Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker.Kieran McAnulty: Good on ya Lizzie.Dr LIZ CRAIG: Thanks Kieran. It's an absolute privilege to take a call on the third reading of the Maritime Crimes Amendment Bill. As a lot of the other speakers have talked about this bill amends the Maritime Crimes Act 1999 so that New Zealand can ratify two maritime counter-terrorism conventions: the 2005 Rome Convention which relates to unlawful acts against marine navigation and the Rome Protocol which deals with unlawful acts against fixed platforms. Both of these protocols were adopted to address the increasing risks of terrorism at sea around the world.So what this bill does is it adds new offences that relate to things like the illicit transport of weapons of mass destruction nuclear material and the transport of fugitives. It also sets a relatively high bar because to actually have an offence under the Act you have to have a very serious offence: things like bodily injury that is severe extensive destruction of property that results in major economic losses and substantial damage to the environment.It's notable though that the bill doesn't apply to situations of armed conflict—so it's relating to those in peacetime. During the select committee process there was a lot of concern that what this bill would do would be that it would stifle peaceful protest and so during that process extra clarity was added to make sure that peaceful protests in themselves—it was very clear that that would be insufficient for prosecution under the Act. That's why that bar has been set very high in terms of the consequences of such acts and what they are defined as under the Act.The bill also defines a maritime boarding regime that is consistent with international law. That aspect is what I want to focus on for most of my call because if you actually distil this bill out what it's talking about is it's talking about extremely rare acts but it's very rare acts where minutes count so you have to make absolute snap decisions and you need to act very very quickly. The other thing with this is that the consequences of getting it wrong are potentially catastrophic.The closest analogy I can think of is in my own field of health where we tend to have a lot of protocols for dealing with situations that are very very rare but nevertheless you have to have an immediate coordinated action. I think the closest analogy I can think of is that of cardiac arrest in the hospital setting because what happens there every second counts. When you get a code that's called staff come from all over the hospital. Someone a senior staff member takes charge and then everybody starts working to a pre-agreed protocol: someone takes the airway someone does the chest compressions somebody else does the drugs and someone does the defibrillator. Basically all these protocols are agreed in advance and so staff are trained in this use. We don't spend a lot of time mucking about having a committee discussion about what needs to happen; what happens is everything falls into line and action and the patient receives optimal care very very quickly.I think in the same way what this bill does is it sets out a protocol for action when an enforcement officer decides that they have to board a ship because they've got reasonable grounds to suspect that someone on board has committed an offence under the Act or they believe the ship is about to be used to commit such an act. So even more than in the situation with cardiac arrests these situations are incredibly incredibly rare and the consequences of getting it wrong are potentially extreme.The other thing with this is that enforcement officers aren't likely to have a heck of a lot of experience in dealing with terrorist acts so it's not the time for a committee decision to make up the protocol; it's the time to enact something that's previously agreed. So that is exactly what this bill provides because what this bill specifies is on what grounds those enforcing officers can board a ship and what they have to do when they get there. For example the enforcing officer has to be the first person that boards that ship and on boarding what they have to do is arrange for notice that they're boarding to be given to the authorities of the flag State from where the ship came. It also states that the enforcing officer must not interfere with any attempt of the master of that ship to communicate with their own authorities. If the enforcing officer has reasonable grounds to suspect someone on board has committed an offence under the Act they can arrest somebody without a warrant but only if the flag State of that foreign ship agrees and consents to that arrest. So it's all laid out.Also if they decide that they want to board a ship but the ship fails to stop when it's been signalled there's a clear protocol for that so it tells you exactly what you need to do: when they can chase the ship when they can fire a warning shot or in the last resort when they can fire on the ship.In the select committee process there was also greater clarity added about who was an enforcing officer to make it absolutely clear that it was the officer in charge of the ship or a constable that could act as that enforcing officer.So just summing up what this bill is doing it's a very very essential bill that will allow New Zealand to ratify the 2005 Rome Convention and the Protocol lining us up with international law. Many of those earlier concerns about the impacts this bill would have on people's ability to protest peacefully have been dealt with in the select committee process because what we've done is specified that there's a relatively high bar about what this bill is talking about. It's talking about serious injury it's talking about extensive destruction of property and it's talking about substantial environmental damage and those have been dealt with.So while all of us hope there will be very few situations where this bill is applied it's absolutely essential that we have clear protocols in place for when such rare high-impact situations occur because those enforcing officers as I said aren't going to have a lot of experience to draw on and they need a very very clear protocol for when they move into that ship. So all those concerns that've been brought into the select committee process have been addressed in some way within this bill and therefore I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.Bill read a third time.