Banks John: Search and Surveillance Bill — Third Reading 
Banks John: Search and Surveillance Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:678;Page:1249] 
Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 Some of us have been very concerned about this Search and Surveillance Bill for as long as it was suggested that it was going to arrive on the floor of this Parliament. Ten Parliaments ago my views on these matters would have been easily dismissed with the narrative: “Well nothing to fear nothing to hide.” But as you grow a little bit older there is plenty to fear if you are not vigilant.  
So there are some very important principles on the line with this legislation. Firstly we accept that we live in a free and democratic country. It is only free and it is only democratic because brave men and women have fought long and hard for these two pillars of a modern New Zealand. The State’s primary role of course is the security and freedom of its citizens—our security and our freedom to go about our lives fulfilled and safe.  
To give the State the mandate to protect us it inevitably needs powers—legislative powers. Sometimes it could be argued and I would not argue that these powers could be seen as Draconian. But those who seek to do harm to us have all the power. They have all the power and the only way we are going to protect good people from bad people is to give the State the necessary powers and the balance required to protect us from the bad.  
I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the third reading of the Search and Surveillance Bill. This bill is well overdue and will provide much-needed consistency and much-needed oversight of the way that the police and other agencies use search and surveillance because the framework around their legislative ability to do that in the past has been at the very least woolly and sometimes illegal. It has been a long time coming but that is only fitting for a bill that required so much intense scrutiny and consideration. I want to thank the Minister of Justice for allowing me to earbash her at every opportunity about the importance of the matters that the ACT Party raised on day one alongside the Labour Party and others.  
ACT believes that it is important to strike the right balance between protecting individuals from the power of the State while at the same time ensuring the State has the ability to protect individuals from people who may want to do harm. That means making sure agents of the Government—often faceless agents of the Government—cannot just walk into your house and search it for no good reason while also making sure that with the correct oversight the police can search and carry out surveillance against those who may be committing serious crimes against us. That balance is hard to get right. But after much scrutiny and many changes ACT believes that this bill has managed to get that fine-line balance about right.  
Before I talk about a few of the more controversial aspects of the bill following on from the Labour spokesman on these matters the ACT Party played last term a very important role in the due process that was followed on the Video Camera Surveillance (Temporary Measures) Bill. We clearly understand why that was necessary and we enabled the Government to get that in place. A Supreme Court decision last year meant that Parliament had to take swift action to ensure important police investigations into serious crimes were not jeopardised. ACT insisted that the bill go to the Justice and Electoral Committee for robust scrutiny and I agree with the Minister that the select committee did a great job in scrutinising that bill as did Charles Chauvel the well-educated member on the legal front from the Opposition. I would like to also acknowledge the ACT Party’s former deputy leader in this House John Boscawen for his work on this bill.  
The ACT Party will continue to play a vital role in ensuring due process is followed and executive power is managed and wielded properly. This Parliament is going to hear a lot from me in my 10th term here about the balance between the rights of the individual and the responsibilities of the State. When you have been around as long as I have and witnessed what I have in 10 terms of this Parliament you can clearly understand that this Parliament’s responsibility is to make sure that agents of the State have only the necessary executive powers to do the work to deliver protection which is the foremost responsibility of the Government—protecting us all from bad people. For instance I will have plenty to say about the arms amendment legislation as it slowly winds its way through the backroom processes of this Parliament. Again the ACT Party will be carefully weighing the philosophy concepts and principles of good arms-control legislation against the rights of lawful gun-ownership.  
This is precisely the same balance that we are dealing with today in this bill the balance that the select committee on the Search and Surveillance Bill had to put in place and the slide rule that it used on every clause of this bill. My observation of these matters is that the select committee did a first-class job. The Minister Judith Collins showed first-class leadership in opening her mind to the views of the minority in this House about some good ideas that she said on balance will be incorporated to get something good and sustainable.  
The Justice and Electoral Committee received an overwhelming number of submissions on the bill and you should not be surprised. It took into account the views of the public and the legal community and it is thanks to the submitters’ hard work that the bill now strikes a much much better balance between civil liberties and police powers—civil liberties in their most simple expression and police powers.  
I want to congratulate the chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee at the time the Hon Chester Borrows on his effort. He is a first-class member of Parliament a lawyer by training a policeman by profession and someone who believes that we should have the right to go about our lawful endeavours without being interrupted by agents of the State.  
I also want to pay tribute to the work of the Labour Party member Charles Chauvel. As I said it is unfortunate even churlish that Labour will not be supporting the bill today as most of its concerns have been adequately addressed by the select committee through the Supplementary Order Paper. I am surprised that Labour did not come into the House this afternoon and deliver a similar narrative that on balance in the interests of safety and security for the citizens of this country we have probably got it about as good as we can get. When we look deep into our souls we have got it about as good as it can get.  
The Labour members have talked a lot about the need for media freedom and we agree with that. The bill now allows journalists’ claims of privilege following the execution of a search warrant a production order or an examination order to be heard by a High Court judge.  
The ACT Party is not in the business of supporting changes to complex bills at the last moment and that is why after extensive consultation with the ACT Party we now have this. Finally it is now Parliament’s duty to keep a watching brief on how the powers enshrined in this new law are wielded and to ensure that we always balance the rights between privacy and surveillance. This bill I think on balance achieves that.