile—that resulted in hackers obtaining candid photos at that time from Paris Hilton’s Sidekick smartphone account. What did they get? They got 16.3 million customers through that access point. Provided for by whom? By the law enforcement agencies. For over a year that hacker had access to all their social security numbers dates of birth voicemail PINs and passwords to their email accounts.So what is this bill? What is this National? Is this because you have stuffed up? Are you going to make us even more vulnerable when we go into this? Whose tune are we dancing to National? Who is in town this week? There is lobbying by the FederalBureau of Investigation which is in town again this week. The Government Communications Security Bureau is totally tied in with that. We know that from the past.Scott Simpson: Ha ha!STEFFAN BROWNING: You guys might laugh at the idea that other foreign agencies are part of all of this. You just talk to your boss John Key about that and you will see—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order!STEFFAN BROWNING: Sorry Mr Assistant Speaker. This is a disgusting abuse of legislative power.There is another aspect in this bill of course. Is this a bill to actually screw down the telecommunications companies to pay even more money in meeting the Government’s requirements? In the early 2000s Telecom was charging Government agencies nearly half a million dollars a year for assisting in search warrants and Vodafone had set an annual fee of $800000 to $1 million. The risk wrote the SIS was that in future the police would not be able to afford all the bugging that it wanted to do. Is this the reason for this bill: so that other providers will provide the Government the information that it wants free of charge? It certainly seems that this might be the case.Dean Pemberton who had previously set up and run lawful interception equipment at TelstraClear told a lot of network specialists a while back that the agencies expected that sort of assistance from it. He said that they expected TelstraClear to install devices that could intercept data and forward it to the agencies on a minute-by-minute basis. That is what this bill is about. If the companies did not—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Members it is a longstanding convention that people should not conduct conversations in the House unless it is absolutely necessary to do so and then only so as they do not disturb proceedings. I just ask for some courtesy for the member trying to address the House. There is too much background noise.STEFFAN BROWNING: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. As he pointed out the agencies were meant to intercept and forward that data—New Zealanders’ data—on a minute-by-minute basis. He said that if the companies did not have this gear in place they risked a half-million-dollar fine and should get a lawyer. And he said: “If you try to be wise with them you’ll end up in the High Court within hours. Don’t be a fool.” Well of course the Government is not going to make them be a fool I suppose. It is going to enforce it through this new legislation and force them to spy on their neighbours to spy on their fellow nationals on behalf of the spy agencies.Another concern we have with this is that it is about data retention or the amount of time the spy agencies demand the telecommunications companies hang on to our private communications our telephone calls our texts our emails and everything that is going through the systems that these two bill together—there is an ugly twin as I have said with the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill—will be able to do. The Greens will be opposing this. Thank you.MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): I would just like to acknowledge Minister Adams for bringing a very good bill the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill to the House. This Government is serious about protecting New Zealanders from threats both domestic and foreign and this includes updating legislation around interception capability. I look forward to receiving this bill at the Law and Order Committee. Thank you.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a short call on this bill the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. New Zealand First understands and accepts the realities that have made this billnecessary. We give notice to the House and to the Government that we will be supporting it at least going to the Law and Order Committee at this stage. I will stress however that our support is conditional on the concerns that we have being addressed and on there being sufficient oversight and safeguards put in place so that the rights and freedoms of New Zealand citizens and residents are not jeopardised or disregarded in the execution of the powers that this bill encompasses.This bill as stated in the general policy statement “repeals and replaces the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act 2004.” The year 2004 was relatively recent in some regards but is a very long time ago indeed by some other measures. Technology marches on all the time at an exponentially increasing pace and legislation must be able to be updated and improved in order to recognise advances in technology and in the technical field. In addition to this the commercial landscape has altered dramatically since 2004. Telecom as a single company has nowhere near the market dominance it enjoyed nearly a decade ago. There are more players in a telecommunications environment that is very much different from that which the 2004 Act sought to address. There are more players there are more networks there are more devices and the manner and volume of data and information being transmitted are very much greater.This bill covers two main issues: interception and network security. The network security aspects are largely technical in nature and deal with how the telecommunications sector and the companies operating in the telecommunications sector are to actually operate in relation to interception warrants. These technical aspects relate to the operation of the networks and the examination and collection of information and data both through and from various network devices—matters that as I alluded to earlier are subject to rapid technological change.The nature of individual and commercial use of networks and of network devices is also changing and it is this usage that by the very nature of its usefulness makes companies as well as governmental agencies vulnerable to exploitation through them. Essential service providers both public and private may be subject to eavesdropping and cyber-attacks with the potential for intellectual property to be usurped and the possibility that essential services to individuals and companies may be compromised. New Zealanders deserve to be protected from such potential threats and as such it is necessary that the legislation governing the interception of electronic communications is able to be updated as required as the terrain of the cyberenvironment evolves.Interception itself remains almost a separate issue and is also dealt with in this bill. Warrants granted under the auspices of this bill to the police the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau will need to adhere to and provide sufficient regard for the rights and civil liberties of New Zealanders. There will need to be sufficient oversight of these warrants and the authority under which they are granted.The general policy statement states that “The main objectives of the Bill are to ensure that the interception obligations imposed on the telecommunications industry are clear and reflect the changing telecommunications industry structure do not impose unnecessary compliance costs and are sufficiently flexible to match today’s operational needs and future technology developments;” and furthermore “that network operators are obliged to engage with the Government on network security matters where they may raise a risk to New Zealand’s national security or economic well-being inform the Government of network decisions that may be of particular national security interest and work with the Government to apply any required risk-based and proportionate security measures.”If these objectives can be met and at the same time the freedoms rights and civil liberties of New Zealanders can be assured then New Zealand First has no issue withsupporting this bill. We do have some of the same concerns as the Labour Opposition but they have to be balanced by the knowledge that threats can develop and evolve very rapidly and may well be home-grown. In closing I would reiterate that New Zealand First’s continuing support for the bill will be conditional on these concerns being examined and satisfied. New Zealand First will support this bill going to the select committee at this stage. Thank you.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I listened to Steffan Browning and if he is the member for Waihopai I can certainly claim to be the member for Tangimoana because I can throw a rock at the Tangimoana telecommunications station.Kris Faafoi: You’d get prosecuted if you did that.IAN McKELVIE: There is a security fence around it Mr Faafoi. However I understand the need for security and the previous speaker Richard Prosser most certainly pointed that out to me. This Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill is a great piece of legislation brought to the House by Minister Adams. I have pleasure in commending the bill to the House. Thank you.Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): Once again we have an important piece of legislation coming into the House that may be necessary but the case has not been made out for it; that is certainly intrusive on the privacy and individual rights of New Zealand citizens but again fails to indicate the checks and balances that might exist to prevent those powers being abused. The Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill is a piece of legislation that was brought in under urgency yet National speaker after National speaker instead of making out the case for why this legislation is necessary and what protections there might be to stop its powers being abused stands up utters and mumbles a few inane sentences and sits down. There is a responsibility on the Government of this country when in the night and under urgency it tries to rush a piece of legislation through to actually justify to the country what it is doing.You know there has been a tradition in this House that where a Government acts reasonably there is an effort to achieve a bipartisan consensus to get intrusive legislation through the House. In this legislation there has been no such effort. It was not tabled until today and when the Minister for Communications and Information Technology brought the bill in the bill in its printed form made a comment about the release of the regulatory impact statements. There are wide-ranging powers in this bill and we need to know what Treasury and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment say the implications of this legislation are. But what do we read in the bill? That “These regulatory impact statements have yet to be publicly released on the Ministry’s website …”.I want to ask the Government why it is good enough for it to bring in a bill that gives unprecedented powers over telecommunications companies to the Government to intrude into the lives of private New Zealand citizens yet the Government does not deem it necessary to table the regulatory impact statements so that the whole House can be informed about what this bill means for New Zealanders. That is a breach of process. That is utter arrogance matching the arrogance of National members who stand up and speak three sentences and then jeer from their seats when other people are criticising the way this bill has been put together.I want to make a point about the bill. This bill is going to the Law and Order Committee. I sit on that select committee. Interestingly our select committee had before it the Corrections Amendment Bill. Members of the committee are in the House right now and they can confirm that. This submission is from three telecommunications companies: 2degrees Vodafone and Telecom. This is evidence that the Government never learns from its failures; it never learns from the fiascos and the botch-ups that ithas already made. This is what the companies said: “It is unfortunate that we were not consulted on the Bill before this process began.” This was about a bill in the corrections context giving power over telecommunications companies—a parallel to this legislation before us—and the telecommunications companies came to the committee and said that they did not know about it before the Government introduced it.My challenge to the National Government is this: did it consult with the telecommunications companies? Did it ask whether the measures were effective were able to be implemented and were necessary? Whether there were better ways of doing it? Whether it unnecessarily intruded on privacy? Silence. You know the answer Mr Assistant Speaker. The answer is that it did not consult with the companies that are dramatically affected by these legislative powers.What do we find about the Government’s last effort to do this that went to the Law and Order Committee? We found that the bill would have had unintended consequences; that the telecommunications providers actually did not have the capability to do what the Government was demanding of them. We found that it gave the department search and surveillance powers over and above any others that existed for Government agencies that it failed to take into account better ways of doing it that it set out costs that ran into millions of dollars and that it was an unjustified intrusion into the privacy rights of individuals. Do you know what the result of that submission was? Everything the telecommunications companies said about that intrusion and those powers was absolutely correct and the Government slunk off with its tail between its legs. It withdrew the provisions in the legislation and it put into effect provisions that the telecommunications companies said were necessary useful pragmatic and had proper checks and balances.This Government learns nothing from its experience. It brings into the House this bill with unprecedented powers. It has not consulted the Opposition parties. It has not consulted the telecommunications companies. My fear is that our committee will find exactly what it found last time the Government tried to implement something like this: that what the Government was recommending would not work could not be done was expensive abused the rights of ordinary New Zealanders and failed to protect where it was necessary to do so the privacy of individuals.You know I wonder what this legislation is about. Some time ago I was talking to people representing the Australian Government and the United States Government. They asked me this question saying: “You know you’re worried about cyber-security. Why is it that the National Government has agreed to allow Huawei to set up communications networks in New Zealand that we in Australia and we in the United States wouldn’t allow because of the fundamental impact that would have on undermining cyber-security in our countries?” So on the one hand the Government has gone out and it has agreed to something that its closest friends and allies apparently thought was stupid and then on the other hand it brings this legislation in. Maybe it is bringing this legislation in because in retrospect it realises it has done the wrong thing and it has opened New Zealand up to the sort of cyber-attacks through foreign-owned companies that other countries with similar democracies have not opened themselves up to.I ask the next Government speaker not to mutter something inane when they get up and then sit down again but to answer that question. Answer all of those questions. Is this about Huawei? Why is it that there has been no communication with the telecommunications companies? Why is it that we found out about this legislation only when it was tabled and that there was no effort as you would normally expect to give a briefing to the Opposition on legislation that provides for a massive expansion of Government powers?I want to give an indication of what that massive expansion is. Network operators will have to notify the director of the Government Communications Security Bureau of “any proposed decision course of action or change [to] procurement of any equipment system or service …” any change to those or any change of ownership of any of them. What remarkable powers—remarkable powers that the Government Communications Security Bureau will have over communications companies. Why is this deemed to be necessary at this time? Is it about Huawei? Or is it because the Government just thinks that it should be able to go in and direct anything that the private communications companies are doing.The bill says that the telecommunications companies must notify the Government Communications Security Bureau before they go out to the market for any new equipment. That is a huge intrusion on what the telecommunications companies are doing. It has not been necessary in the past. Why is it necessary now? The Government Communications Security Bureau is to have a veto power over network operators upgrading and introducing new network equipment if in the director’s opinion they pose a security risk. What is the criteria he follows in that? Why is that not spelt out in the legislation? Is this a total unbridled power?If the director is not satisfied with the proposal then they can refer it to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister can direct that they stop a particular activity—enormous powers placed in the hands of the Prime Minister to be directive. Where is the check and balance on that? It may be that they are concerned for example about the economic well-being of the country. Every day the National Party stands up in the House and argues that every party in Opposition is undermining the economic well-being of the country. Is this a cause that would allow the Government to spy on the political parties’ decision-making process because of that? You would say that is silly really is it not? Is it not silly? The Government would not do that would it? John Key or actually Bill English would not suppress the fact that the Government had acted illegally in another area. John Key would not lie about his involvement in the appointment of the Government Communications Security Bureau’s director. No they would not do those things!This is bad legislation—poorly introduced inadequately explained with no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act veto and no checks and balances. The Labour Opposition will be opposing this bill.TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Could I begin by acknowledging the contribution that we had from Richard Prosser as he outlined his party’s understanding of the need for this Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. We acknowledge that his party has some concerns and they will be worked through. But I want to thank the New Zealand First caucus for its indication of support for an important piece of legislation.I want to turn just briefly to some of the comments of the member for Mt Roskill who made much of the idea that the Government has not outlined its case for this bill. I can only assume that he was not in the House at the time that the Minister for Communications and Information Technology spoke in considerable detail as she outlined exactly what the reasons for the bill were. She made it very clear that this is a bill whose time has come because technology is changing so rapidly. It would be totally inappropriate to bury our heads in the sand and to say that the law does not need to change when New Zealand’s telecommunications infrastructure has to be able to remain secure in an increasingly online world. It is about ensuring that telecommunications network security law reflects the realities of our modern telecommunications infrastructure which is constantly changing at a baffling speed.Our current legislation relating to interception obligations was put in place when there were only a few major vertically integrated network operators. So much has changed since then. That is no longer the case. Therefore times have changed the technology has changed and the law must change to reflect contemporary needs and challenges.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I understand this is a split call?Hon David Cunliffe: Split call. A 5-minute call Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): A 5-minute call. I call the Hon David Cunliffe and I will give the member a bell at 4 minutes.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): In this Chamber we have decorating the walls the emblems of battles in which New Zealanders have fought. I am looking opposite at one named Egypt where the 28th Māori Battalion served so gallantly in the front line of the break out at El Alamein which it was my privilege once to visit. I am calling it to mind because our late colleague Parekura Horomia was a dedicated attendee at its commemorations. I have been very pleased to be at some. I recall the battalion because the principles for which it fought and for which too many died included the protection of the very freedoms which this Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill now calls into question. That is a matter of such seriousness that it behoves this House and every listener to contemplate very very carefully the freedoms which could be compromised willingly or by omission through this bill.This bill as it currently stands based on the information that we currently have appears to be a sham in the shadow of a farce. The farce is obvious on our TV screens and in the debacle of Dotcom and the unanswered questions about Huawei where our nearest allies our “Five Eyes” partners are unwilling to accept certain technology offerings that this Government appears comfortable to do. We have perhaps most important a significant issue of the Government Communications Security Bureau’s cart being before its own horse. We have the Kitteridge review which found 88 cases of illegal spying on New Zealand citizens or residents and made an extensive set of recommendations. It is absolutely proper and important that the House considers the response to that review before it extends the powers of the agency as proposed in this bill.How does it extend them? Firstly to broaden the purposes for which the Government Communications Security Bureau may act to include any economic well-being is to broaden it by as they say a country mile. Almost anything has a cost in financial terms and can be said to impact business. It is not necessarily wrong to cover that but we would want much more information about the extent the process and the accountability around that because it magnifies the scope of this agency.A colleague opposite talked about technology change. A key change has been the development of the cloud. This bill gives the obligation to our telecommunications providers to allow interception access into the cloud. You have seen the ads by one telecommunications company: “We can’t even say which Government agencies use our services.” This bill forces them to open up their clients’ accounts to the scrutiny of those agencies or so it seems. What protections I ask of the veterans of El Alamein are given to New Zealand citizens? Will a judge’s warrant be required for such intercepts? Will New Zealanders’ cloud information be deemed to be within New Zealand’s jurisdiction? Or will it be ultra vires because it is in the cloud and not tied to our domestic terrestrial communications? We look for the answer. We have none.What of the scrutiny? Currently the Intelligence and Security Committee the oversight provided by Parliament is in name only. It generally gets information after itis released to the public and it is headed up by John “Brain Fade” Key—a man who has the courage to pick up the phone and ring a schoolmate and ask him to be the head of our spy agency but does not have the courage to pick up the phone and talk to Aaron Gilmour about his antics. He cannot remember where he was last week or last month or last year or whom he spoke to or why. Are we prepared to accept that man’s assurance that all of the activities of the agency that are being broadened by this bill are subject to New Zealand law when the Kitteridge review has not yet been acted on? I think not.Our Government Communications Security Bureau has a valid and important role to play in protecting our national interests. It must have the highest trust of this House and the New Zealand people. This legislation needs a lot more clarity and a lot more information before the Labour Opposition can support it.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to speak to and oppose the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill introduced by the so-called Minister for Communications and Information Technology but I think she is going to get a name for herself as the “Minister of Communication Interceptions”. This is a bad day for our democracy. It is a bad day. We are seeing this and its sibling legislation the Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill introduced in this Chamber today under urgency with a constrained committee hearing period and with no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet and no regulatory impact assessment—introduced under urgency. It is a bad day for our democracy because I do not think this is the standard Kiwis expect and demand from a Government that takes human rights civil liberties and security issues seriously. What we are seeing is bad legislation being introduced under urgency.I received this in my office today. It is dated yesterday. It is a letter from the Minister for Communications and Information Technology Amy Adams with the legislation. The day it is tabled in Parliament the Opposition gets to look at this legislation. That is not in the spirit of the cross-party approach that we have seen over decades when it comes to security and surveillance issues. I think it is a bad day and it reflects very poorly on the Government. I think the tone of this debate reflects very poorly on the Government benches who are not speaking for more than 1 minute except for a few bland comments. They should be able to stand up and defend this legislation in the House in front of these people and put their words down on the record of our country and inHansard. This is the party that boasted so boldly and loudly about the nanny State. This is the party that ridiculously talked about Fiji and North Korea when we talked about lower electricity prices and housing affordability.If we are going to have a conversation about Fiji and North Korea let us look at the legislation in front of this Parliament today and at what we are talking about. Let us remember what we did last session in Parliament: criminalising protest activity. If there are things that remind me of totalitarian Governments it is things like spying on its citizens it is things like retrospectively changing the laws when the Government has been found to have used its agents to act unlawfully and it is criminalising protest activity. I think it is a bad day for the Government when we are dealing with issues such as this. Government members call it necessary and transparent but there is no justification. There is no case that they can point to. There is no cross-party process that they have gone through to build support as would have been the case in the past. This is a large expansion of power. It deals with the interception capability of internet service providers and other network operators. It deals with a differential escalating role of monitoring and compliance regimes. It contains a penalties regime.I do not think the information and communications technology sector or the telecommunications sector will be welcoming this. I doubt they were consulted. We still have not got a mention from the Government benches as to whether they were or not. I think they will be concerned. I think they will be concerned because it is going to risk investment in this critical sector and I believe an important part of our economic prosperity going into the future. There are even risks around whether these companies can be sold in the future or not.Hey if we are going to have a conversation on nanny State let us just look at this bill in front of the House today. This bill contains an extremely wide definition of what security is and what can be surveilled as a consequence. It uses the term “economic well-being” a catch-all that could catch anyone from Greenpeace to a protestor with a banner to the Green and Labour parties when we talk about excessive super-profits in the electricity sector and trying to drive down power bills for Kiwis.I think crucially what Kiwis find so unfair and egregious about this bill is that what we have seen over the last 18 months is a monumental cock-up when it comes to Kim Dotcom—a monumental cock-up. What this Government has done is reward those spies for their unlawful activities. It is rewarding the spies for their bad behaviour. It is changing the rules to validate what they did. We may as well get Jetstar to write our customer service standards. We may as well get John Banks to run our electoral donation register if we are going to give the spies the laws they want when they act unlawfully. It is bad for our telecommunications and it is bad for our human rights. This is being passed through our Parliament in a poor shoddy process with no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet.There was a regulatory impact statement produced on 12 March I understand. That is not in front of this House. It is a terrible process—a shoddy process. It smacks of Muldoonism. I think the members should be ashamed that they are voting for it. I say that with all honesty and without a sense of rhetoric. This is a shameful day. We have seen a litany of terrible legislation under this Parliament but jeez this has got to take the cake. Laws to spy on Kiwis to validate unlawful spying on Kiwis under urgency—a bad day for this country and a bad day for the National Government.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It is a pleasure to be the last speaker in this first reading of the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill. We live in times that are changing. We live in a modern world where there is increasing technology and increasing risk.This bill is a good bill. It is a good bill because it will give the increasing number of telecommunications providers that we have a very clear understanding of their obligations not just to the Government but in terms of the security of New Zealand and our economic well-being in the global environment. This is a good bill. I commend it and endorse it to the House.A party vote was called for on the questionThat the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill be now read a first time.Ayes71New Zealand National 59; New Zealand First 7; Māori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes48New Zealand Labour 33; Green Party 13; Mana 1; Independent: Horan.Bill read a first time.Billreferred to the Law and Order Committee.Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries)on behalf of theMinister for Communications and Information Technology: I moveThat the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill be reported back to the House on or before 20 September 2013.Motion agreed to.Criminal Procedure Legislation BillSecond ReadingHon CHESTER BORROWS (Associate Minister of Justice): I moveThat the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill be now read a second time. In October 2011 Parliament passed the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 and its 14 associated amendment Acts. Those Acts represented the biggest reform and modernisation of criminal justice procedure in nearly two generations. It forms a comprehensive package that will make the criminal justice system more transparent understandable and efficient. Although a small number of provisions came into effect in March 2012 the majority of the legislation will commence in July this year.Since enactment a number of technical deficiencies have been identified in the Criminal Procedure Act and associated legislation. This bill is an omnibus bill to rectify those technical issues identified during the implementation process. These amendments ensure that the legislative intent of certain provisions is made clear so that those provisions can be interpreted and applied consistent with the policy. The amendments ensure that operational efficiency in the courts is enhanced by clarity in the legislation and that the predicted benefits of reform are realised by full implementation. I would like to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for its thorough consideration of the bill and the amendments it has recommended. The constructive engagement from all parties on the committee enabled the bill to be reported back to the House well ahead of its due date.I would like to focus on two issues raised by the New Zealand Law Society in its thoughtful and considered submission on the bill. The first issue relates to the provision of the bill that would have allowed for regulations to make consequential amendments to references to the word “crime”. The criminal procedure reforms abolish the summary and indictable offence distinction and repeal the definition of “crime” in the Crimes Act 1961. In some instances references to “crime” have already been replaced to make clear the scope and effect of the provision in question. As the Law Society noted that is necessary in some instances to make legislation intelligible.The relevant regulation-making power was proposed to enable any such references to “crime” that may inadvertently remain on the statute book to be tidied up. However the Law Society raised concerns about the potential for this power to be used to make substantive changes to the criminal law by extending too far the scope of existing criminal provisions and the committee has removed this particular regulation-making power from the bill. Although the committee doubted that the power would be used inappropriately it agreed with the Law Society that such amendments would be better made by primary legislation and this would allow parliamentary scrutiny on a case by case basis of any such amendment.The second issue relates to another regulation-making power and this one relates to the jurisdiction of community magistrates. As many members may know community magistrates are judicial officers who sit on a wide range of less serious criminal matters in several District Courts around the country. The bill clarifies and gives full effect to the intended policy that community magistrates may receive guilty pleas for those offences for which they may sentence offenders. It also amends the regulation-makingpower in the Act to clarify that community magistrates have jurisdiction to deal with all category 1 offences punishable by a fine of up to $40000 except those specified by regulations. Currently the Act requires all offences that community magistrates have jurisdiction over to be specified in regulations.The Law Society raised concerns that this change reversed a policy decision. Although the committee understood the concern it ultimately determined that the amendment provided the most efficient means of meeting the overall policy objective that community magistrates should have jurisdiction to act within the specified range unless there is a compelling reason that they should not do so for any particular offences. The committee also recommended that certain powers be included in the list of matters exercisable by the community magistrates. The Chief District Court Judge raised the issue with the Ministry of Justice.Due to a legislative oversight certain powers properly exercisable by community magistrates had not been included in the Summary Proceedings Act. This bill provided the opportunity to make the necessary amendments. These give community magistrates the power to order that a vehicle be confiscated and destroyed after a third illegal street racing offence and the power to issue a written caution to a person with an interest in a vehicle involved in a street racing offence. A number of Land Transport Act powers are also specified as being exercisable by community magistrates consistent with the Chief District Court Judge’s representations as to the need to update the legislation.These sensible amendments fall squarely within the scope of this bill and the overall objective of the criminal procedure reforms. As noted by Judge Doogue without these amendments the valuable resource provided by community magistrates would not fully be utilised. The amendments will help to free up District Court judges’ time and will reduce delay and unnecessary churn in the courts.The committee also recommended a number of other very sensible amendments to the bill consistent with the technical reforms in the bill to ensure its full implementation and effective operation. These are small amendments but collectively they ensure that the policies contained in the Criminal Procedure Act will be efficiently and coherently implemented as intended. I commend the bill to the House.ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): It is a pleasure to rise and speak on the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill and to confirm the Labour Party’s support for the bill. The project of overhauling our criminal procedure legislation started under the last Labour Government. It was overdue and it was a welcome change and this legislation tidies up the bulk of the work done under what is now the Criminal Procedure Act which is due to take effect on 1 July this year.I know from getting around members of the profession over the last couple of months that there is a combined sense of anxiety and also a palpable sense of thrill that the profession has about the coming into force of this legislation because there were problems—major problems—with the administration of criminal justice in this country. Foremost amongst those were the delays being experienced certainly at the District Court and also at the High Court level in many registries around the country and the profession was very keen to see changes made that would enable cases to be brought on and justice to be administered in a timely fashion as indeed it should be. As we all know justice delayed is justice denied or as it was quoted at one point last year in this House sometimes justice denied is justice delayed. The logic of that proposition of course needs no further explanation and will get none from me. So we welcome the legislation; it was the right thing to do.Now this Government has discovered there are tidy-ups required. That might call into question however the speed with which—even a piece of legislation that went through a very deliberate process can sometimes lead to flaws that have to be corrected.It was good that there was a considerable lapse of time before the implementation date for the legislation. It was 1 July this year—Hon Lianne Dalziel: Do you think they should do that to the family law?ANDREW LITTLE: —so there was time to review it. I can think of other laws where it would be entirely appropriate. In fact some legislation that had its first reading in the House only this afternoon could well do with a much more considered and deliberate time frame to make sure the Government gets it right. I can think of the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill which is currently working its way through. It should have been given more ample time to have it properly considered rather than having it pushed through and becoming a great cause of anxiety to the profession. A submission period that encompassed 4 or 5 or 6 weeks of a Christmas break caused major problems for those who were offering their professional expertise and skill to assist the Justice and Electoral Committee and this House—but that is beside the point. So we welcome naturally any changes that will improve the administration of criminal justice.There is another important principle in all this which is a point that the Law Society made in its submission on this amending bill this tidy-up bill. It is that to the best extent possible criminal justice legislation—if not indeed all justice legislation—should be done in this House on a bipartisan or multipartisan basis. When we are talking about the administration of justice when we are talking about potentially imposing criminal sanctions on people depriving them of their liberty that is a matter that the House should reach agreement on for the benefit of all our citizens. It is good that this legislation has as indeed the Criminal Procedure Act had as it was being processed through the House the support by and large of the whole House. That is the way it should be. The criminal justice system needs to be robust and it requires the robust support of all parties in this House. It was good to see.Of course I speak on this bill not having had the benefit of sitting on the Justice and Electoral Committee at the time it was going through but the Government is entitled to credit for listening to the submitters and the other parties on the select committee when processing this bill. Changes were made. Although it is largely a technical bill changes were able to be negotiated and were indeed made. A principal change which the Hon Chester Borrows adverted to in his presentation just now was the “Henry VIII” clause that would have allowed changes to primary legislation and references to the term “crime” in that legislation to be amended through Order in Council. That has gone under this bill. That is the correct thing to do. The term “crime” whether it is in the Crimes Act or in any other piece of legislation is a sensitive term a term of art in many respects and if that term is to be changed in any legislation then it should have the proper oversight and scrutiny of this House. That will be the case with this bill as reported back to the House from the committee.There were other amendments made. The clarification of charging documents—we are no longer having informations laid in the criminal justice system. We are to have charging documents. The procedures and rules around the waiving of fees to access documents to clarify are improved and that is a good thing.The administration of criminal justice is a crucial aspect to the principle of the rule of law and it is our adherence to the rule of law as a principle and in practice that makes us a developed modern civilised nation. That must underpin what we do in criminal justice and indeed in any justice legislation that we pass. But I think it is timely to point out in this regard that in too many other cases we have a Government at the moment that is showing a willingness to ride roughshod over basic rights and principles and that runs counter to adherence to the principle of the rule of law. We have seen tonight inother debates exactly that risk being taken that threat being imposed in the debating and passage of other legislation.The rule of law is absolutely crucial. That is why the World Justice Project sponsored by the American Bar Association now has a rule of law index for every country in the world. New Zealand presently rates reasonably well in that rule of law index but it is the actions of this House and of Government agencies that will determine whether we maintain our high ranking in that register. We do not want to compromise our position. Having a good standing and a good rating on the rule of law puts us in good stead internationally not only as good international citizens of the world but also for our commercial and trading partners to know that this is a place where they can reliably do business. They must also know that when citizens of other States come here and they are subject to a criminal regime that criminal regime will also be subject to the basic principles of the rule of law.But that is not what we have seen in other situations. Only today and yesterday we have seen the Minister of Justice talking about as a knee-jerk reaction introducing a new register of deported offenders—New Zealand citizens deported back to New Zealand after committing offences in other countries—as a permanent record of their offending and with no scope for them to put their evil past behind them and embark on a good future. We have seen that the Family Court reforms launched on this House have now had to be changed because of some of the failures to observe basic principles of the rule of law—denial of the rights of counsel particularly to children which we know is a breach of our international obligations under international conventions. The rule of law remains important and that is why this bill is one of those bills where we see that when the House gets it right our standing and our place when it comes to measures of the rule of law are good and sit at a high level; it is the right thing to do. On that basis we are thankful for the Government taking the time and effort to listen on this criminal justice legislation and we support this legislation.SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): As chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee it is a great pleasure to stand and speak in support of the second reading of this Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill. The bill as other speakers have indicated contains a number of technical amendments required to ensure that the legislative intent of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 is made clear and can be applied as intended. As Mr Little just mentioned in his presentation previously the support for this piece of legislation at the select committee was unanimous and I am delighted to report that the committee worked very well on its deliberations in regard to the bill.Tim Macindoe: Good committee.SCOTT SIMPSON: It is a good committee Mr Macindoe—a very good committee. I think it was a good example of how the select committee process can work to make for better legislation and I want to thank members for their cooperation and support during the discussions that we had. The bill contains these technical amendments to make for better operational efficiencies within our court system. We heard as others have mentioned a very compelling submission from the New Zealand Law Society in relation to its concerns about the so-called “Henry VIII” clause. It was a good result that that was removed from the draft of the bill and I think we have got now a position on this piece of legislation that is going to be acceptable across the House.The Government believes that justice delayed is justice denied. This bill will ensure that timely justice is delivered for victims witnesses defendants and our entire community. Currently our system is clogged and needs to be fixed and these amendments in this piece of legislation will remedy that. I commend the bill to the House. It is a good piece of legislation and I support it.Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East): When the Associate Minister of Justice commented on this piece of legislation the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill he did not mention that clause 15 was a “Henry VIII” clause. I think it is important to put on the record of the House why there is an objection in principle to “Henry VIII” clauses being enacted. The reason is simply this: that when an enactment needs to be amended it should be done by Parliament—it should not be done by the executive. When one has a “Henry VIII” clause in play it actually enables the executive to make an amendment to the work of Parliament which in itself of course is something that should not be taken lightly.A number of people have mentioned the Law Society’s submission on this particular piece of legislation. The society commented on the use of the “Henry VIII” clause and said that in this particular instance it did not have an objection to it because it was the power to make technical amendments to the enactments that the legislation amends to ensure consistency across the statute book. Generally speaking that was acceptable to the Law Society and I think acceptable right across the House in terms of those minor amendments that would need to be made in order to ensure consistency. When one is talking about the extent of reform that the criminal procedure legislation was designed to address it was entirely appropriate that some mechanism for those tidy-ups outside the statutes amendment process could be allowed.So generally speaking the principle was accepted that as long as it was within that category there was not a problem but the Law Society pointed out that it could be problematic. I want to particularly congratulate Graeme Edgeler who appeared on behalf of the Law Society because obviously he personally had put a lot of effort into this particular submission and I believe that he represented the Law Society’s position exceptionally well. What he said when he appeared before the Justice and Electoral Committee—and I have the submission in front of me—was that he was concerned about the insertion of a paragraph that would allow references to the word “crime” in other enactments to be amended by the executive.Again where that was a technical issue he did not have a problem. But what the Law Society in fact identified was that what could happen was that there could be by regulation a vast expansion of the scope of certain offences in fact resulting in the criminalising of conduct that would have been entirely lawful but for that amendment. Of course he made the point—quite rightly so—that these sorts of policy decisions are questions that Parliament itself should consider. When select committee members heard the submission we did question him about this and I think what he really persuaded the select committee of was that we had to rethink what the essence of the amendment was all about. What he was concerned about and the Law Society was concerned about was that: “Under the law applying before the principal Act enters into force the concept of a ‘crime’ for the purposes of the criminal law is essentially a subset of imprisonable offences: it includes all offences where the prosecution has the option of laying a charge indictably. There are a substantial number of imprisonable offences that do not meet the definition of ‘crime’ as the prosecution is not permitted to lay them indictably.” So this is a natural consequence of the change to the legislation itself.Then he went on to say that “This Bill itself makes a number of amendments to the term ‘crime’ and provides good examples of the type of amendment that are technical compared with those that involve important policy questions.” Then he says: “Schedule 2 lists a number of amendments to uses of the word ‘crime’ in the Crimes Act 1961. The amendments … are simple amendments that enable the law to be intelligible now that the definition of ‘crime’ has been repealed and the distinction between summary and indictable matters removed. The amendments to the other sections are different: while they may be the right course they involve a policy choice that extends the scopeof criminal offences beyond that which applies today. The choice of what replaces ‘crime’ in these situations determines how much the reach of these offences is extended.”Then he goes on to talk about how for example “The offences in the sections listed above tend to criminalise innocuous or not-very-serious-behaviour when it is committed with intent to commit a crime. Section 251(2) of the Crimes Act for example criminalises possession of computer software that is capable of enabling unauthorised access to a computer … however this possession is only illegal if done with the intent to commit a crime.”So he was making the point that the situation of removing the reference to the word “crime” would in fact potentially create a criminal offence that was not the original intention because it was not done with the intent to commit a crime. Then he used a number of other examples but the best example he used was burglary: “Burglary involves an unauthorised entry to a building … with intent to commit a crime. Unauthorised entry by itself is illegal but is not considered to be particularly serious … However if the entry is done with the intention of committing a crime it becomes a burglary”.So even though he went through all of the technical details in the way that he did the point that he made was absolutely correct. What we were actually going to be doing was creating the potential for offences that would not of themselves be regarded as serious crimes to become serious crimes by the removal of the word “crime” in the legislation. We had a good robust conversation with officials about this and I have to say that the officials who were serving our select committee were very very helpful. They actually came back to us with a very simple solution to the problem and that was to remove the reference to clause 15(3)(h) altogether. That I think was incredibly helpful because what it enabled us to do was address a very serious issue that may never have become a problem. But given the fact that it could have and that our select committee had been given the benefit of that advice I think we actually did the right thing. So I do agree with the chair of the select committee that we were incredibly well served by our officials and we were able to make the change that we did.I just want to agree with what my colleague Andrew Little said before and that is that when you are faced with legislation at a select committee even if it looks pretty straightforward on the face of it sometimes it takes just one submission—there were only two submissions that we received on this entire bill—and somebody to come to the select committee and make the case and you can end up making quite a substantial change to the legislation which means that you do not get into problems down the track. I think what Andrew Little was saying was that actually we do have to allow time for bills to go to select committees so that those who are going to make submissions can take the time to consider all of the elements of the legislation and to enable them to make constructive comments as the Law Society did in this particular case and to enable that to be considered by officials and for a select committee to report back.Sometimes I think that we actually do a disservice to the very robust process that we have of referring out to the public for that wider reach and consideration on legislation. We do the people of New Zealand a great disservice if we do not allow sufficient time for that. I think that what we have seen here tonight in the House with other bills that are not being allowed sufficient time at a select committee is that we will pay a price for that in the long term. This is a very simple piece of legislation but it just shows what a difference one submission can make.The other example that my colleague Andrew Little used was the Family Court proceedings legislation where we have not had sufficient time and with the looming deadline of the legislation coming into force in part on 1 October this year I just despairof the reality of people who have to operate within a time frame that does not allow for sufficient time. So in this particular instance I would really like to place on record my sincere thanks to the New Zealand Law Society. It has done this House proud.DAVID CLENDON (Green): Tēnā koe. I am pleased to speak to this bill the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill and to confirm the Greens’ continued support for this legislation. It is a necessary piece of legislation. It is practical. It seeks to ensure the integrity and indeed the utility of the primary legislation—the legislation as passed in 2011 or was 2012 the final passing? As highlighted by the Minister introducing the bill the Associate Minister of Justice the 2011 legislation intended to make the criminal justice system more transparent more understandable and more efficient. Those are clearly admirable goals and appropriate goals and it would be perverse not to support them. It is worth recalling that at the time the legislation was being put through the House in 2011 there were elements of the original drafting that were not admirable and did not win the support of this House particularly in the proposals to change the practice of trial by jury and to change the practice and policy around the presumption of innocence. In the event of course the Minister at the time lost the majority in the House due to those two critical elements of the original drafting. It required him to recant and indeed to redraft the bill into a form that was acceptable and it ultimately did get passed through the House.I think the necessity to ensure that our criminal justice system does move speedily and smoothly and that it is streamlined and efficient has been highlighted recently in the context of conversations around the bail laws and the perceived necessity of amendment to those. We are seeing reports of increased offending by people on bail and clearly one of the drivers of that is simply that people are on bail for much longer than is desirable. In part that is due to the fact that the courts are not able to put cases through. Hearings are taking too long and the process is slower than it ought to be and than it ideally would be. Anything we can do to amend that has got to be a desirable thing and something we will support.However there is some disconnect I have to say between the intention of this bill—the efficiency and the streamlining of the justice process and of the court process—and other policies other legislation and other practices of this Government where it seems almost deliberately to be setting out to slow the functioning of the courts and to make the courts less effective and less efficient than they ought and need to be. I think of issues like the numbers of support staff. As with elsewhere in the Public Service we are seeing a reduction in numbers. We are hearing from lawyers from people working in the justice sector that we are seeing a loss of experienced staff in the courts. As a result of that we are not seeing the courts operating as effectively and as efficiently as they might. That is clearly not a desirable thing. We should be at least ensuring we have sufficient well-trained well-qualified and experienced staff in our courts to ensure the prompt and the effective delivery of justice to people going through the court system.Similarly it seems perverse at a time when we are seeking to improve the functioning of the court system that we are closing courthouses in some of our provincial areas and reducing services available at other courts. This is not helpful clearly to the public.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair. This debate is interrupted and the people’s House stands suspended until 9 a.m. when I shall resume the Chair. Tihei mauri ora! Parekura Horomia haere rā. Pō mārie. Good evening honourable members.Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)