Mark Ron: Government Communications Security Bureau Bill — Third Reading 
Mark Ron: Government Communications Security Bureau Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4510] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise to signal that New Zealand First will be voting as it has all the way through in favour of the bill. I wish to make a couple of points. Quite clearly the bill was needed. It is a little disappointing that it has languished on the Order Paper for so long having been introduced into the House under urgency and I would ask members like the member who just spoke that before they give urgency support to this Government they really question it about its intent. To have this bill introduced as a security issue—so important that it had to come in under urgency—and then see it languish for 2 years on the Order Paper and only just coming to its third reading now says a lot about this Government and some of the objectives it puts up on day 1 and what they really mean on day 2. Only two parties in this House are going to give urgency for next week. One is the party of the member who just spoke— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will come back to this bill. Do not talk about urgency. 
RON MARK 
: I will. The point is that if this bill is so important and so critical to the security and well-being of our nation it should not have stopped once the urgency motion had been passed. It should have been rammed through this House as quickly as possible. It should not have taken 2 years. The bill after all was designed to establish the bureau as a department of State and to clarify and define the bureau’s functions and objectives. It was designed to detail the circumstances in which the bureau may intercept foreign communications and how it may do that. They are all crucial and critical things. 
I want to make a couple of points beyond this. It is therefore extremely disappointing to see the way in which the Labour Government supported by the Progressive Coalition and United Future then treated this House with utter contempt at the Committee stage by not participating in the Committee debate. I do not think there was one speech. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: There was. 
RON MARK 
: United Future did speak? I withdraw that. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: You should have been here. 
RON MARK 
: I was here through the whole thing. Maybe the member came in briefly and disappeared. But the Labour Party sat there and did not take one speech in defence of this bill or to explain it. “Concerned about the security of this nation”—it certainly brings into question those statements. But we have the bill. 
The second point is that I note the concerns of the Green Party—and to its credit it fought hard in defence of its views of life. But I have to say to the Greens that they spend so much time worrying about the wrong things. I would put it to the Greens that if they are seriously concerned about the privacy and protection of individual rights individual personal well-being and individual information they should take some time out and examine what happens to the information on an EFTPOS card or a VISA card or maybe they should go and do some checks into Baycorp and see the influence those people have on ordinary New Zealanders’ lives. I would suggest to them that the impact of Baycorp can certainly be far more damaging to many New Zealanders in the low socioeconomic group than this bill will be. 
I would comment on another thing. I have heard a lot of rhetoric and I heard some more of it just then about foreign policy and where we are going. I would say in support of some of those comments that this bill is necessary because the world has changed drastically. If September 11 was not a wake-up call to many of the pacifists and the naïve members of Parliament on that side of the House surely Bali was. And if that was not then surely the bombings in the Philippines after that were. This Government has to wake up to the real security issues that we face and I will say again that the issues that are presented to us through an open-door immigration policy coupled with international terrorism are not issues that this Government should dismiss lightly as simply the rantings of xenophobes or racists. There in the immigration policies lies a very real threat to the security of New Zealand and its friends. 
New Zealand for years has been used as a staging post and a back door into Australia by people who have picked up cheapo New Zealand passports on loose immigration policies. We need this bill and we need more security measures to enhance our protection because of one simple fact: we do not actually have any friends. We say we do but since we came out of the ANZUS alliance much of the intelligence that was always available to New Zealand is no longer available to us. It is available on a pick-and-choose basis and on that basis we are more vulnerable. We need legislation like this and further steps beyond this to ensure that we have access to good information that that access is timely and that it is on a broad-brush not a cherry-pick basis. 
We encourage world trade. We encourage foreign companies to come in and invest here. We therefore have an obligation to protect their investments when they become part of the New Zealand economic infrastructure. By not running competent capable in-depth thorough security systems that are totally networked with our allies where our allies have such confidence in us that they can give us that information we place in jeopardy many of those foreign corporations. 
I shall take a simple example: KFC and McDonald’s which we allow to come in here and set up business to service our needs. Imagine the effects on this nation and on the United States if we within New Zealand had bombings of KFC outlets. It is an American company and a prime target for international terrorists to make their point. In which country could that really happen? Well look at little old New Zealand! We do not think that anything like that could ever happen to us because we have Helen Clark as the Prime Minister and the Labour Government looking after us in a benign environment! I say: wake up New Zealand; wake up Labour Party! I compliment the Government on passing the legislation but I give it a brickbat for taking 2 years to get it through. I tell Government members again that there is a very real need to develop stronger ties with our traditional allies. If this Government is not going to take any of those steps then it had better get its head around this idea: if this Government wants independence of security and independence of foreign policy then it had better develop independence of security on its own shores and an independent Defence Force. 
I put it to the Government that it will only ever do that when it starts allocating 2 percent of gross domestic product towards defence. It will only ever do that when it backs up its independent mouth with independent dollars to create a fully comprehensive security system that this country can rely on. To do anything else is to be a bludger. To do anything else is to tell the United States: “Oh yes when we need you we will need you but in the meantime we don’t want to know you.” Well that does not work does it and it leaves us vulnerable and our security dependent on the goodwill of our traditional friends and allies. I am sorry but we have a habit of stretching that goodwill far too far.