van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the first reading of the Maritime Powers Bill. The purpose of this bill is to put in place clear powers for the enforcement of New Zealand's law in international waters or foreign waters. I think it needs to be quite clear what this bill is actually hoping to achieve. It's not about expanding our laws and creating new criminal offences. It's about ensuring that we can have the power to enforce the current laws that we have in those international waters through detection searching and detaining. This bill when you are looking through it provides a range of mechanisms to help with enforcement of New Zealand's laws in international waters and it's things like requiring a ship to stop boarding a ship searching a ship for a person that's suspected to have committed an offence in New Zealand detaining a ship and arresting a person. I think those are all very adequate enforcement options when you're dealing with crime that's committed in New Zealand and then needing to be stopped in international waters.I think it's also quite important to note the advice that we received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) as background to this bill. It said that we don't have adequate marine powers. This limits our ability to respond to security threats and criminal activity. So there's clearly an error where we're not allowed the enforcement mechanism that we need to protect New Zealanders and enforce the rule of law within our own country and in those international waters. So this law would ensure that we can enforce our own criminal law when it comes to shipping.In particular this is of importance when it comes to transnational crime in the cases of drug smuggling migrant smuggling firearms trafficking and wildlife smuggling. We are an island nation and our criminal jurisdiction extends outside of New Zealand into our own waters and that is already recognised in the law. I mean if you look for example at the Fisheries Act the Maritime Crimes Act and the Customs and Excise Act we already have bespoke areas of law where we accept that our criminal law needs to go into those international areas into waters. But it provides a problem where if you have for example a ship that has come to New Zealand brought illicit substances illicit drugs into our country and then leaves out of our waters into international water there is a problem where you can detain that ship for drug smuggling but what happens with the problem where you might end up with illicit firearms found on that same ship? You don't under these current laws have the ability to detain and find those illicit firearms because our law is so bespoke for those particular areas. So what this law seeks to achieve is to ensure that we have a range of provisions for what may be search and surveillance in international waters and it would simplify so we don't end up in situations where people cannot enforce New Zealand criminal law. MFAT looked into specific regimes to bring some of those criminal elements into line creating specific regimes for wildlife firearms and migrant smuggling. But I think we can all acknowledge the importance that the law needs to be clear and simple to follow. And I think what this law hopes to achieve is to ensure that there is one law for all of these provisions rather than bespoke for specific areas like the Fisheries Act and the Maritime Crimes Act. Having everything in one would drastically simplify the process and make it a lot easier. Thank you Madam Speaker.