McDowall JamesDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT at the second reading of the Inspector-General of Defence Bill. Notwithstanding the circumstances—as the National Party have raised that we're under urgency here and this is obviously not a key priority for the Defence Force—I do acknowledge the investments that have been made in defence since the first reading of this bill.This is one of those tricky roles quite clearly. One hopes that the inspector-general won't be doing very much because if they are busy then something is obviously going quite wrong and that is in particular because the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) is involved in a lot of overseas deployments at present. Of course they are in the United Kingdom training Ukrainians—good on them. In addition to that which could be a tricky issue for this particular legislation there are New Zealand Defence Force personnel unofficially fighting in Ukraine.We will continue to support this legislation because it confronts an important issue and while there is room for improvement once this office is established and functioning we think it can be up to the next Government to look at how it has played out and make those legislative improvements. Because this is not a particularly fast-moving area there is time to look at that structure and improve on things like the independence. I think the submission during this select committee process by the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties is quite a good one to refer to—lots of good recommendations in there.This new authority obviously requires a significant amount of trust in the Chief of Defence Force (CDF) and the Minister whoever it may be. While we acknowledge that things do work a bit differently in the defence space the purpose behind this bill is to increase accountability and we do have some concerns about that. There is a concern around the amalgamation of power and whether there is sufficient independence between the roles say between the Minister of Defence CDF and the inspector-general. As an aside keeping in mind at present that the Minister of Defence is also the Minister responsible for the GCSB the NZSIS and even the Public Service—just thinking about the requirements around getting permission from the Minister of Defence before passing on information to other Ministers—you know you have to wonder if the Minister of Defence has to ask himself if he can pass on information to the Minister of GCSB and so on.If we look at the introduction of the bill and others have spoken about the origin of this The Inquiry found that the Defence Force had failed to provide full and accurate information to Ministers and to the public."—Operation Burnham—and "The establishment … is also intended to assure the public that activities of the Defence Force have independent oversight."Given the nature of this new role it isn't quite clear that this is fully fit for purpose in dealing with this issue. But none the less as I said it can be improved. It does have a lot of promise but it does need tweaking. The independence as I said is a bit questionable but we acknowledge and understand that this is a difficult area to get the balance between transparency oversight national security and privacy right. Obviously there is a necessity to protect identities and national operational security matters so it is tricky.I know we'll get to this in the committee stage but referring to the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in the name of Minister Little number 370 "amends the Inspector-General of Defence Bill by enabling the Minister to certify certain material obtained by the inspector-general as non-disclosable"—perfectly understandable but immediately you get that kind of hint of a reduction in independence of this role. It requires the inspector-general to conduct every investigation in private—so that switched from public to private. I think in all fairness this practically doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference because ultimately it's up to the inspector-general to decide whether to make it public or private anyway. So I guess it changes the focus but not necessarily the outcome.The last issue that the Council for Civil Liberties raised around the OIA we agree with that.Another clause which I'll just sort of query clause 31 requires the inspector-general to "give prior written notice" before entering a defence estate the defence area naval ships and so on and other assets. This is again this issue of independence because—maybe it's just the influence of Hollywood here in the back of my mind but I think it doesn't take too much to imagine a scenario where a future Chief of Defence Force may decide that there's a reason they don't want the inspector-general to go there or can delay it and that heads-up can be quite useful. So we just need to see how this actually rolls out. Maybe it is just an optics issue but I think it's worth raising due to the complex relationship between the CDF the Minister and the inspector-general as a result of this legislation.It is good to see the protections for Defence Force personnel to make sure that they can be whistleblowers and not have that blow back on them. It does make me wonder what about intermediaries who aren't connected with the New Zealand Defence Force? What if a whistleblower goes through one of them perhaps even their local MP and they raise issues with something they've seen or something they've heard witnessed and so on?I think it's also important you know given all the powers that this bill grants this role and the protections which are significant to reflect on the functions going back to clause 8. So not only "(1)(a) to investigate—(i) incidents … in the course of activities of the Defence Force"—obviously—"(b) to assess and identify potential improvements or additions to Defence Force policies and procedures governing activities of the Defence Force". So all in all while this position has a great deal of power as I said around it—privacy mechanisms and information-gathering powers and restrictions on sharing and procedures to follow—it's kind of you know what's the actual outcome we're looking for?Clearly this is not a judicial issue. This is not about massive prosecutions against soldiers. It seems to just be about improving policies. I understand that this is trying not to step on the toes of military justice and the consequences and I wonder is there a tension between the investigations carried out by this role that will be carried out and those that are carried out by the military judicial system or the civilian judicial system?So in summary: room for improvement possibly a job for the next Government. Luckily this is not an area that moves at great speed. This is an important issue. The role should exist needs to be improved and we hope in good faith that the purpose of this role and the office are carried out effectively and it doesn't just become an internal procedural mechanism that actually protects wrongdoing by concealing it from Cabinet Parliament or the wider public. So with that I commend it to the House."