van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise this afternoon on behalf of my ACT Party colleague Nicole McKee who sits on the Justice Committee and who has done a lot of good diligent work on this bill but wasn't able to be here this afternoon. I'm rising on behalf of ACT to support the second reading of the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill. This bill went to select committee in October last year and was reported back in November last year and it was unfortunate that it was a much shorter select committee than was necessary—it was only four weeks—but it's great to see that even within that amount of time over 200 people submitted on this piece of legislation. I'm glad to see that it did get some debate and I know that the select committee itself was very thorough in its deliberation on this bill. This bill is a very serious matter. It deals with terrorism in our country and how to counter it. There are two parts to this bill because it's trying to seek to clarify and strengthen our counter-terrorism legislation to better prevent and respond to terrorism within New Zealand and any associated activities. So the first part of this bill which it's hoping to change is to change the designation regime within the Terrorism Suppression Act to allow the Prime Minister to designate an individual as well as a group as a terrorist entity. That is a very important change because currently only groups can be considered terrorist rather than individuals. It's a very important change to be made because as I was reading through the debate pack prepared by the Parliamentary Library I noted that there have been instances since we first put in place the counter-terrorism laws where we finally have individuals in prison for terrorism offences but importantly we have had tragedies in our own society where individuals rather than groups have been responsible for terrorism. There are two instances of note: those that occurred in Christchurch—the terrible terrible events in Christchurch—and also a man in New Lynn and my thoughts go out to all of the families and communities that are still suffering from the ongoing effects of these terrorist activities. The bill then tries to clarify what it then means to designate an individual to be part of this law. That's very important because we finally have people imprisoned who are individuals and so we've had to define under this law what it means to be imprisoned and have included people aged between 14 and 17 years in the custody of the Department of Corrections or the New Zealand Police as well as people who might be locked up in our normal justice system or what people understand to be in prison. That is very important in order to make sure that we are truly grappling with the proper problem. It's also very important because the Minister herself has said that The terrorist designation scheme was initially brought in to stop New Zealanders from providing financial support to overseas terrorist groups in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Now as the terrorism landscape has evolved our laws need to also." And so we do have people designated as terrorist entities imprisoned but they still seek to attempt to influence and incite others from behind bars overseas. That could be our reality here in the future. So these laws look at what it means to designate a person rather than an entity as a terrorist and also how that will work for people behind bars.Now that also becomes very important because the second part of this bill seeks to change the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act. It allows for a larger range of objectionable publications to be included in the eligibility test for a control order.Now we know that this has had some concern within the committee because there were submitters who suggested you know this could mean that people who might have an illegal online video game but don't realise that it's banned could in fact be in breach of a control order. But the officials during the select committee process clarified that being in possession of a banned game would not be enough in itself to warrant a control order on an individual but a whole set of other criteria also had to be made for that individual to be considered.So the control orders through the select committee process have been extended to cover individuals that have been sentenced to home detention or to community-based sentences and they've allowed the judges more discretion on deciding what the requirements of those control orders should be. So it's taking into account the fact that every person who may have a control order placed upon them is different and everyone will have different unique situations and different circumstances that might need to be controlled. So there will be also new protocols for managing electronic monitoring of an individual subject to a control order.Throughout the select committee process they tidied up the bill a little way to represent some pending enactments in other Acts that they worked on last year. That included changes that were made to the Security Information in Proceedings Act and aligned those legislative pieces with this bill so that when they all come into force they will all work together. I think it's really important that when we are changing our laws we're making sure that they work for New Zealanders and they are comprehensive and they work together.The committee felt the need to clarify some electronic monitoring requirements. They removed some of the provisions from a schedule and put it into the main body of the bill to insert new clause 19A which would outline where the limits on the use of electronic monitoring would have been inserted.Finally when they went through the select committee process they noted that the Commissioner of Police was the sole and current authority for electronic monitoring. The Department of Corrections also had a major part to play and responsibility for electronic monitoring so they have been referenced throughout the bill to allow them the authority as with the New Zealand Police.This is a very serious bill in reference to a very serious matter. The ACT Party commends it to the House and we want to see New Zealand be a safe society where we can suppress terrorism so that all New Zealanders are safe and our laws reflect a way of helping people become rehabilitated while we are keeping New Zealanders safe and we are removing threats of terrorism. Thank you Mr Speaker."